Chapter 26

26

Did you make it home? I text Sage while Carter and I finish off our takeout.

Yes. That's all she writes back and I swallow, waiting for another text. About anything. I don't even care if she wants to push the leatherwork class again. But there's just nothing, even after twenty minutes. Finally I add, I really am sorry, Sage. I know it's probably very hard to believe, but I'm trying to be better.

This time she writes back, I can tell, Teal. I'm not mad, okay? I'm just getting busy with Tenn

Ew , I type back quickly, but my shoulders have instantly relaxed.

"Who are you texting?" Carter's got a crease between his eyebrows.

"Sage."

He instantly relaxes. "Did you guys fight or something?"

"What makes you say that?"

He waves an arm in my direction. "You always get the same look on your face when you fight with Sage."

I snort. "Do not."

"Yeah, actually, you do. You sort of scrunch up your nose and grimace like this." He makes a face that resembles something Jim Carrey did in that Grinch movie, and I can't help but laugh.

"Dammit, Carter, you're making my ankle hurt!"

He's staring at me in awe, like always, when he makes me laugh. Like glitter just appeared around me in a swirl, and I was suddenly dressed like Glinda the Good Witch. "How can that hurt your foot?"

"My body shakes when I laugh. If you didn't notice."

"Oh, I noticed." He looks me up and down and I turn away.

I don't know how to flirt with Carter. Which is what I think he's doing. So I swallow and say, "You know why I agreed to marry you? For real?"

Now he's the one swallowing. He shakes his head and finally says, "The money, right?"

I shrug and try to make it look casual. "Partly. But mostly, I wanted to be best friends with you again." My eyes unexpectedly fill with tears when I say it.

"Hey." He lifts from his chair and comes to me fast, kneeling and wrapping his arms around me. I can't help but cry even more, right into his shoulder. "You are my best friend. Even when we weren't talking. I thought about you every damn day. I wondered what you were eating for breakfast, what you were doing before bed. If you still wore those perfumes your grandmother got you—"

I laugh into his collarbone. Amá Sonya agrees with Coco Chanel that "a woman who doesn't wear perfume doesn't have a future." When she found out that all I had was a bottle of Pear Crème Br?lée body mist from a cheap lotion store, she marched me into Nordstrom and forced me to choose four perfumes, one for every season. Gucci Bloom for spring, Tom Ford's Soleil Blanc for summer, Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille in the fall, and for winter, Byredo Vanille Antique. It was winter when she bought them for me, and so I was working at the gym, wearing Vanille Antique when Carter visited me. "Damn, Teal, what are you wearing? It smells…" he'd said, then bowed his head toward my neck. It was the first time in our history that Carter had gotten close to me like that —something almost bordering on intimacy.

I was filled with so much want it frightened me. I wanted him to close the distance. I wanted to feel his lips on my neck, his tongue sliding down my cleavage. So of course, being the scaredy cat I was, I took a big step back and said, "Geez, Carter, ever hear of personal space?" and watched with equal parts guilt and delight as his cheeks turned bright pink.

"I still wear my perfumes," I mumble into his shirt.

"That one, though. You haven't worn that one…whatever it was called."

My face flushes. "It's not winter, that's why."

He pulls back with half a smile I don't know what to do with. "I'll be counting the days till winter, then."

I close my eyes. You shouldn't say stuff like that to me. It's on the tip of my tongue, but I'm afraid he'll pull away if I say the words aloud.

Luckily he speaks instead. "I'll be your best friend again, Teal. It's what I want, too."

My heart melts and I lean back to look at him. "Really?" I must sound so dumb, so breathless, so desperate. But I wasn't expecting this. For my greatest wish to be mutual.

"Yes." He looks right at me with those gold fire eyes. "I'll start right now." And then he lifts me up, kicking and squealing, turning me around and around, just like when we were teenagers and in one summer, he'd grown a head and a half taller than me and wanted to show off.

He carries me to the back porch and puts me on one of the lawn chairs, and he literally says, "Let's read each other our favorite poems." And you know what? As corny as it sounds, that's exactly what we do. I read to him "Chambered Nautilus" by Linda Hogan and he reads to me "Sometimes a Wild God" by Tom Hirons and then we remember things aloud about our childhood—Abuelo Gene, the dominoes, the guava pastries and sneaky sips of Cuban coffee. Until we're laughing so hard, my eyes are tearing up. Until I'm certain there are a million layers of rainbows in the sky, hidden by the deepest blue velvet in the night sky.

