Amy Yamada - Bedtime Eyes

Whenever they went out somewhere, there was never a moment when Rick wasn’t touching some part of her. And when she was falling asleep, he would keep tapping her cheek to keep her awake.

Everything was very simple with Rick—nothing was hidden. There were no sycophantic sweet nothings or psychological games, and Coco found that refreshing. Although she felt awkward at first, she soon found that with Rick there was no point in trying to preserve the love-struck pretense she usually used with other men. It was the first time she had ever felt good enough just to relax and be herself with a man.

After a while, she began to stay with Rick and Jesse on weekends, and it was not long before she came to hate Mondays because it meant she had to go back to her own place. Every Monday morning she would kick off Rick’s tired, worn-out bedcover and scream at the top of her voice, “I hate this bedcover and I hate leaving here.” And Rick would rub her back gently, like he would a little baby, to comfort her. Then she would calm down a little, lie back using his arm as a pillow, and fall asleep with a smile on her face.

Coco’s relationship with Rick was stable and comfortable, but when it came to Jesse there was never any shortage of surprises.

One morning Coco was in the kitchen making breakfast and Jesse told her he wanted raw eggs.

“Raw eggs? What are you, Rocky the boxer or something?”

Without a word, Jesse broke an egg into a bowl, drowned it in soy sauce, then threw rice in on top and started to mix it all together. Coco just stood and stared at the disgusting sight of him guzzling the whole bowlful with a spoon, the sticky mess turning his mouth yellow.

When Rick came in, Coco pointed wordlessly at Jesse.

Rick ignored her, instead turning gleefully to his son.

“Hey! Raw eggs and rice, right? Outstanding! Make some for me, too, will ya?”

Coco gave an involuntary shiver of revulsion as she watched them greedily slurping down their breakfast together.

“Baby, don’t you want some? Aren’t you hungry?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Jesse’s mama used to make this for us all the time. She’s Japanese, too, you know.”

Coco didn’t believe in God, but at that moment she couldn’t help crossing herself and praying for help.

She had already noticed that Jesse usually didn’t bother to use a knife and fork. It seemed that his mother had never really bothered to teach him about things like table manners. So when Coco saw Jesse grab a piece of meat with both hands one day, stuffing it into his mouth like a dog, she immediately ran into the kitchen to find him something to eat with. She searched the cupboards, but all she found was a single clean plate and fork. This house was simply not equipped for normal, everyday life.

Coco had always been taken to the best restaurants and she was used to spending time with well-mannered, sophisticated people. So eating with Jesse was a real headache. She could only hope that she never had to go out to eat with him.

“You’ve got to do something!” she screamed at Rick. “You can’t let him keep eating like that!”

Rick didn’t seem to mind it at all.

“Don’t sweat it, baby,” he said soothingly. “He can learn about things like table manners when he gets himself a woman.”

“Why doesn’t he ever stay with his mother?” she asked.

“He did at first, but after a month he couldn’t take it anymore, so he packed his stuff up, got on his bike, and came to live here. He told me every day was just fighting and arguments and that there was no fun at all. If I learned anything at all from being married, it’s that a bitching, whining woman is the most difficult thing in the world for a guy to deal with. And Jesse’s a guy, too.”

“But his manners are awful!”

“And whenever he wants to see his mama,” Rick continued, “he can go on his own: she lives right near here. But anyway, you don’t have to worry about it. Parents have to raise their kids and teach them manners.

That’s not your responsibility. You’re just here because you’re my girl, right?”

He kissed her in an attempt to bring an end to the conversation, but Coco’s mind was on Jesse and his part in their relationship.

All Coco had ever known was the simplicity of sex between a man and a woman. Nothing else had mattered to her before. But now, for the first time, she began to realize that there might be another type of relationship: far more difficult to understand, infinitely more complicated, and completely unavoidable.

Coco didn’t understand her feelings toward Rick. Looking at it objectively, Rick certainly wasn’t the sort of guy she would normally fall for. He drank so much that she was sure he was well on the way to terminal alcoholism, and would go numb from head to foot. He never seemed to savor the taste; it was more like a race, like he was trying to get drunk as fast as possible. And he made sure he never wasted a drop—he even sucked the whiskey off the ice cubes in the bottom of the glass.

Coco enjoyed drinking, too. But Rick drank so much that it hurt just to watch him. Because he was so used to consuming large amounts of alcohol, it was extremely rare for him actually to get drunk. Coco was sure it would take at least a couple of bottles of Bacardi to do the job.

That was Rick in a nutshell: he was a middle-aged drunk with a kid. And that made it all the more difficult for Coco to understand why she wanted to spend so much time with him and why she would go crazy every Monday morning when it was time for her to leave and go to work.

The sex was great, of course. Rick never failed to satisfy Coco in bed.

But she didn’t think that was the reason she stayed with him. She enjoyed sex, of course, but she could say with absolute certainty that sh had never been a slave to it. To Coco, it was just a pleasure shared between a man and a woman.

Rick could not be described as cool. Nor did he ooze sex appeal.

When they went to bed at night, Rick was always clinging to her, his arms and legs entwined with hers. At first Coco found it claustrophobic and irritating, but after a while she found she couldn’t sleep without it.

He was like a warm blanket covering her when she woke in the morning, and, like a kid with a comfort blanket, she had to have him with her.

One night when they were drinking and talking together in the apartment, Rick told her that his biggest problem had always been women, and that whenever he saw a good-looking girl, he couldn’t help turning around to look at her.

Cute, thought Coco.

Of course, whenever she saw a good-looking guy, Coco would turn to look at him, too. But then she would contrive to bump into him “by accident,” get close to him, and eventually get him into bed. Coco knew there was no way Rick could ever do anything like that. And then the ridiculous image of him watching his laundry in the washing machine floated back into her thoughts and made her smile. Rick made Coco laugh. And even when he had poured so much liquor down his throat that he was completely trashed, all she could do was scowl and then give him a resigned smile, the way a beleaguered but loyal daughter might treat a beloved but underachieving father.

Coco liked to think that she was the only one who could really appreciate Rick’s charm. His scruffy, unshaven face when he woke up in the morning, and his pitiful, sorry expression the day after they’d had an argument. Coco thought she had never seen such a pathetic face in her life. And when she was feeling really down, he never had a clue. He would always come out with some inane remark about the weather or last night’s ball game. These were all things that warmed her heart when she thought of him. And when she realized that Rick—just an ordinary guy whom no one else thought was special in any way—had begun to mean so much to her that she didn’t want to spend another moment without him, she knew that she was beginning to fall in love.