I’ve gone so far as to invite Jones along. He’s a forty-year-old computer tech at the department who likes me and has eight weeks of vacation time saved up. Not even he wants a free trip to the jungle.
“You coming?” I blink at Joy over my chips and spinach dip. Strangely, the stuff goes straight to my boobs, and I don’t want bigger boobs. I do need comfort though. There’s a lot of comfort in junk food.
“Not a chance, sweetie.” She crunches on one of my chips. Her salad without dressing looks dreary, but her frozen margarita is anything but. I know it for a fact. “Hey, maybe you’ll find someone totally unlike Julian in that jungle. Some super-virile jungle man.” Her eyes light up. “You know what?”
I groan. “No. What?”
“There’s such a thing as jungle porn. You search on the internet, and presto!, these super-hot guys in tribal outfits are invading all kinds of Tarzan-and-Jane tree houses. Probably while Tarzan is out hunting because Jane is definitely present and more than happy about their visit.”
“Jesus. Aren’t you supposed to be studying for finals?”
“I am! This is PSYCH 729 Errant Sexuality.” She shrugs, putting on her blank-face. I have no idea if she’s making it up. “Anyways. Every one of your problems will be solved if you say yes to Luka’s offer. You know this, right?”
“Not true.” I want to explain why, but she stops lining her mouth with champagne-pink lipstick to interrupt me.
“You’re the anthropologist, so you’re fully aware that you feel guilty because of your ex.”
“He’s not my ex.”
“Oh man. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to call him since you weren’t married. Would it be ‘your late fiancé?’”
“Joy.” I press my fingers against my temples. “Just please call him Julian. That was his name.”
Wariness flashes across her features, but she reels herself back in easily. “So, you know the cultural side. I know the psych side. Between the two, isn’t it fair to say the only reason you don’t want Luka to come to Brazil is that you feel bad about Julian?”
I’ve had two good days in a row now. This shouldn’t break me.
She sighs, stealing a spinach-dip-covered chip and hovering it in front of her lips. “I see you.”
“And I see you.” And fear for your lipstick. I grimace while she slow-crunches a small piece of her steal.
“You’re going dark again.”
“So?” I cross my arms. Really, I’m done with this lunch, margaritas or not.
“So. It makes me think that you don’t remember what we talked about. Do you remember how grief works?”
“Of course.” She didn’t stop harping on it after Julian’s death.
“You’re going to have to deal with it for years.”
“Yeah, great. Thanks, love. This is what the world needs psychologists for, telling us the obvious.”
“But you’re going to flip in and out of your grief. In the beginning, it’s all one big black hole you can’t get out of. But then, you have more and more bright moments. Like when you were with Luka two weeks ago. You shouldn’t have pulled away from that; he was good for you.”
“You’re so opinionated.” My eyes are watery and want to spill over. “That was me caving in to momentary temptation. It wasn’t planned, and Luka is bad for me. With him around I’ll never forget his brother.”
I sniffle. There’s liquid in my nose too.
“Geneva.”
I dab off the last drops of moisture. “What?”
“You’re never going to forget Julian.” If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was taunting me. “But it doesn’t mean that you can’t find another man. You should. You’re young.”
“Yeah, I am, which means I have time. I don’t have to jump into the first, worst thing ever presented to me.”
“As in seven roommates, his twin brother included.”
I gasp. Shoot my stare up and find her eyes glittering.
“You’re really not cut out for your profession, you know,” I say. “There’s no way you’ll get repeat customers.”
Joy’s lips are a little chapped, I notice, as they stretch. Her amusement fades again as she continues. “You’ll never forget him—you loved him—but believe me: with time, your dark periods will become shorter and fewer as your bright periods extend. Right now, you have short bursts of happy before you dig back into that hole again. But guess what?”
The rhetorical guess-what. “Tell me.”
“You already seem lighter.”
