Little & Lion Page 8

  I wonder why he didn’t simply flush them, but this is likely more symbolic than anything else. Even with his moods regulated, Lionel has never shied away from the most impactful approach. He starts to tread carefully down the slope along the side of the trail, trying to find the best angle to toss them for the farthest reach—

  “Wait!” I call out before he can lift his hand, my objection weaving through the tangle of tree trunks and leaves and overgrown grass. “Give them to me.”

  I think of him sleeping all day and his chewed-up thumbs and the way he would look at me with blank eyes, the same way he looked at his books and out the window and at our parents.

  His eyebrows knit together at the interruption. “Are you going to try to force them on me?”

  I shake my head. “I won’t. I promise. Just… don’t throw them out yet, okay? I’ll hold on to them in case you change your mind.”

  “I’m not changing my mind,” he says with a conviction so strong I know it to be true.

  “That’s fine,” I say. “But you shouldn’t throw them out here, anyway. Bad for the wildlife.”

  “Wildlife? I don’t think coyotes are interested in pills,” he says with a smirk.

  Normally I would shove him for making light of such a serious situation, but there’s nothing normal about this. He’s entrusting me with his biggest secret, and it all feels like a huge mistake.

  Lionel dumps the pills back into one of the bottles and presses them both into my palm, staring at me hard before he lets go of my hand. “Promise you won’t tell them.”

  I could lie. Say of course I won’t tell Mom and Saul, with every intention of bringing the pill bottles to their bedroom this evening. I could flat-out refuse, even though I know he’d throw the pills straight down the ravine as soon as the words were out of my mouth.

  But I promise him the secret is ours, knowing full well that I will keep it from our parents because that is the sort of thing we do for each other. I’ll have the pills on hand if he needs them, and eventually, I’ll be able to convince him to go back on them.

  There are different levels of trust, and I need to get back to the point where he trusts me so much he no longer has to say it aloud.

  eight.

  The week is hot and long, and in the middle of it, DeeDee asks me over to swim.

  “I don’t have a good way to get there,” I say from my position on the floor. It’s the coolest spot up in my bedroom tower.

  “Have Lionel come with you. It’s been forever since we’ve seen him.” Her voice seems sincere enough. She wants him around, and I’m glad. But I can’t forget that she ultimately gave up on Lion, too. He’s not DeeDee’s responsibility, but she knows how important he is to me, and I’m uncomfortable thinking of her debating whether or not to invite Lionel to things and eventually deciding not to bother.

  “He has therapy this afternoon.” I move my legs out in a sweeping arc and then inward, again and again, making angels without the snow on my lavender rug. “And he’d probably say no. He’s not much into hanging out with anyone besides David Foster Wallace.”

  “Who’s that?” DeeDee could talk for hours about the most famous and talented horn players in history, but she doesn’t have the same love for literature.

  “A genius who killed himself.” That’s how Lionel described him to me so long ago, when he first discovered Wallace’s fiction in back issues of the New Yorker. And it didn’t occur to me then to be worried that he was so captivated by someone who’d decided he’d had enough of this world.

  “Sounds uplifting. Well, I invited Emil, so can you grab a ride with him?”

  I hang up without asking what I really want to know: Will Alicia be there, and if so, is she bringing Rafaela? I haven’t told DeeDee about her, and it’s been only a few days, but I haven’t heard from Rafaela about the job. It’s hard to forget about her with the flower arrangement she made staring me down every time I’m in my room.

  I text Emil, but it takes me entirely too long to write a simple message. I wouldn’t have thought so much about it before, but now… things are different with him. And as I wait for him to respond, I wonder if it’s obvious that I’m starting to look at him in a new way or if he thinks I’m just asking for a ride. I set down the phone and dig through my closet for my stack of swimsuits, hoping my favorite one from last summer, the white one with the yellow polka dots, still fits.

  It does, and Emil texts back right when I’m adjusting the straps, and my cheeks fill with heat, as if he’s standing here in the room with me. He’ll be by to get me in twenty minutes. I pull my dreads back in a ponytail, throw on shorts and a cover-up, and toss sunscreen in my bag before I walk downstairs to wait for him.

