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It’s in the hallway that Lupe manages to corner her. Past curfew, the house dim and quiet around them; nobody to see them but the blocky, shadowy shapes of unfamiliar furniture, the leak of light under Sarge’s door. Jess, by its glow, is scowling. Lupe touches her shoulder. The soft crook of her elbow.
“Hermano,” she breathes, and watches Jess’ pale eyes flick. “Jess.”
In the darkness, the bruise around her eye is black. It makes the rest of her look paler. Then the light in Sarge’s room flicks off, and Lupe loses sight of it. The hallway swims with darkness.
Through it, Jess’ voice: “I was going to the bar.” Tilt of her chin up, hard jaw straining against bruised skin. Lupe eases her thumb into Jess’ elbow ditch. Right there where her own aches bad.
“You’re bleeding.”
A sniff. “They don’t mind it.”
The night beyond the front door is warm and blue and scored by the song of a dozen late night insects. Living, dying, fucking. Throwing themselves against the hard plastic of the porch light, which picks out Jess’ features in the kind of extremes they’re suited to. Jut of her chin, hollow of her temples, slant of her full lips sideways as she bites at her cheek, flicks her eyes over Lupe’s face — equal parts challenging and pissed off and…
Lupe’s fingers close around her elbow. “Well. I mind.”
———
In the bathroom, Jess folds in on herself like a broken umbrella. Hunched there on the stool in her boxers and her singlet, white as the porcelain sinks she’s flanked by. Lupe chucks her on the chin as she passes, grinning. Just to watch her roll those huge grey eyes of hers.
“You’re not that mad at me,” Lupe says, back turned to Jess as she fishes the first aid kit down from the shelf. When she glances back, Jess is bullying a smoke between her teeth, eyes downcast as she snaps a match through its book. The flame flares, shrinks, and then it’s gone. Tossed into the sink at her shoulder, alongside the empty matchbook; all its teeth pulled out.
“I’m a little mad,” she allows, after a beat. Smoke streams from her nostrils. In the bathroom’s high light, her bruising looks worse. Black and blue, and right there on the high arch of her cheekbone, red. Split skin, scabbed and opened, scabbed again and — knowing Jess — picked at. Lupe’s knuckles are bruised too. One small hurt against a dozen more.
She sets the first aid kit on the sink’s edge; dips her hand into the basin to fish out the discarded matchbook. Slightly damp now, pock-marked with random burns, its cover feathery and creased from at least a week in Jess’ pocket. The Kitty-Kat Club, in pink cursive. Lupe snorts, flashes it at her.
“It’s like you wanna get found out.”
Jess smiles, little more than a baring of teeth. “Maybe I do.”
Her cigarette smokes away into the air between them. From how she’s sitting — knee pulled up to her chest, thighs wide apart — Lupe can see up the overlarge leg of her boxers. Pale skin, and shadow. There’s something about Jess that sets Lupe’s teeth on edge. Makes her feel all warm and flushed and a little hungry. She thinks about walking her fingers up Jess’ thigh. Over the blonde hair there that the bathroom light catches, and turns gold. Instead, she upends a bottle of antiseptic over a cotton ball. Urges her finger under Jess’ jaw and murmurs, “Deep breath.”
The first touch of the cotton to broken skin makes Jess hiss. A low, animal noise. Otherwise, they don’t speak. Jess is the first person that Lupe has been able to share real silence with. Everything feels easy with her. Even cleaning out a wound Lupe herself made — watching Jess’ pale skin turn blotchy as the cotton turns pink with blood. Still, she makes no more noise. Just smokes her cigarette. Stares off into the slice of deep blue night that lingers beyond the frosted bathroom window. Hangs her bony wrists off her bonier knees, and lets Lupe tend to her.
“Does it hurt?” Lupe murmurs, when she turns away to rinse a cloth under the faucet. Cold water wets her fingertips, hot from holding Jess still. She flexes them under it. Watching Jess out the corner of her eye as she shrugs, lifts her eyes to the ceiling.
“I like it.”
Lupe snorts. “Huh.” Wrings the cloth out until it drips. “I bet you do.”
Jess is translucent under the bathroom lights. Ghoulish. Green veins at her temples. Lupe dabs at her cheekbone. Soothes a thumb very gently over the bruising making her under-eye puffy and swollen, and bites at the inside of her cheek when Jess leans into it. She wants Jess in ways she doesn’t want other girls. All the pretty things down at the bar with their pin curls and little skirts. Lupe wants Jess when she’s fresh off the field, buoyant and red-faced and sweating. She wants her at that moment when her bat makes peace with the ball — crack! Wiping the sweat off her top lip with the collar of her shirt. Wants her muddy knees, the hair under her arms, the stubborn set to that wide jaw. Wants her like this: quiet, smoking, sallow under the lights.
Lupe swallows. Smears Vaseline over the cut. Jess’ pale eyes rolling up to meet her own, peering up at her from under her brow. Still, she doesn’t say anything. Just wobbles the butt of her smoke between those overlarge teeth, and cocks her eyebrow.
“Doesn’t look bad,” Lupe hazards, like Jess cares. The eyebrow lifts further. Bathroom light sliding through her hair; dull, on the verge of dirty, flyaway strands framing her face. Lupe smooths one down, and then follows it: ends with her fingertips pinched around the end of her skinny red braid. She tugs. Jess, eyes still pinned to Lupe’s, lets her head rock back.
“You ever take this out?” Lupe teases. Jess’ eyes flick. Her jaw works.
