Mireya pressed the side of her head against the window and brought her thumb up to her mouth. The pad of it caught against her teeth. Her other arm crossed her chest. She watched the wing through the glass. It tilted a few degrees and the edge of the cloud cover ran past the underside in a gray slip. Cold pressed against her temple where the plastic met the pane. The plane shuddered once through a pocket of air and her shoulder rocked into the man beside her before she pulled it back.
The cabin dropped through the last of the cover. The light changed, hard and white across her thigh. The shape of the seatback shadow threw forward against the carpet at her feet.
Los Angeles came up from underneath. The grid stretched out flat and brown in every direction, freeways cutting through it in long pale lines, the downtown towers stacked off to the right and catching sun on their west faces. Pools showed up between the houses as small turquoise rectangles, hundreds of them, scattered across the basin. The hills rose past everything to the north, a band of haze stretched across them where they met the sky. A jet on a parallel descent threaded the airspace below, lower and slower, the underbelly catching the morning as it dropped out of frame past the wing.
The man in the seat beside her shifted his weight onto the armrest. His magazine had stayed folded back against itself on his tray table since takeoff, his glasses pushed up on top of his head, his eyes on the seatback in front of him through most of the climb out of Chicago and most of the descent. He turned his face toward her now, his voice coming out polite, careful with the cabin around them.
"Have you ever been to LA?"
Mireya turned her head off the window. Her thumb came down from her mouth and her hand settled into her lap, the fingers curling against her thigh.
"Yeah, a few times."
The man nodded. His hands found each other across the buckle of his seatbelt, his fingers interlacing. A gold wedding band rested on his left ring finger, the metal worn matte at the edges. He looked at her a moment longer before he spoke again, his head tilting a fraction toward his own shoulder.
"My daughter lives out here. Went to Ohio State to get her MBA then moved out here to work in the financial sector. Just waiting for that fella she calls herself dating to get down on his knee and propose."
Mireya's mouth moved. The corners came up a fraction and stopped there. "Can't rush some of those things."
"No, I guess you can't." He shook his head once at his own hands. "You can't blame an old man for trying. Are you coming out here for business or pleasure?"
The plane began its turn. The wing dipped on her side and the city slid across the window, the grid pivoting under the glass, the freeways angling and the downtown towers swinging out of the frame. The runway threads of LAX came into the bottom of her view, parallel pale strips with the green of the in-between cut sharp against them. Mireya watched them come up. Her thumb had drifted back to her mouth and her teeth caught the side of it, the skin just below the nail, before her hand came down again.
She turned her head from the window. "Neither."
The man's chin came back a quarter inch. He held there for a beat with his mouth slightly open, then closed it and nodded twice, his eyes going to the seatback in front of him and then back to her face.
"Well, I, uh, hope you enjoy your time. Try to get out to the ocean. My wife and I love going out for a little cruise."
Mireya's mouth moved again, the same fraction at the corners. "I'll do that."
The intercom dinged above her head. The flight attendant's voice came through the speaker, the cadence already shaped for the announcement before the words started.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we've begun our final descent into Los Angeles International Airport. At this time, we ask that you return your seats and tray tables to their full upright and locked positions. Please ensure your seatbelt is securely fastened, all carry-on items are stowed under the seat in front of you or in the overhead compartments, and any portable electronic devices are switched to airplane mode. Flight attendants, prepare the cabin for landing."
Mireya leaned her head back against the window.
~~~
Ramon came up the walk with his hood pushed back off his head and his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie. The porch rose three steps off the yard, the boards painted a flat gray that had cracked along the grain in places and worn through to the wood underneath in others, and Duke was in his chair at the far end of it with his legs stretched out and his ankles crossed on the rail.
A handful of the youngsters stood in the yard between the gate and the steps, one of them on a milk crate with his elbows on his knees, two more leaning against the chain link with their shoulders touching, another pacing a short line back and forth at the edge of the grass with his phone pressed to his ear.
