Chapter Text
“Christopher, you can’t come over here with cuts and bruises on your face.” I scold him once he comes back downstairs from talking with Marcus. “Maybe when he was younger you could get away with it, but he’s like you. He doesn’t miss anything. I don’t want him to be around you when you look like this.”
I see him clench his jaw, his eyes snapping, but then soften, because he knows I’m right. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, his knuckles on both hands obviously busted and bloody under his bandages. He has a cut under his right eye like somebody with a ring punched him. A bruise on his chin. And even though he’s trying to hide it, I can see the way he winces as he adjusts his left side, probably bandaged under his thick thermal shirt and the pea coat he took off when he got here.
“I just needed to see my son, Rhea. I didn’t plan for him to see me like this. But I just needed to see him.” I see his shoulders slump and see that his age and the stress he’s constantly under are finally catching up to him. There are wrinkles around his eyes and marring his smooth forehead that weren’t there the last time I saw him.
Still too goddamn handsome for his own good, regardless, but that doesn’t work on me anymore.
“You promised we’d raise him as normal as possible. Coming over here with cuts, bruises, and your knuckles bloody isn’t normal. Next time, wait, a couple of days at least. Let it clear up. Or get some makeup.”
He nods his head, resigned, because he knows I’m right again. When it comes to Marcus, what I say goes. I’m thankful that he still respects me at least that much.
I turn my back to him, getting a mug, pouring hot water from the kettle into it, dunking in a jasmine tea bag. I set it in front of him, along with a spoon and the sugar bowl.
I lean up against the counter, watching him quietly. We both sit in silence for a couple of minutes, watching the steam rise from the mug. He then removes the tea bag, uses the spoon to squeeze the excess moisture out of the bag, and pours too much sugar in, mixing it in with the spoon. He’s always had a sweet tooth. Our son is the same way.
He places the tea bag on top of the spoon on the table, taking a sip, watching me back, and I sense that the man I’ve given almost 10 years of my life to, in some shape or form, is struggling with finding what to say.
I can tell he’s not sleeping again.
I feel a pang in my heart but quickly brush it away. What he does and who he sees and what demons keep him up at night are no longer my problem anymore.
I hear the laughter of our son float down the stairs from whatever he’s watching on PBS Kids in my bedroom.
Christopher doesn’t like when I let him watch tv, but I’m a single mom who does a damn good job raising our son. Our son who is growing up under extraordinary circumstances and has turned into an incredibly bright, polite, wonderful kid despite that. Some PBS Kids once in a while won’t hurt him.
Plus, tonight, his father and I are having an adult discussion as we explained to him when we sent him upstairs. The tv is turned up louder than usual in the hopes that Marcus won’t hear us.
“You cut your hair.” His eyes are on me. Warm, but not flirty, just appraising. Not said unkindly, just carefully.
This is the dance we do now. The careful tango of knowing that whatever we once had is broken but we’re too close and have too much tied up in each other to be able to just walk away.
So we try to talk to each other like normal adults that didn’t used to be married, had a son, lost a daughter, and then got divorced in a span of 3 years. We talk to each other like adults who didn’t rip each other’s hearts out. Like we don’t still guard secrets about a man named Rio, no last name needed, that may very well condemn both of our souls to Hell.
I tuck a short brown strand of my hair behind my ear and nod. “Yes, it was too long and hair isn’t practical when you’re working 10 hour shifts four days a week while chasing an 8 year old around.” I smile, but the smile isn’t real and doesn’t convince him.
I’ve always loved my hair. I’m pretty by normal standards and have a nice body for a woman in her mid-thirties with a kid, but my hair has always been my only vanity.
He knows that. And he’s always loved my hair too. When we met it was so long, dark, and thick that I could sit on it. The first time he kissed me he took his pinky finger and brushed it out of my face; the gesture so intimate and perfect that I fell in love with him a little bit right there. Then later, there were so many days and nights when it would get tangled as he moved over and under my body and pulled it hard with his hands as he made me moan in pleasure and then washed and combed it out gently later in the shower while he kissed me slow. When I was pregnant with Marcus he would give me scalp massages so good they would almost make me cry, his large, strong fingers making my scalp tingle and body feel alive.
Then, a few weeks after we buried our nena, he caught me hacking it off up to my shoulders with some kitchen shears while sobs racked my body, quietly taking them from me, lining me up so I was facing our full-length gilded mirror and standing behind me. Finishing the haircut, taking his time to make sure it was even and bluntly brushing against my shoulders. He never said a word as the long strands fell silently to the floor that day.
Over the years, as things have gotten worse and strained and then almost silent between us, my hair’s been cut shorter and shorter.