“Don’t need to,” she grunts.
The braid is fraying, unravelling from its middle. Slept on, showered in, sweated through. Lupe tugs the elastic at its end free. Watches Jess’ pale eyelashes dip, one broad, red-knuckled hand messing with the pack of smokes in her lap. Creased, dog-eared, collapsed around the shape of her remaining few cigarettes. Watches her ease one free. By the time Lupe returns with a comb, she’s smoking again. The butt of her last one crushed out in the sink, next to the toothless matchbook, the bloodied cotton, the elastic; trailing torn hair.
“I don’t see why you don’t just cut it,” Lupe says, running the comb through Jess’ hair. It’s thin, pin straight, just shy of a true red. Creased into what could resemble waves, if it wasn’t verging on dirty enough to be lank. “If you don’t like it.”
“I like it enough,” is Jess’ reply. The bathroom is so quiet that Lupe hears the moment she takes a drag from her smoke: the faint rasp of its burn. “Don’t really think about it.”
“Bet you don’t,” Lupe murmurs, feeling an absent stab of envy that is gone as quickly as it came. They lapse into silence. The comb snags at a knot; right there at the nape of Jess’ neck, the hollow of her skull. Lupe works it patiently out.
She’s never really figured out how to say sorry. Or at least, how to say sorry when you mean it. When you really care whether the other person knows just how sorry you are. Whenever she and her mom fought, Lupe would mop the floors. Put away dishes; hang the laundry. Her mom would cut up fruit, and leave it on the table under a dishcloth for her to find. But Jess has no laundry to do, and Lupe has no fruit to pare into careful, mouth-sized pieces. All she has is this. Her comb, her hands, the buzz of the bathroom light. Jess’ cheekbone catching the light whenever she moves, the Vaseline shining over the broken skin.
In two days the bruise will be blue. And then from there green, yellow, and so on until it’s gone. Something tells Lupe that forgetting it won’t be as easy as healing it. Healing is something the body does without thinking. Forgetting takes effort; it takes forgiveness.
Beyond the window comes a cry. Some lonely creature up burning the midnight oil just as they are. Jess, Lupe knows, could probably tell her just what kind of animal it is. But she doesn’t speak, and so neither does Lupe. The knot comes loose. Jess rolls her shoulders; flex of rangy muscle. To the back of her head, Lupe says, haltingly: “I don’t like getting angry.” Silence. She knows Jess is listening by the stillness of her body, the absent tap of her thumb to the base of her cigarette. Lupe separates her hair into three; begins braiding it as she adds, “Feels like giving in.”
She takes a while to respond. Conversation with Jess is always piecemeal, and often spit out around the end of a smoke. “I know you didn’t do it on purpose,” she says, eventually. Over her shoulder, Lupe sees her hand come up to ash her cigarette into the sink. The long tendons in the back of her hand flex.
Sorry, Lupe thinks, staring at the jagged line of pale scalp at the crown of her head. I’m sorry. She’s not sure what exactly she’s sorry for, but isn’t that what an apology is for? A simple catch-all plea for forgiveness, condensed down into a word that rolls so easy off the tongue.
The faucet is dripping. A faint plinkplinkplink that punctuates their silence. Braid fastened and tidied, Lupe lets her hands drop to Jess’ shoulders. Bony, peeling just slightly from the sunburn she caught a few days ago. Slowly, Lupe pushes her thumb to the dark mole on the nape of her neck. Watches with lips parted as Jess turns, upsetting her hands from her shoulders, and fixes her eyes on Lupe.
She can feel her heartbeat in her teeth. In the burning bend of her elbow. Jess’ eyes flick over her, just once. Something considering in the slant of her brows. The overhead light making her pupils shrink to black pinpricks, the glowing end of her smoke trembling as she rocks it between her teeth.
“Hurt animals always lash out,” she mutters, with an air of finality. That shivering pillar of ash drops, and Lupe watches as she brushes it absently to the floor. “We don’t blame them for it.”
The ash leaves a smear of grey on the off-white leg of her boxers. Lupe thinks about the smell of hot ground; shredded grass; clean sweat. The raw-boned planes of Jess’ body. The way she looks in a pair of slacks. How the collars of Lupe’s shirts smell after she borrows them. Like cigarette smoke, like men’s aftershave. The urge to take the cigarette from Jess’ mouth is an easy one to give into, and then the rest comes quickly and without thought. Leaning over her, kissing her, replacing the cigarette between lips still slightly ajar from surprise.
With Lupe’s shadow over her face, Jess’ pupils have bloomed. “I’m sorry,” Lupe offers, her face hot, over-aware of her mouth — of Jess’ too. The plush, full shape to it. “Hurt or not. I’m sorry.”
Jess rests her head back against the wall, plucks the cigarette from her mouth. Cradles it between her knuckles in her lap, the two of them lingering there between the sinks while the whole house sleeps around them. Jess thumbs at her bottom lip. Her eyes fixed unerringly on Lupe; fresh braid hanging over her shoulder like a little copper snake. Lupe thinks the tiles at her back must be cold. She can see the peaks of Jess’ nipples through her thin singlet.
When she speaks she smiles. “Apology accepted.” Her bruise livid under the lights; a smear of blue-black in her eye socket. Somewhere in the depths of the house, the clock chimes midnight. Lupe swallows. Jess settles her smoke back between her teeth. Grinning, as she extends a hand across the space between them both. Grasping hold of the hem of Lupe’s shirt, reeling her in as she mutters, “But why don’t you tell me one more time, Lu?”