Ramon took the steps up two at a time and crossed to where Duke was sitting. Duke lifted his hand off the armrest and Ramon met it. Their palms came together and slid back, knuckles tapping at the end.
"What's good with it, big brudda?"
"Same ol' shit, different day."
Duke tipped his chin toward the chair on his other side, the cushion on the seat sun-faded and pressed flat in the middle.
"Sit down and run it with me for a little bit."
Ramon dropped into the chair and let the back of it take his weight. Duke had a blunt going between his first two fingers, the cherry small and glowing low. He brought it to his mouth and pulled, the paper crackling soft, and held the smoke for a beat before he turned his head and let it out the side of his mouth toward the rail.
He passed the blunt across the gap between the chairs without looking and Ramon took it between his own first two fingers and brought it to his lips. The smoke was hot at the back of his throat. He held it, let it out slow through his nose, and the heat moved across his upper lip and dispersed into the morning.
Duke stayed with his head tipped back against the chair, his eyes on the ceiling of the porch.
"How your potna out there in Houston doing? I don't know too many niggas that take a demotion on their own and don't get restless after a few months. He doing them runs to the border?"
Ramon nodded as he brought the blunt up for one more pull, kept it short this time, and passed it back. Duke's fingers came across the gap and took it without their eyes meeting.
"Yeah, with that nigga Bodie. He plenty restless though. Probably about to get his shit bat in by that white chick he with."
Duke laughed and shook his head against the back of the chair. The cherry on the blunt brightened as he took another pull.
"That's why you don't mess with them. If there's anything you listen to me on, lil' brudda, let it be that. My granddaddy had him one and everytime she got mad at him, she went to Sheriff Clancy and had his ass thrown in jail for a couple nights. Then his ass would come running back to my mawmaw."
Ramon shook his head. The youngster on the milk crate stood up and stretched, his arms going wide before he sat back down in a different posture. The one on the phone passed the gate, turned at the sidewalk and started his line back the other way.
"You ain't never gotta worry about me doing nothing like that. They just good to fuck nothing else."
"That's why you one of the smartest lil' nigga in the clique. Know how to play the game. Move the pieces where they need to go. When to use one and dispose of it."
Duke let the blunt rest between his fingers and watched the smoke come off the cherry in a thin line that bent toward the rail before it broke up. He let the silence hold for a beat then his eyes came off the smoke and over to Ramon.
"We need to get a new pipeline for poles up. Now that that nigga Trell in the dirt. I need you to go out to Port Arthur with your potna Tyree and talk to these nigga out there used to fuck with Trell and Peanut. See if they know something."
Ramon nodded once. He brought a hand up out of the front pocket of his hoodie and ran it down the side of his jaw and back to his lap.
"I can do that. When you want me to go out there?"
"Couple weeks. Let Carnival wear off first."
"Bet."
~~~
Caine had the volume on the panel show low enough that he heard the knock through it the first time, three flat raps against the wood that stopped on their own. He let his head fall sideways on the cushion and looked toward the foyer for a beat before he set his phone face down on his thigh and pushed up off the sectional.
He ran his hand once down the front of his sweats out of habit as he crossed toward the door, already running through who it could be. Tatum was in New York. The Nike PR girl had said Friday for the next drop. Probably the doorman with another box from one of the brands that had been showing up at the desk in waves since he'd taken the keys. He worked the deadbolt back and pulled the door open with one hand still on the knob.
Mireya was on the other side of it. The strap of her ag dug into the cotton of her hoodie at the collarbone, the cotton itself wrinkled along the lines where she'd slept against it sitting up. Her hair was up in a clip at the back of her head and the strands at her right temple were pulled flat, set against the side of her face from where she'd been leaning it on something for hours. Her eyes were on him with the rest of her face holding still around them. The skin underneath them looked thin in the hallway lighting.
"What are you doing here?"
"Necesitaba hablar contigo en persona."
He held the door wider with his hand still on the knob and stepped back into the foyer. She came past him without looking up, her shoulder brushing his chest in passing, her bag knocking once against her hip with the step. The smell of her hoodie came past him a beat behind, recycled airplane air pressed into the cotton over a perfume she'd put on that had gone soft at the edges.
