Elle.
I.
Little brother, where are you? Where are you now?
Don't you understand what you've done to me? To us? Please don't make me hate you, I can't stand it. I won't be able to stand it. Hating you is like hating my arms or my legs. Even though they are bruised, it doesn't compare to my heart. That thing that beats and beats inside me it's so loud and full of loss and longing for us. It's like when you punched me and bloodied my lip; you were holding a piece of my heart. Then you punched it, too. Then kicked it, and you looked so furious and sad. Were you crying, little brother? My never ever sweet little boy who promised?
Please don't cry. Please come back. Or I'll die and shrivel up and be ugly and no one will want me anymore. Conner won't want me anymore. Will you?
I reach out for you but you're no longer there. Only your blood is. It stains your pillow. Yes, it's your pillow. I touch it and then I bring my face close to it and I breathe you in. I stick my tongue out and I can almost taste you, and then it's like you are inside me again.
I'm hiccupping, sobbing. I call Conner but he can't say anything to make me feel better, so I say goodbye. I curl up and shut my eyes tightly so tightly so I can maybe sense if you're still nearby.
But I can't. Why can't I see you anymore?
II.
I've always wondered about a lot of things. Guilt, in particular. Even when I was young, nothing has fazed me. I can do bad things without feeling ashamed. I can stick pins into cockroaches, fuck with people, and slice Mr. Bittle Fox open but sometimes when I look at you, all I ever feel is guilt. Like every bad thing I've done exists in you.
When we were on our own, remember that one whole day we had together? We packed our bags, wiped our bank accounts clean, and then went to Mexico. Do you remember? We weren't as wealthy as we are now. We were still children. Teenagers, technically. But children nonetheless. I see that now.
We only told people our first names, only we faked it. You were Aaron and I was Anna. Like twins, only we never told them we had the same last name. It was sort of a game for us.
And so everybody oohed and ahhed, what a couple we made!
And we were, weren't we? The sweetest, best looking couple there?
For the first time, we kissed and touched and no one ever thought we were disgusting. I remember it well. You looked so handsome when you tanned a golden brown and we were at the beach. We cuddled and whispered and said nice things to each other with the ocean to complete our safe little world.
Girls wanted you. They looked at me bitterly, and when they tried to talk to you while I was away swimming, I'd sense it. I'd know it, and I'd come out of the water and glare at them and they'd scatter like a flock of seagulls. Then you'd shrug innocently and grin, your big white teeth and broad shoulders and blue, blue, blue eyes all so happy.
"What was that?" I ask, hands on my hips. Dripping wet with salt water.
"What was what?" You reply, scratching your stomach with its little muscles I loved touching.
"Oh, so that's how it is?" I stomp off, looking for a guy while Aaron laughs. I hear you walking behind me, calling me Anna please come back baby I'm sorry you know who I'm with. And it's just you, I swear.
We both glance at this man, this beautiful, beautiful man. Who looks a little like Derrick, only I haven't met Derrick yet. And he looks at me and I smile just a little and I have him. I know I have him. And you knew it too.
Because before I can take one more step, you grab my arm and turn me around. You look so frustrated and handsome, frowning at me like that. I pout and shuffle my feet and you lace your fingers with mine and you kiss my forehead. You smell like coconuts from the suntan lotion. The grainy bits of sand rub against my skin.
"If you knew, if you just really, really knew, Elle." You tell me. "You would never let things like that get you mad. If you just knew how much I thought about you and love you and how I want to marry you and have kids with you someday, you'd never flinch when girls come and talk to me."
I look at you for a while; you look so sad and sorry that I quickly forget about the beautiful man waiting for me. I cup your face and you lean down you've grown so tall already and you look older than me. I kiss you on the mouth and I let my tongue play with yours and little bits of joy travel all over me because I can do this with you out here in public.
We remain wrapped up in each other, Handsome, handsome Aaron and quiet little Anna with their matching hair and skin and nose and sometimes, when my eyes are blue; we have the same eyes, too.
III.
Your cell phone is off and I've been pacing I can't sleep anymore not after that stupid idiot Sebastian broke in looking for you. How I had wished it had been you. I may have punched him because I was angry that he wasn't you. I think he sprained his ankle but he's gone now they're all gone Kathryn went with him. She loves him, you see.
"Hey…" Conner's voice interrupts me and he approaches the room. Gliding with imaginary wings and a halo with his dark eyes concerned. I want to swallow up his concern and his intentions and I want to be noble like him. "Are you okay?"
No. Never. I'm not okay.
"I don't know," I look up at him. He's so tall. "Promise me never ever, Conner."
