Wearing My Smile | ✔

Thursday, November 10th, 2005

I remember a lot of things from when we were sixteen. Happy things.

The late birthday cake I'd bought you two weeks after your birthday. It had been navy blue from the candles to the icing and the cream. You had laughed loud and long, until a tear escaped from a corner of your eyes and you shook your head, looking at me with wonder in your eyes. You'd pulled me in later, kissing me roughly on the lips as though you were trying to maul me and I drank the taste of vanilla on your tongue as if I were thirsty.

On my bed with our clothes off, you'd pushed at my shoulders, asking, "Wait, do you—"

"Condom and lube? I have them."

That shocked another laughed out of you. You sounded breathless. "Shouldn't have asked. You're always prepared."

"It's just an 'in case' thing. I've had them since months ago."

"Yeah?" Your smile was amused as you ran your fingers down my arm.

I smiled back. "Yeah."

You were quiet for a while, before finally you asked, "Do you think we could...?"

"Only if you want to."

"Roo." I watched the way your Adam's apple bobbed as you swallowed down your nerves. Fair skin flushed pink every time you were with me and I felt a fierce but foreign sense of possessiveness that no one else would get to see you that way, laid bare underneath me, vulnerable, naked, content, gorgeous, and wonderful. "I've wanted to for a long time. I just didn't know how...to bring it up."

You hissed when I touched you and I tried to hide a smirk at the side of your neck as I kissed it. "You're up enough for me."

I never told you how much I loved your laughter. How crisp it was. Your gentleness that was only meant for me when you said, "Ass. I also want to return the favor for the thing in the shower." And I found it sweet the way you'd call a blowjob as a thing because I knew it embarrassed you. It only showed to me how innocent you were underneath all the hardness. When you grabbed me closer, there was no more conversation to be had.

There were hands all over, mine on and in your body, yours on mine. My mouth on yours then your mouth on something of mine. Your groan and stifled moan were the most wonderful sound I had ever heard and I fleetingly wondered what it would feel like to have this for the rest of our lives. The thought dampened my mood for a second or two, at least until you said, "Stop thinking so hard." then put your mouth on me again and I forgot completely how to create words.

The foreplay might have taken too long because at one point you smacked me at my side while panting hard as though we'd just been at a marathon and I had to bury my head on your shoulder to keep me from laughing. In the end I took what I needed, or maybe I gave you what you needed—I couldn't tell the difference. It was awkward at first because the angle didn't work somehow and maybe because we were laughing too much it was hard to really navigate, especially in the dark, but we finally did it with groans escaping from both of our mouths.

You'd tell me later when it was over that it was painful at first, but it had helped that I'd been an attentive partner, that I saw it that you got off first before I did. Patience was my virtue, you'd said with a knowing curl at the corner of your mouth, mirth glinting in your eyes, so I'd tickled you until your howled and wheezed and cried. I might have been patient, but I couldn't hold back more than ten thrusts in because of how intimate it had been, that you could love someone so much to want to be inside of them just so you'd see how they see the world.

I remember the week you'd bought me a ticket to watch a soccer game at the stadium next town over for the weekend and I gave you a confused look, "How are we going to get there, man? We only have our bikes and I'm not pedaling my ass there."

"Roo." You gave me a mock-offended sigh. "Give me some credit, huh? I asked Luce to lend us her car."

"Yeah, so? We don't have driving license." There was your shit-eating grin and I felt my eyes widened by the realization. "Holy shit! You didn't!"

I tackled you even before you finished taking out your license card, cackling the whole time. I ruffled your hair affectionately, until you screamed, "Roo, stop, I spent half an hour for that hair," but we were laughing so much that it was hard to imagine we'd ever been anything but happy.

But there were also those times. I remember those times when we were walking around the neighborhood one evening despite the rain. You'd told me once that you loved the sound of the storm and rain licking the edges of your face. Your face was upturned to the sky, eyes closed, listening to the loud rumble of the thunders, your cigarette abandoned, wet and dying around your fingers. You opened your mouth and I imagined you screaming, screaming something I couldn't hear because of how loud the wind was. You looked as though you were wailing; a little lone wolf howling for a pack which was not there anymore.

Maybe there were tears there, too, hidden by drops and drops of water which never stopped falling and I recalled the day you'd finally come home to me, thinking maybe you'd been soaking wet that day because you'd done exactly the same thing you were doing then.

When you suddenly opened your eyes, your stare collided with mine and you gave me a gentle smile that made the corner of your eyes wrinkle. You walked back to me and kissed me briefly on the lips before we walked back into my house to shower and change, back to reality, back to where nothing could touch you.

"What did you say earlier?" I asked.

"When?"

"In the rain."

"Oh. It was nothing." I didn't push. Instead, I held you by the shoulders, my head leaned to the side of yours and we watched movie until we fell asleep.

The fights never stopped. Months passed and they happened still. I couldn't stop them. Some days you were so upset about everything I could practically feel the vibration of your anger. It was something which was difficult for me to understand because when you were with me you'd always been calm and relaxed, but it was when you were surrounded by other people that you'd change into a completely different person. You'd throw the first punch to whoever had insulted you, disregarding any caution of consequences that had been drilled into your ears over and over. You were fierce in the way you looked, as if the world alone angered you, as if not even you knew what to do with so much rage.

Some days being around people hurt you so much that you had to get away. You never pulled the whole vanishing act anymore, knowing what it would do to me, or at least until the last time when we were seventeen and you had a gun in your hand. You knew exactly how I felt about you leaving without words, so when you needed to go away you'd always tell me.

Not once you failed to come back home to me in the evening, with bloodied knuckles and bruised cheekbones and jaws. Sometimes you'd clean them on your own, sometimes I'd do it for you, then we would be sitting on the couch pretending everything was fine.

On the days when it was unbearable, I'd find you under that mango tree. We were almost seventeen, but at that point you had alienated yourself from everyone around you except those you'd hang around with at school who sold weeds and drugs when no one was looking. You were so angry your hands trembled, but you didn't know why. I told you that it was because you were sad. You clutched that bottle of vodka you stole from your father's stash tightly onto your chest as if you were trying to ease the tightness inside your chest. I asked you where it hurt, and you only said, "Everywhere."

Maybe once when we were sitting in my living room, watching vacantly to the muted television, I'd told you, "I wish I could take it away."

"Take what away?"

"Your pain."

Your voice was wistful when you replied, "It's no one's fault, Roo. Sometimes pain is there to stay."

But I wished it wouldn't. I wished it would go away. If I recalled the tragedy in your eyes, brimming with tears as you told me you were sorry, the explosive sound of the gun echoing inside your neglected house, the blood flying, the sharp smell of iron. I saw your eyes and I recognized it like an old friend because perhaps your pain mirrored with mine, so I wheezed and sobbed as I waited for the ambulance to come.

If there was salvation in death, I couldn't see it in your eyes.