She crossed the foyer and the threshold of the living room at the same pace she'd kept since stepping inside, kept it past the windows with the city stacked behind them, and came to a stop at the marble island. Her bag came off her shoulder onto the stone with a flat sound, the strap puddling over the side.
Caine pushed the door shut behind her with two fingers and turned the deadbolt back into place. He came after her at his own pace and stopped on the other side of the island, his hands going flat on the stone.
"Are you okay?"
She snorted a laugh out of her nose. Her eyes stayed on the marble between them.
"I ain't been okay for a long fucking time, Caine."
"Mi mama texted me. Asked me if I talked to you. This got something to do with that."
Mireya unzipped the bag with her hand going in by feel, and what came back out was a folded sheet of paper pinched between her first two fingers and two small white cardboard boxes pressed against her palm with her thumb. The boxes went down on the marble first and her thumb came off of them. Then she opened the paper across creases worn soft from handling, smoothed it once with the heel of her hand, and turned her face toward him with her hand still flat on the page.
"Estoy embarazada."
Caine's eyes were on her face and his brows pressed together for a beat before they let go.
"¿En serio? ¿Con un DIU?"
The corner of her mouth twitched. Her hand on the page lifted half an inch and came back down on the paper a little harder than the first time. "Well, I ain't got a fucking IUD anymore. I got a fucking kid on the way."
"For who? Trell?"
She shook her head once, slow, and her finger came down at the bottom of the page and stabbed once at a number printed there. She slid the paper across the marble toward him with her finger still on it, the page coming around in a quarter rotation, until the percentage at the bottom faced him and her fingertip kept tapping at it.
"It's yours. I did a DNA test. Used Camila. 99.99% chance of sibling."
His eyes went down to the paper for the first time. His hands stayed where they were on the marble, and his eyes ran down the column on the left side and then over to the column on the right, then to her finger on the percentage.
"And you're just telling me this shit, Mireya?"
"I just found out yesterday. I wasn't going to fucking tell you I was pregnant without knowing. I was just going to get a fucking abortion."
Her hand came off the paper. Her fingers moved to the boxes next and she slid both of them toward him across the stone until they came to rest a few inches off the edge of the page.
"I went to get an abortion. Just flew here from Chicago."
His eyes moved over to the boxes. "I'm not getting where you going with this."
"I didn't take the pills yet. I decided to come to you first."
His eyes came back up to her face. "That ain't my choice."
She sucked her teeth. "The fuck it ain't."
Her hand came back across the marble and her fingertip pressed down on the lid of the first box and stayed there.
"If you don't want this baby, here you fucking go. That's mifepristone. You have to give me that first."
Her finger moved to the second box and pressed down.
"That's misoprostol. I'll go stay at a hotel then come back tomorrow and you have to put four of those in my pussy every three hours."
"¿Qué pinches quieres decir con yo?"
Her finger stayed on the second box. Her chin lifted a fraction. "That's my conditions. I'll abort this baby before I fly back to Louisiana. But you have to do it. You have to make me take the pill. You have to put the pills in me."
Caine pushed both hands back through his hair and let them stop at the back of his neck, his elbows out, his eyes off her and back onto the page on the marble between them.
"Fucking hell, Mireya."
Her hand came off the box. Her voice came up two notches. "Do you want a baby mama that everyone has fucked, Caine? When you're out here taking doing all these brand shoots, everyone knows what it feels like to be inside of me? Do you fucking want that? Do you want to know why my IUD got knocked out?"
His hands came down off the back of his neck. He rolled his lips into his mouth and brought one palm up between them. "That's enough."
He leaned forward over the island and his eyes went back down to the page. They moved across the lab letterhead, the case number printed in small black type, the row of markers, Camila's name in one column and Mireya's in the other, the percentage at the bottom of the page in bold. They came off the page and onto the boxes. Mifepristone, two hundred milligrams, one tablet. Misoprostol, two hundred micrograms, twelve tablets sealed into a foil sheet behind the cardboard.