"What?" He smiles, so blinding that smile. My angel man.
"Nothing,"
He wraps his arms around me and he smells nice not like coconuts and sand. But still nice. I flinch, because you beat me up pretty badly. Conner's eyes narrow, but he doesn't ask.
"Come on," he says. Quietly. Always quietly, like he knows me so well already. "Let's get you cleaned up."
I allow him to lead me upstairs, where everything isn't a mess. He attends to my cuts and bruises and I kiss him. I wonder about his words, his capability. The extent of his angel-man powers.
To clean me up until I am glowing white again, like before. When everybody was still alive and with me.
III.
I find you.
It isn't easy, but I do. I do because even though you left me, I licked your blood and then you are inside me again. Where you go, your body still calls out to me. It's at a hotel. An obscure little hotel. I know you could have afforded to stay somewhere nicer, but you had switched hotels to hide from me. You think I'd never find out? Of course not, little brother. You watch me, I watch you. That's the way things are.
I bribe and flirt to make them tell me where you are. As I grow nearer and nearer to you, my entire body hums with anticipation at seeing you again. I miss you like I'd miss my eyes and my mouth.
When you open the door, you don't look surprised to see me. It makes sense. You probably knew I was coming, didn't you?
You look banged up and bandaged, my love. Are we going to have another go at it to see who can hurt whom the most? Are we going to have more broken things and skin and bones?
You're playing a song. Solitude by Ella Fitzgerald. It reminds me of smoke and lights and nights in bed that are like Mexico. Fitting. And yet at the same time, it's not.
In my solitude, you have me.
Your eyes are red like you'd been crying but now they're hollow, like an empty well. You look at me like you don't even know me.
But slowly, very, very carefully—
I stroke your hair and your cheek and then I have to tiptoe a little so I can hug you.
"What do you want?" You ask in a raspy voice, groggy and drunk.
"Mexico," I reply, kissing your neck. "Mexico in New York always and always."
"I'll never be able to give you that," your voice breaks into little bittle pieces.
"I know," I close the door behind me and this time, you're the one who falls on the floor, sobbing and shaking with your eyes shut and your body curled up into a fetal position. Loud, pained cries escape your mouth and you grit your teeth and hit yourself because you want to stop crying.
I stroke your hair and lie down beside you. "My Aaron,"
"No!"
"Yes," I hate that you are still shaking, still so sad and resistant. "Do you remember me, your Anna?"
"Stop playing with me, Elle." You reply, wiping your tears. "Just stop."
"Mexico in New York," I kiss you, tasting your tears, tasting the ocean as it trails down your cheeks. I unbutton your shirt kissing and licking and when I come across your bandaged torso, I kiss the bandages. Your weeping eventually subsides and you're breathing quietly now, watching me.
I undo your belt and unzip your pants; touching you and feeling you harden beneath my fingers. I kiss you there, too. You groan, beautiful boy lashes fluttering like a girl's.
"Please, not tonight." You beg. "I can't stop the way I usually do, I can't not be inside you."
"So we won't stop," I reply and your eyes open and I don't like how they are red and how you look so fragile maybe if I said a cruel thing you would break.
"You mean it?" You ask.
I take my dress off and you devour me with your eyes first, and then your hands. I take your right hand and put it under my panties, writhing and groaning and calling you Aaron
You lick and suck my breasts like I was our mother and maybe I was. I am your mother and sister and best friend and only friend and love. I am everything in one. I claw your back and urge you on, rubbing myself against you and holding you. Because things like this never last.
"Elle," the tip of your erection touches my waiting lips and I swallow thickly. Your eyes burn mine, full of life again. "Elle, say Ian. Don't call me Aaron. Not tonight."
Our hands join and I think sometimes that maybe we have the same hands, too. Only yours is bigger and longer and mine is just a little whiter.
"Ian," I whisper. "Ian, Ian, Ian. Never ever and always and always."
You finally go inside me and then it is like you are the key to something and I am the key to something of yours too. Because tears fall as fluids flow back and forth back and forth and we are panting groaning loving.
And it hurts to move too much but you sit me up and I embrace you and whisper nice things like when we were at the beach.
"Leave with me," your voice is wobbly again. Perfect, crying Ian. "Please just leave with me."
"Shh…" I silence you with kisses, going up and down on your lap like we are meant to be joined like this. I think maybe you are my twin sometimes, that they lied when they said I came out first. I think maybe sometimes you were inside with me, and that our bodies have been joined long before now.
But then sometimes I wish that I would get a phone call. I don't know from whom, but I'd like to speak to anyone who can tell me that
We don't have the same blood, and that us having the same hair and nose and hands and (sometimes, when my eyes are blue) eyes.
