Page 2 of Every Breath

“It’s only for three or four days, Sarah. But I’ll talk to him.”

Benny’s phone buzzes from the bedside table and excusing himself, Benny reaches over me to retrieve it.

“Work?”

He shakes his head, returning the phone to the table and pulling me in an embrace. He buries his face in my hair. “My mother.”

I pull away, studying his face. While Benny isn’t exactly close to his mother, he’s not one to avoid her either. She lives on the Navajo Nation just outside of Shiprock, about three hours west of Taos and once a month, he and Dyami spend the weekend with her and her parents where they teach Dyami the ways of the Navajo. “Why didn’t you answer?”

“Have you seen the time?” His tone is teasing, but he also knows I get uncomfortable being around when his mother calls.

“It could be an emergency.”

“She’s probably asking about the spill. That way, she can tell everyone that her son is such an important man to be called over there on short notice. You know how she is.”

Yes, I know how she is. Like how she never liked me, I almost add as Benny kisses my forehead and then my lips one more time before removing his arm from under my head and sits up. Now he really needs to get ready to go to the airport.

“Will you be staying there the whole time?” I ask instead, the silences growing longer between us again. It always happens when he’s about to leave and he and I don’t quite know how long he’s there for. Some spills require his presence for only a few days while others have him staying for weeks at a time, sometimes butting heads with protesters who show up and think he’s working for the big corporations instead of the federal government overseeing tribal lands. And it’s not like such things can be sped up. Spilled radioactive waste doesn’t get cleaned up in a day, certainly not when it happens on tribal land. There’s just too much red tape.

“Yes, but I’ll call you when I get there.” He gets up and heads to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. A few seconds later, I hear the shower running. I get up and take a peek at his phone which buzzes again. This time it’s a text message.

Noelle is in town. She said hello.

My chest tightens, my throat turns dry.

Noelle.

I know that name.

I get up and walk out of the bedroom, making my way to the guest bathroom so I can wash my face and brush my teeth. Twelve years since we first kissed, why on earth am I still letting Noelle bother me?

But then, why not? She and Benny grew up together on the reservation. She’s also the woman he was supposed to marry, something that was prearranged between their families. The wedding only got delayed when he won a scholarship in the East Coast where he majored in Environmental Sciences. He returned to New Mexico after graduation but instead of getting married, he opted to pursue his Doctorate.

That’s where I come in, setting Benny’s path a totally different direction from the one his mother had hoped for. I was completing my Bachelor’s in Nursing at UNM where he was working on his dissertation on Environmental Biology when we met and the next thing everyone knew, we were inseparable and I had Dyami, a strong and beautiful baby boy with Benny’s eyes and a lustful cry that could wake up the neighbors.

I stare at my reflection in the mirror, droplets of water clinging to my skin. Blue eyes, creamy skin and dark-haired, I’m what people have always called a curvy girl. Broad shoulders, wide hips, big boobs. Far from the ideal woman that many men I’d met in New York held on to when I went back there for my first two years of college.

How I wanted so badly to leave the quiet of Taos then, flying back to New York ten years after Dad uprooted me from everything I knew so Mama could live in Taos again. I thought I’d fit right back in like I never left it.

Only I’d changed.

What I thought I wanted—the hustle and bustle of Manhattan along with the status that came with it as Daniel Drexel’s oldest daughter—had faded into the tired rumblings and exhaust fumes of the city that never slept and a father whose affection for his only daughter turned into an expectation of perfection.

Too bad I was far from perfect and still am.

But at least, Benny loves him a curvy girl with something more than skin and bones to hold on to. You’re more than just curves that drive me crazy, Sarah Drexel, he’d say teasingly. There’s a woman in this body. My woman.

Shi’áád.

He just hasn’t put a ring on it, not since he first kissed me twelve years ago and promised to be mine forever.

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