Cobain returns to the window and shakes his head. “Well, once your brain is done figuring out shit, my dick is ready.”
Smiling, I curl up on the bed and check my phone. Mama sent a message earlier about how much she misses me. I reply with my own text, wishing we were together again. The trip to this country might have helped Kai and me find ourselves, but I’m more than ready for it to be over.
COBAIN
Fucking women. They always know how to play me. Neri’s no different. The worst part is she isn’t even running a con.
Logically, Neri wants me to protect her and the others until they’re home. She should be using sex to keep me blinded to my own safety and needs. Instead, she brings up kids and how we won’t last.
Neri isn’t dumb. She knows getting my back up over the future will make me more likely to ditch her, but she doesn’t care.
That’s why I’m in a bad mood even after she stops all her fucking thinking and decides to strip naked. I ought to tell her no. Get her back up. Put her on the defensive.
But the woman’s too damn tempting, and I’m not giving up the chance to fuck her. I’m not dumb either.
But I am irritated. Neri shouldn’t be worrying about kids. She’s only twenty-two. Who needs kids at that age? Or any age? If my mother made a different choice with me, she might have lived longer. Kids slow down even the coldest person.
I never want children. I don’t even know if I want to live in Nicaragua. I’m a man suited to colder temperatures and away from tourist spots. Nothing about that country or life interests me except for Neri.
And this particular woman must remain mine. Sure, that likely won’t happen long term. Yet keeping Neri is why I’m still alive. It’s also why I sat in that muggy indoor pool room and listened to them splash around like idiot children. I do what needs to be done to keep her.
“Your beard,” whispers a freshly satisfied Neri, smiling as she fixes it. “I left it all wet and sticky.”
Shit like that shouldn’t make me smile. Fucking is just fucking. There doesn’t need to be more to it than getting off, but I need Neri to remain close after my dick is satisfied.
How many women have I ever gone down on before? Priscilla claimed I was too sloppy of a lover to trust with her most cherished possession. The woman treated her clit as if it were the crown jewel. I never thought to ask why. Women and conversation rarely interested me, even when I was younger and far more gullible.
“Do you have any other income source besides killing for your father?” I ask while she rests naked on her stomach and swings her feet back and forth.
Neri watches me, wearing a faint smile. My question doesn’t register, or at least, she doesn’t react to it right away.
“I work in tourism,” she finally says and sits up to face me. “Papa owns a boat and takes rich foreigners out to fish and snorkel. The women all flirt with him and Kai. I go with them sometimes, but I’ve been working more in real estate the last year. Knowing English helps when selling properties to Americans.”
“Do you have many friends?” I ask, trying to picture her world that I’ll never fit in.
“No. We’re a family full of secrets. I know many people, but I would only consider a few of them friends.”
“Secrets,” I mutter, thinking of Gator and his broken woman raising two overly confident children in a beach paradise.
“Can I ask questions about your life?” Neri whispers.
“No.”
“Not questions about your time at the safe house. I think I got the gist of that story.”
“No.”
“I’m more interested in what your childhood was like.”
“I was never a child.”
Neri grins and takes my hand. “How did you get these marks on your knuckles?”
“I was born with them.”
“Born full-grown and with these scars?” she murmurs, amused by my stubbornness.
“Exactly.”
“Who was the best lover you ever had?” she asks, begging for trouble.
“A professional girl in Berlin. Mouth like a vacuum cleaner.”
“Is that really safe, though?” she asks, reaching for my cock. “Wouldn’t the suction be dangerous?”
“You’re so naïve.”
“I’m not the man who just told the truth about his best lover. You really don’t know how to manipulate anyone at all, do you, Cobain?”
“Should I have said you?”
“Of course!” she cries dramatically. “The truth has no place between two naked people!”
Chuckling, I consider instigating another fuck. I’m tired, though. I hated the bed in the other room, and I hated the chair at the safe house. I miss my shitty mattress and my home for ten years. A dark feeling comes over me when I imagine my safe house as a charred hole in the ground. I miss my old life, but Neri couldn’t be part of it. Even if the house wasn’t gone, she wouldn’t last long in such a barren land. I had to leave my home because losing her would have been unforgivable.
Maybe that’s why I try to adjust to the thought of doing the family crap Neri wants. I should assume she’ll lose interest once there’s no one chasing us. Yet there’s nothing particularly frivolous about Neri. She doesn’t seem easily swayed, and she offered her virginity to me rather than what must have been plenty of interested men. Sure, Gator probably scared away many of them, but she’s been in the US for weeks. A lot of men wanted what she offered to only me. That has to mean something.
Fuck, now I’m getting sentimental! My mother would hate to see me so weak. She wanted her son to be a terrifying force of nature, not a grown man swooning over a stranger. More than once, my mother told me how she almost loved my father, but she knew he could never love her back.
“Why waste my heart on a liar?” she said and smiled. “Love breaks even the strongest people, but it offers nothing of value in return. Don’t fall for its tricks, son. Keep your heart safe and strong.”
My mother was right about love. Falling for Neri has made me weak, afraid even. I even find myself trying to imagine the life she craves with me. Watching her dress, I attempt to mentally force my ill-tempered presence into her idyllic existence in Nicaragua. None of it fits. I’m not the man she needs, and this realization breaks me a little.
After the kid wakes up, we open the doors between the two rooms. Anika peeks around the corner at me. In her hand is that ugly doll. I don’t know where the duck toy is, and I hope she hasn’t lost it. I’d prefer to get through the entire day without her losing her shit.
Neri appears behind the kid and taps her shoulder with the duck. As they return to the other room, I sit in a chair and study the security cameras.
When I hear Neri and the kid getting louder next door, I consider shutting the door. I don’t need them bothering me or irritating Robin hiding in the bathroom. I swear the dog’s more homesick than I am.
However, since Neri won’t approve of me closing myself off, I leave the door open. My reward for behaving is the squealing kid headed in my direction. She takes one look at me, though, and stops in her tracks. Smile gone. The pout is coming. Then that submit shit will happen.