I wait for a call that will never come, for a reason for everything to be Mexico.
So when we are about to come (I know when you are close, because that's just how we are, that's how much you are inside me), I suck on your lip and close my eyes and hold on tightly so we can enter that new world together.
Colors and lines and shapes move and melt and form into new things only we can name. We both cry out in pleasure, exploding into each other. Braving a fucked up world where we are children and we can hold hands and love and kiss and maybe even sometimes if we feel like it, kill.
"Elle," you keep saying my name, crying again, knowing the new world can only be taken in brief snatches. I stroke your hair and feel your seed warm inside me and I wonder, for the tiniest moment, I wonder if maybe we weren't human and that suddenly a child would come out of me and she (or he) would look like us and she (or he) would be so beautiful with ten perfect toes and fingers and gray or blue or gray blue eyes and long black lashes and dark, dark hair. And then we can all live together and you'll buy a ring and ask me to marry you and we'll get married and we'll belong to each other and to the baby.
Then maybe Keiko isn't really dead at all, maybe she's alive and she'll come visit us and be Aunt Keiko to her (or him) and play with her (or him) and kiss her (or him) and everybody will be happy.
You pull out of me and then carry me to the bed, asking me to lie down and stay still when I reach out for you like a needy child. When you kneel in front of me and kiss my slippery mouth, I bite the insides of my cheeks. The shame is far away, but I can see it. It watches me, waiting to pounce, but for now there is nothing else. Nothing else but Aaron-Ian and Anna-Elle and Mexico-New York. And maybe the little baby Fox. Who I know will never exist because my eggs and your semen are like magnets with the same large glaring positive sign. Or negative. Either way, they will repel.
You're trying to suck and lick yourself off me but I place a hand on your head and you look up and I shake my head, smiling. Tired.
"Leave it," I say, and your eyes cloud over. You're so concerned.
"It will never happen," I tell you. "Just leave it. I like how it feels inside me."
So you do, and you still keep licking and biting and then your fingers are inside me and I close my eyes and remember you when you were a little boy and you kept staring at me with those large blue eyes of yours thinking that I'd never notice. Then I imagine you as that little boy and that it is your little dick inside me, and you are mewling like a kitten my love my Aaron-Ian.
I come all over your sheets, my body liquefied. I feel the aftershocks as you clean me up. You and Conner always want to clean me up.
You take your place beside me, looking at the ceiling. Quiet.
"Adios, Mexico," you say bitterly.
I don't reply. I think at this point we both knew.
It was the perfect way to say goodbye.
IV.
Conner is still up, waiting for me. The first signs of daybreak light my way as I step inside to find him there. We just look at each other and I wonder if he can maybe sense what I had done.
"We've belonged to other people all our life," he plays with his untouched mug of coffee. "So much so that sometimes I don't know if we have anything left to give."
I don't speak.
He stands up, wiping his hands on his pants. Then, he goes to the kitchen to get another mug. He pours me a cup, too. And he toasts a bagel for me.
"But if there's anything left to give, Elle, I want to give it to you." He places the mug opposite his, and then the bagel on a plate. He picks up the jars of marmalade and places them neatly lined in front of the bagel so I can choose. Then he comes up to me and I can tell that he smells you in my hair, that man, tough smell. But he only hugs me tightly, kissing the top of my head. Always Mexico with Conner.
My voice comes out, as wobbly as yours had been when you asked me to leave with you.
"I need to tell you something,"
And he just listens. And listens. His expression never changes but mine does. Because the shame and the guilt just swallows me and rips me and hits me.
"I'm filthy and disgusting. I should never be alive."
"No," he says gently, drawing me into his saving arms. He rubs my back to calm me down.
"Are you going to leave me?" I ask in a tiny weak voice. "Because I know sometimes you'll think about it and imagine it and see me with him in bed and maybe it's going to be too much."
"Elle," he murmurs and I look at him.
His eyes are so dark and warm and they make me feel so safe and normal.
"Your coffee's getting cold," he says instead.
I pick the coffee up and he sits down. I sit on his lap and he chuckles.
"Me, too," I say.
"You too, what?"
"I want to give whatever's left to you."
He's quiet again. He nuzzles my neck. "Good," he answers in that deep whispery sexy voice of his. He carries me in his arms and I try not to spill the coffee on him, we go outside and we sit on the bench in my garden. He holds me against him like he knows I will fall apart if he doesn't. It is only then that I am truly able to sleep.
V.
Little brother, forgive me.
Never ever is over.
