“I’m sorry, Pearl—I was so—” Distracted by lust. Out of my mind. Crazy for you. My head thumped back against the door. I was so fucked.
“I was too.” She turned and sat on the floor in front of me, her eyes heavy-lidded, watching me, probing desolate corners of my heart that never saw the light of day. I dipped my head to kiss her sweet lips, dumbstruck—always dumbstruck by her, top to bottom and back again. We sank toward each other, kissing until we were both breathless. “I’m tired.” She sighed, eyes blinking open. “Will you lie down with me? We need to talk.”
We got up and moved to the bed, stripped the covers back, and lay down facing each other.
“I went to see my mother this afternoon, before work. She’s retracted all her med-school demands.” She laid her palm over mine, and I closed my fingers over the back of her hand, but I could barely feel her touch because I knew what she was about to say. “I want to thank you for giving me a place to live and the ability to stand on my own—or as close to it as I’ve ever come. I’m keeping my job. No more allowance or credit card, though they offered the return of both. But I’m going to move home. Especially with your mother here—it’s the right thing for both of us.”
Every cell in my body argued that letting her leave was the farthest thing from right—for me. But this decision wasn’t about me. It never had been. “When?”
“Tomorrow.”
I reached to trace the soft skin at her hairline. “Your birthday,” I said, sliding a strand of hair behind her ear and following the curve behind her earlobe. I settled my hand on her neck, fingers massaging the back of it, palm absorbing her fluttering pulse.
“Yes.” Her voice shook and her dark eyes each reflected the square of moonlit window. A tear streamed from the corner of her eye into her hair. “I’ll miss living with you, Boyce.”
My name in her mouth just then pierced right through me. Thompson once told me that he’d gotten stabbed by a guy in prison. “You’d reckon it’d be a sharp pain,” he’d said. “But it’s not. It’s like getting punched really fucking hard. So hard that it bruises down deep inside. At first your innards are all surprised—like How did something hit me there? I didn’t even know I’d been shanked till I saw that dickhole standing there all crazypants, holding a fucking shiv with my blood on it. Creepiest damned thing ever happened to me—looking at him and thinking, That motherfucker just killed me.”
Thompson was lucky—the homemade blade missed everything vital. He recovered.
The knowledge that Pearl was moving out—that I’d pulled her so close just to lose her forever—was a deep punch to the gut. A punch that in reality was a stab wound I might never recover from.
“Jesus, Pearl,” I whispered, more worship than curse.
When I angled above her, she drew me down for a long, deep kiss, her body growing restless as my hand slid from her neck to her chest, palming those perfect tits and tugging her nipples gently through the barely there tank I’d not had time to remove the first time. “Won’t be needing this tonight,” I said, lifting it over her head and tossing it to the floor. “These neither.” I drew the shorts down silky-smooth legs that would shortly be spread wide and then locked around me.
I paused to stare at the tempting little road to hell lying there in my bed for the two beats it took to ditch my own shorts and no longer. If loving her was gonna be the death of me, I saw no reason to dawdle.
Pearl
When I woke this morning, everything was the same—at first. I leaned to turn off my phone alarm, bleary-eyed. The bedroom door was shut and I was alone. I was also butt-naked.
As I pulled on the tank and shorts I’d worn for about ten minutes before Boyce stripped them off, the night came flooding back, not that it had far to go since it hadn’t ended until early morning. A shiver went through me at the thought, and my body temperature must have spiked several degrees because holy cow, that room was suddenly an oven.
I padded into the kitchen and poured a mug of coffee, then went back to Boyce’s bedroom and dragged my suitcases from the back of his closet. As I packed up everything I’d brought with me weeks ago, I replayed yesterday afternoon’s conversation with Mama in my head. I’d been too shocked to be angry at her confession, though I worried that bottled-up emotion could rise up and slap me silly any minute. She’d kept so much from me—evidence of how childlike I had still been in her eyes, college degree and all.
