The Misbegotten

My head was still resting upon the headrest of the couch when I heard the front door open and close with a bang. Jacob had never known how to just close a door. For some reason, he always had to slam the hell out of it. I closed my eyes and let my breathing even out, elongate, letting my entire body relax.

Ramona moved again. This time, she got up from the couch and a moment later the room plunged into silence. She had turned off the god forsaken reality show.

I was so thankful I opened my eyes. I half-expected to see her with her hands on her hips, one foot tapping with impatience. I was pleasantly surprised to find, she wasn’t standing at all.

Rather, she was sitting on the plush carpeting. She sat cross-legged, facing Katie and I, gazing at us over the surface of the coffee table.

I chanced a quick look at Katie, who was staring at Ramona with a bemused expression on her face. She wasn’t oblivious of the other girl’s intentions, and that made her curious. Katie was sometimes drawn to conflict. It intrigued her.

It was Ramona who broke the quiet. “So, Estefan, are you ready to tell me what was going on in here when Jacob and I were knocking on the door?”

Wasn’t it sometimes nice to just mince words for a while before getting down to fucking knitty-gritty? Je-zuz, ramrod the crap out of me why don’t you!

At my side, I felt Katie’s body go stiff, her toes digging into me, pure reflex.

My eyes fell upon her. I could see she was flushing with incredible severity, her whole face went pink. The upper portions of her neck and chest went pale red. Her blue-green eyes froze, boring into Ramona. She poised her body, waiting. It was so profound she didn’t even bother to hiding it. She was waiting for my girlfriend to make a move.

I cleared my throat and sat up straight, my gaze turning back to Ramona.

She peered back without any distinguishable cast to her face. She didn’t look mad or sad. There was no accusation in her eyes, no blame at the corner of her mouth, nothing.

To me, it appeared as though she had asked the question out of pure curiosity and nothing more. Total bullshit that, there had been intent behind the question, it wasn’t innocuous. She knew exactly what she was doing. I knew she’d never ask a question of that magnitude just for the sake of asking it.

Yet, if she could be adult about this, then so could I. I decided right then and there, the only way I could show her a degree of respect was to be honest. After all, I was the one who had messed up.

“Katie and I were making out.”

I managed to say five of the six words before my throat constricted. The last one came out more like a squeal than any word spoken in English.

At the same time, I tried to ignore Katie’s gasp of shock. It wasn’t like she felt I’d betrayed. No, she hadn’t thought I’d be strong enough to tell the truth. She seemed surprised I chose honesty. I had decided against deception and deflection – the typical male weapons of choice in the war-chest of infidelity.

Ramona chewed on what I said for a bit. Her face skewed behind a one-eyed squint and a smirk. “So, it is true, then,” was all she said.

This confused the fuck out of me. I felt my own face pinch, wondering what the hell she had meant by that.

It was Katie who vocalized my question though. “What’s true?”

“Well, it seems our Effy here had an ex-girlfriend.”

Though she hadn’t finished explaining, I knew exactly where this was going. I rolled my eyes and inhaled a huge amount of bad thoughts at Tirza. Motherfucken, titty-sucken, two-balled BITCH!!!

“Let’s just say she was, or is, super, super angry about something he said, while they were fucking their brains out in this house.”

Katie’s brows knitted deeper.

Ramona’s tone began to fill with glee as she continued to my chagrin. “This is what Tirza’s been saying around school. It seems while he squirted his load into her one day, he moaned the name, Katie, out loud. She said she heard it quite clear and that it sickened her so much, she couldn’t be with him any longer.”

Katie’s eyes were saucers now.

Ramona went on, “The funny thing though, she thinks he was referring to some girl who attends our school. She even confronted the poor girl before she broke up with Estefan. All this time, she never had a clue, he was actually thinking about you.” My girlfriend crossed her arms under her ample bosom, nodding in my direction, her point made.

I could feel Katie’s eyes digging into the side of my face. I felt embarrassed that this intimate, this personal, tidbit of information had gotten out. I couldn’t even look at her.

“Estefan?” she called to me.

I turned her way, reluctant as hell.

“Did you say my name while you came into another girl?”