"Do it, Caine. Fucking do it."
He brought his eyes up off the boxes and found hers across the marble. "I need time to think. Go take a nap. We'll talk later."
Her brows knit and her finger came back to the lid of the first box, her fingertip pressing on the corner of it, pushing it toward him.
"¿Esa es tu respuesta?"
"I need time, Mireya. Solo dame un par de horas."
Her finger came up off the box.
"Fine. Two hours."
~~~
Sena sat with her back against the cushion of the couch and her hands flat on her thighs, palms down, the skin under her fingernails pale where she'd been pressing them into the denim on the walk over. The light came in through the window past Celia's shoulder, paler now than it had been when she'd come in. Across the small expanse of rug, Celia held her pen between two fingers, the cap off, the tip resting against the margin of the open page on her knee.
"I think it's just fate tempting me when I'm already nervous about the HESI next week. I don't need Alex's complications in my life right now."
Celia's head tipped a fraction. "Do you think that you're being punished for not being prepared enough?"
Sena's chest rose with a breath and came back down on the exhale. Her eyes moved off Celia and toward the corner of the rug where the woven edge had started to fray, a few of the gray threads pulled loose and curled back against themselves. She nodded.
"Yeah, because if I would've been at home prepping or in a library somewhere, I wouldn't have run into her. And then she wouldn't have texted me and I wouldn't have answered it. I should've just kept studying."
"The way you frame your thoughts always puts you at fault even when it's a situation that you can't control. Sometimes, things just happen and we have to accept that and move on."
Sena's right hand came off her thigh. Her thumb found her left palm and pressed there, working a small circle into the heel of it without her looking down at what her hands were doing.
"Things don't just happen to me. They happen for a reason. Always for a reason."
Celia's pen lowered farther. The tip touched the margin and she made a small mark there with the press of her thumb against the barrel, then let her hand rest on the page.
"If that were the case, would you say that the reason you went to meet Alex was because you were controlling an outcome that you knew to be negative before you stepped out of your apartment?"
Sena's thumb stopped on her palm. Her eyes came back from the rug to the carpet in front of Celia's chair, then to the leg of the chair itself, then up to Celia's face. She let her thumb move once more across her palm, a slower pass this time, and her shoulders rose with another breath then she shook her head.
"I did but it's like I couldn't have just told her no."
"You always have a rebuttal to whatever I say to turn it back into a personal failure. If I were to point out that you had a stain on your shirt, would you think that was some kind of moral failing?"
Sena's chin dropped toward her collar. Her right hand went to the front of her shirt and pinched the cotton between her thumb and finger, pulling it forward off her body, her eyes scanning down the length of it from the collar to hem.
"There isn't a stain on your shirt, Sena."
Sena's fingers opened. The shirt fell back against her stomach. Her hands went to her thighs again and her lips rolled into her mouth, pressing flat between her teeth before she let them go.
Celia waited. The pen made another small mark on the page, this one a short horizontal line beside the first.
"What was it that you were trying to get out of going to see Alex?"
Sena's shoulders lifted, dropped. "If there was something to salvage after what she said to me."
Celia nodded. "And what would that something look like? Would it even be worth committing to? For your own emotional well-being?"
Sena's hand came back to her left palm. Her thumb pressed there and held without moving. Her eyes went past Celia, past the bookshelf, past the watercolor of the marsh on the wall, and stopped on the window where the light had pulled back another shade since she'd last looked.
"I don't know, but that's how it's always worked with us. I give. She takes. Then we do it all over again."
~~~
Caine pushed up off the couch and let the remote slide off his thigh into the cushion. He crossed the living room to the hall and pushed the bedroom door open with his fingertips, easing it through the last of its arc so it stopped short of the wall.