I’d perched on the edge of one of the chairs facing the water, anticipating a critical diagnosis and trusting it would be something highly treatable, caught early. Not fatal. Please God, not fatal. Her expression terrified me—eyes like dinner plates, chin quivering, hands knotted in her lap like they’d been superglued to each other.
“What did he mean by time to tell her?” I prompted. “Tell me what, Mama?”
She swallowed, flinching when Thomas pushed the sliding glass door aside to join us. I waited, tensely silent, as he handed glasses to each of us and took a seat next to her, across from me.
“Your father,” she began and then stopped, swallowing again. Thomas placed a hand over hers and she took a shaky breath. “The story I’ve led you to believe about your father is not… wholly true.”
I was so relieved that no one was dying that it took me a moment to absorb what she’d said. “What do you mean, not wholly true?”
“It is true that we grew up together. That we fell in love. That he was intelligent and had dreams of becoming a doctor. It is untrue that he died trying to escape Mexico.”
“How… how did he die?”
“He was executed by the drug cartel—”
I gasped.
“—which he belonged to.”
My mouth fell open, but I could only shake my head and think What?
“We were sixteen and seventeen when he was recruited. Boys of poor families follow the temptation of money all too easily, and we were from very poor families. The money, the power, the violence—they changed the boy I loved into someone I no longer recognized. But that transformation took place gradually. It took me too long to see it, and once I did, I thought I could change him back.” Her voice hitched. “The first time he hit me, I blamed myself.”
“Mama.” My eyes welled with tears.
“He appeared sickened at the mark of his hand on my face. He cried like a child and begged my forgiveness. I pled with him to leave the cartel. He swore that if he remained just a little longer, we would have enough money that he could go to university to follow his dream. I argued that the deeper he got, the more impossible leaving would be. But he was a charming, persuasive boy, and I loved him.
“The next time he hit me, I fell against a large urn and it toppled over onto my hand. My face scraped against a broken fragment.” She touched the scar at her temple. She’d cited a childhood accident for that mark and the little finger on her right hand that didn’t bend. Her aunt had set the broken bone with a stick, she’d said, shaking her head as if the whole incident was sad but funny.
Hot tears tracked down my face. This story didn’t fit the woman I knew.
“The last time, he brought me home unconscious and told mi abuela I had fainted and hit my head. I woke and said nothing to contradict him. I pretended I couldn’t remember his fist flying at my face. When he left, I collapsed at her feet in tears because I knew… I knew I was pregnant with you, and I thought there was no way out.
“‘Have you told him about the baby?’ Abuelita asked, and I shook my head. ‘Then you will never tell him. You will go to the United States and make a new life for yourself and your child. You will be safe, because you will never return.’
“She took me to the room she shared with mi tía and knelt by the bed. She pulled out a box covered in dust, filled with old papers. One was my birth certificate. My parents died, as I told you, in a car crash. But before that, they’d crossed the border into Texas with my brother Jasiel, found work, and had me.”
“Which made you a US citizen,” I whispered
.
“Yes. They made a home near Brownsville. My mother worked in a hotel kitchen. Jasiel began school. But the construction site where my father worked was reported for hiring illegals. He was deported, and Jasiel. They thought that because of my citizenship, my mother would be allowed to stay, but the anchor baby exemption was a myth. Immigration officials deported her as well, and she would not leave me behind. They died only months later—I can’t remember them.”
“And my uncle?” A man I hadn’t known existed until two minutes ago.
Her red eyes refilled, tears spilling down her cheeks. She held tight to Thomas’s hand. “I haven’t seen my brother or any of my family since the night I left Matamoros. Jasiel took me to the US Consulate with my birth certificate and Mexican identification and every peso Abuelita had scrimped and saved for years. I had just turned eighteen. I was granted a passport and allowed to enter the US two weeks later. Alone.”
