CHAPTER FOUR
Nico
I actually hadn’t considered where I would take Layla, despite the fact that I had days to figure it out. I had a few ideas in mind, but they all flew out of my head when I saw her sitting on that step, looking more beautiful than I’d ever imagined for the past few months. Her hair seemed darker, shinier. Her lips seemed fuller, her legs longer. And by the time I’d parked and she tackled me against the car door, I couldn’t think at all, couldn’t fuckin’ breathe because she felt so good.
The trees looked brighter. The unnaturally green grass rich people water to death looked like it was in fuckin’ technicolor. With Layla in my arms, I felt like I’d been seeing black and white for the last three months only to have the whole world turn into one of those new 3-D movies.
Then she started to cry, and it was over. All my ideas that this was going to be some kind of beautiful reunion, that we were going to pick right up where we left off, vanished. The only thing I could see or hear or feel or sense was her. The only thing I wanted to do was take away her pain.
But how the fuck do I do that?
Luckily, she solves my problem as I start driving: “Let’s go to the beach.”
I nod. “You got it, baby.”
She’s quiet for most of the thirty-minute drive. This is a Layla I don’t know very well. She was never a loudmouth, but she was always full of questions, things she wanted to know about me. Since the roar of the road doesn’t make for good conversation, she just tugs on her long hair and gazes at the palm trees, the concrete buildings, the traffic as we take the back roads through downtown LA.
I peek at her when we idle at stoplights, trying to spot any differences. They’re small, but they’re there. Her hair is a little bit longer, dropping past her shoulder blades in a loose braid I want to wrap around my fist. She’s gained back the weight she lost last spring––yeah, I noticed that as soon as she stood up. With the tight shirt and tiny shorts that show off most of her legs, with her curvy body pressed up against me, I really noticed that.
You horny asshole. Get it together. She is not here for that.
But the biggest difference is in the way she holds herself. The smile that was all over her face when I arrived is gone. Whether it’s the shit that’s going down in her family or something else, there’s a sadness that wasn’t there before. Her eyes look more tired than a twenty-year-old’s should. Every now and then they close, her long black lashes hovering over her cheeks like fans for one, two seconds before they lift again. I know that look. It’s a look that says, “I’m just trying to fuckin’ deal.”
It’s not until I’ve exited he freeway onto Sepulveda and have just turned onto Ardmore that I realize I’ve been so absorbed by her, I’ve driven on autopilot straight to my neighborhood. Shit. Thirty minutes with Layla, and I’m already losing my head. This is the last place I should be taking her.
I could drive north to Malibu, maybe, or south to Newport or Laguna Beach. Maybe we could hike Griffith Park and make out behind the Hollywood sign. Anywhere but here. But instead, I find myself parking around the block from my building knowing that even if I can’t take her there, I can at least show her the places that have become my places here in LA, even if they aren’t quite home. Just as much as I ever did, I want Layla to know me, to see me for what I am.
I didn’t realize how much I missed that feeling until I pulled up to her grandparents’ fancy house.
“Where are we?” she asks as she gets out of the car.
I close the door and take her hand. She glances at our entwined fingers, but doesn’t pull away. It’s natural. I don’t think I could be next to her and not touch her.
“Manhattan Beach,” I say as we start toward the main strip.
She gives me a look. “Out of all the places to live in LA, you ended up in Manhattan Beach? Don’t you think that says something?”
I give her a sly grin. “You can take the boy out of New York, right?”
She chuckles, but she looks a little sad.
“This place actually makes a decent sandwich,” I say as we pass Becker’s, one of the only basic delis for miles. “Over there they make açai bowls and smoothies, but they don’t really fill you up. That’s my new gym––it’s not my old spot back in Hell’s Kitchen, but they have a good trainer.”
Layla holds my hand tight, like she’s afraid she might lose me, but takes in the neighborhood. I see her gaze float over the sushi restaurants and yoga studios, the way all the buildings are nicely painted with matching colors.
