Us (9 page)

But really, I could've cared less.

We were us.

Us.

Breathing heavily, clutching one another, professing our love, and trying to hold on to those last moments of bliss before reality set in—we were us.

"You're mine, right?"

I eased my leg down from around J, righting my clothes and attempting to understand his question.

"Of course. Why would you ask?"

"Just making sure."

I hel
d my hand up, the moonlight shining on Gram's ring, my ring now. He took my outstretched digits and kissed each one.

"
Wanna go have a seat and enjoy the evening?" I asked, grabbing his hand in mine. Together we walked over the rickety-rack bridge, careful not to misstep and fall into the creek. I paused for a second to follow the creek that ran behind the mountain and around the park toward the main street.

"How far do you think this creek runs?"

"Creek?" J laughed. "Are you sure this isn't a drainage ditch?"

"Fuck. How
far do you think this
little stream of water
goes?" I amended.

"Not sure, and not trynna find out, but I'd love to go kick it with you at the table."

"That sounds good. I'm not trynna get fucked up, but I wouldn't mind one of those forties I saw for sale. You down?"

J looked around as we walked, hand in hand, back to ou
r table. "Yeah, but we gotta keep our eyes peeled. Feel me?"

"Yep." I knew we weren't out of the woods
, metaphorically speaking considering we were so deep in the woods I expected Pan to be perched on any one of the trees surrounding us playing his pipes. As glad as I was to be out of the house, I knew we were still in danger. I took a moment to imagine one day being normal people. People who got up for work or something each day and came home to one another each night. I wanted to walk in the front door and yell
Honey, I'm home
! We may never be those people, and as simple as it was, it seemed like a pipe dream at the moment.

"You OK?" J asked, sensing my silent pondering.

I grabbed his arm and wrapped myself around it as we walked the dirt path back to our table. "Yeah, just imagining what our life could be like."

"Will be
like," he corrected me. I admired his assurance.

"
Yes. Will be like." I smiled up at him, his coal black eyes shining despite the dim lighting.

He kissed the top of my head. "I don't care what our life is like, so long as we're together, Burns is dead, and no one is fucking after us."

"Word," I agreed.

We found our table w
ith the Pinto parked next to it. Fernie was a few tables down chatting with his friends. It seemed he knew everyone here. I wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing. He caught J and I returning and came over to our picnic area.

"Here." J dug in his pocket to pull out a twenty dollar bill. "Hook us up with a
forty, will ya?"

"A what?" Fernie's brows wrinkled. I wondered if Genesis got off on his brows as much as I did on J's. I only had the thought for a second before the heebs snu
ck through me. I didn't need to be thinking about what Genesis found attractive in Fernie, and the fact that I was thinking about it made me mentally slap myself.

"One of the big bottle
s of beer," J clarified.

"A
cahuama
?"

"Huh?" I stared at Fernie, unsure what the fuck word ha
d just slipped out of this mouth. He held his hands as if demonstrating the size of a forty ounce beer. "You call it a what?"

"A
cahuama
."

"Sure." I took the bill out of J's hand and put it in Fernie's, a bit unsure about having a seventeen year old buy me a beer. Though I had observed enough in Mexico to realize the cultural ideals regarding drinking were quite different than in the States, and I wasn't really trying to go get the beer myself
, having Fernie get it seemed wrong. I rolled with it nonetheless. First, because I didn't want to walk under the giant lights around the bodega selling beer. Second, because I wasn't sure if I could repeat the word
cahuama
.

"How many do you want?" Fernie stared at the twenty dollar bill in his hand. He'd have to use his Mexican money, but I was sure he could switch the twenty in town at a bank or something.

"One." I looked at J to see if he was interested in more. I thought one would be plenty to relax and keep our wits about us.

"Yeah, just one." J nodded to Fernie's hand, still outstretched with the bill in it.

"This is like five or eight
cahuamas
," Fernie said in reference to the money. Shit! That was a cheap ass forty! I suddenly wondered if he was going to come back with a Coors Light.

"Just one, man. Just one." I laughed as I said this, unable to keep the humor out of my voice. I was still riding my high from the orgasm I'd enjoyed less than fifteen minutes ago, and the price of a beer was proving to keep me all smiles.

J and I had a seat on the cement bench of the picnic table while Fernie, who'd be deemed underage in the United States, went to get us a beer. It was like we were in the Twilight Zone.

I looked around at the various groups having fun. Most were younger, Fernie's age or a little older. There were a few groups that seemed like the
y might've been in their twenties. You could kind of tell from the stream of cars that continually passed, some never stopping, just doing laps how old the people inside were. There were some beater cars like the Pinto, most holding teenagers. There were small cars like Dodge Neons or a Toyota Corolla from 1992 that seemed to hold people a little bit older. I even saw a Hybrid roll by, but it stopped and a bunch of guys decked out in Abercrombie set up shop at a picnic area a few spaces down. It appeared the preppy boys existed in Mexico too. They even had tight jeans on. All I could do was shake my head. Men in tight pants just didn't make sense to me. I'd say it was my American-ness, but the tight jean was alive and well on men in the States as well. Maybe it was a global ailment?

Fernie came back with our beer, two plastic cups, and another cup with four small lime halves.

"What do I do with the lime?" I asked.

Fernie laughed.

What the fuck?

"You put it in the beer, baby."

I looked at J, the official Mexican beer connoisseur.

Whatever.

