Lucas Varela
Lucas Varela streaks his sorrows in gold and wears them as his Sunday best. He traces and colors his father’s searing disappointment on to his quivering cheek as to prove his indifference—his meticulously crafted indifference—for all to see. He does this so well, embellishing all that is savage and unforgiving so that it appears to be almost angelic and witting, that she’s floored by his self-confidence.
He does not walk, dragging his feet along like droopy appendages. He strides with purpose, with shoulders rolled back and chin jutted in the air—slicing through critiques and insults long before they can reach his ears.
His first interactions with her are restrained, sparked by a simple question.
“Can I borrow a pen?”
His words linger, and she imagines them as slimy things, slithering out from the slight gap in between his teeth and gliding straight into her ears. She hands him a duplicate of hers, and he tips his head, allowing the left corner of his lips to rise slightly.
It isn’t until Lucas arrives home that he realizes her pen has been mingling with the loose change in his pockets. He’s holding the instrument in his hand, absentmindedly clicking and unclicking the pen, when his father returns from work. Out of habit, he jolts upright and locks his door until he hears the click of their crumbling radio and the tenderness in his father’s voice as he croons along.
His father’s happy today, so Lucas shuffles out to the living room, perches on the arm of a loveseat, and hums along. He allows himself to get carried away for a moment and forgets about all the times his father has slung him into his mouth and spit him out. He forgets about the caustic sting of words and how he fears neither physical harm nor violence because he knows that there’s no greater terror than that of looking directly into a cocked mouth.
In this moment, Lucas imagines that this is his normal. His father comes home, hangs his tattered coat up without a single complaint, and insists that his son join him for dinner each night where they reminisce over all the silly things Lucas did as a kid in between sharp gulps of air.
Lucas is still toying with the idea of a father who isn’t a disappointed man, who doesn’t view the world with a disappointed heart, when he falls asleep.
The next morning, his foolish dreams have faded into fragments of the past, and he instead focuses his attention on returning a pen back to its rightful owner.
“I forgot to give this back to you yesterday,” he says as he glides into his seat. “Thanks for letting me use it.”
She eyes the pen in his hands and pushes his open palm away from her. “You can keep it if you want, that way you won’t have to make conversation with anyone else for a lousy pen.”
He presses his lips together and stuffs the instrument back into his pocket.
“If you insist,” he deadpans.
Their next interactions are slight—a gentle nudge during a taxing exam, a twitch of the lips as their eyes dart away from each other’s faces. It becomes a game of who leans in a sliver closer to the other’s lips first, who admits that there’s more to this than what’s on the surface. It’s the thrill of the chase pounding from their curling fingers to toes.
It’s Thursday after class (a good four months after their first conversation) when Lucas decides to throw in the towel and kiss her just as she slips into her seat.
“What was that?” She asks throatily, trying to conceal her enthusiasm with his same apathy.
For a second, he’s a deer caught in headlights. His shoulders have reverted back to their slumped state; his head droops, and he’s a perfect stranger. Then, she bats her eyes, and he’s back to the self-assured, cool headed person she knew.
“Do you want to grab dinner tonight?” he segways as they bump shoulders on their way out. “Think of it as an late repayment for the pen.”
“Well,” she drawls, giving him adequate time to squirm, “if you put it like that, how can I say no?”
One meal becomes two (then three, then four, then five), and within a month’s time, they’ve spent more time together than apart. His effect on her is unnerving, she realizes late one night. He demands attention (anyone’s attention) in each small, swift movement, and she gives it to him by the tons. He wants her to remember him--just like this—and preserve him in his faded SAN FRANCISCO USA t-shirt long after he’s gone. He wants to be idolized, to be someone wide-eyed, freckle-faced children dream about.
Here’s the thing about Lucas Varela: he’s missing a piece of himself. At his birth, his father douses him in his dreams, bathes him in the river of his failures, and expects him to bring him the joy he never had, but Adrian Varela keeps his hand over his son’s hammering heart, telling him not to feel, not to expect from him anything more than a failed man’s disappointment.
For once, she’s grateful her blood runs crimson and not gold, for the world is a scale and a god’s strength can only be matched by an even greater weakness. Lucas’s is this: he craves approval, aches for it, wishes to suck it from a straw until there’s not a drop left, but his father’s chalice is empty.
So he looks to other mugs and he eventually settles on hers. It’s not a chalice (at least not yet, anyway); it isn’t plated in gold and soaked in silver, but it’s filled to the brim with affection. Lucas drinks her approval, and she drinks him. He drinks to toss his father’s icy glare into oblivion, and she drinks to feel a little closer to him.
