Here the Whole Time(41)

“Remember what? That I slept with you in your bed and it was kind of embarrassing? That I spent the day reading because I had no clue what to say? That I came up with this whole Gandalf-is-back thing just so I’d have an excuse to wake you up because I didn’t want to go to sleep without talking to you?” he says all at once. “Yeah, I remember.”

I take a relieved breath. “I was worried you might be the type who drinks and then forgets everything.”

“No. I remember it all perfectly fine.”

And then there’s an awkward silence for almost a full minute.

“Just like that Friends episode where Joey and Ross sleep together on the couch without meaning to, and then they realize it was really nice. Then they start doing it in secret,” I finally say.

“I’ve never watched Friends,” Caio says, which is a terrible answer for so many reasons.

“But, look, relax. It’s okay,” I say, trying to alleviate the tension.

“I get a little needy when I drink. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

I feel the now-familiar bucket of cold water hit me. Because I wish it would happen again. I wish it would happen right now, to be honest. But I don’t say it. I don’t say anything.

“I’m glad you’re okay. I didn’t want to go another day in silence. Not after I offered to be your best friend,” Caio says.

And I hear his voice saying the words best friend inside my head two hundred times before I fall back to sleep.





THERE’S THE EARTHQUAKE AGAIN.

I wake up to my mom shaking me by the shoulders. It’s not even eight in the morning, and I’m already in a bad mood because, seriously, what is wrong with people in this house who keep choosing to wake me up like this?

“Son, get up. I’m going to the community center today. Are you coming? I can’t miss the bus,” she says, not bothering to keep her voice down so my ears will comfortably receive this information.

“Huh?” I say, which is now my official answer when someone wakes me up unexpectedly.

“I’m heading to the community center. Are you coming?” my mom asks, slowly this time, like a robot.

“I’m staying home,” I decide in a heartbeat.

“Okay. There’s food in the fridge. Caio already had breakfast. He’s coming with me. Take care, love you, bye.” She kisses my forehead and doesn’t give me a chance to rethink my decision.

A minute later, I hear the two of them walk out the door, and I’m alone in the house.

I already regret staying behind, but now there’s nothing to be done. I turn on my side and get some more sleep.



I wake up a few hours later, and the first thing I notice is the silence. This could be the part in the story when I say a bunch of nonsense about how I can feel the silence, or something really cliché like “The silence was deafening.”

But what I actually realize is that I miss the quiet.

Not that Caio is a loud guest or anything. He’s as quiet as I am. But Caio’s presence is noisy, you know? When I’m next to him, it’s as if a siren goes off inside my head. And that happens even when I’m sleeping.

In my sleep, I can still feel him in the bedroom. I try to lie in a position that won’t show my belly as much, with half my brain still awake to warn me if I snore. I’ve been sleeping like that for the past few days, not even recognizing that I was sleeping so terribly. And now I realize how good it feels to wake up not caring if my T-shirt has rolled up and 80 percent of my body is showing. That I don’t have to hide my morning wood.

I missed getting a good night’s sleep.

And yet, all this soliloquy is to say that it’s still weird to wake up without Caio by my side.

What kind of person am I turning into? The kind of person who criticizes the “deafening silence” one moment, but in the next says that “Caio’s presence is noisy.” That’s the kind of person I’m turning into.

It scares me, because this whole time I’ve had a crush on Caio the way one has a crush on a Hollywood celebrity. But now I can see him up close. I’ve heard him cry. Heard him laugh. We drank together. We slept in the same bed together. And I’ve never done that with any celebrities. Caio is real. And maybe I’m, I don’t know, in love? I mean, really in love. Like “I want to kiss you right now but also every day” in love.

How can people be sure that they’re in love, though? Is there a test?

Obviously, as I think about all that, I’m already looking up “How do I know if I’m in love?” on Google. Here are my findings:

An article about “intrusive thoughts,” which, as I’ve just discovered, is an obsessive passion that can make the person spend 85 percent of their life thinking about the loved one. I don’t think I fit the bill. Kind of dangerous, by the way. And pretty creepy.

A quiz from a misogynistic website claiming that if you don’t mind a woman’s stretch marks, then it’s real love.

A slideshow with scenes from City of Angels full of quotes about love.



All the results show that being in love is either sick, a serious problem, or sappy. That’s not how I feel. What I feel is good.

I wish I had a best friend to talk to about it. But for the moment, I don’t have any best friends who aren’t actually the guy I’m in love with. In a healthy way that has nothing to do with obsessive passion, of course.