Page 38 of Every Heartbeat After

Me

Sorry I didn’t tell you about Kit. Are you mad?

Gary B

Never, Tess. He’s a good kid and so are you. Though I can’t wait to hear how all this happened when you find some time.

I promise to call, and he wishes me good night, not once questioning why I’m up so late in the first place. It’s how I managed to keep from spilling my guts about what happened with Kit when my uncle visited at Christmas. Even if he’s always down to listen, be it to gossip or a true undressing of the heart, Gary doesn’t prod. So I didn’t mention it, much as Kit had been weighing on my mind since I left. It was over, anyway. A one-time ordeal. Or so I thought.

My lips are soft to the touch. Warm. There’s no evidence of the way Kit burned himself onto me, and yet I feel it. Haven’t been able to stop feeling it since that moment in the aquarium. Yet he hasn’t pushed for more, or even another kiss. I get the sense that the ball is in my court, and he’s waiting for me to make the next move. Too bad I’m waiting for me, too.

Waiting to figure out what the hell I want from this life, beyond surviving it with minimal pain from here on out. If I stand still like Kit suggested, what will catch up to me? How much hurt have I been evading by never settling long enough for it to float to the surface? What little leaks through is bad enough. Anything more and I’d be incapacitated.

“Tessa?¿Qué haces?” Mo steps into my line of vision just as I glance up, startled. His gaze settles on my palm, still resting in the outline of my mother’s, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes soften. “Oh,querida.My brother told you, didn’t he?”

I nod. “But it’s okay; I mean, I understand—” I’m interrupted by my own hiccuping sob. A sound that says it’s very muchnotokay and I most definitely donotunderstand. I bat away the tears slipping over my cheeks and draw in a ragged breath. “I’m sorry; I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“I think I do.” Mo lowers himself to the cold ground and wraps me in his embrace, that familiar tobacco scent soothing me like nothing else does. “It is okay to be sad. I was, too, when they first told me it was a possibility.”

“They’re just handprints,” I say, though the words are interrupted by more tears, followed by sniffling.

He rubs the goose bumps decorating my bicep rapidly, like he might kindle a fire. “I know. But they belonged to people you loved.”

It’s the past tense that splits my heart in two. “People I love,” I correct weakly.

I feel his chin brush the crown of my head as he nods. “And whom I love as well.”

We sit there, tangled in a haphazard embrace, for what feels like hours but may only be minutes. Long enough that he eventually releases me to remove a cigarette from his pocket, which he lights before offering it to me. I accept it, and he retrieves a second for himself. I’ve only ever smoked while drinking, which has been infrequent as of late, if the pack of Camels gathering dust in my underwear drawer back home are any testament. But it feels right to do this with Mo, under a mostly starless sky thanks to a bright moon casting everything else in its shadow. It gives me something to focus on rather than the erratic breaths still struggling to find their pace in my lungs, or the tears that have dried sticky-taut on my cheeks.

Mo releases a plume of smoke that climbs the air above us like a chimney. Our gazes meet, and he purses his lips the way he always does before asking a question he shouldn’t. “How are things with yournovio?”

I narrow my eyes at him and take a long drag. When I finally speak, my voice is threadbare. “If that means anything close tolover,I’ll fight you.”

He chuckles around his cigarette.

“We are friends,” I clarify. “Just. Friends.”

Somewhere above us, a balcony door closes. Neither of us reacts. Mauricio watches me for so long that my skin begins to itch. He must notice me squirming, because he finally relents. “Did you know Alex and I have a cousin who works at the aquarium?”

No fucking way. My eyes close in a grimace against my will. I have to pry the left one open to peek at him. “Are you related to everyone around here?”

He huffs a laugh. “She said a young couple put on quite the show a couple days ago. You went on Wednesday, right? I wondered if you saw them.”

I smoosh the tip of my cigarette into the concrete and then let my body follow suit, becoming one with the rough surface. It chills me to the bone, but it’s better than facing a man who might as well be family as I admit to making out with someone in public. “It’s very complicated,Tio.”

He sinks onto the pavement beside me, though a guttural groan gives away our age difference. “Love is always complicated. That’s why it’s wonderful.”

“Says the perpetual bachelor,” I grumble.

“It is because I love to fall in love that I remain alone, Tessa. I can never give it up.”

“Ah.” I turn to look at him. His face is cast half in shadow and half in stark moonlight, like he’s wearing the mask fromThe Phantom of the Opera.“And here I thought it’s because no one could put up with your shit.”

He flattens a palm over his heart. “You wound me.”

Our soft laughter is quickly caught and carried away by a breeze coming off the Gulf. We sit in silence until that silence fills my chest to the point of bursting. I need someone to talk to, someone who is unbiased. All Alicia has been telling me to do is go for it. Get laid and get it out of my system. But it’s deeper than that, even if I can’t bring myself to explain that to her, though I don’t know why not.

“I can’t let him be more than a friend to me.”

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