“This is a really nice area,” she remarks after I point out a few more spots.
Her words aren’t meant to hurt, but they do a little. Threaded through them is surprise––surprise that someone like me would be living in a place like this. She probably thought I’d be somewhere like East LA or Maywood––not because of the way I look, but because of where she knows I’ve lived before. A one-bedroom apartment shared between my mother and her four kids. A railroad up in Harlem with about as much charm as a sardine can. Compared to those places, Manhattan Beach is the Ritz.
Lennox, one of the neighborhoods in LA that actually reminds me a lot of home, isn’t actually that far from here, and sometimes I’ll stop there for dinner when I miss hearing Spanish. But even there, I’m still an outsider. In a room full of Mexicans, Guatemalans, Colombians, Salvadorans...I sound different. I speak a different kind of Spanish, a different kind of Spanglish. It’s close, and there are a lot of similarities. But it’s not like home.
“The club must pay well,” Layla says after we cross Hermosa and turn onto The Strand, the big pedestrian promenade that runs alongside the beach. A few roller bladers whiz by us, and Layla jumps a little closer.
“Whoa,” she laughs as I tuck her into my side.
“You okay?” I ask.
She’s jumpy, like she’s not sure what’s about to happen next. I don’t think it’s just me.
After we pass the volleyball nets, we step onto the beach, past the sunbathers, where we can walk mostly alone. It’s one of the things I actually like about California––unlike New York, where everyone is crammed together, here you can always find a spot by yourself, even in the middle of LA.
Layla takes off her sandals and holds them in one hand as we walk.
“So,” I say, reaching for small talk. “What, um, classes are you taking this year?”
She takes a deep breath and tugs on her braid again. “Oh...well. Yeah, they’re...you know, I don’t really want to talk about it.” Another big sigh.
“What?” I ask. “Don’t want to take them anymore?”
“I...you’re not going to believe this.” She rubs her face, and her forehead wrinkles adorably. “I decided to be a Latin American studies major. So I could, um, get to know my culture better.” She makes a face. “Now it seems really dumb.”
I frown. “That doesn’t seem dumb. That seems awesome, baby. Shit, I wish I could be a ‘Latin American studies major.’”
She laughs, then blows a long stream of air from her lips. “I don’t know how I’m going to focus. I’m taking Spanish, Portuguese, and a few other classes this fall. And all I’m going to think about is, well, you”––she gives me a sheepish shrug––“and my asshole dad who just fucking abandoned me and my mom. Sounds like a great way to spend the next two years.”
I wait for her to say more. I don’t know the whole story. I do know that her dad went from being an uptight, controlling-as-fuck Latino father to announcing he was straight-up leaving her and her mother. And yeah, I can see how that probably hurts. A lot.
“Plus...” she trails off, looking out to the water. “I don’t...I don’t want to be like him. I thought I wanted to learn about my culture, learn about that part of me that he always tried to hide. But if Brazilian culture is what made him...I don’t know that I want any of it.” She sighs. “Maybe I should just be the nice white girl he always wants everyone to think I am.”
I frown. She’s talked about this before. Her dad, like a lot of immigrants who’ve experienced prejudice and hate for not being “American” enough, went through a lot to keep his daughter from being different. But in the process, he alienated her from a whole part of her identity.
“Even if you hate your dad right now...” I venture, “you shouldn’t let that make you hate what you are. He’s not Brazil, baby. He’s just one man. And that shouldn’t stop you from learning about who you are.”
We walk a little more, letting the sound of the gulls flying down the beach fill the air. I try not to notice the way the sun gleams off Layla’s skin, or the way her legs, long and tan from the summer, are in the shortest shorts I’ve ever seen. Okay, they’re not really that short, especially by LA standards. It’s just that some animal in me wakes up around Layla, one that wants to cover her up and show her off at the same time. Because my girl is that beautiful.
