Wait for It

by Mariana Zapata

My grandma had told me once you couldn’t make someone love you or even like you, but you could sure as hell make someone put up with you.

“What are you doing standing around? That’s not what I pay you for,” I called out to them. Louie gaped before asking his brother, “She pays us?”

“Okay, maybe if he’s really nice to me and good to me, and I’m the love of his life, and he writes me sweet notes on a regular basis telling me that I’m the light of his life and he can’t live without me, I’ll give him ten women tops. Tops.” I let out a breath. “I’m getting mad just thinking about it.”

“Since we’re good, can I ask why you have Pop-Tarts in your back pocket?”

His frown deepened, his gaze raking all over me again in a way that made me feel like he was making sure I didn’t have some contagious disease. “You look like hell.” Was I supposed to look like a beauty queen when my eyeball felt like it was about to abandon ship from my skull? “Migraine?”

I could see the corners of his mouth twitch up a little more. “It said Dal-ass on it. That’s how he wrote it. D-a-l-a-s-s. Dalass.”

There was a lot of things about love that you could only learn after you’d faced the real kind. The best kind wasn’t this soft, sweet thing of hearts and picnics. It wasn’t flowery and divine. Real love was gritty. The real kind of love never quit. Someone who loved you would do what’s best for you; they’d stand up for you and sacrifice. Someone who loved you would face any inconvenience willingly.

The tips of his tennis shoes inched closer to me, his hands squeezing my shoulders as he said in a whisper, “I’m gonna hug you as long as you promise not to grab my ass, okay?”

“Fine then. One day you’ll find some poor idiot to love you.” She smiled at me, reaching her hand across the bed, and I took it. “If you don’t, we’ll pay someone to pretend they do.”

I coughed. I coughed like I’d come down with emphysema randomly. What the hell did he want a little sister for? What was I supposed to do? Pull one off a tree for him?

“Someone say something to you?” he asked, his voice getting more worried by the second.

“He hit you?” His question was pulled out like each word was its own sentence. “Yeah—” Those big hands fisted at his sides, and his neck went pink. “Which one is he?” “Dallas, stop, it isn’t him,” I said, reaching for his shirt and grabbing a handful of it. “It was a long time ago.” “A lifetime wouldn’t be long enough,” he ground out. “Which one is he, Diana?”

“Is it the guy over there in the green shirt?” “No—” “In the red shirt?” “Dallas, listen to me—” Was he shaking? “Stop being stubborn. It isn’t him. And even if it was, I pressed charges against him. He went to jail for a few months—”

“Jail?” He turned around slowly to face me. His face… I’d never seen anything like it before, and I hoped I never did again. He was shaking. “Tell me what his name is, and I’ll put him six feet in the ground.”

“You fucking idiot,” a voice exploded—angry, so angry—from somewhere nearby.

“If something happened to you, I wouldn’t be okay. I would never be okay,” he practically hissed.

“Fine, but I don’t want to make you feel weird either.” His reply was low and steady. “I’ve seen you in your underwear and combed nits out of your hair, baby. I think we’re past that.”

“Fuck off, Trip,” a tall man who had been standing off to the side with a toddler strapped to his back and a baby wrapped in a pink blanket in his arms snarled.

His eyes met mine; we were both smiling at each other. And in that moment, it was the most connected I’d ever felt to anyone. Anyone ever. God help me. It hit me. It hit me right then. I was crazy in love with this motherfucker. I really, really was.

That slow smile crossed his harsh features, lighting up my gut. “As you wish.”

“Look, I appreciate you looking out for me, but I’m a grown woman. I can take care of myself.” “Maybe you can take care of yourself, but have you thought for one single fucking second that maybe somebody else might want to take care of you too?” he growled.

“I knew it would be like this,” he murmured into my collarbone, nipping at it with those flat, white teeth.

“The ‘skinhead,’”—I used my fingers as quotation marks—“is my really good friend.” I dropped my hands. “Actually, I think he’s going to marry me one day.”

A big hand reached out to wrap its fingers around my wrist, and he pulled on it gently. “How can I miss you so much when I just saw you yesterday?”

“You told me you were a little in love with me, do you remember?” How could I forget? “But I wouldn’t use ‘little’ to describe what I feel for you, Diana. I think you know that already.” It was my turn to blink. I squeezed our palms together. “So I’m not imagining it?” I pretty much whispered. “No, baby, you’re not.” Dallas squeezed my fingers between his.

“I’m your poor bastard and you know it.”

“Just like I tell the boys, we don’t play for one single run, we play to win the whole game. And I’m in it to win it.”

I love you. —Your born-again virgin Catholic convert, Dallas

“Go find your own girl to dance with,” came a voice from behind me.

He smiled at me and I smiled back. Before I could take my next breath, Dallas dipped his head and pressed his mouth, closed and sweet, to mine. He pulled back and then pressed it again. “God, you guys are gross,” came a voice I’d be able to distinguish in a crowd. It was Josh. “When can we go home?”

So I asked him what we should do, and he said nothing because you were never gonna do anything with him and that one day soon, between me and him, none of those jackasses—he said it, not me, don’t get mad—would never bother you again.”

“And what did you tell him?” “I said okay.” “Okay? That’s it?” He grinned. “What did you want me to do? Ask him for money?”

“I threw Hawaiian Punch at your brother, that’s a start.”

All I could think about as I stood there was that sometimes life gave you a tragedy that burned everything you knew to the ground and changed you completely. But somehow, if you really wanted to, you could learn how to hold your breath as you made your way through the smoke left in its wake, and you could keep going. And sometimes, sometimes, you could grow something beautiful from the ashes that were left behind. If you were lucky. And I was a really, really lucky bitch.