J poured us beer in each cup. It wasn't Coors Light, but it was a brand I was unfamiliar with. Victoria. Fuck, at least it wasn't Coors Light. Beggars couldn't be choosers, I guess. J squeezed a lime in each of our beers before launching the empty rinds into the trees behind us.

We sat back and sipped our
beers, Fernie retreating back to making his rounds to the picnic areas with his friends. I curled up against J, sipping my beer and enjoying being out of the house.

"Thanks for this."

J looked down at me. "I knew you needed it. I could tell you were running out of smutty books to read."

"Hey!" I shoved him in the stomach with my
finger. "Those books have been beneficial to you too, and you know it. So don't hate on Gideon. He gave us some great ideas. God bless the shower." It had been the only place we'd managed to have sex at Abuelita's. Fucking at grandma's house didn't seem right at first, but after forty-eight sex free hours, I drug J into the bathroom with me for some sex that was off the chain hot, and a great test in my quietness skills. The Ritchie sisters had provided some great inspiration as well. Though Connor was undeniably sexy in his own right, Gideon took the cake. I'd never get enough of Gideon, just as I didn't think I'd ever get enough of J.

"You feeling good here?" I nodded to
answer J's question, leaning back into him once again.

The park seemed to be a calm atmosphere. There were cars playing music and a few couples danced. I tried not to judge, my anthropology classes kicking in, but damn if it wasn't some music
that was far out of my wheel house. I did my best to ignore (and not judge) the accordions and random howls from the men, and instead tried to enjoy my night out of the house. I mentally sighed and imagined bumping Kalibre Magnum at full blast. Even if I had no idea what they were saying, it would still be something closer to what I was used to. Fuck, I even found myself missing Eight Oh Eight. I guess I could lift the ban—well, once we returned home and things were "normal" again.

Despite the fact that no one seemed to be getting too crazy, I knew there was weed here. I could smell it, and fuck if I didn't want some. With Fernie here, that wasn't an option. There was no way I was going to be high around him.  It would be wrong on various levels, but it also would be a waste of a buzz
, kind of like being high around my mom. It wasn't worth it because I'd be so uncomfortable. I might as well just flush the weed down the toilet since I wouldn't be able to enjoy the high.

It
was all good, though. It'd been days since I'd been high. I'd been sober from marijuana during all this bullshit, the longest amount of time since I was a teenager. I hadn't smoked since I left Aaron with a crying, then passed out Chris. She'd been sobbing over missing her BFF—me. Of course she had a few drinks in her, so she was more emotional than normal, or as normal as a goodbye between us could be. We weren't girls who did emotions well, so her outpouring was unanticipated, despite being drunk.

Yet it felt like just yesterday that I was
being presented my awesome Wampa hat and listening to Aaron's need for a high weight sex swing.

Oh, the sex swing. I realized
I missed my friends. I missed Eight Oh Eight night with Chris, Tiny's and even Dynasty, but most of all I missed my support system outside of J, which included my kids. All of them.

Marcos and his making up of game rules.

Ramon and his constant losing of said game rules.

Angelica and her lack of common sense at times, yet oh-so-sweet disposition.

And of course, Genesis, my warrior. My petite, little ball of teenage hormones who was still Facebooking her undying love to Fernie. It was sweet really, though if she were my daughter I would tell her that no matter what, always have a long engagement. I laughed to myself at the thought of telling a daughter to live with a man before marrying him. First, because my mother would cringe. Second, because Genesis' mother would probably do more than just cringe, maybe more like scream with flailing arms. Finally, because I just couldn't imagine having kids out of my body.

"You smell that?" J leaned over to whisper to me, pulling me from my mental motherhood. He'd
drawn me closer to his body for warmth, as the night had grown cold. I looked up from the warm spot I'd found under his arm and smiled. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

"You mean the schwagg? Y
eah, I smell it." He gave a hearty laugh at my ability to identify the quality of weed merely by its scent in the air, and what we were smelling was mos def schwagg.

"You gonna partake?" h
e asked me.

"Fuck. I can't. Not with Fernie here. It's not appropriate."

"Can I borrow your backpack?" I looked up to see Fernie standing in front of me holding his hand out for my bag.

"What are you going to with it?" I was skeptical. There were various reasons
I could think of as to why he wanted the backpack, and all were highly illegit.

"I want to put something in it."

"What?" I prodded.

"Nothing major." He shrugged. "I'll get my stuff back when we're at Abuelita
's."

"Fuckin' A, Fernie. Tell me straight up. You
'bout to get the hookup or what? None of this beating around the bush bullshit."

He looked down, that being his affirmative response. "I can't tell you what to do.
You're practically an adult. Here in Mexico, you
are
an adult, but I'm not about to give you the backpack." I was firm in my answer.

"So it's like that?" J asked as we both watched Fernie walk away, obviously pissed
at my response.

"He can do what he wants. I'm not his mother. It's just—I couldn't contribute to his procuring of weed. It felt... wrong." I looked up from my spot in the crook of J's body. "You feel me?"

Kissing the top of my head and squeezed me tighter to him and replied, "Yeah, baby. I get it. Those are your cubs."             

"Dude, how did I end up with cubs?" I laughed, my body shaking against J's.

"You can't help it." The matter of fact manner in which he spoke caught me off guard, as I had no idea what it meant. I looked up to J with furrowed brows.

"Baby, you have light inside you. How many times am I going to have to tell you? It radiates out, and pulls your cubs in. It pulled me in. Hell, it pulled fucking José in. Your kitchen guys, they see it, and they recognize the value of having you in their life. That's why they circle around you as if you were the sun."