You asshole. She’s not your girl anymore.
The idea hurts. A lot.
“So, your dad,” I say, just to interrupt my own thoughts. “When he bounced. Did he say why?”
Layla sniffs. “Are we really going to spend this time talking about that?”
I shrug. “What do you want to talk about? The weather? It’s the same thing every day here. Sunny and boring as fuck.”
She smirks. “You don’t sound as if you like it here very much.”
I shrug. “It’s okay. Different. But don’t think you get to change the subject that easily, beautiful.”
For that, I get another small smile.
“You still think I’m beautiful?” she asks.
I stop walking and turn so I can push her hair out of her eyes. “I’ll always think you’re beautiful, Layla.”
She stares at me for a moment with her wide blue eyes the color of the ocean, then swallows and starts walking again.
“He just left,” she says. She lets me keep her hand in mine, but stares down at the sand while she talks. “We all went to the airport together. He barely said a word to my mom, kissed me on the cheek, and got on his plane while we waited for ours. Did you know he sold his practice? All of it. Apparently they’d been planning it since last year. I just––” She breaks off, stopping for a moment to look out at the ocean. “I just feel really stupid,” she says quietly.
I squeeze her hand. “You’re not stupid, sweetie. Not even close.”
She pushes her hair out of her face defiantly. “Yes, I am. All of those years, he was such a control freak. He told me what to do, told my mom what to do. I thought it was because he cared so much, but obviously not. Because if you care about someone, you don’t just up and leave them!”
“No,” I agree with her. “You don’t.”
She gives me a piercing blue look, and I know what she’s thinking: that I left her too. Although if she said so, I’d say I left New York, not her. More and more, I’m wondering why. I look away.
She walks a little closer to the water, then, without warning, plops down in the sand. I fall down next to her, and we sit together, looking out at the ocean. Down the way, a few surfers flounder around in the whitewash, and a couple of others are riding the waves farther out. We watch the way they move up and down on the waves like second nature, fall, paddle back out. It’s one of those things that makes me feel like an alien in California. I can barely even swim.
“It’s not the same,” I venture after a few minutes.
Layla turns sharply. “What’s not the same?”
“Your dad,” I say, but then I surprise her. “Versus someone like mine.”
Her expression softens. She knows this is hard for me, that I don’t normally like to talk about my father, if I can even call him that.
“Your dad stuck around your whole life,” I say. “Mine split before I was even crawling. He didn’t ever want to know me at all.”
“So you’re saying it’s okay what mine did?” she asks defensively.
“No, baby, I’m not. But I’m saying...I doubt he did it because he wanted to get away from you. It sounds like maybe he waited until he knew you were going to be okay. He put up with a lot of unhappiness, living in a place where people only heard his accent, only ever looked at him like a foreigner.” I say it like a dirty word. “Maybe he saw his chance to go home, and he took it.”
It’s a familiar story––the same one I had to tell her last spring. Under normal circumstances, I’d want to break the nose of anyone who made Layla feel like this. But a part of me understands her dad too, and I never thought I’d be saying that. I understand how it feels to sacrifice everything you want so that everyone you care about will be okay. I understand the need to escape that kind of pressure. It’s what I’m doing out here.
“He’ll come back,” I tell her with more assurance than I feel. “Maybe not permanently, but he’ll be back for you.”
Layla’s quiet for a moment, running her tongue over her bottom lip while she thinks things over. I really wish she wouldn’t do that; it makes it hard to focus.
“You think?” she asks.
I take her hand and pull it across my knees so I can toy with her fingers.
“I know,” I say. “You’re...there’s no way he doesn’t love you, baby. Anyone who knows you would love you.”
She stills for a second, then lays her head on my shoulder. My chest tightens. It’s crazy how easily we fit. How could I have convinced myself she was just another girl? How could I have convinced myself we were anything but right together?