It takes her a while (for she’s too distracted by his allure to notice his heart) to realize that he’s just a boy, just a boy with a heart a lot like hers, that the gold in his veins is dyed. But eventually, she does—and here’s the ugly thing—she loves him less when he’s mortal.
She comes from a family of six—six hungry mouths, twelve open palms, six throbbing hearts. They’re assembly line children, each one with crooked noses and wavy black hair. They’re plain and common, and maybe that’s why she’s drawn to him, for he’s a god and that’s as special as it gets.
Gods aren’t manufactured mechanically. They are chemical explosions, spontaneous combustions, and an assembly line girl can only wish to love a god (but he isn’t one).
Every morning and every night, he drags her mug out of the cupboard and waits for her to fill it up. Believing he deserves nothing but ambrosia, he grows more and more demanding, and she becomes more firm.
The night they break up is indistinguishable from the many nights that preceded it. Someone programs them to sit side by side and share the same air. Their declarations of love are stiff, robotic statements crackling through silence. They do not love because they feel it in their blood; rather, they love because they did once before.
A father’s disapproval proves too colossal a burden for two assembly line lovers to bear, and though they fight their pressing demise, it’s not nearly enough. Lucas cannot hide any longer; he cannot wake up every morning, repeat his morning mantra (“You are good enough; you are good enough.”) while his girlfriend is draped over the bed.
She cannot extract the sadness from his body like a tumor and fill it with her synthetic warmth. A girl cannot be made a father, and a father’s absence is all-encompassing.
At 9:26 that night, while he’s mulling over another unanswered call, she stands up.
“You have to stop doing this, Lucas. There’s no point in calling him every night and wasting your time sending him cards for all the holidays he’s missed. People don’t change.”
“He’ll come around,” he vows. “He will; I know he will.”
“Luc—”
“Don’t say it,” he hisses, then softens. “I know what you’re going to say, and you’re wrong. You’re wrong.”
Her heart contracts, and she reaches out for his hand.
“We know where this is going, don’t we?”
He loosens his grip on her and tilts his head slightly. “I have to figure this out on my own. I can’t keep doing this. My dad—”
His bottom lip begins to quiver, and he extends his arms with obvious hesitation. She lunges into his embrace and grips him tight.
It’s a beautiful break up, she realizes once the house is empty, her best one yet.
He does not walk, dragging his feet along like droopy appendages. He strides with purpose, with shoulders rolled back and chin jutted in the air—slicing through critiques and insults long before they can reach his ears.
His first interactions with her are restrained, sparked by a simple question.
“Can I borrow a pen?”
His words linger, and she imagines them as slimy things, slithering out from the slight gap in between his teeth and gliding straight into her ears. She hands him a duplicate of hers, and he tips his head, allowing the left corner of his lips to rise slightly.
It isn’t until Lucas arrives home that he realizes her pen has been mingling with the loose change in his pockets. He’s holding the instrument in his hand, absentmindedly clicking and unclicking the pen, when his father returns from work. Out of habit, he jolts upright and locks his door until he hears the click of their crumbling radio and the tenderness in his father’s voice as he croons along.
His father’s happy today, so Lucas shuffles out to the living room, perches on the arm of a loveseat, and hums along. He allows himself to get carried away for a moment and forgets about all the times his father has slung him into his mouth and spit him out. He forgets about the caustic sting of words and how he fears neither physical harm nor violence because he knows that there’s no greater terror than that of looking directly into a cocked mouth.
In this moment, Lucas imagines that this is his normal. His father comes home, hangs his tattered coat up without a single complaint, and insists that his son join him for dinner each night where they reminisce over all the silly things Lucas did as a kid in between sharp gulps of air.
Lucas is still toying with the idea of a father who isn’t a disappointed man, who doesn’t view the world with a disappointed heart, when he falls asleep.
The next morning, his foolish dreams have faded into fragments of the past, and he instead focuses his attention on returning a pen back to its rightful owner.
“I forgot to give this back to you yesterday,” he says as he glides into his seat. “Thanks for letting me use it.”
She eyes the pen in his hands and pushes his open palm away from her. “You can keep it if you want, that way you won’t have to make conversation with anyone else for a lousy pen.”
He presses his lips together and stuffs the instrument back into his pocket.
“If you insist,” he deadpans.
Their next interactions are slight—a gentle nudge during a taxing exam, a twitch of the lips as their eyes dart away from each other’s faces. It becomes a game of who leans in a sliver closer to the other’s lips first, who admits that there’s more to this than what’s on the surface. It’s the thrill of the chase pounding from their curling fingers to toes.
