Marisela.
Finger tips press into bursted blood vessels under the skin of my sternum, spreading from collar bone to collar bone.
I grit my teeth together as I keep poking and prodding, the corners of my mouth pulling downward once I pull a black tank top on, considering covering the bruises up with some make up.
I know it won't do any good, I'll just have to admit to Emily I completely missed my step coming down stairs last night and ate the wood floor chest first.
Hearing her talking and laughing motivates me to pull a pair of shorts on and head downstairs, following the smell of bacon and cinnamon rolls.
I cautiously make my way down the steps, taking a sigh once my feet hit the floor.
"Good morning, princess Mari." My cousin's voice hits my ears before she looks at me, but when she does she's giving me a wide smile.
"Good morning." I say it back, seeing Sam's finishing up his food, while Jared sits beside him, giving me a wide, toothy smile which I return for a second before my eyes fall on another guy that looks to be around my age sitting beside Jared with his eyes locked on his plate.
Emily's grabbing my attention once more when she nearly gasps out, "what happened?!"
"I fell down the stairs last night." I inform her, horror taking over her features as I open the cabinet she keeps the plates in. "Flat on my chest."
"That looks awful, Mari." She gets closer, her hand reaching out to brush against a particular bruise by my collar bone.
"I think it broke my left tit." I say under my breath to her to avoid the boys from hearing it.
"I bet." Em mumbles. "We can have Sue look at it when we go over there."
"Sue is not looking at these." I scoff out, completely shutting that possibility down.
"Sue has already seen those and everything else you've got. She changed your diapers and gave you baths." She keeps her voice low but still light in nature.
"That's not the same." I argue in the same tone as Sam clears his throat as if he's about to speak.
When he doesn't, I'm looking at him, pulling a cinnamon roll onto my plate and a couple pieces of bacon.
"Are you coming with us to Sue's?" It leaves my mouth before I even really taking into consideration the fact that it's not just Sue's house, but also his ex-girlfriend's.
"Um—" he starts to speak but he's interrupted by Jared opening his mouth to smartly add, "depends on if Leah's gonna be there or not."
My good mood is spoiled, my face falling as Sam just glares at Jared who mumbles out, "Sorry."
"Yeah, when are we gonna talk about that?" I keep a faux kindness to my tone, though it's quite obvious it's not genuine.
"It's not necessarily your business, Marisela." He says it sternly with a coldness that's probably meant to discourage me from arguing.
It isn't my business, not really, but the fact no one else seems phased or bothered by the fact he screwed Leah over has me automatically taking her side.
Deciding to keep Emily out of it, I take in a breath before doing the exact opposite of what he was hoping to accomplish.
"It's fucked that you wasted four years of Leah's life just to turn around and shack up with a cousin who's like her sister." My words give me the response I was hoping for, his jaw twitching as his teeth squeeze together for a split second. "Well, was like a sister. I doubt the sentiment is the same." I correct myself, further adding to the look of frustration on his features as he stands up.
This in itself is a threat to me, my plate leaving my hand as I toss it onto the counter, having lost my appetite anyway, before I'm taking a step closer to him.
"Marisela." Emily grapples to try to get me to back off, her voice going through my left ear and out of my right.
"I said it was none of your business. And it isn't." Sam says to me.
"Did you actually care about her at all or were you just playing the long game?" I hope my words are digging into him, but they seem to be having minimum affect. He looks more so irritated than hurt and it drives me to start tearing into him in my mother's native tongue the same way she would do my father in their constant fights, my finger nail poking at the bare skin of his chest harshly.
"That's enough." I hear Emily in my ear, grabbing my arm to pull me away her fiancé, only for me to pull away from her roughly, causing her to stumble back.
I now get a reaction from Sam, finally, feeling the heat of his hand come after me to grab me but I pull away.
"Don't fucking touch me!" I bark at him at the same moment Emily shouts, "Hey!" and forceful grabs my arm in her hand, tugging me back a few feet, making me go quiet as I have to settle on using my eyes to tell her precious lover to go burn.
"If this is how you start your mornings, then no wonder your mom needed a break." She spits out next, not even knowing the half of it.
I don't have the desire to start anything with her, having been expecting her to stick up for him but hoping she wouldn't.
I don't think I've ever heard Emily be angry.
Feeling her eyes on me, I just keep looking at Sam, wishing I could do more than just curse him.
I completely forget there's two other people in the room with us, Sam not even trying to move beside me to get to the door, instead turning and going behind Jared.