I close my eyes. I don’t give a shit about the sunset that’s starting in front of us. I just want to focus on this feeling. The solid weight of her nestled up against me. The smooth skin of her palm under my calloused thumbs. The scent of her. It’s not coconut anymore––she stopped using whatever it was that made her smell like a piña colada. But a hint of something sweet is still there, subtle and intermingled with whatever intoxicating thing makes her smell like her.
I kiss her lightly on top of her head. She sighs.
“You okay, baby?” I whisper.
She exhales. “I’m fine,” she says. “I’ll be fine.” Then, so quietly I wonder if she even wanted me to hear it: “I miss you.”
But I did hear it. And it fuckin’ guts me. I miss her too. More than I’ve ever admitted to myself before now. But I can’t say it back, because then I’d have to admit that this whole fuckin’ thing was a mistake, that I never should have left New York, never should have left her.
And I’m just not ready to do that yet.
I shift, and she sits up and looks at me. I lean in and press my forehead to hers, my eyes closed. Without me thinking about it, my hand cups her cheek. I can feel, rather than see, her shudder, can feel the skin of her forehead frown against mine with the pain. I get it, baby, I want to say. Neither of us can pull away.
Fuck it.
“I...it’s not enough,” I admit.
“What’s that?”
“Saying ‘I miss you.’ It’s weak. Like something you’d say when you’re away from home for a weekend. Not...not like this.”
My hand slides down her shoulder, and Layla takes it between both of hers.
“Brazilians have a word for that, you know,” she says as she sits back and plays with my fingers. “Saudade. It’s...it’s hard to explain because there isn’t a translation. But the way I had it explained to me, it’s like when you yearn for something or someone. Like your heart speaks to their heart, and when they’re gone, it’s that emptiness that remains. It’s a longing, maybe for something that never even happened.”
Slowly, I nod. “Sow-dodgy?” I repeat, trying out the unfamiliar syllables. They say Portuguese and Spanish are twin languages, but they sure as fuck don’t sound like it to me.
Layla smiles and nods. “That’s pretty much it.” She repeats the word, but smooths out the syllables, so it sounds less choppy and more like a waterfall.
Damn. That’s one hell of a word. And it fits perfectly. Because it doesn’t make sense why we should miss each other like this after having, what, a few months in New York? We’ve been apart longer than we were ever together. But it only took one second of seeing Layla again for me to see a future I could never have with her, and for that hole in my chest to open up all over again. Saudade? Yeah, I get it.
“So how do I say it?” I wonder. “I saudade you, baby?”
She chuckles and shakes her head. “It’s not a verb. It’s something you have. Like, I have saudade.” She looks at me, and her eyes match the color of the sky behind her, and my heart pounds in my chest.
“Eu tenho saudade,” she whispers in Portuguese
Her eyes lock with mine. They shimmer like the ocean next to us, deep and open. I could get lost in those eyes. I’d look at them the rest of my life if she’d let me.
“Para tí,” I whisper back in Spanish, so low my voice is almost carried away on the wind. But not quite. For you. Only for you.
“Sim,” she says.
“Sí,” I say.
Yes. Both words mean the same. They sound the same. Spelled out, there’s one letter of difference, but when you say them, it doesn’t matter. The differences don’t really matter.
We lean into each other like magnets while the sound of the waves crashing on the beach overwhelms the air. Eu tenho/Yo tengo saudade indeed. I’ll long for this girl for the rest of my life, whether I’m with her or not. I know now this longing will never go away. I had it before I even met her.
She leans into the pain, rubs her nose against mine, searching for something until her mouth finds mine. Her lips are soft, open, pliant, and fuck, it’s like they’ve never been gone. It’s a kiss that’s full of sorrow and longing, a kiss where Layla pours out her grief, and I take it. I cup her beautiful face with both hands and guide her again and again. I can’t go with her where she’s going next week. I can’t help her bear the weight of what’s happening to her family. But right now, I can help absorb some of that pain. I’d take it all if I could.
~