The Kiss Principle (Hazardverse: Sidetracks)

7

“Dinner is on the table,” Zé said as he grabbed his keys. “And Igz had a bottle right before you got home.”

The last part, I probably could have figured out on my own. Igz—Isabela—had a dreamy look on her face that told me she was deep in a milk coma. She lay against my chest, breathing softly and slowly. She fit there. Everything, it seemed was starting to fit. Zé, in his Quiksilver tee (so old that the collar was frayed and there was a hole under one arm) and his board shorts and the same cracking Hurley slides, fit. What had seemed like pure chaos not so long ago was now routine.

Over the last couple weeks, everything had started to come together. Zé’s background check had come back clear, like he’d promised. He’d started watching the baby full time, and true to his word, he arrived on time every morning, and from what I could tell, was doing a great job. Igz—Isabela—was happy (and obsessed with him), the house was cleaner than it had been in a long time, and more often than not, he made something for dinner before he left. He didn’t have to do that; I’d told him that more than once. But he nodded, agreed, and then did it anyway. We’d even made it through our first doctor’s appointment together (Zé had gone along for moral support), and Igz (God damn it: Isabela) had come through with flying colors.

Along the way, I’d started to learn more about the guy who was currently the second-most-important person in my orbit. Zé had grown up in Brazil until he was thirteen. On the coast, he said. A town called Saquarema, near Rio. Then he’d come to the States with his family. He’d done some school, but nothing had grabbed him, and he’d stopped taking classes instead of continuing to pour money down the drain. He was twenty-five, and every day he had on a variation of the same outfit, and his hair always had that effortlessly windswept look that made me want to choke somebody. He was thinner than he should have been, and when he thought I wasn’t looking, he took his weight off his injured knee. He wasn’t a fanatic about sports, but he’d watch the Dodgers with me. He did yoga. He read a lot on his phone, he said, when I asked him what he did during the day. Read what, I asked. Whatever I want. He had a way of saying things like that, things that could have sounded petulant or defensive or rude, so that they seemed authentic, sincere, unselfconscious. Whatever I want. Wouldn’t that be nice? He was a giant goof (exhibit A: the dance he choreographed for him and Igz; when he sent me the video during a work meeting, I’d started laughing and had to excuse myself). He did yoga, did I mention that? And he offered to teach me, like I could so much as touch my fucking toes. Once, I’d come into the kitchen in the morning when he’d been feeding Igz. The way he was holding her had rucked up his shirt to expose the small of his back, and the fabric was tight over his shoulder blades.

Zé shifted his weight, stretching his leg and knee. “Anything else before I take off?”

I shook my head, adjusting Igz (well, fuck it, I give up) against my shoulder. She’d be in her milk coma for a while, and I’d eat whatever Zé had left me (in front of the TV, obviously), and then we’d go to bed. Mom had gone straight from Vegas to—I wanted to say Aspen, but who the hell knew anymore?—and in spite of a lot of phone calls, I’d been unable to track Chuy down. I’d have the house all to myself. Again.

Before I knew it, the words were slipping out my mouth: “Do you want to stay and eat?”

Zé grinned and shook his head. The textured mess of hair fell in his eyes, and he brushed it away. “Already ate, thanks. I know you like some time to yourself.”

Igz made a few discontented noises, so I shifted her higher on my shoulder and rubbed her back. “You know that, huh?”

“Kind of figured it out that time you told your brother to stop crawling up your ass for five minutes while you ate dinner.”

“Jesus Christ, you weren’t supposed to hear that.”

And that was the truth; since Zé had started working for me, I’d been making a concerted effort not to spook him with what Augustus called your particularly heinous brand of verbal diarrhea . I was polite. I kept the language moderately clean. I even smiled. Sometimes.

“It’s not that big of a house.”

But he was smiling, and I laughed in spite of myself. He shifted his weight again and put his hand on the door handle.

“Hot date tonight?”

A little furrow appeared between Zé’s eyebrows.

“You’re in a hurry,” I said.

“Oh. No, no dates. A—a meeting.”

“Your knee?”

“Oh. No.”

The vagueness was about as close as Zé would ever come to telling me to mind my own fucking business, so I nodded. “Have a good night.”

“You too.” He opened the door and paused. “Is everything okay?”

Aren’t you lonely?

“Yep. Thanks, you know. For Igz.”

Zé’s smile was uncertain, but a moment later, he stepped out of the house and pulled the door shut behind him.

I carried Igz into the kitchen. True to his word, Zé had left food for me: an on-the-small-side portion of lemon-pepper salmon, hot and crispy from the air fryer; and a mountain of roasted broccoli.

“He’s not exactly subtle, is he?” I asked Igz.