Mireya was on her side on top of the duvet, knees pulled toward her chest, one arm folded under her head and the other tucked between her knees. The clip had come out of her hair on the walk down the corridor and her hair lay across her face in a curtain that moved a little with each breath. Her thumb sat at the corner of her mouth with the pad of it just inside her bottom lip. She’d taken off her hoodie and leggings. She'd kicked one of her shoes off near the dresser and the other was halfway under the bed frame, the side of it visible above the carpet.
Caine came around to her side and stood at the edge of the mattress for a beat with his hand at his side. His fingers came up and found the strands of hair across her cheek. He brushed them back from her temple, slow, his thumb running a path along her hairline above her ear and down behind it, and her thumb shifted at her mouth and her breath came back even.
He left his hand there for a second longer then he turned and walked into the closet.
He pulled them a pair and stepped into them without sitting, his hand on the doorframe for balance, his heel working into each one with a small sideways shake. He picked up his keys off the dresser and closed his fist around the metal as he crossed the bedroom and stepped back into the hall, pulling the door behind him until it caught.
The boxes were still on the marble where she'd left them. He came around the island and put his keys down on the stone next to them and reached for the first box. The cardboard sleeve slid off the inner tray easy. The blister pack was inside with the foil lid peeled back at one corner and pressed flat again, a strip of clear tape laid across the seam to hold it down. The mifepristone tablet sat in its bubble underneath, white, scored across the middle, the letters embossed into the surface dulled where the foil had pressed against them. He worked his thumbnail under the edge of the tape and lifted it. He pushed the bubble from the back and the tablet popped through the foil into his palm.
The second box was longer. He tipped the inner tray out and slid the foil sheet free of its sleeve. Twelve bubbles in three rows, the foil intact across the back. He pressed each one through with his thumb in turn, a steady rhythm down one row and back up the other, and the tablets stacked into his palm against the first one with small dry clicks each time another one came through.
He carried them in his fist toward the foyer and turned right into the half bath off the corridor. He held his fist over the bowl and opened his hand. The tablets dropped into the water, the smaller one first and the rest after it, and they bobbed for a second before they started to soften at the edges and lose their shape. He pressed the lever. The water pulled them down in a tight spiral and the bowl filled back up clean. He pressed the lever again, watching the water spin, slow and settle.
He dropped the empty cardboard and the foil into the small can beside the toilet and pushed the bathroom door shut behind him on his way back out.
He went back for his keys, slid them into his pocket, and headed for the foyer.
The elevator hit the lobby and the doors opened on the polished concrete floor. Caine stepped out with his head down for a beat to clear the threshold and brought it back up as he turned toward the front of the building.
Cam and Derron were coming through the glass doors at the entrance, the cold off the street rolling in behind them, both of them in fitted sweats and jewelry,
Cam saw him first. He spread his arms wide and stopped in the middle of the lobby with his palms out toward the ceiling.
"Where you going, nigga? We was about to roll to the club."
Caine shook his head. "Nah, not tonight."
"Must got a bad bitch up there."
The two of them laughed. Cam's head tipped back and Derron's shoulders rocked once, his hand coming up to his mouth. Caine laughed back at half their volume, the sound coming out of his nose more than his mouth, and he shook his head once and kept moving past them.
He turned at the back of the lobby and pushed through the door to the garage. The cold from the concrete hit him at the threshold and the overhead lights cycled on across the slab as he walked toward his car.
…
The bar ran the length of one wall in dark wood with copper inlay along the rail and a row of mezcal bottles standing on a glass shelf behind it, the labels in Spanish and the glass throwing color back from the pendant lights overhead. A pressed-tin ceiling sat low above the bar. The smell of toasted corn, chile pasilla and something smoky underneath both came forward off the kitchen line each time the door behind the bar swung open.
Caine stood with his elbows on the rail and the takeout menu open in front of him on the wood, one hand flat on the page, the other hand resting closed beside it. He read down the columns and tapped his finger once on a line near the top, then moved it to a line in the middle, then down to the bottom.
The bartender came back over with a cloth in his hand. He tossed it over his shoulder and braced both hands on his side of the rail.
"What you getting?"
