Here the Whole Time(6)

I’m such an embarrassment.

I fling myself onto the bed and watch cat videos online until I fall asleep.





TODAY IS A SATURDAY. I usually love Saturdays. I get to sleep in and watch three movies in a row, and my mom always bakes a cake. Every Saturday is like that, and the tradition has never been broken. I like traditions, especially ones that involve cake.

And yet I don’t wake up excited today. I didn’t sleep well and spent the whole night thinking about how much easier it would be if my life were Freaky Friday. My mom and I would swap bodies, and she’d have to deal with Caio. I’d just sit there and watch, smiling and painting. We’d stay in each other’s bodies for fifteen days, and when Caio left, the spell would wear off.

I leave my absurd fantasies behind and decide to get out of bed. It’s early, six in the morning. I look in the mirror and notice that I’m still inside my own body. Too bad. This story would be much better if I had magically switched bodies with my mom.

I walk out of the room to get a glass of water, and when I pass by the living room, there he is. Caio is asleep on the couch, and it’s almost ridiculous how good-looking he is. I’ve never seen anyone who could look so beautiful even while sleeping. Not in real life, anyway. I’ve always thought the whole peaceful sleep thing, the thing where your chest moves up and down calmly in unison with your breathing, only happened in movies. In real life, people sleep with an elbow touching the back of their necks, one sock half-off, and drool streaking down their pillows.

Caio can’t be real.

I think a whole seven minutes have passed, and here I stand, watching him sleep. Seven minutes. I need help. Seriously.

Water, Felipe! Water! I tell myself, trying to focus on the actual reason that got me out of the bedroom. I walk to the kitchen, trying not to make noise, but of course it all goes wrong, because I’m about as delicate as a mammoth. I open the closet without realizing my strength and two pans fall to the floor. In the morning quiet, it sounds more like two hundred.

I kneel down to clean the mess I just made and suddenly feel a presence in the kitchen. For a second I believe it might be the ghost of my dead grandma, who has decided now would be a good time to tell me the meaning of life or to give me advice about how to become emotionally stable. But of course it’s not her (though I do miss you, Grandma!). It’s Caio.

“Need help?” he asks, looking at me with the face of someone who’s just been awoken by the clatter of two hundred pans crashing on the floor.

“No, no. It’s okay!” I lie, because it’s not okay. I’m crouching in my beige pajamas. And I am pretty sure my butt crack is showing. Big-time.

And those are all the words we exchange that morning. We go through a silent ritual where I pour a glass of water and offer it to him with a nod. He accepts it with a grunt that doesn’t quite become an actual word. And we just stand there, drinking water, staring into nothingness without saying anything.

Caio stretches his back between sips (a lovely sight, I have to say) and I’m sure he woke up with a backache. It’s impossible to sleep on our couch and wake up happy. Sleeping on a wet cardboard box would be more comfortable. I think about starting a conversation and asking if he slept okay, but I quickly give up. The silence is nearly unbearable now, and then he puts his glass in the sink and leaves.

I let out a sigh of relief.



The rest of the morning goes by slowly and torturously. After I woke him up, Caio didn’t go back to sleep. He sits on the couch and picks up his book. I pace back and forth, trying to casually make it clear that I’m available. Totally not doing anything. Like 200 percent free as a bird. But he’s so focused on his reading that I give up.

I go back to my room and watch YouTube tutorials for things I’ll never make (today it’s artisanal candles, ceramic bowls, and soaps). I can’t quite explain it, but the time I spend on the internet somehow feels less like a waste when I’m learning something new.

Weekends always go by pretty quickly, but after lunch it feels like I’ve been living this same day for forty-five years. My mom is painting in the kitchen, and I find myself alone with Caio in the living room. It’s cold outside, but of course I’m sweating. I’m sitting on the floor because it feels like the kind thing to do. Our floral couch was Caio’s bed last night, and I don’t want him to feel like I’m not respecting his space. My laptop is on my lap and I’m adding movies that I’ll never watch to my watch list. Caio is still sitting on the couch, still reading The Fellowship of the Ring.

In the last few hours, I’ve come up with a theory. I believe Caio is already done with the book but he keeps rereading the final chapters over and over just so he won’t have to talk to me. I know that sounds neurotic, but this time I’m serious. It just happened! I was debating whether it was worth adding Legally Blonde 2 to my watch list (an easy call, because I absolutely love the first Legally Blonde, and bad sequels to good movies even more). I looked over at Caio quickly as I clicked “Add to List,” and I caught him turning back a few pages in the book! He’s rereading pages! All so he doesn’t have to close the book and feel obligated to talk to me.

I’m officially the worst host in the world.

“It’s cake day!” My mom walks into the living room, practically shouting with excitement. “But we’re out of eggs and flour. I need butter, too, and I’m craving grapes.” She’s calling out the items as she writes them down one by one on a piece of paper. “Who wants to go to the supermarket for me?”