  I run into Lionel on the stairs. He’s coming back from the kitchen with a cheese sandwich in one hand, his book in the other. I’ve been looking at him extra closely since he told me he went off his meds, but not enough time has passed to notice anything different—yet. He’s not staying in bed and he’s eating meals with us, and that is no small thing to be thankful for.

  “Want to come swim at DeeDee’s after therapy?” I’m hopeful for a few seconds that he will surprise me, say he’ll meet me there, but he shakes his head.

  “I don’t think I’m ready to see people yet. Maybe next time, okay?” He smiles as he says it, and I think this time the maybe is good, that I have a reason to be hopeful things can go back to how they were.

  I have to keep asking him to do things. Especially now, especially since he’s gone off his meds. I know that’s when he’s most easily able to believe the lies in his head, the ones that tell him no one cares about him. Not asking seems like not caring, even if it’s not true.

  Emil and I go straight to the back of the Sullivans’ house this time, passing DeeDee’s father’s old Land Rover parked in the driveway. We follow a stone path around the side of the house to an unlatched wooden gate. Emil holds it open for me and we round the corner to the backyard just as someone does a massive cannonball, sending water cascading onto the grass in front of the pool house.

  I’m shocked when a green head pops up. Grace? She looks way too mellow for the display I just saw, but she takes high fives from the people in the pool around her, clearly proud. I look around for Rafaela, but she’s nowhere to be found.

  My disappointment must be audible; Emil turns to me. “What was that?”

  I shake my head as I do another survey, making sure I haven’t missed her in the pool or hanging off to the side. But I know I wouldn’t have missed her the first time. “Nothing, it’s just… hot.”

  “It is. I’m going in.” He peels off his T-shirt, tosses it to the ground next to his towel, and jogs over to the deep end, slicing cleanly through the water. I’m alarmed to realize his hearing aids are still tucked behind his ears, then remember he said they were waterproof.

  I try not to stare as he comes up shaking droplets from his shoulders, but my eyes don’t get the message. Emil has the sort of body they put on the covers of men’s magazines; I’ve always known he was in good shape, but watching him now makes my chest flush. His brown skin has taken on a golden hue in the sun, and I never noticed before, but there is something almost graceful about the way he moves. He knows how to use his long limbs and doesn’t walk around gawkily like some of the other tall guys our age.

  “I would totally try to get with him if I liked dudes.” DeeDee comes up behind me so silently that I jump when she speaks.

  “Hello to you, too,” I say, turning to look at her.

  She’s wearing flowery board shorts over a red bikini and smells like coconut sunblock as she hugs me. “I’m just saying, I get why you’re looking at him like he’s your last chance on earth for sex.”

  “Would you stop that?” I whip my head around to see if anyone is standing within earshot, but we’re safe.

  “Relax, Suz. It’s okay to think he’s hot.”

  Maybe I should just let whatever happens happen—but I’ve never been very
good at that.

  “Yeah, but he’s Emil.”

  “And Emil just happens to be super kind and a total babe.” She gives me a look. “You could do a lot worse.”

  She’s right. When I take off my cover-up and lower myself into the pool, I see Emil watching from the corner of my eye. I could face him, smile to let him know I don’t mind him looking, but I’m too shy. Which is definitely new; I must have been around Emil in a bathing suit dozens of times and never thought twice about it.

  I slip under the water until it covers my head.

  A few minutes later, Grace and Tommy wade through the pool, trying to organize a tournament of chicken fighting. I can’t think of anything that sounds worse right now, so I dip back under the surface when no one is looking and quietly travel to the shallow end. But as soon as I emerge for air, I hear my name.

  “Come on, Emil needs a partner!” says Tommy, who is damn near unrecognizable without a guitar strapped across his body.

  I shake my head and then, when he and Grace keep pestering me, I say no aloud. But they are relentless, starting up with a slow chant of “Su-zette, Su-zette” that only gets louder and grows in force until I say “Fine!” and meet them back in the deep end.

