The door was open.
I woke up sprawled half on top of Jacob with a headache, the driest mouth I’d ever had, and a rock-hard boner under my thigh.
Oh my God. I bolted up and scrambled out of the bed.
Jacob sat up, only half awake. “What happened?”
“Nothing. The door’s open. Plan worked,” I said, grabbing my clothes without looking at him. Then I realized that every time I bent down, my ass peeked out from the shirt he’d loaned me. I tugged the back down with one hand and fled the room clutching my clothes and what was left of my dignity with the other.
I couldn’t remember half of last night. My memory got foggy somewhere after shot number three. I think I told him about the glitter. Ugh.
I took the longest shower of my life, chugged some water and Motrin, and came down to face the firing squad. Alexis immediately cornered me in the kitchen, but I had no gossip for her other than I got blackout drunk and woke up with a hard-on under my leg.
Jacob kept looking at me over the table at breakfast.
I’d glance up and he’d be sort of silently gazing at me. I usually knew what he was thinking when he was quiet, but I couldn’t read him this time, which made me certain I told him about the glitter and now he was probably wrestling with the fact that his fake girlfriend was also likely a serial killer.
He must have carried me to bed. No way I’d gotten myself there. I’d been passed out and flat on the floor and he’d probably had to dead-lift me.
Jacob was so soft and gentle I never really gave him credit for how physically strong he was. He reminded me of those sweet, docile draft horses they use for riding lessons for children. You forget that they weigh a couple thousand pounds and could pull a loaded wagon.
I wished I’d been coherent enough to remember him carrying me. The whole thing was probably very sexy.
After breakfast, Jacob and I drove home in our separate cars.
On the way home I thought about the penis. I thought about the penis a lot.
I knew there was going to be a peen encounter. I just knew it.
I knew clinically that his erection didn’t mean anything. He’d been sleeping. It was just a sign of a properly functioning blood and nervous system, nothing to get excited about. Only I also knew that the next time I picked up my vibrator, that was one hundred percent what I’d be thinking about. Jacob, warm and sleepy in the bed with me. Me, waking up to him hard. Only in my fantasy scenario I didn’t run from the room. I slipped a hand under the waistband of his underwear to wake him up instead…
What if we just did it?
Hooked up for the duration of this arrangement. Two grown adults with needs and an understanding, that’s it. Friends with benefits.
As if that’s all he’d be…
And that was the biggest reason of all why I couldn’t cross this line. Because I didn’t think I could separate the sex from the feelings I was having.
No. I knew I couldn’t.
And I couldn’t let myself fall more in love with a man who was in love with someone else. I couldn’t be his second choice. I couldn’t be his fall-back plan.
But God, I wished I could.
I’d let this man turn me inside out. Grind me into dust. Flip me like a pancake. I wanted him to do things to me that I hadn’t done with anyone. He had me worked up in a way that was making me creative. I’d eat a Pop-Tart naked off his bare chest.
I didn’t know how it was possible to love someone this much and be just as attracted to them at the same time. How you could absolutely adore someone and want to take care of them and put Band-Aids on their boo-boos and simultaneously want them to pile-drive you into a headboard. I wanted him to whisper sweet things to me after bending me like a pretzel in every sexual way possible, and then I wanted to watch him sleep and stare at his face with heart-eye emojis.
These two things had never existed for me side by side before. Not like this.
I’d been attracted to my husband. I’d been in love with my husband. But not the way it was with Jacob. Not even close. And I had to wonder if this is how Nick had felt about Kelly.
I hated it.
Because if it was? I got it. I really did.
Nick should have left me first. He should have never cheated on me. But if I’d felt this way about Jacob when I was married to Nick…it would have been torture. It would have made me question if who I was with was the right one.
It would have been enough to end a marriage.
It was two o’clock when I finally pulled up to my house. I dragged myself out of the car and up the front walk, planning on going to bed to sleep off the rest of my hangover, but when I opened the front door, I immediately knew something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
The air smelled like chicharron.
Mom was here.
I mouthed a silent cuss word and Benny poked his head out of the kitchen. “Hi, BRIANA. Nice to have you back, BRIANA.”
I gave him a death glare and a second later Mom came out behind him. She had on her old apron, and her wild salt-and-pepper curls were tied up on top of her head. “Hola, mija!”
“Hola, Mamá,” I said, hugging her.
Benny was glaring at me over her shoulder. He was in an apron and I just knew he’d been Mom’s prep cook for however long she’d been here.
She held me out from her and shook her head at me in disapproval. “So skinny. You aren’t eating? Where is your boyfriend? He doesn’t feed you?”