It’s Thursday after class (a good four months after their first conversation) when Lucas decides to throw in the towel and kiss her just as she slips into her seat.
“What was that?” She asks throatily, trying to conceal her enthusiasm with his same apathy.
For a second, he’s a deer caught in headlights. His shoulders have reverted back to their slumped state; his head droops, and he’s a perfect stranger. Then, she bats her eyes, and he’s back to the self-assured, cool headed person she knew.
“Do you want to grab dinner tonight?” he segways as they bump shoulders on their way out. “Think of it as an late repayment for the pen.”
“Well,” she drawls, giving him adequate time to squirm, “if you put it like that, how can I say no?”
One meal becomes two (then three, then four, then five), and within a month’s time, they’ve spent more time together than apart. His effect on her is unnerving, she realizes late one night. He demands attention (anyone’s attention) in each small, swift movement, and she gives it to him by the tons. He wants her to remember him--just like this—and preserve him in his faded SAN FRANCISCO USA t-shirt long after he’s gone. He wants to be idolized, to be someone wide-eyed, freckle-faced children dream about.
Here’s the thing about Lucas Varela: he’s missing a piece of himself. At his birth, his father douses him in his dreams, bathes him in the river of his failures, and expects him to bring him the joy he never had, but Adrian Varela keeps his hand over his son’s hammering heart, telling him not to feel, not to expect from him anything more than a failed man’s disappointment.
For once, she’s grateful her blood runs crimson and not gold, for the world is a scale and a god’s strength can only be matched by an even greater weakness. Lucas’s is this: he craves approval, aches for it, wishes to suck it from a straw until there’s not a drop left, but his father’s chalice is empty.
So he looks to other mugs and he eventually settles on hers. It’s not a chalice (at least not yet, anyway); it isn’t plated in gold and soaked in silver, but it’s filled to the brim with affection. Lucas drinks her approval, and she drinks him. He drinks to toss his father’s icy glare into oblivion, and she drinks to feel a little closer to him.
It takes her a while (for she’s too distracted by his allure to notice his heart) to realize that he’s just a boy, just a boy with a heart a lot like hers, that the gold in his veins is dyed. But eventually, she does—and here’s the ugly thing—she loves him less when he’s mortal.
She comes from a family of six—six hungry mouths, twelve open palms, six throbbing hearts. They’re assembly line children, each one with crooked noses and wavy black hair. They’re plain and common, and maybe that’s why she’s drawn to him, for he’s a god and that’s as special as it gets.
Gods aren’t manufactured mechanically. They are chemical explosions, spontaneous combustions, and an assembly line girl can only wish to love a god (but he isn’t one).
Every morning and every night, he drags her mug out of the cupboard and waits for her to fill it up. Believing he deserves nothing but ambrosia, he grows more and more demanding, and she becomes more firm.
The night they break up is indistinguishable from the many nights that preceded it. Someone programs them to sit side by side and share the same air. Their declarations of love are stiff, robotic statements crackling through silence. They do not love because they feel it in their blood; rather, they love because they did once before.
A father’s disapproval proves too colossal a burden for two assembly line lovers to bear, and though they fight their pressing demise, it’s not nearly enough. Lucas cannot hide any longer; he cannot wake up every morning, repeat his morning mantra (“You are good enough; you are good enough.”) while his girlfriend is draped over the bed.
She cannot extract the sadness from his body like a tumor and fill it with her synthetic warmth. A girl cannot be made a father, and a father’s absence is all-encompassing.
At 9:26 that night, while he’s mulling over another unanswered call, she stands up.
“You have to stop doing this, Lucas. There’s no point in calling him every night and wasting your time sending him cards for all the holidays he’s missed. People don’t change.”
“He’ll come around,” he vows. “He will; I know he will.”
“Luc—”
“Don’t say it,” he hisses, then softens. “I know what you’re going to say, and you’re wrong. You’re wrong.”
Her heart contracts, and she reaches out for his hand.
“We know where this is going, don’t we?”
He loosens his grip on her and tilts his head slightly. “I have to figure this out on my own. I can’t keep doing this. My dad—”
His bottom lip begins to quiver, and he extends his arms with obvious hesitation. She lunges into his embrace and grips him tight.
It’s a beautiful break up, she realizes once the house is empty, her best one yet.
Lan Nguyen is from Hell's Kitchen, New York (seriously) and is the true devil's advocate (according to her Myers-Briggs personality type, ENTP). In a past life, she was a world leader who bumped shoulders with U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In this life, she’s a high school student who enjoys camping (but not the mosquitoes), swimming (but not the stench of day old chlorine in her hair), and performing. (She is an ENTP, after all.)