  “I promise I had nothing to do with that,” Emil says when I’m treading water next to him.

  I don’t know how much of that is true… or, for that matter, how much I want it to be.

  “You’d better not drop me” is what I say in return, and he grins.

  We’re up against DeeDee and Alicia first, with Dee on top of her girlfriend’s shoulders, facing me. I feel nervous about Emil supporting me—what if he slips and falls? Or gets tired of holding me up?—but his arms feel strong around my legs. He’s not letting go.

  Dee and I are useless competitors, giggling more than actually trying to defeat each other. She’s taller than me, but after a few false starts, I grab hold of her long arms and, with Emil as my base, wrestle her off Alicia’s shoulders with an unceremonious splash. They come up laughing and Emil says, “Nice work!” in a voice that’s muffled below me. I ask if he needs a break between matches, but he says no, he’s ready.

  Grace and Tommy are up next, and as if the competitive gleam in her eye weren’t enough, Grace says, “You guys are totally going down.” I’ve never seen anyone take chicken fighting so seriously, and then I stop to wonder if this is about chicken fighting at all. Does she somehow know about Rafaela? Maybe she saw us talking at Dee’s party. Or maybe Rafaela mentioned how she basically offered me the job at Castillo Flowers.

  I’m still lost in my thoughts when the match officially starts. Grace swats hard at my shoulders, nearly knocking me off-balance in one try.

  Or maybe this has nothing at all to do with Rafaela, and Grace just happens to be wildly overcompetitive.

  We push and pull and twist at each other’s arms while Emil and Tommy faithfully keep us upright, and after a few minutes I wonder if either of us will ever give up or if this will go on all afternoon. If DeeDee’s mom will come home from work to find us swatting at each other like wrinkly, exhausted prunes.

  And then Grace gets distracted by a fat fly that buzzes near her ear. She stops fighting to smack it away, and it’s only a brief respite, but I take the moment to push her hard and she goes tumbling off Tommy’s shoulders backward, into the water with a resounding thwack.

  “Still the champions!” Emil cheers as I raise my arms in victory.

  “No fair,” Grace says, splashing us as she finds her footing. “Black people aren’t supposed to be able to swim.”

  A chill settles over me, starting at my shoulders and ending never. Emil’s arms tighten around my calves instinctively. Sometimes it’s easier to let things slide, to laugh along with them, to pretend like what they said to you wasn’t really fucking offensive. But sometimes my mouth takes over first.

  “What did you say?” My dreads are soaked, sending tubes of water cascading down my back every few seconds, and I’d like to get off Emil’s shoulders, but this moment is frozen. Everyone heard her and no one is moving.

  Grace laughs and wipes a few strands of green hair from her forehead. “I just mean… you know. Black people don’t, like, swim.”

  “And yet here are two right in front of you,” Emil says coolly.

  “God, you guys, it’s just a joke.” She looks around for support, only to be met by downcast eyes and puzzled faces. Even Alicia is picking at her fingernails instead of looking at her friend.

  “Did you know that black people weren’t allowed to use public pools back in the day?” Emil says, his voice never wavering. “And that even if they weren’t actually segregated, white people used to attack black people who tried to swim? But black people get made fun of for not swimming, like there’s no fucking reason for that. Not all jokes are funny.”

  Grace’s face is pure white and her bottom lip hangs down, but Emil doesn’t wait for her response. I’m still balanced on his shoulders and he walks us over to the side of the pool, carefully depositing me on the edge. Then he jumps out, grabs his towel, and walks in the back door of DeeDee’s house.

  After a couple of seconds sitting in the collective silence of our friends, I do the same.

  Inside, DeeDee’s dad is sitting on a stool in the breakfast nook, sketching on a small pad. He designs bottle labels for wineries and breweries all over the state, but most of his clients are on the Central Coast.