There's the slightest blip in our feel-good vibes when I turn and say to him, "Hey, um. Did you happen to see anything weird in the lightning yesterday?"

He turns to me, that line between his brows there once again. "What do you mean?"

"Like, it took on some weird…unexpected…forms? Almost like, I don't know. A simulation of some kind?"

He blinks at me and shakes his head. "There for sure could've been. But I was only looking at you, Teal. I didn't look anywhere else."

I nod, trying hard to not show my disappointment, and quickly change the subject, this time to back when I tricked Carter into eating a hot pepper from Nadia's garden, and soon we're laughing all over again. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I'm all alone in that weird experience. It probably means nothing anyway.

He helps me get ready for bed so I don't put any more weight on my foot than necessary, and he makes sure I have my medicine so I don't wake up in the night from throbbing, sharp pain.

When he goes to the door, to get to the pull-out, I whisper, "Stay," so softly, I'm equally afraid he has and hasn't heard me.

But he freezes and turns to me. "Yeah?"

"Yes."

He pauses. "But…not for sex, right?"

I shake my head, ignoring another drop of disappointment in my chest. I wasn't inviting him for sex, but the fact that he is still so against the idea of it feels like another rejection all over again. "No sex."

But then something maybe even better than sex happens. When he gets under the covers, he turns over toward me, draping his heavy arm over my hip, hand on my belly, and then he nudges me until I'm completely wrapped up in him, the way I feel when I'm all alone in the big, dark, safe forest after a long run. He lets out a deep, long sigh and says, "Fuck, I've missed you, Teal. You have no idea."

These words linger in my mind like a lullaby when I fall asleep.

Carter wakes up early to make me breakfast—eggs and fried plantains with sliced avocado on the side—and then he claps his hands together. "I took the next few days off, so we can do whatever you want," he tells me with a big smile on his face.

I raise my eyebrows. "The whole week? Really?"

"Yep. I've accrued enough PTO so it doesn't matter. And Nate—" He coughs. "Well, Nate said it was fine."

I finally let myself smile in response to this news. "When did you ask for the week off?"

Carter's cheeks pinken. "This morning." He shrugs and looks off in the distance. "I just…you know. I thought we could spend this week doing best friend shenanigans. Like, catching up on old times and stuff."

I'm so moved, I can't speak, so I cover for this with a big bite of plantain.

"I was thinking, today—"

"Dammit!" I rise up, then remember about my foot, and plop back down. "I have brunch with Amá Sonya in two hours. So I can't do anything till after that."

"Oh," Carter says, but he doesn't look at all disappointed. "Two hours gives us enough time, I think…for what I have planned today. And maybe I could come with you to brunch after."

I give him a look like he just suggested we should pierce our nipples, ourselves, for funsies. "You. Want to come to brunch. With Sonya."

He shrugs. "She usually gives you a hard time, right? I could be there and buffer things."

And now I'm basically melted butter. "We have to dress up. You know that right?"

He shrugs. "Not a problem at all, Teal."

"And she's probably going to insult us. A lot. But backhandedly. So it sounds like almost a compliment."

"Teal. I grew up with y'all. I know how Sonya is, remember?" He furrows his brow. "Do you not want me to come? That's fine if you'd rather I stay."

"No, I—" I blink a few times when I realize that I'm actually getting emotional. "I just don't know if it's worth your time."

Carter's smile is crooked and his gaze follows me up and down and back up again. "You'll be there. So it'll be worth my time."

I can't think of a single thing to say in response. Instead I clear my throat and say, "But you wanted to take me out first? Like a date?"

Carter nods and winks. "Well, it's not exactly like we're going anywhere. I didn't plan anything elaborate this time…"

I wring my hands, the suspense making me want to throw a lightning bolt right at his head. "What is it, then? What best friends shenanigans involves us…staying home?" In my memories, there's a jumbling, summery montage of him and me climbing the trees reaching up toward the sky all over Catalina Street, or digging through all of the sofas we could find for loose change for the ice cream truck, or leaving each other secret notes hidden under the rocks of our yards.

Carter's shoulders drop just the slightest bit. "I don't want to let you down."

I raise a playful fist. "Carter Velasquez, if you don't tell me right now …"

"Fine." He lifts his hands. "Fine." He walks over to the living room, lifting the top off one of the ottomans there, and procures a…CD?