“He feeds me, Mamá.”
She pursed her lips. “He’s probably too skinny too. You doctors never eat. I’m making pupusas, come help me with the masa.” She went back to the kitchen without waiting for me.
I slumped. Benny shot me a vindicated look. Now it was my turn to suffer.
I loved my mom. She was an incredible woman. Strong, capable, a survivor in a hundred different ways—but she was a lot.
Mom lived to care for others. And when the people she loved were in crisis, this instinct went into overdrive. She’d come home to her newly divorced and apparently emaciated daughter and her ailing son in kidney failure. She was going to scrub down every surface of this house and feed us until we begged for mercy.
Benny looked over his shoulder toward the kitchen and then closed the space between us.
“I can’t believe you called her,” he whispered. “We had a deal.”
“She called me last week. Was I supposed to send her to voicemail?” I whispered back. “I told her you had a donor and you were fine. I didn’t tell her to come!”
“I’ve been making curtido since eight a.m. Apparently I’m sick enough to need her to fly across the United States, but not sick enough to not chop cabbage.”
I snorted at this, which earned me a more pointed glare. “How long is she staying?” I asked quietly.
He held up ten fingers. Then he started pulsing them. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty—two months???
I groaned quietly. “Whhhhy?”
“To be here to nurse me back to health.” He jabbed a finger at me. “This is your fault—”
“My fault?” I whispered. “How is that?”
“You made me give up my apartment,” he whispered. “I’m trapped here.”
I crossed my arms. “Well, if it makes you feel better, I’m trapped here too.”
“It doesn’t. It does not make me feel better, Briana. You suck.”
“Gil didn’t come?” I asked.
“Nope.”
Ugh. Gil buffered her. It was always better when Gil came. He liked being mothered and bossed around. It was sort of their thing.
“Maybe it’ll be fun?” I said hopefully.
Benny gave me a look like No, It Will NOT Be Fun. “The kitchen’s a mess. It looks like the whole mercado blew up in there.”
He took off his apron and smacked it into my hands. “Mamá, me siento un poco cansado,” he called around the corner. “Gonna go lie down.”
“Okay, mijo. Briana will help me,” she called back from the kitchen.
He smirked and I rolled my eyes at him. I was way too hungover for this.
I spent the next four hours helping to make enough pupusas for a small army. We also stripped and washed all the beds and reorganized every cabinet in the kitchen. Mom announced that she was going to give the cat a bath once he came out of hiding, and I knew we’d never see Cooter out from under the sofa ever again.
I knew why she was like this. Cooking and cleaning were her stress response. When we were growing up, there was so little she could give us, but even if there wasn’t money, she could always give us a clean home. And she wanted to feed us now for all the times she couldn’t before—and she did. In amounts that attempted to compensate for the lean years, times a million.
This extreme nesting would settle down once Mom had the house the way she wanted it. The cooking would never end, but she’d stop cleaning the ceiling fans once she felt we were being adequately cared for.
Mom would be great when there were grandchildren. She’d be a wonderful Mamá Rosa—she was a wonderful mom. It’s just that Benny and I didn’t need this level of mothering. But when there were infants around? She’d be a dream come true.
I felt bad I’d never been able to give her any grandkids. I’d always feel bad about that.
We got caught up while we cooked and cleaned. I told her about my “boyfriend.” She wanted to meet Jacob. And his family.
His family was no problem, but I worried about Jacob. He’d be the center of her attention and he’d probably get overwhelmed.
I couldn’t decide if it would be better to introduce them at his parents’ house, where she’d have more distractions and the focus wouldn’t be so squarely on him? Or alone, when the stress of Amy and Jeremiah wouldn’t be a factor, because they’d probably be there.
And then I had a moment of wondering if I should even introduce them at all. Because in a few months Jacob and I would break up anyway. But then I realized if I didn’t, Mom would think I didn’t want him to know her or that he didn’t want to meet his girlfriend’s mom.
I’d have to make her believe we were real, the way I had to make everyone believe it. I had to set up these foundations that I’d eventually have to tear down.
The lie just kept getting deeper and deeper. And I hated it. Not because I had to tell it, but because I wished it weren’t a lie.
I showed Mom how to set up Benny on dialysis. I had to admit, that was a major bonus of her being here. Mom was a nurse, and she was very capable of sharing this load. Having two of us who could do this would give Benny the flexibility of doing his dialysis pretty much whenever he wanted to, even when I was at work. He wouldn’t have to wait for me to get home.
