Her attention is entirely consumed by the world around her. She looks at everything we pass: the vintage mustang pulled up to the curb, top down to show off its creamy leather seats. The laurel dropping its leaves onto the street in slow, lazy drifts. A raven breaking open a snail by beating its shell against the cornice of a bank.
This is why Mara is so easy to stalk. When I’m outside, I’m constantly scanning the street. Watching for cameras, cops, anyone who might be following me. Looking for people I know, people I don’t know. Watching everyone all the time.
Mara is consumed by whatever catches her attention. Anything beautiful, anything interesting.
lovely — Billie Eilish
Spotify → geni.us/no-saints-spotify
Apple Music → geni.us/no-saints-apple
She points it all out to me. A rose-covered trellis on Scott Street. The stained-glass window of a church. A girl gliding down the hill on roller derby skates.
“Those are Eclipse,” Mara says. “They’re the best.”
My back burns. I bet her ribs are burning too.
I like that we’re feeling the same pain at the same time.
I like that I marked her, and she marked me.
We’re bound together now, her art on my skin and mine on hers.
“Would you let me tattoo you again?” I ask her.
She looks up at me. In the pale early light, I see there is blue in her eyes after all. Blue like a gull’s wing, like a bruise, like Roman silver with a little lead in it.
“Yes,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because the tattoo you gave me is beautiful. And because . . .” she bites the edge of her lip, her eyes dropping down to our feet, treading the pavement in sync. “Because I like when you pay attention to me. I like when you put your hands on me. The other night at the show . . . I felt like you were pushing me away. That hurt me.”
She looks up at me again, her gaze naked, uncovered. Painfully vulnerable.
My natural reaction is to recoil from her.
I despise weakness.
Neediness, too.
But this is what I’ve been trying to get from Mara all this time. She has the hardest shell I’ve ever seen—I want to peel off her armor. I want her naked. I want to know who she is, all the way down.
So I answer her honestly, even though that too is very unlike me. Though I’m only saying what she already knows, it feels dangerous . . . walking a thin wire across an unknown abyss.
“I was pushing you away,” I admit.
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t have control.”
“Over what?”
“Over how much I wanted you.”
Mara looks at me, searching my face.
Other people look at your expression to make sure it matches what they already want to believe. Mara never believes. She always checks.
“What do you see right now?” I ask her.
“I see you,” she says. “I’m just wondering . . .”
“What?”
“If it’s another mask.”
My face goes cold and still.
“And if it is?”
“Then you use the best one on me.”
My skin feels stiff like plastic.
“What if I took it off? And you didn’t like what you saw underneath?”
Mara slips her hand into mine. Her fingers interlock with mine. They fit together like links in a chain.
“I shouldn’t like you now,” she says. “But I do.”
I shouldn’t like her, either.
But I do.
I walk along beside her, holding another person’s hand for the first time in my life.
It feels outrageously public, like we’re shouting for attention. But also intensely intimate, the energy running down my arm and up into hers in a bond more powerful than sex.
Mara often makes me feel two things at once. I’m not used to that. My emotions have always been simple, easy to understand. I’ve never been confused about what I want.
We’re passing Alta Plaza Park. A woman sits on a public bench, her stroller parked beside her. She’s taken her infant out of the stroller, setting it against her breast. She nurses the baby, singing down to it softly.
Mara turns away from the sight, lips pressed together.
“You don’t think she should nurse in public?” I say, surprised by her prudishness. Usually, Mara is actively antagonistic to the concept of modesty.
“It’s not that,” she says. “It’s the singing.”
“Explain,” I say, curiosity piqued.
Mara takes a deep breath.
“My mother is a piano teacher. That’s how she makes money—when she’s working. If I was sick or hurt, she’d sing to me. It was the only thing that comforted me.”