"No way," I breathe as he approaches, because no, it's not a CD. It's an old-ass edition of Mutant League Football , our favorite video game Abuelo Gene grabbed for us from the thrift store back in the day. Abuelo Gene, poor fellow, thought it was the more popular Madden game. But honestly "mutant" intrigued me far more—I've always loved the X-Men. Hello, Storm? A powerful superhuman who could control the weather? There is no alternative universe in which Teal Flores doesn't love the idea of humans with strange and unusual powers.

Even though this game turned out to be less epically magical mutants, and more of the zombie and alien sorts, Carter and I still had so much fun with it.

He stares at me, at my smile and my glee, and freezes, like the sight is too overwhelming to continue movement. "Carter! Put it on!" I shriek.

"Okay, okay, okay, mami," he says, retreating back toward the living area, finagling with cords and video game controllers and whatnot.

I watch him, wanting so bad to bounce up and down but unable to because of not wanting to fall over in agony. "You actually got an old Sega Genesis?"

He gives me a sheepish smile. "They're really cheap on eBay. It was nothing."

The way he calls this nothing, like it isn't everything to me. I half want to cry, I half want to laugh, I half want to rush to Bath & Body Works and buy every Pretty as a Peach body care product they have to help me regulate my emotions.

Instead, I do a few counted breaths. "Do you mind if I get ready for brunch while you do that?" I finally ask.

"Go ahead, mamita. I'll have it ready by the time you're done."

When Carter winks at me, I basically have to run away. Only I can't, so it's more of an extra deranged hobble.

Mutant League Football —or at least the one Carter has procured, probably the exact version we used to play—is an old-ass game. It's pixelated, the players are coded to do, like, one of a total of three very awkward-looking actions at a time…and yet. Playing it with Carter, it's literally like I'm eleven years old all over again, sitting in Nadia's dark living room. It's just me and Carter and this absurd video game. I don't know how fucked up I am in the head yet, I haven't yet hurt Carter as bad as I eventually will, I haven't made so many mistakes that I barely even know where to begin in repairing them. It's like some type of deep healing, in a way, this nostalgia. Even if it's nostalgia that takes the forms of actual monsters playing football on the screen.

"Jesus, Teal," Carter mutters beside me. "You bribed the ref again? You know I don't like killing him, mujer."

"It's too bad that's the only way to get him to stop," I reply in a singsong voice as my zombie receiver rushes to the end zone. Before he can make it there, a fiery pit opens in the field and devours him whole. "That is so unfair!" I moan.

I punch Carter in the shoulder when he cackles at me. "Ow, what was that for?" he yelps.

I gesture to his players, a collection of skeletons wearing only shoulder pads and shoes. "You think they really need that protection?"

"Don't want to dislocate a shoulder." Carter shrugs.

"But they're made of nothing but bones, man! They don't protect their hips or ribs or even their heads, but shoulder pads are the necessity, here?"

And as I'm distracted, Carter has one of his wide receivers rip the ref's head clean off with his bare hands.

I roll my eyes. "That was needlessly brutal."

"Babe. You bribed him. You gave me no choice."

"No choice but decapitation," I respond dryly, and then without reason I erupt into giggles. Carter grins at me in return. And then he drops his controller and grabs my hips. "Come here," he murmurs.

"Where?" My voice is breathless and shaky, but he doesn't answer me. He carefully drags me over his lap, until I'm straddling him, my bad ankle thoughtfully tucked against a soft pillow.

When I look down at him, his pupils are blown, the inky black making the honey of his eyes even lighter than normal. He's so hard against my thigh, it's unreal. "I don't remember doing this when we were tweens," I say.

"I wanted to. All the damn time. My mind was so filthy around you." He runs his hands up to my shoulders, then slowly down, cupping my breasts. His pointer fingers run over my nipples.

"Carter," I whimper. "What do you think you're—"

But before I can finish the question, his phone begins to chirp a joyful, electronic melody. "Dammit," he mutters under his breath. "I set an alarm for brunch."

"Right. Brunch." It's like I'm in a trance or something—one fueled entirely by lust—because it takes another few seconds for the words to hit me. "Brunch!" I push myself up on wobbly legs, Carter's arms there to catch me if I fall. "Amá hates it when I'm late."

"We'll be there right on time. Don't worry. I got you."

I want to hate the way his words, his hands, his everything makes me feel so safe. But I can't. So I'm not even going to try.