I couldn't say I loved them, but I could do this. My fingers could reach for the buttons of their clothes, for their soft skin. I could lean in for light kisses and harder kisses, my tongue seeking theirs. I could push them down on my bed, or their beds, or the couch in the garage, or the back seat of cars. I could reach for any part of their bodies and touch it and invade it, I could have sex with them even if I couldn't say why.
Right now I didn't know which one I loved, Manny or Ashley. Maybe I loved them both. Maybe I loved neither of them. Manny's skin was so smooth and dark, always tan even on the coldest winter nights. Ashley was so pale despite the artificial tan from the tanning booths that faded so quickly. Her eyes were so blue, and looking into them was like being lost in some summer sky. Manny's eyes were so dark, like some unfathomable liquid I could drown in.
Wasn't sex enough at this point? Why did I have to confess some love that I was afraid to even feel, never mind say? I couldn't admit that to them, and let them have that piece of me. I was too damaged. All the traumatic events of my life weren't that long ago. They had just happened. In my dreams and nightmares they were happening still.
Still, it was driving Ashley away, and I didn't want to lose her. Instinctively I went to Marco for advice. He thought more like them than like me.
"You love her, right?" he said to me, sitting next to me on the couch in the garage after I had driven everyone else away.
"Yeah," I said, but grudgingly. I stared at my sneakers, the light blue converse. Light faded jeans hanging over them and the edges all frayed from dragging on the ground. My dad would never have let me dress like this, all messy edgy cool. Joey didn't care, though.
"Then tell her," Marco said, and I narrowed my eyes at him. It wasn't fair. It was so simple for him, and for Ash. It wouldn't be so simple if they'd been beaten on a regular basis and always told afterward, "I love you," What kind of love was that? So, what kind of love was this?
"It's not, it's not that easy for me. I can't just tell her. I mean, I don't want to lose her, but I can't just tell her," That didn't explain it. I couldn't explain it.
"Then you've already lost her," Marco said with this grim finality. Shit.
So I wrote her that song. That was easier, because it was kind of like it wasn't me. It was a song, and so it was some song narrator who was saying it to someone, not Ashley necessarily. Anyone. Anyone could take this song and use it for themselves, so it wasn't so personal. That kind of impersonal thing got through to Ashley, though. She was smart. But she bought it for awhile.
At Paige's party Ashley was acting like she was all mad because I'd told Spinner about us having sex, or planning to or whatever. But that wasn't really why she was mad.
"You wrote that stupid lie of a song because you can't say that you love me because you don't," she said, and there was some truth in that. I felt things for her, I really really liked her, but if I loved her maybe I was hiding it from myself. And the song was a lie to appease her.
So I went to Manny after she came to me, because things were easier with Manny. She didn't demand things from me. Maybe she loved me or maybe it was a crush or something, who knew? But I undid the little delicate buttons of her shirt and struggled with the tricky clasps of her bra and I shrugged out of my jeans and boxer shorts, praying that Joey wouldn't come up to the garage.
It sucked in a way, that I was kind of closed off from my feelings. But I had to be. I'd had to be for years just to survive. I'd come home from school sometimes and my dad would almost immediately get pissed about something and then he'd hit me with his belt. I couldn't go from that to school without shutting down. I had to be like that and I guess I still was. So sex was the only way to say that I loved them.