Emily flashes me one last look before following after him as if I've made a mess she has to clean up.
Jared looks at me, an awkward silence having fell over us as I calm down, now beginning to feel embarrassed that they had to witness that.
"…Did you sleep good?" He asks me, his question acting like a pat on my back to release a deep breath.
"Yeah." I say to him as the other one stands up with his plate, walking to the sink that I'm leaned against. "Sorry." It comes from me as I move out of his way, not meaning to block him.
Catching myself looking at him longer than I had planned on, I offer a half-ass introduction as if the grand exposé he just witnessed wasn't enough of one.
"I'm Mari." I tell him.
He nearly drops his plate in the sink, his hand shaking in a manner that I wouldn't notice if I weren't standing right by him.
He's letting out a breath of irritation, refusing to look at me as moves away from me.
I assume it's because I was just yelling at his friend.
"I'll see you later, man." He tells Jared in passing, leaving the two of us alone as he also steps out of the open door.
Jared just looks at me, taking a swig of his orange juice.
"That's Paul." He informs me. "He's just shy." It's added as an afterthought.
He finishes his food as well, making a point once again to stay as far away from me as he can, like he did when I got here last night, making sure he's against the edge of the counter opposite of me before moving to put his plate in the sink.
"I'm sorry." I apologize to him.
He looks at me with no flirtatious grin, or mischievous look in his eyes.
"It'll work itself out, Sam's pretty easy going. He'll probably be over it by lunch." He shrugs it off like he seems to do much of the things he can't change. "But maybe you should pack your things in case he isn't." It's an obvious joke, one I don't laugh at, but the fact he's trying to make me feel a little better is appreciated.
XXX
The ride to Sue's and Harry's is quiet and nearly solemn, Emily keeping her lips pushed together to keep from speaking to me.
I envy the ability to simply keep my mouth shut when I'm angry as opposed to lashing out.
She doesn't speak the whole ride, so I don't either, we just reach a silent yet mutual understanding that we're not going to bring any of it up in front of Aunt Sue as we pull up to see the long haired woman stepping off their porch to greet us.
Emily's the first to meet her arms while I'm getting out of the car, looking around to see how or if anything's changed since I've been gone.
I wait for them to pull away from one another before her chocolate brown eyes fall onto me.
There's a falter in her expression, more so an unspoken acknowledgment that I don't look like my father, the only thing's he'd given me were my skin, hair, and eyes.
Everything else might as well be a living tribute to my mother.
"You're not taking her away from me, Tom, you have Stevie! She's mine!" I can hear her hard voice in my ear, words she had spoken repeatedly through years of turmoil with my father, anytime he even entertained the idea of taking me and my older brother and getting far, far away from her.
No regard for Stevie. Just me. I was the only one she claimed.
"It's so good to see you, Marisela." Her voice drips of relief, welcoming in a tight embrace that I return. "You've gotten taller." She adds when she lets me loose, grasping my hands to look me up and down, her eyes eventually settling on the array of bruising across my chest.
"She fell down my stairs last night." Emily tells her.
"I'm fine." I insist when Sue raises her brows before I sneak a look to Emily who won't meet my eyes.
"Come inside and I can take a better look." She wraps her arm around my shoulders.
"That's really not necessary." I shake my head as we get on the porch and she opens the door.
"At least let me get you some pain medicine for it." It's more like an order than an insistent suggestion, one that I follow, relenting.
"Thank you," is all that I can bring myself to say as we step onto the porch.
She's swinging the screen door open to let us inside, my steps cautious as I look around at the home I spent the first few years of childhood frequenting.
It smells the same. Warm, comforting…furniture has been replaced, a new couch and recliner in the den, but the wooden table in the kitchen remains the same, down to the marks Leah and I had carved down the legs of it with sharp rocks out of boredom while Sue was distracted with Seth and Harry had been off hunting with dad and Stevie.
Seth was a new baby back then.
It's as if Sue is reading my mind as she steps to a cabinet in the kitchen, calling out, "Seth, we have company!"
He's peeking his head from behind the doorway into the hall that keeps the bedrooms, seeing that we're in the house, a smile that reaches entirely across his face appears before he pulls ear buds from his ears and discards them before coming to us.
Upon seeing him I can just feel my expression shift the way I had seen Sue's shift when she first saw me.
The last time I saw him he favored his own father a little more, but three years has blessed him with an uncanny resemblance to a large piece of my heart.