Caine looked up. "Let me get the chapulines, memelas, mole negro con pollo and nicuatole de agua and de leche. And one tejate and one chilacayota."
The bartender's eyebrow climbed. He let the silence hold for half a beat with his hands still on the rail.
"Bro, you did something wrong and trying to make it up to your girl or something?"
Caine snorted a laugh. "Something like that."
The bartender shook his head and turned to a tablet on the back counter. He started tapping at the screen with one finger, the order coming up in a column on the display. He glanced back over his shoulder at Caine.
"I'm gonna throw in the chocoflan for you, too. On the house. If your girl likes all this, I already know she loca."
Caine laughed. "Appreciate it, bro."
~~~
Autumn lay on the pool lounger with her sunglasses on and a glass of lemonade sweating onto the side table beside her. Jade was on the lounger to her right with her legs crossed at the ankle, a magazine folded back against itself open across her thigh, the pages flipping when the breeze caught them. The sun came through the hedge line in long strips that warmed the concrete deck in patches and left the rest in shade. The pool was still and held the sky on its surface in a flat mirror.
Jade flipped the magazine shut and dropped it on the deck beside her lounger. "I got 'bout one more time of this nigga thinking he Klay Thompson and can play around on me before I go upside his head."
Autumn sucked her teeth and shifted on the lounger, lifting one knee and setting her foot flat on the cushion. Her hand came down on the strap of her bikini bottom and adjusted it.
"If he think he Klay, you just be Meg and upgrade on him real quick. Then he can be in the group chat with all his boys talking about how much of a ho you are while he crying on their shoulder."
Jade shook her head. Her hand came up off the lounger and cut through the air once before settling back on her stomach. "I ain't trying to have no niggas talking behind my pussy, girl."
"They're going to do it anyway. Might as well give them something to talk about instead of having them make it up on some little boy shit."
Jade's mouth opened to say something back. Before she got it out, the latch on the side gate of the fence rattled and the gate came open from the outside, an arm reaching over the top to work the catch. Miles stepped through into the backyard and pulled the gate shut behind him. He had on a heather crewneck with the sleeves pushed up his forearms, a watch on his left wrist, slacks pressed sharp at the front crease.
He walked across the deck toward the loungers and stopped a few feet short of Autumn's. His hands settled in his pockets.
"You ain't hear me knocking?"
Autumn turned her head on the lounger. "Clearly, I didn't hear you knocking. What do you want? My daddy is in Sacramento, but you should already know that."
"I know where Mr. Tate is. I came over here looking for you."
Autumn's eyebrow lifted behind the dark plastic of her lenses. Jade had her chin tipped down, watching the exchange from her own lounger without saying anything, her foot rocking once at the ankle.
"For what?"
"I was trying to see if you wanted to go check out that new Jamaican spot down on La Cienega."
Autumn's head turned toward Jade. Jade shook her head once, the corner of her mouth pulling. Autumn turned back to Miles and let her sunglasses slide an inch down her nose with a knuckle.
"Nigga, are you asking me on a date?"
Miles shrugged, both hands still in his pockets, his weight shifting onto his back heel.
"You acting like we weren't together for a little minute. Nothing wrong with exes being friends and going grab something to eat."
"Boy, if you don't get your goofy ass out of my face with that shit. It's been two years. What's got you wanting to spin the block? Some Becky in Sacramento turned you down?"
Miles shook his head. The smile he'd been holding on the side of his mouth widened a fraction. "I'm just seeing you still fine. That's all."
Autumn pushed her sunglasses back up the bridge of her nose with her middle finger and threw her other hand up.
"Nigga, bye."
Miles brought his hands up out of his pockets and held them in front of him, palms toward her.
"You gonna say yes one day."
Autumn sucked her teeth. "Because that ain't creepy."
Miles let the smile finish its arc. He turned and walked back across the deck toward the gate. The catch took two tries before it set, and his footsteps moved off down the side of the house and faded.
Jade waited until the sound was gone. Her head tipped back against the lounger and she looked over at Autumn from under her own sunglasses.