Instead of another night sitting in front of the TV, I took a chair at the table. I could have put Igz on the floor or in her crib or in the swing (one of Zé’s few requests). But I’d gotten used to holding her, and she was warm, and there was something pleasant about her sleepy weight. I ate the salmon. Then, because I was still hungry, I ate the broccoli. I wondered if I was supposed to give Zé a performance review. Would it be fair to dock him points on something that wasn’t technically his responsibility? Not that the broccoli was bad. It was great, actually—roasted until it crunched, bringing a slight sweetness out of the vegetables, and then lightly salted. The lightly part would be another note in his file.

After I cleaned up (which meant putting my plate and silverware in the dishwasher, because Zé had already done everything else), we moved into the living room. Igz’s eyes were open, but she was quiet. The house was quiet. I turned on the TV. Since I was a responsible adult, or a reasonable impersonation of one, I didn’t smoke around Igz, which meant I’d been watching a lot more television—and a lot more of my life—through sober eyes. It turned out a lot of things sucked when you weren’t high enough to take the edge off. We found some show with people singing, and half of them sounded like cats getting their scrotes stretched. I told Igz, and she didn’t appreciate the language.

Aren’t you lonely?

Well, no. I wasn’t. I shifted around to find a more comfortable spot. I adjusted Igz on my chest. ESPN, ESPN2, MTV, CBS. I stalled out on a commercial. Some guy was doing ballroom dance with what looked like a plastic bag.

“Stick your head in,” I told him. “See if there’s anything in there.”

Igz didn’t approve. She fussed and squirmed on my chest. The baby version, I thought, of beating me up.

Was I lonely?

It wasn’t a question I’d had to consider before. Before, I’d been busy. That had been my default state. Busy taking care of Augustus and Chuy, because Mom always had an audition, or she was burned out and needed to see a friend, or it was an important party that could help Mommy get a job. Once Augustus had been old enough for me to leave with Chuy (who, until he’d started getting high at twelve, had been reliable enough), I’d started mowing lawns. And then I’d had a series of jobs. And school. And Augustus. And coming home, at the end of a shift, to do as much homework as I could before I fell asleep. The impossible days.

I stroked the back of Igz’s head and told her, “I’m glad those are over.”

There was nothing good on TV—a big-eyed woman, who seemed to straddle the line between housekeeper and wife, couldn’t get the bad smells out of the kitchen, but don’t worry, somebody was going to sell her something that would help—so I took out my phone.

Sure enough, a few weeks back, Lou had sent me Bea’s name and number.

Hi , I texted. This is Fernando.

As the message zipped off, a voice that sounded like Augustus said, Seriously, what is wrong with you?

So, I sent a second message: Lou’s friend .

And then: Lourdes .

Lourdes Amador.

I’d seen slow-motion car accidents before. Videos, you know. People like that stuff for some reason, and you watch it, and it looks like there’s all this time to change course. But there’s not. When you’re on the inside, all you can do is watch it happen.

Somehow, I managed to drag myself away from explaining further. Instead, I opened the text thread with Augustus. His profile pic was from when he was ten, at Disney, looking like a Disney kid himself: sun-streaked bangs and a huge white smile. Even back then, he’d been a wiener. I wrote, What do people text each other these days?

But that wasn’t right, so I erased it and tried, What am I supposed to text someone to introduce myself?

I erased that too.

What should I text this girl?

When Augustus was happy, his whole face lit up, and his nose got a little crinkly. The ten-year-old version of it was staring back at me. I thought about his face if I sent that text. And then I thought about the years and years I’d have to spend cutting him down to size again.

I was still waffling over sending the message when Bea replied: Hi! Good to hear from you!

Sorry, I wrote back. Things have been weirdly busy .

Lou told me about the baby??!!!

After that, it was easier. At first, the texts were short, and I focused on talking about Igz, because it was easier. But slowly the chat moved on to other things. She was a biochemist at Caltech, which immediately put her about eight leagues out of reach, and she loved scuba diving and swimming and, in general, being in the water as much as she could. I managed not to make myself sound like a total tool, I think, but I do some mountain biking sounded pretty limp-dicked compared to her last vacation, diving the Great Barrier Reef.

I was surprised, when she told me she needed to call it a night, how much time had passed. Igz was getting fussy, and it was time for both of us to go to bed (for approximately three hours, before Igz screamed me awake). I told Bea goodnight, and then I carried Igz and laid her on the floor in the hallway while I peed, brushed my teeth, and washed my face.

I changed into my pajamas—this ratfucker T-shirt that said BIBLE EMERGENCY HOTLINES, and then a list of things like STRESSED and LOSING HOPE and SINNED, each one with a Bible verse, and then at the bottom, TOLL FREE – TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. Augustus had given it to me because he still thinks he’s hilarious. He’d given me the shorts too, which made me look like I was ready for somebody to swing me from an ass hook in his dungeon, but I couldn’t stop wearing them because they were literally the most comfortable thing ever.