Much like how I'm nearly my mother's twin, Seth looks as if he's a copy and paste of my father.
He hugs Emily first, only an inch shorter than her despite being fourteen.
He's probably going to tower over all of us before he finishes growing.
Turning to me next, he offers a light fueled, "hey, stranger," before hugging me tight.
It's nice to see him again outside of a funeral for once.
"Hey, Seth." I reply to him, constricting him for a second before letting go. "Where's Leah?" I ask Sue next.
"She went to town with Harry to get a couple things we need for dinner tonight." Sue hands out a couple over the counter pain meds to me and Seth looks at my wounds before asking, "Did you fall down Emily's stairs?"
"Yes." I confirm.
"I told you those are a hazard." He says to our cousin.
"You two are the only ones who have had any trouble. Maybe your eye coordination is just bad." Emily argues with him.
"Maybe you need a hand rail like I said you did. Or get Sam to install an elevator." He shoots back to her.
"Yeah, I'm sure he'll be up for that." She rolls her eyes, shoving at his shoulder playfully.
"I almost busted my chin open a couple months ago." He says to me.
"At least her's makes sense, she was walking down the stairs. You got hurt walking up the stairs." Sue teases her son.
"It's a lot easier to do than you think." Seth points at his mother, his brows raising.
"You know what else is easier to do than you think it is?" She questions him, glancing at the trash can.
"…Oh…I forgot." He steps over to it, pulling the bag out of it and tying it up.
"Yeah, so did your dad." Sue comments as he walks outside to toss it out in the garbage can.
"What time are they supposed to be back?" Emily asks Sue, and I can't help but to feel it's because she may not want to be here when they get back.
"They should be back before lunch." Sue replies.
I wonder how she took the revelation of Leah's close cousin getting engaged out of seemingly nowhere to a man she perhaps thought would be her own son in-law.
However she felt about it at first, she appears to have gotten over it fairly quickly.
I once again feel that envy to be able to do such a thing.
Forgiveness very much is just for the person the rage is held towards.
"You two are welcome to stay for dinner." She invites us as she pulls a pitcher of lemonade from the fridge.
"We won't be able to tonight, I'm afraid. Mari still has some things left to unpack and get moved in."
I feel as though my teeth are about to crack, squeezing together at her blatant lie.
"Oh, I already got it this morning." I try to block her way out of eating dinner here in a manner that won't let Sue know she's telling a story.
Emily just looks at me with her lips rubbing together.
I've noticed she does this when she wants to avoid saying something that might hurt feelings.
A part of me hopes she stops caring and just tells me to fuck off, but I know she won't do that.
Even if we weren't in the company of our aunt and cousin.
Sue can see it now, I think. The unresolved tension between us. She looks from Emily to me before saying, "Would either of you like a glass of lemonade?"
Seth comes back inside, taking our attention from one another.
"Yes, please." Emily and I speak it at the same time, and Sue walks to the cabinet to grab us a both a glass.
"Seth, you want some?" She offers.
"Sure." He replies before looking at me. "So, how long are you gonna be here, Mari?"
"Just for the summer." I reply to him, his face lighting up.
"Yes, I won't be bored to tears." He takes it as a personal victory before Sue chuckles and bursts his bubble.
"I was actually hoping she could help you out this summer with what you nearly failed."
His face falls, his eyes shifting to his mom as if asking her why she couldn't let him have his moment.
I go to speak but Emily beats me to it, sticking to what my mom had told her.
"Actually, Marisela's been struggling in school, too."
"Oh, really?" Sue looks to me, a worried expression on her face.
No, not really.
But I can't tell her that.
"Yeah." It's me that's lying to her now.
"Anything math related kicks his butt." Sue motions to Seth as she hands the two of us our lemonade and gives him his.
"Thanks, mom." He mumbles to her as he takes it.
"What did you have trouble in?" She asks me, curious.
"Math and science." I keep up the charade.
"Looks like you're just going to have to see if Embry is willing to help you out." Sue nudges Seth with her arm.
"If me learning math depends on Embry teaching it to me, I'm screwed." Seth tells her.
"You just have to open these up," she tugs at his ears, making him laugh and pull away from her, but she doesn't let him, "and actually listen," she finishes her point with a kiss to his temple, and a pat on his back.
He's practically glowing under the affection of his mother, a genuine love that's reciprocated.
I pull out my mental scroll of paper and pen, marking another tally of something else to be envious of.
At this rate I'll be completely green by the end of the summer.