Here the Whole Time(44)

As we eat our sophisticated Mexican dinner, sharing the tight couch and watching an episode of Hoarders (a really gross show to watch during a meal), Caio’s phone starts ringing. He rolls his eyes and lets out an impatient sigh, but when he looks at the screen and finds out it’s not his mom trying to call, his face lights up.

“It’s Becky. I’ll take it in the bedroom.”

And off he goes, leaving half a meat burrito on a plate balancing on the couch’s arm.

My mom and I continue eating in silence, completely focused on the TV. In today’s episode, we’re following a hoarder addicted to wedding artifacts and cats. She’s never been married but has hundreds of white dresses. When the show crew finds a dead cat under a pile of bridal magazines, my mom and I exchange a look of disgust and decide it’s time to watch something else.

It’s been half an hour and Caio still isn’t back. I can hear his voice from the bedroom but can’t understand what he’s saying. Sometimes he laughs out loud, but mostly it sounds like it’s a serious conversation.

My mom is exhausted. She kisses me good night and goes to bed. Then it’s just me, the TV, and Caio’s burrito. I feel tempted to finish it, but I put it in the fridge because that seems like the right thing to do.

I go into the bedroom quietly, and Caio keeps talking to Rebeca. I try to gesture the question “Can I come in?”

“What’s that?” Caio asks, taking his attention away from the phone.

Apparently, I suck at sign language.

“Can I come in?”

He smiles at me, nods, and goes back to his conversation.

“So, yeah,” he says. “I’m going to hang up now. But thank you for the talk. You know exactly how to pat my head and slap me in the face at the same time.”

I laugh, trying to imagine what that must feel like.

Caio hangs up and hands me a piece of paper. “I circled my favorites.”

It’s the list of cat names that I left on my desk.

I let out a sigh of relief, because on the top of the list I wrote only Possible Cat Names and not Possible Cat Names for the Cat Caio and I Will Adopt in Our First Year of Marriage.

I scan the list and see the names Caio circled: Nesquik, Jonas, Nugget, Beyoncé, and Bagel. The last one is the common denominator, so it’s official. Our adopted cat will be named Bagel.

It’s not even ten o’clock yet, but Caio is already turning off the light and getting ready for bed.

“It was exhausting today. Those kids drained all of my energy,” he explains. “They won’t stop for a second.”

“You weren’t very different,” I say, remembering the afternoons I spent playing with Caio at the pool. He could run and dive for hours, never stopping to rest. But if I got tired (which happened very often), he would calm down and swim slowly with me.

Caio goes quiet for a moment and I’m starting to think he fell asleep when I hear him say in a whisper, “It was cool, wasn’t it? When we were kids. At the pool and everything. Too bad it didn’t last.”

“It was. I don’t even remember why I stopped going,” I lie for the second time in the last couple of hours.

“We can go back there one of these days. I never say no to pool time. Just let me know!” he says, and I can feel a drop of sweat running down my forehead, nervous just to imagine going to the pool with Caio. “If you want to, that is,” he adds, when he notices I got a little awkward.

“Tell me all the things that I missed by not being your friend for the last few years. Only the best parts,” I say, trying to change the subject.

“Oh, I don’t know. How old were we when we stopped hanging out every day? Twelve?”

“Thirteen.”

“Whoa, thirteen years old! That was a hard time for me.”

“Thirteen isn’t easy for anybody,” I remark.

“Sometimes you talk as if you were sixty.”

“Sometimes I feel like I am sixty.”

Caio laughs and reaches out to give my shoulder a light punch. I feel my face burn; I don’t think I’ll ever be ready when he touches me.

“When I was thirteen, I was in the drama club. My mom didn’t know, of course. But the teacher crushed all my dreams telling me I wasn’t in my element when I was acting. I got over it quickly and took dance classes. I really liked them, but then my mom found out about it and told me I had to focus on ‘boy stuff.’ ” Caio makes air quotes on the last part.

“You’re like Billy Elliot, then!” I say, excited. Because I’m crazy about Billy Elliot. And probably about Caio, too.

“Billy who?”

“The movie,” I explain, a little frustrated. “About the boy who dreams of becoming a dancer, but his dad won’t have it. Spoiler: At the end of the movie, his dad ends up being fine with it, Billy becomes a great dancer, and years later the movie becomes a fantastic musical with several compositions by Elton John.”

“Lipé, you’re a walking gay encyclopedia. I love that about you,” Caio says, laughing, and I feel my hand breaking into a sweat because Caio loves something about me.

“I like that! Maybe I’ll try to make ‘walking gay encyclopedia’ into a profession!” I say. “I wonder if I can make money with it?”

“You can have your own game show on TV, testing the participants’ knowledge about gay culture!” Caio suggests excitedly.