I mean, what could I say? I knew I was treading on thin ice on so many different levels it was mind boggling. One misstep and I’d be drowning in the bullshit. So, being realistic, it would prove disadvantageous to add anything else to the mix by lying. When she asked me, it was like I had been water-boarded for three days. My will to resist was already broken.

“Yes, I did.”

“Wow,” was all Katie said.

“I think it is so much more than a simple ‘wow’,” countered Ramona. There was a slight edge emerging in her tone now. “My boyfriend, the guy I have been dating for almost a year now, the very same guy I’ve given my heart, my mind and my body - in just about every way imaginable - has been secretly pining for another girl all this time. And, this girl just so happens to be his first cousin.

“No, Kate, this is so waaaay more than a ‘wow’.”

I could feel my stomach sinking to my feet. I was certain this was going to end up a cluster-fuck of such epic proportions. I could see it as plain as day; my family would never be the same.

“You know, Ramona, I have to apologize, because you are absolutely correct. This is so far beyond anything I could explain. I’ve over-simplified the entire situation,” replied Katie.

There was not so much as a hint of guile; it jarred me from my thoughts.

“What makes this whole thing so much more confusing and so much more entangled, is this fact. If it had been me on that day and not the other girl, if he said my name as he came into me, I would’ve said his name right back. I would’ve arched back into him. I would have accepted everything that spilled from him with pleasure. I would’ve taken all he had to give.

“I can’t lie here. I have to tell the truth. I feel for him what he feels for me. I’m saying this. I’m admitting my innermost taboo, to you. I'm doing this, right now, because I think you’re mature and you’re being forthcoming. You haven’t made a big deal out of this, so I will do no less. I have to speak the truth about what I feel. I cannot put it plainer than that. You deserve that.”

Holy crap, Katie, brutal honesty! I shouted but remained silent.

An awkward silence lengthened about us. It was a very, very, very long, discomfiting absence of sound. It had me clenched from asshole to eyebrow.

Ramona’s smile was small and tight, and didn’t animate her face.

I figured this would be the time when she’d lose it and all hell would break loose. It wasn’t.

“That’s what makes this issue even more bizarre, Katie,” her tone sounded strained. But, to her credit, she held her emotions in check, speaking in measured syllables. “Because I know you would’ve done that. I think on a subconscious level I have known there was something between you guys. Maybe unrealized and unconsummated, but it’s there. I’ve heard you’re name on Effy’s lips when he sleeps. I’ve seen you and him in my dreams for months now. You both always look so happy together. It’s like you guys share some secret about the world only you two have the ability to know.

“You see, with me, things always start with my dreams. When something becomes repetitive, I know it’s time to pay attention. The rumor about what went on between Estefan and Tirza was the icing on the cake, but only that. I had already figured out there was much, much beneath all that on my own.” She paused to take a few breaths.

Katie and I both knew she wasn’t done, so we stayed silent.

“I can see how you feel about him. I see it your eyes. By the way you position your body, the way you wait for him to finish talking before you allow yourself to speak. Your feelings are written-in-bold with everything you do around him. It’s more than being close family members. It makes me feel like it’s an ocean when it should be a pond. There is, by far, more depth to your interactions, the expressions you share. The fact that you two go out of your way to avoid one another is a big clue as well. It tells me there’s something intense between you guys, something huge and scary. I can see what it is now. You love him, and… no matter how much it hurts me, I know he loves you back.

She swallowed as though she’d taken a bite of something. “But it doesn’t discount in any way what I feel about him. It doesn’t make him any less real or important to me. Just because you are willing to risk whatever it takes to be with him, even if it shatters your whole family, doesn’t change what I feel.

“If I were in your shoes, I’d be willing to risk it all too. Shit, if he asked me right now to run away with him, I would. If he asked me to have his babies, I would. From the moment I saw him walking with his ex-girlfriend years ago, I liked him and… I wanted to be with him.” This was when I noticed there were tears in her eyes. She hadn’t moved, though her breathing remained the same.

This was a dignified release of feeling and it tugged at my heart, because it was so god damned heroic. I say that, because if you knew Ramona like I did – do – you couldn’t feel any other way about it. Watching her bear her soul to a potential rival, putting her heart out there for us to see was like something out of literature or a classic film. This was something this young, head-strong woman had never done in the past, at least not in front of me. This was something new.

