Coming Home

From far away, my childhood home is exactly as I remember it: cream-colored stucco with dark brown trim, its moldings fanciful curlicues pressed onto two square, stacked stories that rise against the suburban sky, a tiny little cupola-like turret set towards the back like a lone birthday candle. When I was growing up, I thought it looked like a giant piece of caramel, a building made of spun sugar and chocolate trimmings. 

But upon closer inspection, I see the dirty, forlorn FOR SALE sign is stuck in the lawn—which is still green, albeit with some weeds. The windows are caked with dirt, and the mailbox is overstuffed with slick white envelopes sticking out from its metal craw. 

Despite these signs of neglect, the hedges are trimmed, and the flower beds near the front door are freshly watered. 

I look up. A curtain on the second floor twitches, as if someone has pulled it closed. 

I go around to the back—my usual way—and open the fence quietly. I tiptoe across the patio, which is partially weeded, and see that someone has dusted off the ping-pong table. A single paddle and a can of beer sits on its green surface, as if abandoned midgame. 

I pick up the can. It’s half-full and still cold, beads of condensation rolling down its aluminum sides. 

I am about to push open the sliding glass door when a voice says, “I wouldn’t.”

I look up. A man about my age is standing at the fence I just entered through. He’s a little under six feet, with the build of a former athlete now slightly gone to seed.

He holds his own can of beer. From the way he shifts his weight from foot to foot, I surmise he’s a little drunk. His thick, wavy black hair is standing on end as if he has just run his hands through. By the looks of it, he probably hasn’t shaved for at least three days, and he wears a pair of very old jeans and a Joni Mitchell t-shirt. I sneak a couple longer glances at his face, taking in his crooked nose and wide, full lips. He looks familiar to me and somehow a little glamorous.

“I’m housesitting for my folks next door,” he says before I have a chance to ask if he’s the new renter, if the house is now his. “I didn’t want you to accidentally break and enter.” 

His eyes are enormous, deep-set, and the grey-amber color of smoky quartz. They send a thrill straight into the pit of my stomach.

“I remember you,” I say. 

He invites me to join him for dinner. 

As he grills two steaks, he tells me about my old house, the car he sees parked out front sometimes, the fact that the garden is always watered. The more he talks, the more I remember about him and his family. 

The Solanos are seriously wealthy, so wealthy that it always surprised me growing up that they lived next door to us. The father is some kind of financial consultant who occasionally got helicoptered into important meetings up and down the coast when traffic was bad, while his mother fancied herself a glamorous globetrotter. She used to host decorative-looking European exchange students every summer, usually from the major capitals: Madrid, Paris, Rome.

I had been casual friends with Danny’s adopted sister, who was my age. The Solanos had seen the long hours my parents worked and insisted on inviting me over for birthday parties, holiday celebrations, the occasional weekend in Joshua Tree or Laguna Niguel. I had been a free companion for both their exchange students and their daughter. I was a sort of foster child whom they could be magnanimous toward without any real long-term commitment. 

I can count the number of times I’ve directly spoken to Danny before today on one hand—he was already a college freshman by the time I entered high school, and clearly thought of me as nothing more than a mildly annoying neighborhood kid. Nevertheless, I knew every detail about him as if he were a movie star or some kind of household god.

Now, the man himself stands in front of me, taking a long, meditative pull off of a joint. He pinches the end between his forefinger and thumb, offering it to me.

I shake my head. 

He shrugs: suit yourself. 

He returns to tending the meat, and I watch him with hungry eyes. His shoulders are still broad, and his arms muscled, but there’s now a comfortable layer of padding over his chest and belly although he does bear the weight with almost regal nonchalance. His gain looks good on him, lending some gravitas to his still-boyish face. He has the most beautiful hands I’ve ever seen on a man, and that same lazy grin that had flipped some switch inside me back when I was a teenager, all those years ago. During the Solano get-togethers when he’d been in attendance, my body always seemed to know when he was within a twenty-foot radius. 

I wonder now, as I sit and watch him, how obvious my crush was. I wonder if he was flattered or annoyed by it.

“So what do you do?” he says. I’m sitting on the low wall next to the barbecue, idly kicking the heels of my sneakered feet against the bricks as if I’m still sixteen rather than thirty-two. I wish I’d worn something different. After dumping my boxes at my best friend’s house, I was filled with so much buzzy adrenaline that I just pulled on the first clean thing I could find, which was a faded old cotton sundress that reaches my ankles. Its thin spaghetti straps don’t really complement my ratty-looking Converse, but I’ve been comfortable and cool as I’ve taken the bus from Los Angeles to my hometown in Pasadena carrying the heavy bags of essentials. 

“I play music,” I say. This time, when he proffers the joint, I take it gladly,  placing it between my lips and sucking so hard that the ember at the opposite end  glows like a dragon’s eye. 

Danny stands up. “Oh yeah?” he says. “What instrument?”

“A few different ones,” I say, my voice tight as I try to hold on to the smoke.  “Piano. Drums. Bass. Guitar.”  

I exhale.

“Huh,” he says. He hands me the joint again.

I watch as he carefully hangs the tongs on the handle of the barbecue and walks over to where I sit. I say nothing as he pushes my legs apart so he can stand between them. He slides the skirt of my dress upward slowly—so slowly—to bare my legs. He pulls the top of my dress down—I wore no bra, I don’t really need one—and rubs his thumb across my nipple as my eyes grow wide. I blow a long plume of smoke over his head to hide my nerves. He bends his head to kiss the hard bud and runs his knuckles up my inner thigh once, twice, three times; traces the seam of my pussy with a tender, curious touch. He pulls back and looks at me, his face amused: I’m as surprised as he is at how wet I’ve become. 

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