Page 123 of For Pleasure Or Worse

“Mateo Duran!” I cackled.

His sweet laugh filled my ears as he kicked out of his dress shoes and flung my heels off my feet. I weakly lashed against his back with my tiny fists. “Yes, wife?”

Then we were submerged in sand and saltwater, suit and dress and all. I clung to Mateo and wrapped my legs around his waist. So much for the dress, for the hair and makeup, for the cake, the perfect wedding, the drama-less bachelorette party. So much for keeping all our secrets, and walking through life unscathed. I liked this version of it much, much better.

“Full moon tonight,” I pointed out.

“I wasn’t going to admit it, but I told the sky guy that I wanted to give my girl the moon, and he’s shown up every single time.”

My fingers swept into his damp hair. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Natalia Duran.”

Mateo’s eyelashes were wet, and the moonlight highlighted his lips and jaw so perfectly when I leaned down to kiss him. Our mouths parted and our tongues swept carefully and intentionally against each other. My senses were consumed with him, brain blank, chest heaving. I gave him all of me. It was a kiss that said,I’m home.

Hooting and shouting came from the beach and we parted just in time to watch our entire wedding party—Frankie and O, Angelo, my sisters, the Swans—in all their clothed glory break the water's edge and follow us into the waves.

My cheeks hurt from laughter but I threw my head back and laughed some more. People believed in magic because of moments like this.Lovewas magic. Love was family. It was earned, found. Love was simple. It hurt, it healed, it made you crazy. Love was raw and untamed. Love was whispers in crowded rooms, broken glass, crying so hard you couldn’t breathe. Love was howling at the moon.

Mateo sunk his hand into the wet hair at the nape of my neck and pressed his forehead into mine. “I think this is the second best day of my life.”

“So far,” I said.

“So far,” he agreed.

epilogue

Mateo

3 months later

The movingtruck whined as I hopped down onto the street with the last box of things from my parents’ house in the Bronx. Angelo had driven eighteen hours behind the wheel of a twenty-six-foot U-Haul to follow them down to their new place in Pompano and help unload and move them in. Sweat dripped from my temples and down my back beneath an old cut-off Army T-shirt, and my hands clammed up underneath the cardboard as I lugged it inside and dropped it on the long marble island next to forty other ones.

September in South Florida was consistently hot, and we’d hit a record-high heat wave just in time to take a hundred trips in and out of a box truck instead of riding it out in the comfort of an air-conditioned house. The one Mom and Dad bought was a two-story, three-bedroom with an office and a garage. Enough backyard space to add a pool if they wanted to, and a neighbor on one side instead of two. They could take a long stroll to mine and Tally’s if they felt like it, or hop in the car and be on our doorstep before a Billy Joel song played all the way through.

“Last one?” Mom was twirling around in her brand-new kitchen, stacking plates in the cupboards as she unpacked them. It was weird to see her in a place that wasn’t our childhood home. The dishes were the same off-white ceramic I used to eat off of in the small confines of our breakfast nook, and the coffee mugs were the same mismatched souvenirs from vacations growing up. Now they sat in newly sawed-off, builder-grade cabinets next to a stainless steel refrigerator that didn’t showcase our Little League photos or house any handmade magnets.

“That’s the last of it,” I told her. She opened the fridge and tossed a can of beer out of the lone box sitting in it at me, and I took it to go as I walked out the back door.

After the wedding, Tally and I went on a two-week honeymoon out of the country to the Caribbean. It was exactly the decompression we needed to reconnect on a primitive level. It was like returning to our base selves after a period of heightened stress. We barely left the hotel room for the whole first week. I was inside of her more than I was out. We woke up and fucked. Ordered room service and fucked. We fucked in the shower while we washed off the fucking from before the shower. It was hedonistic and borderline primal, but it reminded me just how much I missed her for the six months we were living under the same roof yet somehow miles away.

We even managed to livestream a few times for our subscribers on the cam page. They loved the change of scenery, and for the first time in a long time, pressing record didn’t feel like a job we had to finish before time ran out.

Life had resumed to perfectly normal. I saw Dr. Brinckler at the VA bi-weekly, and our talks stayed informative and entertaining, filling in my void of insecurity with tools and techniques instead. Seeing a therapist turned from a chore into a bright spot in my schedule, and if I didn’t know any better I’dhave said Henry and I were friends. He regularly turned down my offer for a drink outside office hours, but chuckled when I brought him a real grocery list notepad as a gift.

TechOps was thriving, and Angelo was committed to taking night classes on the basics of cyber security, malware, coding, and computer hygiene to be ready to take on a job with me when he came down to Florida. My parents went back home after Key West and put their house on the market, and it sold for over asking price in less than a week. It took a few months to negotiate contracts and empty out the house, and that gave Angelo enough time to close out his open contracts with Duran & Son and finally pull the chain on the sign above the door. The end of an era, and the start of a new one. It had become a theme.

He was up in the air about a living situation, but had saved more than enough money having never paid rent to put his own down payment on a house somewhere around here, too.

In the backyard my brother was lying on the concrete patio helping Dad screw together the new outdoor furniture with a cigarette between his teeth. His shirt was riding up his stomach, and his boots still had dirt on them from job sites up north that he hadn’t bothered to clean.

“I thought you quit.” I kicked his shoe and a crumble of dried mud fell off.

“Ask me again in a month,” he mumbled. “Hand me that flathead.”

I sucked on my teeth and swiped the screwdriver out of an open toolbox, handing it to him. My dad was working on the legs of a table and I crouched down to hold two pieces together while he twisted at an awkward angle with an Allen key.

“So what are you going to do first, Pop? Get a boat for the marina? Join the golf league?”

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