"You need to give him another chance. He fine in a Cory Booker kind of way."
Autumn raised her sunglasses up off her face with one finger and held them an inch above her brows. Her eyes stayed on Jade for a beat then she shook her head and let the lenses settle back into place.
"You welcome to him."
~~~
Caine came in through the bedroom door with his hand already lifting before he'd cleared the threshold. He crossed to the bed and stopped beside it on the side she'd taken, and his palm settled on the curve of her shoulder under the duvet she'd pulled up to her collarbone in her sleep. He squeezed and rocked her, slowly.
Mireya's eyes opened on a slow blink. Her face stayed soft for a beat, the recognition catching up behind her irises in stages, her gaze moving across the ceiling and over to the lamp on the nightstand and across the headboard before it found his. Her throat worked once with a swallow. She rolled up off her side and pushed her hair back from her face with the heel of her hand, and her legs swung over the edge of the bed and her bare feet pressed against the rug.
"What are we doing, Caine? You making me take the pill or not?"
His hand was still on her shoulder. He moved it once, a shallow lift in the air between them. "Levántate."
Mireya sucked her teeth. "Just shove the fucking pill down my throat and get it over with."
Caine drew a breath in through his nose and let it out slow. "Mireya, por favor."
She rolled her eyes and pushed up off the mattress then stood, the duvet falling away from her. His hands came down to that hem of her shirt and stopped there, his fingertips against the cotton, his eyes going to her face. She held him there for a beat then her arms lifted.
He pulled the shirt up the length of her body and over her head, the cotton catching once at her elbows before her arms came free, and he set it down on the foot of the bed without taking his eyes off her. His thumbs hooked into the waistband of her panties at her hips.
"Go ahead."
He pushed them down her thighs. She lifted one foot, then the other, and stepped out of the fabric.
He came back up to standing and his arm went under the backs of her knees and the other came around behind her shoulder blades, and he lifted her up off the floor against his chest. Her brows pulled together as her hand caught at the front of his shirt.
"¿Qué estás haciendo?"
He turned with her in his arms and crossed the bedroom to the bathroom door and pushed it wider with his shoulder. Steam rolled out across his face. The tub was half full of water with the surface still moving from the tap, and the mirror above the vanity was grayed over with the heat. He carried her across the tile and lowered her in, his arm staying under her shoulders until her back found the porcelain and the water came up around her hips.
She watched him from the tub. His hand brushed wet hair off her temple before he stood up. He crossed to the vanity and pulled a fresh towel down from the bar and reached past the soap dish for the body wash, a heavy glass bottle with the gold cap. He brought both back to the tub and went down on one knee on the tile beside her.
He held his hand out across the rim of the tub. Her arm came up out of the water slowly, the water running off her elbow in a small clear sheet, and her hand settled into his palm.
He dipped the corner of the towel into the water and worked it into a lather with a press of body wash from the bottle, and the smell of it came up between them in a thick wave of bergamot and something deeper underneath. He took her arm by the wrist and ran the towel along the inside of it from her elbow to her shoulder. He moved to her other arm. Her chest. Her collarbone, the hollow at the base of her throat, down across her breasts where he slowed. Her stomach. His palm hovered against the flat of it for a beat longer than the towel did, his fingers spread, before he kept moving. Her hips. Her legs, one then the other, lifting each foot out of the water in turn and running the towel along the arch and between her toes. He brought the towel up to her face last and ran it across her forehead and along her cheekbones and down to her chin, his fingers behind the cloth, the pad of his thumb at the corner of her mouth.
She watched him through it. Her eyes stayed on his face from the moment he'd come down on his knee beside the tub.
"Caine, what are you doing? You don't need to clean me up before an abortion."
He stayed silent. He rinsed the towel in the bath water, wrung it out against the porcelain, and folded it across the rim of the tub.
