Sweetbitter(83)

“You know,” he said, putting his cigarette out and pulling me onto his chest. “It’s not like that with me and her. You know that.”

He was distracting me, he knew his neck distracted me, his hands rolling over my hips distracted me.

“Was it ever like that?” I tried to see his eyes. “Simone’s not ugly.”

“Yeah, she’s not bad.”

“Jake…”

“No.”

“How come?”

He grunted. His knees cracked as he got up. He squinted at his bookshelves, and pulled out a copy of De Anima. An old color photograph fell out. He picked it up and threw it on my lap and jumped over me back into bed. A woman with feathered, golden hair was smiling, holding a baby that looked sternly at the camera.

“That was my mom.”

“Oh,” I said. “They look alike.”

“Tell me about it. Everyone has their shit. I have Simone. I know it’s hard for people outside. But it’s the way it is. She pretty much moved in when my mom died. She was only fifteen, but she raised me, in her fucking haphazard way.”

I didn’t react. I let it sink in and fit into the puzzle I had been putting together of Jake. Motherless. An entire city of orphans. I looked back at the photo of Simone. What would I have given for someone to come and take care of me? I touched the baby’s face in the photo. Those impenetrable, penetrating eyes. “You were unamused even then.”

“It takes a lot to amuse me.”

“How old were you when she died?”

“Eight.”

“How? Did she die, I mean.”

I reached out for him. I used my nails to trace his tattoos and his eyelids shut. I felt the bumps on his key tattoo and thought of Simone wrapped up in her sheets, alone in bed. I wondered what the funny story was, wondered why his tattoo looked like his skin had rejected it, and why hers looked like it had sunk in too far. His breathing deepened.

“That feels good,” he said. I don’t know how much time passed before he said, “Simone told me my mother was a mermaid, and that it had always been her destiny to return to the ocean because it was her real home, and someday she and I would return too. My mother swam away. I think I knew better, even then. I got older, I found the newspapers, I learned what drowning is, I know. But when you asked me that, my first thought was, she swam away and went home. Funny, right? The way we can’t unlearn things even when we know they aren’t true.”

I rolled on top of him, torso on torso, stomachs breathing convex and concave into each other. I thought about saying a lot of grown-up things: I lost my mother too. I think it would have been harder if I’d ever had her, could remember her. I know that trust is impossible with other people, but mostly with yourself because nobody taught you how. I know that when you lose a parent a part of you is stuck there, in that moment of abandonment. I thought about saying, I know you’re falling in love with me too. Instead I said, “I told someone you were my boyfriend.”

“Who?”

“Some guy who was hitting on me.”

“Who? Where?”

“Just some guy.” I had never seen him jealous, or even prickly, except for maybe when we talked about Simone and Howard’s friendship. But his tone had gone from laconic to lucid. “He was like, a fancy rich guy at Grand Central Oyster Bar. He wanted to have oysters with me.”

“You went to Grand Central? Without me?”

“Are you mad or impressed?”

“Annoyed and intrigued. How did it feel?”

“It was totally magic in there, I was thinking we should go back—”

“No, how did it feel telling that guy that you had a boyfriend?”

How did it feel? It felt—possibly, potentially—true. “I don’t know. I mean, he left me alone after I said that. So that was…good.” We looked at each other. I kept resettling my head on the pillow. I was terrified. “How does that make you feel?”

“I’m not big on labels. You like labels?”

“I’m not trying to have a talk about labels.”

“But I will say…” His hands found me again. He traced underneath my breasts. He traced the round part of my stomach. He traced my ribs. I watched his rings. “I don’t want you to eat oysters with anyone else.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I like it when you’re mine.” He pushed me onto my back and my head banged against the wall, hollow. “Now, can I ask you a serious question?”

“Yes,” I said, breathless.

“What does a guy have to do to get a blow job in the morning?”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“I see three rays of sun over there on the wall.”

“That’s the neon sign from across the street.”

He kept my wrists above my head. He rubbed his chin and lips over my breasts. “Let’s see,” I said. “I got my eight and a half minutes of cuddling, I got the sensitive-man monologue, I got my bohemian ‘nonlabel,’ so I guess I just need…”

“What else for fuck’s sake?”

“A sign,” I said, catching his eyes. He made fun of my tendency to invoke fate. Simone made fun of me too, but said it was very old-world, which was a compliment when we talked about wine. Jake and I looked at each other, and I thought, How can you believe everything is accidental when we’re together and it feels like this?