When I finally went up to bed, it was eleven and I had four missed texts from Jacob. One making sure I got home okay. Another one thanking me for letting him come to Wakan, and two more with some selfies we took yesterday. I smiled at the selfies.
I’d loved the last two days so much. I loved just being with him. Talking to him, doing things with him. When I was with Jacob, it didn’t matter where we were, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. He was like that terrarium in his plant room. A self-sustaining ecosystem. Everything I needed or wanted was wrapped up into one human being. It didn’t even seem possible.
It occurred to me that this is what true compatibility must feel like. Easy. Being with Jacob was easy in a way that I never knew existed. And it made me realize how much of my marriage had been forced. How we never had anything to talk about. How he didn’t seem to like my family or make any effort to get to know them or Alexis. Even things like vacations. I’d want to explore and he’d want to relax. These things seemed insignificant at the time, just small differences of opinion or minute preferences. But they glared now. Like proof that something was off and always had been. That maybe I’d married a six out of ten on the compatibility scale—which can work with effort. But Jacob was a ten out of ten. A yes/yes. Jacob didn’t take work.
Jacob was perfect.
I made one of the pictures of us my screensaver and moved all the icons away from his face so he wasn’t covered. I liked seeing his smile looking back from my phone.
I’d have to take this down when we broke up. Wouldn’t be appropriate then. But I could have it for now.
When I called him, he answered right away.
“Hey. You’re not sleeping, are you?” I asked.
“No. Just journaling. You got home okay?”
I climbed onto my bed. “Yeah. My mom is here.”
“From Arizona?”
“Yup.” I punched a pillow under my head. “She’s here for Benny’s transplant.”
“Oh. Can I meet her?”
I laughed a little. “You want to meet more of my people? You haven’t had enough?”
“Well, I didn’t enjoy Doug very much, but I liked Alexis and Daniel.”
“Okay, Doug is not my people. I do not claim him.”
He chuckled.
“My mom actually does want to meet you,” I said. “And your family.”
“Great. Let’s set it up.”
Again with the enthusiastic meeting of my inner circle. This man was really putting in the work for this charade.
“What if your family slips?” I said, lowering my voice. “About the kidney. Benny and my mom don’t know you’re his donor.”
“We could just tell them.”
I wrinkled my forehead. “Tell them? I thought you didn’t want a bunch of people knowing.”
“I can handle two more.”
I twisted my lips. “I don’t know…”
“What?”
“These two people are going to be a lot. There’s probably going to be crying and hugging.”
“It’s okay.”
It was a little weird that he was so willing to do this. All of this. I mean I had to know his family for the thing, but he didn’t necessarily need to know mine. It seemed like extra work for him.
“You’re so social lately,” I said.
“I want to know your friends and your family.”
I don’t know why, but his words gripped me right in the heart. I guess because that’s what a real boyfriend would do. Want to meet the people I loved. He was probably doing this because introducing my family to his made this fake relationship feel more authentic. I couldn’t really think of another reason why he’d want our families to meet, especially because meeting people he didn’t know was his least favorite thing in the universe.
“Okay,” I said. “How do you want to do it? Do you want me to tell them you’re Benny’s kidney donor before you see them? I feel like if I do it in front of you, it’ll be awkward.”
“Sure.”
“When do you want to do the family meet-and-greet thing?”
“Let me call Mom and see what day works for her.”
“All right.” I yawned.
Then we just stayed on the phone for a moment, not saying anything.
This time last night I was in bed with him in Wakan. I wished I were in bed with him now too. I’d see him at work tomorrow, but it wasn’t the same.
“Jill came back over today,” he said.
It was weird, because I felt like he said it to remind me that we were supposed to be living together. Like he was thinking about me being there with him too.
“When your mom meets my family, she’s going to tell them you’re living at home,” he said.
Oh, crap. I hadn’t thought about that.
“We could always tell her the truth,” I said. “Like, the actual truth. That we’re not dating.”
“No,” he said quickly. “I don’t like that. It’s going to get out.”
I sighed. “Okay. Let me think on this. I’ll figure something out.” I rubbed my eyes. “I have to go to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“All right. I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night.”
But then we didn’t hang up.
I waited for the moment of disconnect. I wanted him to do it. It couldn’t be me, at least not tonight. But it never happened.
We stayed on the phone in silence. Thirty seconds. A minute. Two.
He’d probably just forgotten to hang up. His phone was probably sitting on his desk and he was back to scribbling in his journal and he didn’t even notice the call hadn’t ended. Only I didn’t hear scribbling. I could only hear the soft trickling of the fountain in his plant room.