  “Hi, Mr. Sullivan.” I flex my bare toes against the tile floor. I’m wrapped in my towel, but water still drips from my hair, pinging the floor next to my feet in fat drops.

  He keeps sketching and doesn’t look up, though I know he hears me. The slight quirk of his mouth gives him away.

  I clear my throat and try again: “Hi, Rick.”

  “Suzette!” he booms loud enough to be heard outside as he jumps down from his seat to give me a hug. “Our DeeDee is real happy to have you back.”

  “I’m happy to be back.”

  Rick eases back onto the stool and slips on his glasses, peering at me over the top. “Massachusetts treat you okay?”

  “Yeah, it was okay.”

  That’s partially true. It was okay when no one had figured out what Iris and I were doing. Life has changed here in California, but I know I’m loved and safe and wanted. The only person who came close to providing that sort of comfort in Avalon was Iris, and all of that was ruined. What if we both go back but she wants nothing to do with me?

  “The snow wasn’t so bad,” I say to DeeDee’s father. “And I got to wear boots and sweaters for longer than two months.”

  “Well, sometimes you gotta leave a place to really appreciate it,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s talking about the East or West Coast now. “You want a ginger ale? Iced tea?”

  “I’m good.” I twirl a loose string hanging from the bottom of my towel. “I was actually… I just need to use the restroom.”

  “You know where to find it.” He picks up his pencil again. “Good to see you, Suzette.”

  I don’t need to use the bathroom, but I figure that’s where Emil headed, so I walk down the hall and around the corner and—he’s not there. I double back the way I came, branching off into the living room, but it’s empty, and he’s not in the family room, either. He wouldn’t leave without telling me, but maybe he went to sit in his Jeep, even though it’s baking under the afternoon sun. I cross the foyer, open the front door, and find him sitting on the curb, his towel draped over his shoulders. I close the door behind me and walk out to meet him.

  “Hey.” I use my towel to cover the curb and sit on top of it.

  “I thought about leaving, like, a hundred times, but my keys are back there,” he says, staring at the steep embankment that faces DeeDee’s house. He pauses. “And so were you.”

  I try not to think about the way his voice changed when he said you. I try to ignore the shiver that runs up my legs, so close to his, because that’s not why we’re sitting here, at the op
posite end of the house from our friends.

  I glance at him. “Thanks… for saying what you did.”

  He bends his knees and rests his arms on them, elbows poking out from beneath the towel. “I didn’t know I was going to. I mean, not until you said something. That helped.”

  “I didn’t do anything.” I focus on the cracked pavement.

  “You did.” He looks at me now, his eyebrows furrowed. “You called her out on it. It made something inside me snap and—I didn’t know I was going to go off like that, but I’m not sorry I did.”

  “That’s the part that sucks. When you feel bad for telling someone they were wrong.”

  Emil sighs. “Maybe it gets easier the more you do it.”

  The part of the curb where the Sullivans’ house number is spray-painted sits squarely between us, but the digits are too faded to read. I trace the incomprehensible shapes. “Maybe it would be easier if people didn’t say shitty things.”

  Emil smiles a familiar smile, one that I’ve seen too often on my mom and Saul and Emil’s parents—black and Jewish and Korean, every one of us all too aware of the stupid things people say without thinking. A smile that says the only alternative is screaming with rage.

  “I really don’t want to go back there.” He cocks his head toward the house. “But—”

  “Your keys. And my clothes.” I don’t want to go back there, either. Dee must be mortified, and I don’t hear anything from the backyard: no talking or splashing or shrieks of laughter. The whole vibe changed as soon as those words left Grace’s mouth.

  “Right. And maybe we shouldn’t leave. This is our turf. She can’t run us out of your best friend’s house.”

  “True.” I may have been gone for the past year, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let Grace start running things around here. “We have to go back there together.”

  “It’s the only way,” he says with a quick nod.

  He reaches the door first and puts his hand on the knob but stops before he opens it. He looks at me. “Listen, I know we didn’t hang out a lot before… I mean, not alone, but… would you want to, um, grab a bite sometime? Just you and me?”