Trade Me (Cyclone 1)

I don’t want to care. I don’t want to hurt because he hurts. But here I am, caring anyway, and it scares me. It scares me, but still, I squeeze his hand. He glances down, as if realizing for the first time that I’m touching him. That our fingers are intertwined. That the current of electricity is arcing between us uninterrupted.

And then he lifts his head and truly looks at me. There’s a raw hunger in him, something bigger than what he’s just admitted.

There’s a lot of truth in what my mother told me. I don’t let myself have fun. I pull away from people who could be my friends. I refuse to let people help me. And right now, I realize that Blake and I have a lot in common—a lot more than either of us can admit.

“Do you remember when you told me that you’d bought something ridiculously luxurious, and it was a mango?” he asks. “I was so fucking jealous of you. I wished that I could feel what that was like. I wanted to want something like that. I wanted to have that so badly.”

I don’t have answers to any of his problems. I don’t even have solutions to mine. But this one thing? This, I can handle. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s get some mangoes.”

We pull off the freeway a few miles later and follow the computer’s directions to a little grocery store. Fifteen minutes later, we’re sitting in a rest stop, cutting our mangoes to bits.

“Here,” I tell him. “Trade me. Pretend you’re me. Let me tell you what it was like when I had that mango.”

He shuts his eyes obligingly.

“I didn’t have a lot of money,” I tell him. “And that meant one thing and one thing only—fried rice.”

He smiles despite himself. “Kind of a stereotype, don’t you think?”

“Whose stereotype? Rice is peasant food for more than half the world. It’s easy. It’s cheap. You can dress it up with a lot of other things. A little bit of onion, a bag of frozen carrots and peas. A carton of eggs. With enough rice, that can last you basically forever. It does for some people.”

“It actually sounds good.”

“If you have a decent underlying spice cabinet, you can break up the monotony a little. Fried rice with soy sauce one day. Spicy rice the next. And then curry rice. You can fool your tongue indefinitely. You can’t fool your body. You start craving.”

He’s sitting on the picnic table, his eyes shut.

“For me, the thing I start craving first is greens. Lettuce. Pea shoots. Anything that isn’t coming out of a bag of frozen veggies. And fruit. If you have an extra dollar or two, you buy apples and eat them in quarters, dividing them throughout the day.”

I slide next to him on the table. The sun is warm around us.

“But you get sick of apples, too, pretty soon. And so that’s where I want you to imagine yourself: sick to death of fried rice. No respite. No letting up. And then suddenly, one day, someone hands you a debit card and says, ‘Hey. Here’s fifteen thousand dollars.’ No, I’m not going to buy a stupid purse. I’m going to buy this.”

I hold up a piece of mango to his lips. He opens his mouth and the fruit slides in. His lips close on my fingers like a kiss, and I can’t bring myself to draw away. He’s warmer than the sun, and I feel myself getting pulled in, closer and closer.

“Oh, God.” He doesn’t open his eyes. “That’s so good.”

I feed him another slice, golden and dripping juice.

“That’s what it felt like,” I tell him. “Like there’s a deep-seated need, something in my bones, something missing. And then you take a bite and there’s an explosion of flavor, something bigger than just the taste buds screaming, yes, yes, this is what I need.”

I hand him another piece of mango. He bites it in half, chews, and then takes the other half.

“That’s what it felt like,” I say. “It felt like I’d been starving myself. Like I…”

He opens his eyes and looks at me.

“Like there was something I needed,” I say softly. “Something I’ve needed deep down. Something I’ve been denying myself because I can’t let myself want it.” My voice trails off.

I’m not describing the taste of mango anymore. My whole body yearns for his. For this thing I’ve been denying myself. For physical affection. For our bodies joined. For his arms around me all night.

It’s going to hurt when he walks away.

But you know what?

It’ll hurt more if he walks away and we leave things like this, desperate and wanting, incomplete.

My voice drops. “It’s like there’s someone I’ve been denying myself. All this time.”