Fuck Ramona, don’t make it this harder than it needs to be! I could feel my tears coming.

“I changed, after hanging around him this long. I am no longer the little girl chasing after boys and making a fool of myself. Shit, Katie, I don’t even think I’m the same person. I have changed so much. I can see into people now. I can see the good in them – the bad too, but in a much smaller proportion. But hey, I can see them. I take the time to see them and try to know them for who and what they are. I was never able to do that until Estefan came into my life. This is much more for me than just his friendship, his care, even sex with him - which is so good. For me, it has become so much more, so much I don’t think I could ever describe it the right way. I don’t have the words. I’m not a writer… or a poet.”

I was staring at her like I was meeting her for the first time. She’d never come close to mentioning anything she had just confessed to Katie about me, or about us, nothing! She always came across like I was no more than a good time and a hot lay. She had never said anything to me about my presence having a positive impact on her life. She did not talk about how she felt there was more to us than just hanging out. Where the fuck had all this extraneous shit come from?

I’m not saying it made me angry, because everything she’d said about me was astonishing and good. Still, even with my beloved cousin sitting next to me, I wish she had said something earlier. By waiting this long to express herself, she had made what I intended to do an insurmountable mountain to climb.

“I know exactly how you feel,” murmured Katie, but her voice carried to both of us.

I glanced at her with only half a mind of what she might have meant. Only because, last night and earlier this morning, she had mentioned something like Ramona had. It was something about change, wasn’t it Katie? I was asking without speaking.

“What do you mean?” said Ramona, curious about Katie’s perspective. Her eyes narrowed with renewed focus.

Katie peered up from her lap and met the other girl’s gaze. “He makes me feel like I can do anything when I am around him, like I can be a better person, special. I am unique of a sudden and not some freak. That calms me and makes me feel comfortable, and loved. I can think clearer, because it originates from a more stable, a more centered, part of me. I wouldn’t be capable getting there without him being around to begin with.” She paused to swallow. Then she reached out and squeezed the upper part of my arm.

I felt my heart lurch into my throat in an instant, afraid Ramona would explode in a jealous rage.

She did nothing of the sort. She sat there and let one tear fall down her fac. Her eyes filled with a sea of hurt.

Somehow, through everything she was witnessing, I could see longing. It was a wellspring of hope and desire delved deep into her. I swear I could see it there, gouged into her soul. I was speechless, numb, stunned. Was it true? Could I have that sort of effect on someone and not see it before?

Who was this girl, Ramona? How come I had never seen her before? Where had she been hiding all this time?

Why the fuck had I not known this?!? Was I that dense, that obtuse? Did I not have the ability to recognize people were multi-dimensional? I should’ve guessed everyone - even the simplest personality - could be incalculable with complexity. What kind of asshole had I turned into? I felt my vision blur with frustrated tears. I tried to focus on Katie, not sure of what I would see.

She had shifted her body so that her feet, now positioned away from me, were touching the outer arm of the couch. Her body was closer, almost as if she wished to lean on me. She held herself upright by placing her hand on my bicep. Even through the emotion welling in my eyes, I could see the same wanting in hers. I knew I was in deeper trouble than I ever imagined before.

What the fuck was I going to do?

“What am I going to do?” asked Katie, as if she had read my mind. Her voice was on the verge of cracking. “I want him, Ramona, so much that I know I will fight just about anyone, or anything, to have him. I am so god damned tired of settling, of trying to make myself forget how I feel inside. I’m sick of deluding myself that I can’t go there, because we’re related. I don’t care if they call me a freak forever, because I have let myself fall in love with my cousin. Because, when I look into myself, where it counts, I don’t give a fuck. I don’t, and yet I understand what you’re saying as well. Just because I have known him since we were little kids, doesn’t make what you feel for him any less strong.

“And, look at me,” she continued, pointing at her chest with her other hand. Now her tears were flowing. “I’m the idiot who ran away. I ran half way across the country in a stolen car with a loser boyfriend. I did it just to come to California and be closer to Eff. Me, the stupid girl who was willing to screw her way all the way here, so that I could be next to him. And, I wasn’t even sure if he’d have me!

