call them cousins
1 September 2011 at 10:21 pm (Daily Stories)
My cousin loved me, and he thought I didn’t know it, but I did. So I pretended to like him back as well. When I saw him falling over himself to follow me or hold hands with me to cross the street, I held back my laughter so hard that I felt like I was about to pop.
His mom sat us both down and explained that it was wrong, and we were cousins, which meant we could not hold hands anymore. So of course I grabbed his hand right then and there as she watched.
He turned red. My aunt turned red, too.
After that, we had to run away, otherwise we would have been in serious trouble. We called ourselves brother and sister and sat up late at night in motel rooms or on the roofs of unlocked apartments, laughing and laughing at the pure insanity of it. Brother and sister, that was even worse. If anyone realized what sort of sibling love we’d shared, we would have been put on death row at once.
Eventually, we settled down in Santa Monica. Then we called each other boyfriend and girlfriend, and no one cared what we did to each other in public.
After a while, that grew old, so we called each other husband and wife.
After a while, that grew old, too.
Then we realized we could call each other cousins again. We went home our separate ways. I took a plane, and he wandered around for a few more weeks until the Greyhound bus dropped him into the neighborhood again.
My aunt sent me to pick him up. A lesson, she called it. When he stepped off the bus he smiled at me, a little shy, a little embarrassed. I smiled back. Well, we were cousins again. We could start over.
As we got in the car, he reached out, hesitant and blushing furiously, and held my hand.