I bent over to pick up Igz and stopped. She was breathing fast, what I would have called hyperventilating. And then, as I watched, she stopped breathing entirely. She looked like she was struggling to get any air, her tiny nostrils flaring. She was pale.

“Oh my God,” I said, dropping onto my knees.

My first thought was that she’d somehow grabbed something and put it in her mouth and was now choking. I opened her mouth as gently as I could and, using my phone as a flashlight, tried to see if something was blocking her windpipe. Not that I could see anything. Not that I knew what I was looking for. I wondered if I was supposed to do the Heimlich.

By that point, though, she was breathing again—those rapid, frantic breaths. I’d done enough safety trainings to know not to try the Heimlich if someone was breathing. I scooped her up and staggered through the house, grabbing my keys and wallet, shoving my feet into a pair of sneakers. Her little face was full of struggle as I fumbled with the buckles on her seat.

“Go in, go in, go the fuck in,” I said.

Why hadn’t I practiced? Why hadn’t I spent more time doing this?

Somehow, I got her secured, and then I bolted for the SUV. I backed out of the driveway so fast we bounced off the curb, and a voice inside my head told me to calm down before I made things worse. I took a deep breath as I shifted into drive, and I accelerated more carefully down the street.

Orange County was a patchwork of light and dark: streetlights, security lights, neon lights buzzing on and off. The sky ended in a low, flat ceiling of clouds. I called Mom, and she didn’t pick up.

“Call me back.”

I hesitated. Who next? Augustus? But he was two thousand miles away, and, more importantly, I hadn’t told him about Igz yet. It wasn’t the time, and there was no point telling him something that would upset him until we knew what was going to happen long term.

Before I had time to reconsider, I placed a call to Zé. This one went to voicemail too.

“It’s Igz.” My voice broke, and I had to struggle to shore up that place inside myself before I could say. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry.”

I disconnected.

The drive to the closest urgent care felt like a lifetime: my hands slick on the steering wheel; my back aching as I twisted around, every fifteen seconds, to make sure Igz’s eyes were open, that she was still breathing; the storm inside my head of what if what if what if .

It was a corner unit in a stucco strip mall, with a wall of windows and an illuminated sign in red and white letters. Then I couldn’t get the car seat out of the base, and a scream started building at the back of my throat. Press this button, then press—

With a click, it came free.

I ran.

The lobby was empty, and the white woman behind the safety glass was missing her front tooth and had a tattoo of an anchor on her forearm, like a cartoon sailor.

“She’s not breathing. She can’t breathe.”

The woman’s expression changed. She said something I couldn’t hear into a walkie and then motioned me toward the door that connected to the rest of the facility. I jogged over to it, and the door opened. This woman was Black, her hair in beaded braids, and she wore a white lab coat with a name tag that said Ferguson. She glanced at me before bending over Igz.

“Her name’s Igz,” I said, and that place inside me threatened to break open again. I fought back tears. “She’s a month old, and she—and she—” I knew there was more I was supposed to say, but it was like I’d reached the end of the tape, and there wasn’t anything left.

The doctor ignored me. She had a stethoscope out, and she was listening to Igz’s heart. Then she slipped an oximeter onto Igz’s big toe. She checked the display. After what felt like an eternity, she said, “All right. She’s breathing, and her oxygen saturation is good. Her heart rate is a little accelerated, but it’s not in the danger zone.” She straightened, looked me over again, and said, “She’s not in any danger right now, sir. Let’s get you set up in an exam room, and we’ll see what’s going on.”

After not in any danger , I barely heard the rest of it. My knees didn’t literally buckle, but my body did feel a million times lighter, and I had this strange sensation that someone had turned up the lights, that the ceiling was higher than it had been a moment before. There was this whooshing sound in my head, and I heard myself think, Oh shit, am I going to pass out?

But I didn’t. Instead, I sat in the exam room, trying to fill out paperwork. I didn’t make much progress because every time the doctor moved, I looked up to see what was happening. But from what I could tell, it was a more thorough version of the exam Igz had gotten in an abbreviated form a few minutes earlier, not that far off from what she’d had when we went to her one-month checkup.

“Has she had an episode like this before?” Dr. Ferguson asked.

“No, never.”

“Any complications in her health history?”

I shook my head.

“Walk me through what happened tonight.”

So, I told her about it—eating the dinner that Zé had made, watching TV together, texting Bea, getting ready for bed. From a long way off, a part of me recognized that I was babbling (Dr. Ferguson’s mouth twitched while I was using my hands to show how much broccoli Zé had left me). But she let me get it all out.

