Here the Whole Time(35)

The party isn’t packed yet, but a few food booths already have lines. I look around and see a forró band doing a sound check on a makeshift stage, and I spot a few familiar faces, too. People from school know I exist, but I don’t feel the need to say hi to them.

When I turn my attention back to the table, I notice a beer can in front of me. I don’t know at what point Caio, Becky, and Mel started drinking (and I have no idea where this beer came from), but the three of them are holding up their cans and looking at me.

“A toast!” Becky says, nodding at my can.

“Ah, yes,” I say, picking up the can and trying to act naturally—to not make it obvious that I’ve never had beer in my life.

“To festivals in the square that are kind of meh, but I love them, anyway!” Becky announces, raising her can.

“To forró bands that play the same four songs the whole night!” Caio adds, touching his can to Becky’s.

“To my hair, which looks beautiful but will, in a few seconds, stink like barbecue smoke,” Melissa cheers, shaking her ponytails.

“To corn on the cob, the best thing at this festival,” I say timidly, but it makes me happy when the three of them laugh.

Caio takes a gulp of his beer, then I take a deep breath and do the same.

I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty bad. Bitter and strong, and it must not be my lucky day, because mine is warm. I grimace so hard that Becky notices right away.

“You’ve never drank before, have you?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“I swear it tastes better with time, and not all of them are warm like this. Warm beer tastes like piss.”

I shrug as if I don’t care and keep sipping little by little.

The band starts to play and we have to raise our voices to hear one another. We spend some time listening to Mel and Becky talking about their relationship. Mel’s grandparents live in town, so she uses that as an excuse to come see Becky. They say weekends are always too short, but love trumps distance. I smile when they say that, but deep down I find it a little cliché.

“How did you two meet?” I ask them.

“I love that story! Tell him, tell him!” Caio says excitedly, poking Becky’s arm.

“It was Carnival, and fate brought Melissa to town—” says Becky.

“Fate, in this case, being my grandparents’ anniversary,” Melissa interrupts.

“I prefer to call it fate,” says Becky. “Long story short: Caio and I came to a street party in this very square. It was seven o’clock, and his mom was already calling him desperately, telling him to come home, and Caio, always the softy, just left. Totally abandoned me here, by myself, at the most depressing street party of all time.”

“Draaaama,” Caio says softly, in a high pitch.

“Then I stumbled upon her,” Becky says, wrapping Melissa in her arms. “Literally.”

“I had lost one of my contacts,” Mel says. “I knelt down, certain that I could find it. Becky apologized a thousand times for bumping into me. I said it was fine, but that I had to find my contact. And you know what she said to me?”

“ ‘You’ll never find it. You can stop looking now and kiss me instead,’ ” Becky answers right away.

I laugh out loud. “And did you?”

“I stared at Becky from up close because I couldn’t see very well,” Mel continues. “Then I covered my left eye to try and get a better look and she said, ‘I know you can’t see very well, but I swear I’m pretty.’ So I kissed her.”

“And it was the best kiss in the world. I’d have kissed her forever, but after a few minutes someone threw a beer can at my head because this shitty town would rather see a public hanging than two girls kissing,” Becky says. “And speaking of beer …” She gets up and doesn’t finish the sentence.

And I know she went to get more.

That’s when I realize that, as I was listening to their story, I finished my can. At some point, the beer went from being really bad to acceptable.

“Now I want to hear your kissing stories,” Mel says to Caio and me, propping her elbows on the table as if she is getting ready for a long and captivating tale.

The question throws me off, and my thought process goes more or less in this order:

She wants to hear the story of how Caio and I kissed?

Probably not, as we never have.

Which is a shame.

So she wants a general kiss story, is that right?

Which is still kind of panic inducing, considering I’ve never kissed anyone.



Before I can think of how to get myself out of the situation (grabbing some corn on the cob on the way), Becky comes back with more beer, and Caio is already talking.

“So, I have a kiss story. But it’s not a beautiful one like yours. It’s kind of depressing, actually,” he says, a little embarrassed.

“I love depressing stories!” says Mel, with an exaggerated expression that I can’t tell if it’s genuine or a joke.

“Last year, Becky and I went to the next town over, to an alternative club,” Caio starts, but he’s soon interrupted by his best friend.

“Worst. Club. Ever,” she says. “We had to dupe Caio’s parents and get fake IDs that in the end we didn’t even need, and the DJ only played David Guetta.”