I don’t want to hear it, which she sees and grabs my arm, shaking it slowly against the tabletop. “There’s no shame in surviving your fiancé’s death. Especially when you had nothing to do with it.”
“I did though. If I’d been there...”
“You weren’t. It was his choice, all of it.”
“Yes, but I—”
“It’s over, okay?”
We’ve had this conversation one time too many.
“Julian didn’t wake up, and you went to class. It’s what you did on a regular basis because he flaked. But put yourself in Luka’s shoes. He was there, having breakfast while his twin brother stopped breathing right above his head. He’s the one who has to live with having called the ambulance too late.”
Here she is, Joy, my friend, and she’s throwing Luka’s higher guilt in my face. It’s ruthless, and I can’t take it today. I stand so fast my chair screeches against the floor. She straightens, eyes still on me as I whip around and stalk out the door.
Tuesday night dinner. Luka has a slump to his back I haven’t seen before. Connor passes around baked duck glistening in orange juices. It rests on a bed of vegetables and rice.
“Luka,” I murmur for the first time in two weeks. Since I asked him to please leave my room and stop making me feel at peace. “How are you?”
He stops chewing, eyes moving from his plate and up to my face. The low chatter around us stills too. I feel Lenny’s attention on me while the others look away, leaving this moment to us.
“I’m all right.”
“Have you thought more about what you want to do?” I’m putting him on the spot on purpose. I’ve finally made up my mind, and I need to tell him about it.
“As in?” He clears his throat of gruff. Then he swallows and looks away.
“As in if you’re taking a break from classes.”
“You’re taking a break?” Lenny cutting in makes the others shift in their seat.
Luka leaves his fork on the plate and tips on his chair in a display of controlled. “Yeah, hanging up the books for a minute.”
“You’re finishing up your degree, right? This doesn’t make any sense,” Connor mutters. “You’ve got, what, one semester left or something?”
Luka nods. “The one retake in the summer—which I’m not doing—then one semester because I’m behind.”
“He’ll do it later,” I say, which turns their attention to me. They’re a study in group behavior. “Have you talked with the administration about it?”
“What, are you my mother now?”
“No, I just didn’t want you to throw your education out the window.”
He sighs and lets the front legs of his chair land on the floor. “It’s not the first time someone has an emergency while in med school. You’re not gonna be cut off from ever finishing because your brother dies.”
“So you haven’t asked them, then?” I cross my arms. “You should ask someone, your adviser or something.”
“All right, fine! I’ll ask tomorrow.” Luka’s ice cracks, and he scrunches his eyes shut, mouth constricting in a trembling line. He lifts a big hand, pushing down over the bridge of his nose as if pressing back tears. I see it, though, the trickle of moisture escaping from a corner.
Around us, forks start to clang against plates. Nathaniel asks Diego to pass the duck as Luka rises to his feet and turns toward the kitchen. He hesitates. It’s as if his brain is too full to kick his body into action. I get up too.
“Luka.” I stroke a stooped shoulder. “I only asked because you were right; I can’t do this alone. I want you to come with me to the Amazon.”
He stills.
Between the disgust I feel for this man, the attraction, the constant reminder of the past, I’m setting myself up for more pain. Even so, it feels right to offer him a chance to escape with me.
“I’m not saying it’ll be easy. Honestly, I don’t understand why you’d want to come with me in the first place. But yeah. If you’re interested, I can’t think of a better solution for a male chaperone.”
“Chaperone? I think you can hold your own.”
“I’ll delegate. You’ll be expected to wield the sword and slay all the dragons for me. You have to defend my honor, etcetera.”
A small smile raises the corners of his lips. “I can do that. And I’ll stitch you together after the tigers feast on you.”
“Knock on wood!” I exclaim. His smile grows, and I meet his gaze without restrictions. I suddenly feel lighter. “So you accept?”
Luka sinks his teeth into his lower lip. “Yeah. I’ll be your dragon slayer.”