Left at the Mango Tree by Stephanie Siciarz Read Free Book Online

among these, as I said, and when his father finally died, he forgot his exaggerated pride and accepted his family’s legacy of separation and slouched shoulders, not genetic, but instilled by years of solitude.
    A proclaimed pococurante, the one thing Gustave couldn’t ignore was his hormones. A young man with no friends or guidance, he couldn’t ease into love the way Wilbur did, in the sun’srays with a kind but unremarkable girl. No, Gustave made his discoveries under the shade of night at the island brothel, with Miss Lulu Peacock. He had to pay double, on account of who he was, but a Vilder always knows where to find money when he (or she) needs it. At least there’s that.
    Miss Peacock introduced Gustave a number of times to what Wilbur would find out about for free. But she did so much more than that! In her embrace Gustave discovered a familiar, beastly energy that lay hidden inside him. He let it surge, a homecoming somewhere in his gut. It crushed his guilt and puffed his chest, sloughed off the droop his shoulders had assumed. After that he didn’t sit alone so much in the shack his parents had left him. He was an islander like all the others, he told himself, born and raised there, and had as much a right as they did to fit in. Which he did, nicely, at least in a seedy bar near the port where the girls were too drunk or too desperate—for money, rum, or attention—to care a tinker’s damn about who or what he might be.

    Soon after is when Wilbur’s life found itself connected to Gustave’s, or vice versa, though neither would know it until over nine months had passed, and only one of them would ever know how to explain exactly what happened.
    It was at dusk on Wilbur’s wedding day, the day he’d lift Edda’s gauzy and transparent skirt on their secluded strip of sand, that Gustave would end up under Wilbur’s mango tree, in the soft, green brush a stone’s throw from the edge of the sea, with a girl from the seedy port bar.
    The leaves cooed softly as Wilbur spread the white coverlet on the cold damp sand and the moon began to spread its light across it. Edda sat down and reached to remove her sandals, but Wilbur stopped her and guided her head to the ground. He kicked off his shoes and knelt down to remove hers for her. He stroked her shins and kissed her knees, exploring her inner thighs with his fingers. Edda’s heart thumped a beat that was unfamiliar but comfortable, and the leaves hummed in her ears. Her legs fell open as his fingers found hers and their hands interlocked. She squeezed until her knuckles felt white, while Wilbur licked the soft skin that finished in her hidden and pale something-blue wedding satin. She was afraid, impatient, and reluctant at once and steadied herself for Wilbur’s hands on the elastic, wishing him to free her hips so she might know what would follow. But his hands tricked her and fell onto the opalescent buttons of her dress instead.
    Gustave meanwhile heard hummingbirds as he left the dusky beach behind him and entered the darkness of the soft green wood. His hand was wrapped around a girl, her neck in the crook of his elbow, and their bodies bumped awkwardly against each other as they walked out of step, owing to the excess of alcohol they had swallowed. Gustave kicked off his shoes and pushed the girl onto the ground, nearly collapsing next to her. “You alright?” she giggled, competing with the leaves to be heard. Gustave didn’t say yes or no. He put his hands on her waist and with grunts and jerks pushed down the tight jeans the girl wore, rolling them into an inside-out bundle at her ankles, unable to pull them past her complicated strappy sandals. The girl’s heart thumped a drunken din that echoed from her chest to her ears. Her legs fell open as Gustave’s hand found hers and pulled it to his middle, while his other hand guided her head. Her hands fell onto the zipper withwhich she’d come face to face, and she maneuvered his pants down