And he knows me so well. He knows me well enough to accept my lie when I tell him that it was too long and I cut it for work. So he tells me, “It looks nice. You look nice in any hairstyle though.” I know he means it but it makes me angry to hear him say it.
I give him another fake half smile and tell him simply, “Thanks.”
The dance. The dance. The dance.
He looks down at the table and works his jaw again, not in frustration or anger, but in a display of meekness. Gone is the slick talking Detroit street shit. The bravado. The arrogant gaze. The cruelty that can flow as easily as the beauty from him in a way that’s rare for most human beings. He knows he can’t be that way in here in the home of me and his son.
And I think in a way it’s a respite for him to let it all fall away when he comes here.
Here, in this small, bright kitchen covered in our son’s drawings and with his laughter echoing down the stairs in the air around us, I see Christopher, not Rio. Maybe in a way no one but I am allowed to.
He looks into my eyes and I see pain and remorse and regret. And it does nothing to me but make me more angry because we’re passed all that now. “You don’t have to work so much, Rhea. You don’t have to work at all. That’s what I’m doing all of this for. For you and him and the rest of my family. But especially the two of you. Why won’t you let me help you?”
I can’t believe we’re here again. It’s blood money. It’s dirty. It’s cursed. I accepted it and it cursed my womb, made me lose my darling baby girl and be told I'd never be able to carry a baby to full term again. My father and my friends tried to warn me but I let myself fall in love with and marry a drug dealer, someone affiliated with American gangs and Mexican cartels, a money laundering killer.
And I got what I got.
And he’s lying, even if he can’t and won’t admit it to himself. Because the man who calls himself Rio has so much money in multiple accounts and so many assets earning him passive income that he doesn’t need to work either. He does it because he loves it, because it’s who he is. But I won’t say that. I don’t think he can bear to hear that.
Because if I say it, what purpose would it serve?
He knows how I feel anyway. I’ve said all of this to him before. “You know why.”
Those three words hang in the air and hold so much weight in their simplicity.
He nods and leans back in the chair. He closes his eyes. He looks so tired and pale and the bags under his eyes are almost purple. He’s losing weight too, making his face more angular, more regal, more solemn. There was a time in my life when I would have died gladly in the arms of this man. In more ways than one I already have.
But there’s no reason to think about any of it anymore. I don’t want to look at his face anymore. He needs to leave me be.
“You should crash for a little bit. You look like shit.” I give him a half smile that’s real. Regardless of how I feel about him now, after everything we’ve been through, he’s a good dad and he needs to stay healthy and strong to help me raise our son.
He chuckles but his eyes stay closed and he stays leaning his head back in the chair, pulling his big palm down his face, over his beard and letting it stop to rest on his chest over his heart. I watch his chest rise and fall as he inhales and exhales, while his right hand stays resting over his heart. The psychology books I read and body language YouTube videos I watch would say that’s a gesture of submission, vulnerability, or self-soothing. Maybe all three.
He says nothing, with his eyes closed, resting his hand over his heart for a few seconds more.
I don’t want to look at him anymore.
“You should go up and hang out with Marcus for awhile. He’s up there in my bed. Just make sure you take your outside clothes off. I’ll stay down here. I have some laundry to finish and need to pack his lunch for tomorrow.”
His eyes pop open and I see appreciation in them. He asks quietly, “You don’t need help?”
I just shake my head and motion my head towards the stairs. “I’m good. Go.” I reach out my hand for the mug and spoon. He hands them to me. I rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. The tea bag goes into the trash.
I lean back against the counter and watch him again.
He gets up slowly, pushes in his chair under the table, and walks over to me. I’m still leaning against the counter and I drop my eyes. I don’t want to look at him, at his beautiful, angular face marred by an old bruise and a new cut, this close up.
But he won’t let me not look. He puts his hand under my chin and guides my gaze up to him so I’m looking into his eyes. I’m tall for a woman but Christopher's tall for a man, and he looks down on me, many emotions flitting across his face, something I can’t place in his eyes. “Just know that you’re gonna always be straight, Rhea. I’m here if you’ll let me in.”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer because he knows I have nothing left to say.
Then he bends down, uses his right pinkie to move the bangs hanging over my eyes, and turns to jog up the stairs where I know he'll cuddle and laugh and then fall asleep with our son.
I stay leaned up against the counter for a long time after he leaves the kitchen, alone, finally letting the tears flow and feeling the tinge of regret knowing I can’t, won't, join them to laugh and cuddle and sleep in my bed.
It’s just better if he never sees it.
It’s just easier for the three of us if he never sees it again.
*