“No one said you had to like your family,” Jacob reassured as he handed Nena the chipped mug.
“Yeah,” she sobbed.
“We don’t all have to be the Cleavers. In fact we aren’t. None of us. Even they weren’t, you know?”
“I know. I just... I just wish it would stop hurting so much.” Jacob sat down on the couch next to Nena and she buried her face in his shoulder, taking in the worn through softness of his ancient tshirt and the comforting smell of his skin. “Its the surprise, you know? Like I think its safe. And then I step on a land mine I’d thought was already cleared.”
Jacob pulled out the tie holding back her ponytail and rumpled Nena’s hair, “it doesn’t really work like that. Things are never really cleared. We just learn to... well, dance around them... I guess.” He ran his fingers in circles around the back of her head. “This is why we don’t talk to our families.”
“But they find us,” she whined, collapsing face first across his lap.
Jacob leaned over and kissed the back of her head.
Nena woke the next morning to bright pink light slicing through Jacob’s living room window and the sound of a car alarm blaring from the street below. She lifted her head off the pillow, heavy from too many hysterics the night before. Jacob was curled in a nest of blankets on the ground next to the couch. He worried too much. She half smiled, she would tease him later, but they both knew how grateful she was. It was nice to be worried over. Nena pushed herself off the couch and over Jacob’s cocooned body and shuffled to the bathroom. The bathroom at Jacob’s place was a tiny after thought. The tiles, clearly replaced in different decades as necessity demanded, clashed. Brown, blue, white, and floral collided into ding in the dim light let in by the tiny window overlooking an air shaft. Nena pressed her face against the cold glass. It was clean. She knew that without looking. Jacob was always clean. But the small window and gray air shaft gave the room an ill-used feeling. She shuddered slightly from the gloom and ran her finger tips along the toy brontosaurus that Jacob kept on the windowsill. She smiled, picking the toy up to check that her initials were still scrawled across the bottom of one foot. Jacob had been so excited when he’d signed the lease on this place.
“Its got big windows, Nee. Even one in the bathroom. Not great light,” he paused seeking encouragement, “but still, the windows are huge.”
When they were nineteen he had lived in a basement studio. Studio had been a generous term for the space. Four walls and a cement floor. But the door locked and he only shared the common hallway bathroom with two other guys. Nena refused to stay over after one of them had propositioned her late one night when she was on her way to take a much longed for pee.
Nena stripped off the jeans, tank top, and bra she’d been wearing for the last thirty six hours and stood starring at her reflection in the mirror. She ran her fingers over her ribs and around the hollow of her stomach. Her sister teased her that you could poke Nena in her stomach and touch her spine. It looked like that might be possible first thing in the morning before she’d given her belly anything to eat. She poked her own stomach and stretched out her torso watching the skin pull tight over her bones. She patted the place where her belly had once been and rested her hands on the angled ledge of her hip bones. Liam liked her hip bones. They would stay in his kitchen for hours talking as he slid his thumbs back and forth over the protrusions. Nena curled her back, imitating the stance of a couture model from any fashion magazine. She liked the way the diffused morning light shadowed her collar bones.
“I need new underwear,” she noted, taking in her faded cotton panties. Washed too many times in too many machines, basins, and sinks. The lace trimming was in tatters and a hole was forming in the crotch.
Nena hummed briefly, a non specific tune, as she turned on the water in the shower. She loved the sound of the water erupting into the silence of the apartment building. She reveled in the envelopment of steam.
Stepping out of the shower, Nena listened for the sound of Jacob waking as she wrapped a towel around her hair. He’d always had a multitude of towels. She’d never been able to figure it out. When he didn’t own a bed, a coffee maker, or a proper winter coat, somehow the man had owned a cupboard full of decent to high quality towels.
“I stole them,” he’d answered once when she’d asked.
He hadn’t of course, but she could never get more information out of him than he wanted to give.
Nena searched through Jacob’s medicine cabinet and picked up every bottle and tube in the bathroom, wasting time. She’d taken a longer shower than she’d intended and was reluctant to leave the hot cloud of steam that had built up. Liam didn’t have much in his bathroom she’d noted the first time she had been at his place. Not even a waste basket.
“You don’t have a trash can,” she announced quizzically as she walked back into the kitchen.