“I did it all on purpose. I said fuck you to my parents. I said fuck you to my brothers and sisters, and fuck you to my self-respect and fuck you to everything I had back in Oklahoma. I had only one shred of hope. I had one dream. That somehow, through a miraculous series of random events, I just might be lucky enough to find myself in my aunt’s house. When my only goal, all along, was to betray her every sense of propriety and be with her son. I did it on purpose!” She stopped and buried her face in her hands. Monstrous, wracking sobs consumed her.

I felt sick to my stomach, knowing there was a lot unsaid about what Katie had done to get here. I knew whatever it was, it was going to be bad to have to listen to. Ah, fuck me! Sometimes the simple thoughts depicted are more than a thousand words could ever have dreamed. I ran my hands over my bald scalp, massaging as I went along the smooth surface. This was just all so fucked up I think I threw reason into the incinerator. I told myself, stay with the truth and follow Katie’s lead. I didn’t care if Ramona was there or not. I reached for my cousin. I held her tight in my arms as she wept with abandoned for the second time in less than a day.

Almost at once, she scrambled onto my lap and held me back. Her small arms encircled my neck as she cried on my chest, her face hidden.

I rested my chin on her shoulder and turned my head. I was just in time to see Ramona walk from the other side of the coffee table and climb onto the couch on her knees.

She put her arms around the both of us. She squeezed us so hard and with so much warmth, I can tell you with complete honesty, it was the moment I fell in love with her.

For me, it was no longer about partying alongside her or having wild, daring sexual encounters. My heart opened and accepted her into the centermost parts of me, where Katie had dwelt for many years. It was that special place where life-long bonds formed. It was where they were so strong they were virtually impossible to break. Only we could break them ourselves. No external force could even dent them.

We sat there, the three of us, like a ball of human compassion.

I prayed to God there would always be enough room in that special place for the both of them.

Ten minutes later, her feelings spent, Katie‘s sobs subsided. She seemed to realize it was more than just me hugging her. She stiffened and glanced over her shoulder and into Ramona’s eyes.

I watched as my girlfriend brushed the hair out of her face with her right hand. She was staring right into my cousin’s bloodshot orbs.

Though I was right there, less than half a foot from them, I could have been a million miles away as it concerned either of them.

Ramona’s voice was like throaty silk as she spoke, “We can’t let the past control who we are in the present or who we will be in the future. Otherwise, we will forget the lessons we have learned. We will become infused with regret over things we can’t change. We will stop being, Katie, and that is a fate worse than death as far as I’m concerned. I have known you long enough to know I don’t want that fate for you. I will be here for you if you should ever need me.”

Through a nose clogged with mucus, Katie didn’t hesitate to respond. “Do you mean even if I want to be with Estefan, even if I want to take him from you and keep him all to myself? Will you still want to be there, after I become a total bitch in your eyes?”

“Yes, because I have a feeling something very uncommon is about to happen,” was Ramona’s answer.

Both Katie and I squinted with questions. We both settled back a few inches from her not sure of what she meant by what she’d just said.

She took our mutual reactions as her cue to continue. “Something has changed inside Estefan. For me, it was a close thing indeed. Thank god, for close calls and last second 3-point shots that hit nothing but net. Otherwise, it wouldn’t make any sense to me at all.”

Katie’s bewilderment appeared to increase two-fold with every word that Ramona spoke.

I, though, knew what she was getting at. She was talking about the precarious lives we all live. How sometimes the smallest things affect the biggest aspects of what we feel, what we do – the decisions we make. She had used the basketball reference, because she had learned this firsthand by watching the Lakers¹ on TV over the past year. Sometimes, it was only a touch-foul that altered the outcome of the game. The first time she understood this, she’d been beside herself with indignation for the rest of the day.

She was telling us she knew how close she had come to losing me.

It seemed my girlfriend anticipated even that reaction. She shifted her gaze to me with little warning. “Effy, if you had any choice in the world, which one of us would you have beside you?”