“Yes.” His voice is hoarse in response. “That. Always that.” And he slides his arm around me, pulls me close, and kisses me. He tastes sweet like mango. Like he’s bigger than my taste buds, like he’s precisely the luxury I have been craving. I let my eyes shut and tilt my head back, falling into his embrace.

And I know, despite all the constellations placed in the sky as warning, why all those Greek maidens gave it up in the end. It’s because all the pain is worth it for this one moment.

His tongue is sure against mine, touching me with insistent strokes. His hand clamps around me, holding me in place. And he holds me like I matter, like I’m the entire world.

“I can’t touch you,” I say. “My hands are sticky.”

“That,” he says, “is what washing machines are for.” He reaches out and takes hold of my fingers and then, very deliberately, he wipes them on his shirt. The sun is hot against my shoulders; Blake is sweet to the taste and tempting to the touch.

I’m not sure how long we stay there, kissing in the sun and the wind, stopping only long enough to feed each other bites of fruit. Long enough for me to touch him all over, to feel his body hard and lean through his shirt. Long enough for me to lose all sense of safety.

The air smells of new beginnings—crisp and clear, untouched by any worries. He touches me like the middle of the story, strong and sure. But despite the mango on his tongue, he tastes almost bittersweet, because the end is coming. It’s coming, but it’s not here. Not yet.

“Let’s get home,” I tell him. “Let’s go home and find a bed.”

I won’t be home until tomorrow morning, I text Maria as we turn up the freeway heading back to campus.

The answer comes back shortly. Something wrong?

I glance over at Blake. He’s driving. For the first time in…I’m not sure how long, he looks completely calm. As if he’s finally in place.

And for all the turmoil I feel inside, I sense it too. That hint of calmness, as if in a sea of things that have gone wrong, this one thing is right.

Nothing, I text back. I just realized you were right.

And for now, that’s exactly what this is. A little texted heart, two characters. Fragile and all too breakable.

16.

BLAKE

We don’t talk much on the remainder of the drive back. This thing between us is too new to be pinned down with words. But it’s contained in the feel of her hand on my thigh as we drive. The squeeze of her fingers on mine. It’s the look in her eyes, every time I glance her way—liquid, alight, as if she’s filled with the luminous light of a thousand stars.

It’s beautiful and unsettling all at once, because I know how she feels about constellations.

By unspoken consent, I go straight to the converted garage. She gets out when I do and comes to stand by me.

“Hi, Tina.” Somehow, the moment seems to stretch. I pull her close, let her body fold into mine. She comes, molding against me. She told me once our lives fit together as well as Legos and puzzle pieces, but our bodies have no such problem. We work together.

I want her. I want this. Her voice is a low, sensual caress, and I’m on fire, burning for her.

She looks up at me. “Blake…”

I set a finger on her lips. Not to silence her; to feel them, soft against my skin. To sense the warmth of her breath so that when she says yes, I’ll capture the feel of it on t

he palm of my hands. I imagine, briefly, that I can catch hold of it and keep it. Maybe if I do, I’ll be able to pin it down.

“Why are we still outside?” she asks.

“Because.” I take her hand in mine. “Your pulse is racing. Your hands are shaking. I want you to feel safe.”

“Nothing is safe anymore.” But her hand squeezes mine. “I thought I could avoid getting hurt. I thought I could avoid caring. But I can’t.”

She sets her other hand on my chest.

I wish I could lie to her. I wish I could tell her that this is nothing, that she’ll never be hurt. I wish I could say that even though I’m going to take over for my dad in two weeks, we can still be something.

But I remember Peter’s funeral all too well: the crowds. And yet…not one person from outside work. I don’t even think I’ll be able to hold on to myself when I go back. I can’t promise to hold on to her.

“How can I make this better for you?” I ask.

Her hand slides down my chest. “This is going to hurt no matter what we do. It’s never going to be safe. But maybe we can have something. A memory that we can keep safe, no matter what happens.”

“I don’t want a memory,” I tell her. “I want the whole damned two weeks.”