• • • • • • • • • •
Avoiding a glance into the garage for fear my anguish was too visible, I stowed two suitcases in my car and went back to get the third and my backpack. Inside, I stood staring at the bed I’d only shared with Boyce twice, overwhelmed with the eerie sensation of overlooking something vital.
I didn’t want to leave him, that much was plain as day—but I recognized my selfish pining for what it was. I would not remain here and let his mother use him. If you love something, set it free. The rest of that insufferable adage didn’t even matter, because there was no if. The only way to free him from her coercion was to walk out his door and release him from the promise he’d made to me.
I took a deep breath, determined to paste a smile on my face and walk to the garage. Say good-bye. Assure him that we were good. Pretend that I hadn’t just stood in the center of his bedroom ripped open, heart bleeding out on the floor, aching for him worse than I ever had before. I’d known, in part, what I was wading into and how much it would eventually hurt, but I wouldn’t make it undone now if I had the power to unravel time.
I turned and there he stood, hands planted on either side of the doorframe as though he’d hold me prisoner in that room if he could. Ah, damn. My heart was still capable of wishful thinking, poor ignorant thing.
“Were you gonna say good-bye?” he asked.
“Of course.” I tried to smile, but all I managed to do was bare my teeth and raise my top lip. I must look nutty as a fruitcake, I thought, lowering my chin so he wouldn’t see through my charade and ordering myself to get a damned grip. “I was just about to come out to the garage. You didn’t have to come in.”
“I did, actually—I have something for you. Today’s your birthday, after all.” He reached into the closet—top shelf—and pulled down a plain cardboard box, a foot square, flaps folded shut instead of taped. “I can’t wrap anything worth a shit, so I didn’t try. Figured you wouldn’t mind.”
I smiled up at him, taking it. “I don’t. Wrapping paper is overrated and environmentally unsound.”
He inclined his head toward the box. “Wait until tonight to open it?” His gaze dropped to the floor, thick lashes falling against his cheeks. “After whatever you’ve got planned to celebrate your bein’ twenty-one, I mean.”
The boy who’d seen the inside of Ms. Ingram’s office more times than any single person I knew in high school—usually for cutting up or smarting off in class—was shy when it came to gift-giving? I wondered if he’d ever given anyone a gift, and how long it had been since he’d received one. My heart ached, because I knew the answer to that without asking.
“I’m having dinner with Mom and Thomas tonight, but I’m going out with classmates Friday to celebrate—La Playa and then some barhopping. Would you… want to come?”
His eyes lifted to mine and he was quiet for a long time. I realized he might have Friday-night plans. Plans he wouldn’t want to confide and I damn sure wouldn’t want to hear.
“I could do that, if you’re sure you want me along,” he finally said. “I usually meet up with Thompson Friday night for supper, but I think he can survive without me.”
Senseless relief filled me—it was only a matter of time until our lives went in opposite directions, after all—but today, I’d take it. “I’m sure. If you’re sure Randy won’t mind.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile brimming with secrets. “He won’t mind.”
I hefted the box that held my birthday gift. It wasn’t heavy. “Can I shake it?”
“Maybe a little. Just don’t drop it.”
As clumsy as I’d been lately, I decided shaking was right out. “What if—oh, never mind.” I waved a hand.
“What if what, Pearl?”
“What if you call me tonight when you go outside for your evening smoke? And I’ll open it while we’re on the phone.”
He smiled. “Deal.” He took the box and set it atop my suitcase and slid my backpack from my shoulder to the floor. “One more thing before you go.” His voice rumbled softly like the idling hum of a powerful engine.
His cool hands framed my face, and I inhaled the citrusy smell of the oil-removing soap he kept by the aluminum sink in the garage. His eyes crept over my features one by one like he might never see them again. When he reached my lips, his hands slid into my hair, cradling my head. As he bent to kiss me, I rose on my toes to meet him. Tears streamed from the corners of my eyes, and I knew he felt them connecting with his palms, baptizing his miraculous hands and giving me away.