Katie twirled in my lap, so fast, it was almost painful. My eyes darted back and forth between the two of them. It felt, with each passing heartbeat, like I was peering up at them from the bottom of a well that kept somehow deepening. I was drawing farther and farther into the blackness of the earth with every breath I took, the longer I gazed upon them.

They sat there, waiting for me to do something. They believed I had to power to stop what was happening right here in my parent’s TV room. Both of them - the natural beauty and the fashion model - scrutinized my every move. Katie’s hazel stare was piercing. Ramona’s slate-blue ones exuded nothing but confidence, as if she believed she knew exactly how I was going to answer.

I had my cousin, my first love, and my forbidden fruit.

I had my girlfriend, the girl who opened my eyes to the world and made me see.

Both of them were nothing but trouble for me. On about every aspect one could imagine. But, both of them loved me, and either one of them would walk by my side until the end of the world. Both of them would be loyal, would grow into the better half of me and make me a better man in the long run.

Yet, whichever one I chose, the other I would leave devastated, forever altered by a simple choice I had made when we were young. Could I live with that? Could I look in the mirror, watching one of them stretch languorous on the bed we shared together? Could I do this knowing the other was out somewhere in the world broken and lost? Could I bear to look upon my own image in that same mirror and not feel a sense of regret? Would I always question if I had chosen the incorrect one, that maybe I should be with the other? Could I do something like that to either one of them? Could I choose from the both of them? Could I…?

I felt my throat constrict and the moisture that had filmed the corners of my eyes returned. How could I? What kind of monster would I become?

They stared on, at me, both of them.

Both of them.

Both of them…

“I… I don’t think,” I began. My voice deserted me as sweat began to bead on my forehead, my upper lip. I cleared my throat. Then: “I don’t think I could hurt either one of you. I can’t, not after last night with Katie, not after sharing our first real kiss. And not after seeing what an amazing person my girlfriend has become. I would hate myself for the rest of my life…” I trailed off, unable to speak any more.

Both of them…

“What are you saying, Effy?” asked Katie with more than hint of supplication in her tone.

Both of them…

“Effy?” asked Ramona, soft, which made Katie frown in the slightest.

“Yeah.”

“How do you feel about Katie, the truth, and no bullshit. She deserves it,” she asked, blunt.

“I love her with all my heart.” I wasn’t thinking or trying to qualify anything. I just said what she’d asked of me. The fact that she was my girlfriend and I’d just told her that I loved someone else, never even crossed my mind.

Katie’s shoulders hunched. She put her hands up to her face, covering the lower part of it, so she could still see us above them. She was unsure of what was going to happen next. She looked like she was cowering, but from what - the truth?

Ramona didn’t react in any way discernible. In fact, she seemed unmoved. Though when I watched close, she was taking long, measured breaths. She released a series of them before she spoke again. “How do you feel about me, Estefan? Truth only, please.”

I caught her eyes with my own as my tears began to fall. They made me feeling like a little boy they'd caught doing something bad, but I had to say it. “I love you with everything that I am.”

She closed her eyes in relief and let out another explosive breath, though I hadn’t seen when she had last inhaled. She put one of her hands over her heart and smiled a knowing smile. She let it creep across her face with each beat of her heart.

Katie went still, like a deer in the headlights. She didn’t move, but was staring at me as if I just contracted the Hanta virus.

“He can’t chose, Katie. Don’t you see that?” questioned Ramona once she had recovered.

“Bu-but, what the fuck does that mean for us?” demanded my cousin, hitting the back of the couch. She missed my face by mere inches.

“It means two things, either we get used to it. Or we fight like the bitches we both know we can be and completely fuck up everything between the three of us. This, of course, will only result in neither of us being in his life for long,” was her simple reply.

“You mean… we become a ménage a trios or you and I wage all-out war for him? Are you crazy, Ramona?” I could see Katie was fuming.

I was so dumbfounded, I regulated myself to bystander status, while the young women talked. I was more than glad for it.

“No, I am not crazy. And, I don’t think we need to be a ménage a trios per se, or at least in the exact context of the phrase.” My girlfriend paused as she studied the smaller girl before her. “You are a pretty girl, Katie. You are attractive and nice to look at, but I’ve never been more than casually curious about what it would be like to be with a girl. What about you?”