“You okay?”
“Yeah... you don’t have a trash can.”
“Do you need one?”
“No.”
“Then why does it matter?”
Jacob had always had a trash can. But then Jacob had always had a stream of steady girlfriends to remind him that having one was a necessity.
“Coffee,” Jacob called from the living room floor.
“Are you ordering or offering?” Nena called back hesitantly exiting her oasis.
“Coffee...” Jacob called again, rolling over and rubbing his face into the blanket nest.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it.” Nena wasn’t really a morning person herself, but years of early morning dinner gigs had taught her to fake it. Jacob refused to do morning the honor of feigning friendship. Nena opened the second drawer of Jacob’s dresser, rooting around until her fingers felt the sought after silkiness of Jacob’s old blue X Men tshirt. It was too small for him. It had to be by this point, but he kept it. And she wore it nearly every time she stayed over. Nena sniffed the bra she’d tossed on the bathroom floor before putting it back on. It was the only one she had with her. She’d left in a hurray. She pulled on her jeans, hanging low from too many wearings since they’d last been washed, and yanked the tshirt over her still towel wrapped hair.
“You’re going to stretch it out,” Jacob muttered from the floor.
“No I’m not. I’m smaller than you.”
“The towel. You’re going to stretch the collar out.”
“Oh,” Nena responded looking down at the tshirt, touching the collar. “It looks all right to me.”
“Whatever.” Jacob rolled over.
Pulling a pair of Jacob’s hiking socks over her clean bare feet, Nena remembered how they always use to sleep like that. In a nest of blankets on the floor. He hadn’t owned a bed for a couple of years after he’d gotten his own place. He’d slept on a couch his cousin had loaned him at first. But then Greg had wanted it back. Then he’d just made a nest in a corner and seemed content with the result. She remembered giggling as she wormed her way through the onion layers of blankets to find his body in the dark. She’d rest her head against the hollow where his shoulder met his chest muscles and stick her hand under his shirt for warmth. Her hands and feet were always cold.
“Too hairy,” he would complain. About his own body, not her hand. He would yelp at the iciness of her, but never pull away, never complain.
“What?” she’d questioned the first time he’d made this assertion.
“Too hairy. It’s not fair, other guys are all smooth, but I’m basically Wolverine.”
“No you’re not!” Nena had laughed.
Jacob edged slightly away. “It’s ugly.”
“It’s not,” she reassured him. And would for years to come. Nena liked body hair on other people. She was a compulsive body hair remover herself, spending hours plucking, waxing, shaving, and trimming. She honestly believed that body hair removal was a legitimate excuse for canceling or avoiding plans with a friend. It took hours after all.
“Grinding!” Nena shouted out as she pushed down the button on the coffee grinder. Jacob liked freshly ground coffee beans but hated the noise of the grinder. They were both “coffee people”. Bordering on snobbery, but clinging to the edge of acceptability by their mutual love of late night dinners. Jacob had worked part time for a coffee supplier as a taster once. It wasn’t regular work, but it’d kept him in coffee. He’d been a bit of a douche about it, truth be told. Had gone on and on about the different varieties of shade grown, mountain, valley, tropical, etc. Nena had been tempted to grind him into a coffee grinder, if she’d had one big enough. Nena pulled open the fridge door as the coffee brewed. Yogurt. But not the good kind.
“Why do you buy this?” she called to Jacob in the other room.
“What?”
“Why do you buy this? It’s crap.”
“Buy what?”
“This,” Nena repeated picking up one of the individually sized peach flavored yogurts and carrying it into the living room.
“What?” Jacob sat up and looked over at her. “The yogurt?”
“Yeah.”
“I like it. What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s not real yogurt.”
“What are you talking about? It’s yogurt. I bought it in the yogurt section. It tastes like yogurt.”
“It’s gelatin. Like cows hooves and bones and stuff.”
“No its yogurt.” Nena thrust the container in front of Jacob’s face and pointed to the words “kosher gelatin”. “Whatever, its yogurt.”
“You should buy real yogurt. No gelatin. Milk, bacteria, fruit.”
“I like this.”
“Suit yourself, I guess” Nena threw back as she went into the kitchen.