Maybe he’d set the phone down and left? But for a moment, I allowed myself to believe that he was doing what I was doing. He was keeping me for a few extra precious moments.
I let myself reach across the silence. I was looking at him now in my mind. His soft, tender eyes, the curve of his lips. The tic in his jaw when he was giving me one of his quiets. The one I didn’t know.
I could feel him through the line. I could smell him. He was becoming 3-D, shaped by my memory of the constant study of his face and his movements and his moods. He floated in front of me like a ghost, coming through the thin connection of our phones.
I wanted to run to him. To walk out of this place and get in my car and go straight to his house. Burst into his plant room while he sat at that desk and throw myself at him and take whatever he was willing to give me, no matter how small, or temporary, or insignificant. I could feel my body and my heart and my mind wrestling with one another. One screaming for him, the other one too afraid to act, and the last one arguing rationally that this would be a terrible, terrible idea.
And he probably wasn’t even there. Just a phone, abandoned on a desk. And me, making things up.
I pulled the cell away from my ear and looked at the screen. Then I pressed the End Call button.
Hanging up with him and going to bed alone felt like the saddest thing I’d ever done in my life.
I waited until dinner after work the next day to talk to Mom and Benny. Mom had made pollo encebollado, chicken thighs in a tomato onion base. It was my favorite dish. Of course she’d made ten times more than we could ever eat and it was all going into the quickly filling deep freezer in the garage. Oh well. At least I wouldn’t keep wasting money on DoorDash.
I’d given this situation with Jacob a lot of thought. I’d decided to move in with him, just for a few months.
He was right. My mom would definitely blow our cover to his family if I was still living here. Moving in with him was the only way to make sure his family didn’t catch us in this lie I’d told. It was so stupid. I should never have done it. Amy just made me so mad and I wanted to rub it in her stupid face.
Anyway.
I’d promised Jacob that I would make this fake relationship believable. And I was the one who’d made the claim we were living together. He was obviously stressed about it or he wouldn’t be insisting on it so much. Plus, this house was officially crowded with Mom and Benny in it. Mom could do Benny’s dialysis; I didn’t have to be here. So I was going to Jacob’s after dinner.
We were finishing up eating and I wiped my mouth with a napkin.
“So I have something I need to tell you guys,” I said.
Mom paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Are you pregnant?”
“No, I am not pregnant.”
I couldn’t help but note that she looked disappointed.
Mom was extremely traditional. If I were pregnant and unmarried, she would not be happy. But apparently me being childless and unmarried at my age was even worse.
I let out a long breath. Then I looked at my brother. “Benny, Jacob is your kidney donor.”
I heard Mom’s fork hit the plate.
“He didn’t want anyone to know,” I said. “But he’s given me permission to tell you. Also, he’s asked me to move in with him and I’ve agreed. I’m leaving. Tonight.”
My brother looked stunned. Mom had her hands over her mouth. Then she got up and headed straight to the fridge.
I twisted in my chair. “What are you doing?”
“Packing food for him. Briana, make him a plate.”
“Mom, I’m not going yet—”
“Si, claro que se lo vas a llevar!” She was pulling Tupperware out of the fridge. “If you do not go and feed that man right now, I will go there and feed him myself.”
I groaned. Jacob didn’t know it yet, but his freezer was about to be full of Salvadorian food. Forever.
I looked back at Benny. He was just blinking at me.
“You don’t have to make a big deal about it,” I said to my brother. “He’s introverted too. He won’t like a big show of gratitude or anything.”
Mom pulled an insulated bag from the pantry and went for the deep freezer in the garage. When the door to the garage closed, Benny licked his lips. “You’re not doing anything stupid for me, are you?”
I wrinkled my forehead. “What?”
“You’re not like, hooking up with him for this. Right?”
I shook my head. “No.”
I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t believe me. “Why’d he ask you on that date?” he said. “The other day?”
I leaned forward. “Benny, I need you to believe me when I tell you that Jacob would never do anything to take advantage of me. I am deeply in love with this man. And only five percent of that is because of what he’s doing for you.”
I realized in that moment that it was true.
It was amazing that Jacob had so many endearing qualities that donating an organ to my brother only represented the smallest reason why I loved him.
Benny peered at me for a second. Then he looked away from me and nodded.
“I’m sorry I’m leaving you here with Mom,” I said quietly.
He sniffed. “It’s okay. I get it. Tell him thanks.”
“I will.”
I put a hand over his. “I want you to know, though, that I would have done anything I needed to do to make this happen for you.”
He nodded again.
And I guess I sort of already was. Because in making this arrangement with Jacob, I’d signed up to break my own heart.
