Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (26 page)

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 was leaning toward 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 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 truly feel.  I am sick of deluding myself that I can’t go there, because we’re related.  I don’t care if I’d be considered 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.  I wasn’t even sure if he’d have me!

“I did it all on purpose.  I said fuck you to my parents, fuck you to my brothers and sisters, and fuck you to my self-respect and fuck you to everything I had back in Oklahoma with 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.  She was consumed with huge wracking sobs.

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 it as I went along the smooth surface.  This was just all so fucked up that I think I threw reason into the incinerator.  I told myself, stay with the truth and  follow Katie’s lead.  I suddenly didn’t care if Ramona was there or not.  I reached for my cousin and 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 and put her arms around the both of us.  She squeezed us so hard and with so much warmth, I can honestly tell you, 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 were formed, where they were so strong they were virtually impossible to break unless we broke 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 abruptly 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 directly 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 far as either of them was concerned.

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 be consumed with regret over things we can’t change.  We will cease to be, Katie, and that is a fate worse than death as far as I’m concerned.  I have known you long enough to know that 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 from her weeping, Katie didn’t hesitate to respond.  “Even if I want to be with Estefan, even if I want to take him from you and keep him 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 that
made both Katie and myself squint 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 a cue for her to continue.  “Something has changed inside Estefan, and, for me, it was a very 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
, but I 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 remainder of the day.

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

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

Katie literally tw
irled in my lap, so quickly, it was almost painful.  My eyes darted back and forth between the two of them, feeling, with each passing heartbeat, I was peering up at them from the bottom of a well that kept somehow deepening.  I was drawn farther and farther into the blackness of the earth with every breath I took as I gazed upon them.  They sat there, waiting for me to do something, as if I could, as if I had to power to stop what was happening right here in 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 one 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 trou
ble for me.  On about every aspect one could imagine.

B
ut, both of them loved me, and either one of them would walk by my side until the very 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.  Whichever one of them I chose, the other would be 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 languorously on the bed we shared together, knowing the other was out somewhere in the world broken and lost?  Could I bear to look upon my own image in that very mirror and not feel a sense of regret, that maybe I had chosen incorrectly, 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 return.  How could I?  What kind of monster would I become?  They stared on, at me, both of them…

The both of them…

The both of them…

“I… I don’t think,” I began, my voice nearly deserting me as sweat began to bead on my forehead, my upper lip, “I don’t think I could hurt either one of you, not after last night with Katie and 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 softly, which made Katie frown slightly.

“Yeah.”

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

“I love her with all my heart.”  I wasn’t thinking or trying to qualify anything.  I merely 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 and she put her hands up to her face, covering the lower portion 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 entirely unmoved.  Though when I watched closely,
she was taken long, measured breaths and slowly released 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, making me feeling like a little boy who had just 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 and 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 herself.

“Bu-but, what the fuck does that mean for us?” demanded my cousin, hitting the back of the couch and missing 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 was regulated to bystander status, while the young women talked.  I was more than glad for it.

“No,
I am not crazy
, and 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 very pretty girl, Katie, attractive and nice to look at, but I’ve never really been more than casually curious about what it would be like to be with a girl, and 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 probably 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 bansh
ees for him and lose him in the end.   Right – that’s what you saying correct?” ascertained Katie, wiping at her eyes and 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 in order 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 dreaming about it for a long time.  I often imagined it was him and not the guy who was actually 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, truthfully, I am 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, so that she could lean against me, placing her back upon my chest.  “I would rather learn to share him and possibly learn to accept you as a permanent fixture in both of our lives, because I sure as hell would never want to do anything that would drive him away.”  She reached over her head and stroked my baldhead like she often did when she was telling me that 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 with more issues and dysfunctionality than your average insane asylum?”