Brow creased in confusion, he touched his thumbs to the tears. “What’s this then?”
“When will you leave town?”
His frown deepened and I realized my mistake.
“Why do you think I’m leaving?”
Me and my careless mouth. “I… I just assumed,” I stammered, knowing my eyes were telling him what a liar I was.
“Ah, dammit Pearl.” He sighed, mouth tight. “Did Sam tell you?”
I shook my head. “I overheard you telling her what you were doing for me. I’d meant to call Mama this week to let her know I missed her. What you told Sam just gave me incentive to do it. We needed this break because it’s past time she began regarding me as an adult, but we also needed the reconciliation.” And I needed to know the truth about my father.
An hour later, sitting in class, I realized that he’d deflected my question about when he planned to leave town. I had no business wanting him to stay when I would be gone before the end of August. I’d asked to move home to liberate him to go find his future. My longing to be part of that future didn’t figure in.
• • • • • • • • • •
Four messages were on my phone when I checked it after class.
Mama: Happy birthday, Mija. We’ll see you tonight?
Melody: Hey chica – FINALLY 21!!! WOOHOO!! Sorry I’m not there. ☹ Scratch that. Sorry you aren’t HERE. When you come to Dallas this fall we will party our butts off. K??? Miss you!
Lucas: You’re welcome – it’s a great apartment. Heads-up, the Hellers’ daughter Carlie may elect herself your new best friend, and a bossy orange cat may show up at the door. Francis considers the apartment his and I didn’t disabuse him of that notion. Carlie takes care of him and will keep that up if you don’t want to. Jacqueline and I plan to fly down for Thanksgiving. Dad’s meeting us there. If you’ll be in town, J wants to meet you.
Mitchell: Happy birthday, Pearl. Thinking about you a lot lately. Hope you’re doing well. I miss you and wish we could at least be friends.
I told Mama I’d be home after lab. I sent Mel a winking emoticon and Miss you too! I thanked Lucas for the tips on Carlie and Francis, assured him that I would welcome a friend and a guard cat, and told him I’d love to meet Jacqueline. My first, second and third instinct was to ignore Mitchell, but he wasn’t getting the message. By the time I was unpacking in my old room, folding clothes into the dresser and stacking textbooks on the desk, that text was like a burr under my saddle.
I set the light
ning whelk shell he’d tried to destroy on my desk, finger tracing the whorls, and then I picked up my phone.
Me: I’m fine, and I wish you all the best, but we can’t be friends, Mitchell. We’re done. Please don’t text me again.
I deleted the conversation, deleted his contact information, and blocked his number just as Boyce’s familiar smirk showed up on my screen and the ringtone he’d never know I’d set for him years ago played softly.
“Hello there, Mr. Wynn.”
chapter
Twenty-two
Boyce
She sounded happy. Good. I wanted to be the one who triggered it, but I’d rather her be happy the rest of her life without me than be the thing that made her sad. The tears she’d shed after I kissed her this morning had hung over my day like a storm brewing out over the water but never making landfall. I couldn’t for the life of me think what I might’ve done to hurt her, but I had no damned clue why she’d been crying.
“Hey, Miss Frank. How was the birthday?”
“It was good. I heard back from Lucas—I texted him last night to thank him for arranging the apartment. He said he and Jacqueline are coming down for Thanksgiving and meeting his dad at the Hellers’. Are they related or something?”
“I think his dad went to college with them. Maxfield’s known them his whole life.” I blew a stream of smoke away from the phone, as if she were sitting next to me instead of in her bedroom two miles and two thousand reasons away from me.
“The first thing I thought when I read it was that I can’t stay there for Thanksgiving, because I won’t see you unless I come home. And then I realized I don’t even know where you’ll be in November.”
“Maybe I’ll come see you there. I’ve been tied to the garage for years. Now I’m not.” I wondered what in hell made me say that. I kept meaning to let her go, but I kept holding on.