“I’ve kissed girls, but I’ve never gone down on one or anything like that.” She quieted, repeating what Ramona had done to her only moments before. “I would have to know the girl pretty good before I did anything like that, you know?”

“Yeah, I hear you,” was all Ramona said before she went silent.

“So, you’re saying we should share him or fight like banshees for him and lose him in the end. Right – that’s what you saying correct?” ascertained Katie. She wiped at her eyes, running her hands through her hair.

“Yes, that’s what I am saying.”

“What do you prefer?” wondered Katie aloud.

Ramona smiled her big, gorgeous smile that lit up her face like a Christmas tree. “I want Estefan above anything else. If that means I have to share him to make that happen, then so be it. I would rather have you as the women I share my man with, then an enemy. I don’t think I’d like that at all. And, who knows, maybe we could grow to be ‘friends’ in the process.” She giggled, her eyes sparkling as she bracketed the word “friends” with a two fingers from each hand. “Who do you think?”

“I’ve never had Estefan, though I’ve dreamed about it for a long time. I often imagined it was him and not the guy who was flopping on top of me.” She paused to clear her thoughts. “Like you, though, I want that more than anything. Even if it means I will rot in hell, because, speaking true, I’m so tired of fighting. I just want to feel loved and have a degree of security I can trust. I want to live and experience these things as far away from my parents as humanly possible.” Katie sighed and twisted again. She lay back, against me, placing her back upon my chest. “I would rather learn to share him and maybe learn to accept you as a permanent fixture in both of our lives. I sure as hell would never want to do anything that would drive him away.” She reached over her ear to stroke my baldhead like she often did when she was telling me she loved me. “What about you, Effy, do you think you could handle both Ramona and myself? You think you’re up to sharing yourself with two strong-willed, stubborn young women? We’re two chicks with more issues and dysfunctionality than your average insane asylum, are you down?”

I placed my left arm around her waist and felt her small hands come to rest upon my forearm. I stretched my other arm out toward Ramona.

She gripped my hand in both of hers, bringing it up to her lips and kissed it, gentle, over and over again. Her eyes she closed the whole time.

“I would consider myself the luckiest man alive to have either one of you. But I’m not sure I am worthy of the sacrifice you are both willing to undertake just to be with me. I’m not sure I’m that special, in fact, I know that I’m not. Why would you two want to do this?”

“Because, I love you”, “Because, it is best this way”, they said it simultaneous, voices blended.

To this day, I never knew which one of them said which. I like the think they both said both phrases with two throats that, for one second, became one.

When things got hard, got desperate, this was one of those perfect moments, in time, that always uplifted my spirits. The memory pushed me back onto my feet. I could always fight on, even when things were at their worst, because of them. That recollection always drove me to do what needed getting done. Fuck the odds. Fuck the consequences. I was always strong enough, because of what those two teenage girls had said to me on that bright, sunny day in the summer of 2018.

I remember asking them, once again, if they were certain they wanted to do this. I remember Katie had squirmed from my lap and grabbed my face with both hands. She gave me a kiss so sweet on the lips, I cried beneath her tender touch. A few seconds later, she backed away and Ramona repeated what my cousin had done.

Then, we were all on the couch hugging and crying like babies, just holding onto one another, rejoicing in what we’d just formed. Out of hatred and fear, loneliness and despair, the three of us had come together and decided that love, trust and security were more important than anything else in the world. It would prove to be the cornerstone of our existence – we lived with it each day we’ve been together. All this time nothing has changed.

There have been many other important people in our lives over the years, great individuals, dear to us. Some of which were integral to our survival. But the cornerstone of me, of Katie and of Ramona has always been the twisted covenant we forged that day in my parent’s house. It is the fundament driving our little band. It keeps us going. It keeps us whole. The struggle has become something we have overcome, can control – even manipulate. If it hadn’t been for our openness, our willingness to share, we would all have died long ago. We would’ve died right alongside all our families. And, more important, we wouldn’t have been able to fight back.

To put it plain, there has never been anything like us.

Not ever…

{ ¹The Lakers: an American professional basketball team based in old Los Angeles(Angel Free Town),California. They played in the Pacific Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association (the old NBA).}