He stood and went back to the vanity. The shampoo bottle came down off the second shelf and he carried it back to the tub and went down on his knee again. He poured a small pool of it into his palm, set the bottle on the tile, and worked his hands together until the foam came up between his fingers. His hands went into her hair at the crown of her head. His fingers spread across her scalp and pressed, working in slow circles from the temples back, his thumbs running down the line of bone behind her ears. Her eyes closed. The pressure came down through her shoulders and her chest fell against the surface of the water on a long exhale.
He kept at it for a while. He rinsed her with his hand cupped at her hairline to break the water before it reached her face, his palm running the shampoo down the length of her hair until it ran clear over his fingers. Then he reached for a fresh towel off the bar and stood.
"Levántate."
She came up onto her feet slow and the water sheeted off her down the porcelain. He wrapped the towel around her from behind and dried her in long passes, shoulders and back first, then around her sides, his hands working the cotton against her skin with even pressure. He brought her foot up over the edge of the tub and then the other one, and she stepped out onto the bathmat. The bathrobe came off the hook on the back of the door. He held it open behind her and her arms slid into the sleeves and he pulled it closed at her front, tying the sash loosely.
He lifted her again. Her face was inches from his and her brows pulled tighter. Her eyes stayed on his without leaving them, and the question in them grew with each step he took.
He carried her out of the bathroom and through the bedroom, down the corridor past the foyer, into the living room where the coffee table in front of the sectional had been pushed an inch out from where it usually sat and was covered with takeout boxes laid open across its length. He lowered her down onto the rug beside it. He nodded at the food.
"Sit. Eat."
Her eyes came down off his face and moved across the table. The chapulines in their small clay bowl, the salt and lime catching the light. The memelas in a stack with the masa edges crisped and the salsa in a separate cup. The mole negro con pollo, the sauce dark and shining around the chicken. The two nicuatoles in their cups, one pale water, one deep with milk. The chocoflan still in its paper sleeve from the restaurant.
Her lips rolled into her mouth and pressed flat between her teeth. The corners of her eyes filled.
Her eyes stayed on the table. She felt his weight settle onto the cushion of the sectional behind her and his hand on her shoulder, and then the bristles of the brush were running down the length of her hair from the crown.
"Eat your nicuatole, Mireya."
Her hand came up shaking. Her fingers closed on the rim of the nicuatole de leche and she slid it across the wood toward herself, the small spoon clinking once against the side of the cup. She lifted the spoon out of it. The bite came up to her mouth and she opened for it.
The first sob came out around the spoon. Her shoulders folded forward an inch and the tears that had been gathering let go down her face. The brush kept moving. He worked a small amount of the jojoba oil between his fingers and ran it down the length of her hair from the midpoint to the ends, his other hand resting at the back of her neck. The brush followed.
She kept eating. A piece of memela between her fingers, the salsa catching at the corner of her mouth. A bite of the chicken with the mole heavy on the spoon. A spoonful of the chapulines, the salt and lime sharp on her tongue. The sobs came up out of her chest in waves and her hand kept going to the table for another bite between them.
"No puedo."
The spoon went down on the table and her hand came up between her face and the food, palm flat, the tremor in it going up through her wrist. Her other hand came back over her shoulder and pushed his hand off her hair.
"No me lo merezco. Soy una puta."
She pushed up off the rug and turned, walked back through the corridor toward the bedroom. The bathrobe trailed behind her at the calf. He set the brush down on the cushion, got up off the sectional and followed her.
She was on the bed when he came through the door. On her side. Knees pulled up to her chest. The bathrobe half open at the front, her hand pressed flat against her stomach. Her body shook through the crying, her face pressed into the pillow she'd pulled against it.
"¿Me abrazas, por favor?"
He came around to the back side of the bed and pulled the duvet down and got in behind her. His chest pressed against her shoulder blades, his thigh ran up under hers and his arm came across her waist and his hand settled flat against her stomach inside the bathrobe.
Her hand came up off the mattress and closed around his wrist. She pulled.
"Mireya, basta."
Her hand stopped. She held his wrist a beat longer, her fingers loose around the bone. Then she let her hand slide down to cover his on her stomach, and she pressed both of them against her skin, holding them there.