She returned carrying two mugs of coffee. Cream and a teaspoon of brown sugar for Jacob. Black for herself. She sat down cross legged next to him and reached over for her messenger bag, rummaging around until she found her pill box. Nena hated taking pills. Not all the time, some days it didn’t bother her, it was just a part of life like breathing or drinking water. But other days she resented the four times a day interruption of swallowing the foreign objects that kept her body going.
“You want something to eat?” Jacob asked. Nena gestured with her coffee mug after taking a large gulp. “Right, so an hour?”
“Yeah, but you should eat.”
“No, I’ll wait.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I don’t mind. I’ll eat when you eat. And no dairy, right?”
“And no wheat.”
“No wheat?” Jacob asked in surprise.
“Yeah, its new. No wheat, no barley, no oats. On the bright side everyone thinks I am just a trend following hipster.”
“That’s the bright side?”
“Well, I’m calling it the bright side.”
Jacob stood up and strode into the kitchen. Nena could hear him opening cabinet doors and shifting things around.
“I’ve got peanut butter and a can of pears of unknown origins.”
“I think I’ll pass,” Nena replied, “but thanks for the lovely offer.”
“You’ve got to eat something.”
“I’ll eat something. Just not that. I’ll eat later. Promise.”
“What?”
“What?”
“What will you eat later?” Jacob challenged.
“I don’t know yet. Something. I’ll raid Da’s fridge. He’s bound to have something.”
“Your Dad only keeps wine and bagels in his place,” Jacob shot back.
“No,” Nena responded, standing up and walking toward him, “and cheese and usually a little sausage and ham. Maybe if I’m lucky, he’ll have an apple.”
“So, what, you’re going to have an apple and wine for breakfast?”
“Or lunch, it’ll be more like lunch by the time I get there.”
Jacob exhaled loudly. “Take the peanut butter with you. Please.”
Nena laughed, placing her hand on his chest.
“That laugh,” he breathed in happiness and laughed softly to himself before turning away.
“I’ll go to a store Jake. I promise not to let myself starve. I’ve been doing all right these last ten years or so, taking care of myself, haven’t I?”
“You’re getting thin.”
“Yeah, well, I do my best.”
“Would you go to a law firm called Hicks and Steele?” Nena asked, looking down at an advertisement in yesterday’s paper lying open on Jacob’s counter.
“What?”
“Hicks and Steele?”
He looked over at her in confusion.
“Hicks and Steele,” she repeated, holding up the paper. “I just think its a bad name for a law firm.”
“Why?” Jacob asked slurping the remnants of his coffee.
“Why?”
“Yeah, why? The add looks nice,” he stated, looking down over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” Nena drew out the word, unconvinced. “Sure, but its Hicks and Steele.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m just saying that if I am in jail or trouble or something, I don’t want to be walking into court with a lawyer from Hicks and Steele.”
“It’s S T E E L E,” Jacob spelled out the word.
“I can see how its spelled, Jake.”
“So what’s the issue?”
“The issue, is HICKS AND STEELE” she enunciated.
“What? You’ve got a problem with hicks all of a sudden?”
“Lord,” Nena sighed, rolling her eyes.
Jacob chuckled and tapped her lightly on the ass.
“So are you coming back later?” he asked as he began gathering up his things and shoving them into a beat up old backpack.
“Probably. Is that okay?”
“Of course. Just asking. I don’t know what time I’ll be home.”
“You’re going to work, right?”
“Work till five and then I promised Neil I’d meet him a The Poor House.”
“Really? Neil?”
“You really want to start a conversation about our friends?” Jacob looked up, giving Nena a challenging, eyebrow raised stare.
“No,” she answered sheepishly. “Its just, Neil means you’re going to be drunk tonight.”
“Probably. But I don’t have work tomorrow.”
“Really drunk,” she continued. “Like can’t find your own feet drunk.”
“I’ve always been able to find them by the end of the night,” Jacob grinned.
“Barely.”
“Mhm. I’m the drinker of the family,” he nodded sarcastically.
“You are!” Nena cried.
“Oh, yeah absolutely. We’ll go with that.”
“Go with that, cause its true.”
“Anything you say,” Jacob smirked back at Nena.
“Secrets are secrets for a reason Jacob,” she gasped at his back as she hurled a pillow at him.
Nena could hear Jacob laughing from the other side of the door.