Then she asked, “Have you noticed any changes in her behavior?”

“Nothing.”

“Her feedings?”

I shook my head.

“Do you have a lot of air fresheners in the house? Or candles? Do you or your partner typically wear strong colognes?”

“No, Zé’s not—” And then I remembered the day I’d met Zé, how stupid I’d been taking the vape out of my pocket, using it in the house. Since then, I’d taken my recreational shit outside, but that was a recent change. I’d been vaping in that house pretty much every day of my life for years. I’d smoked, too. And Chuy had done God only knew what. What kind of particles were floating around? “Oh my God, this is my fault. I vape—I used to vape inside the house. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? Oh my God, I did this to her. Did it damage her lungs? Is this like asthma, is this how babies get asthma? What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“Take a breath.” She smiled softly. “Pun intended. Igz is a healthy baby. There’s nothing wrong with her lungs as far as I can tell. Do you still vape in the house?”

“No. God, no.”

“That’s good. Do you still vape?”

When I’d been twelve, Mom had wanted to try a megachurch, and I remembered the long-faced white pastor clutching my shoulder, his breath close and hot in my face and smelling like peppermint as he asked, “Fernando, do you touch yourself?”

“Uh.”

Dr. Ferguson was too professional to roll her eyes. “Since you’re an adult, I’m sure you know that vaping is not a healthy lifestyle choice.”

“I’ve been thinking about quitting.”

Okay, maybe she wasn’t too professional to roll her eyes. “Like I said, you’re an adult. But I do recommend that you do it outside the house, and not anywhere near your daughter.”

I almost said, She’s not my daughter. But I didn’t.

“You don’t need to beat yourself up,” Dr. Ferguson added. “As far as I can tell, this was a minor respiratory episode. That’s what we call them when we don’t know exactly what caused them or why. It could be an allergen. It could be dust. It could be that her throat got dry. This kind of thing is common in newborns.”

I looked up at her.

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “Really. Keep an eye on her, and if it happens again, or if the symptoms are worse, you’ll need to do more testing. You did the right thing bringing her in tonight. You’re a good dad.”

Finishing the paperwork took almost as long as the exam itself, but I didn’t mind. Igz fell asleep on the drive home. I went slow. I took the turns carefully. I stopped at a red light with a Taco Bell on one corner, and I stared at the illuminated Taco Bell sign, and it felt like my head was empty—this big, open, empty place. Then my vision blurred, and I sank down in my seat and fought to keep from coming completely undone. When the light changed, I snuffled into the Bible hotline T-shirt and let the Escalade roll forward.

Zé’s car was parked in the driveway when I got home. That was unusual; he always parked on the street. Sometimes, I didn’t see his car at all, and he’d say he parked up the block because he wanted some exercise. A lie, maybe, because he was embarrassed to admit he’d needed a ride. But Zé wasn’t a liar, so it was probably the truth.

Tonight, though, his car was in the driveway. When the garage door rolled up, he got out of the car. I only caught a glimpse of his face, a mesh of shadow and worry, as I parked in the garage. By the time I got out of the Escalade, he was already coming toward us. His knee must have been hurting worse than normal because he was limping.

“What happened?” he asked. “Is Igz okay?”

“She’s fine,” I said. “I, on the other hand, am not. I am still freaked nine fucking ways from Sunday.” As I got the car seat out of the base (zero problems now, of course), I added, “I’m sorry I ruined your night. You didn’t have to come.”

The yellow light from the garage painted the side of his face and left the rest in shadow. He moved some hair off his forehead. When he spoke, I didn’t understand what I heard in his voice, but all he said was “You called me. Of course I came.”

I told him what happened. And then he had to check Igz himself, even though she was still asleep. He tried to go down on his knees, but then he wobbled, and he only caught himself by throwing out a hand and grabbing the side of the house. It was hard to tell in the weak light, but I thought his face was red.

With my free hand, I steadied him and helped him stand. The spring night was cool, and the air smelled like Calla lilies from the Hensons’ garden. It smelled like sage, like the wild parts of the world that lay out there in the dark, beyond the reach of streetlights and subdivision. It smelled like a warm body, like coconut wax and something earthier that made me think of driftwood. A warm male body. And even though the night was cool, I felt warm too.

“Come on,” I said, surprised by the roughness of my voice. “Igz and I will walk you to your car.”

Zé let me walk him a pair of steps before his whole body locked up. When I tried to tug him forward, he wouldn’t move.

“I’m okay,” he said, and for the first time since I’d met him, I heard panic instead of his usual calm. “I’m fine. You need to get Igz to bed. Let me help you—”

My first thought was junkie. And then, liar. Chuy was both, and I’d spent enough time with him to recognize the flailing effort to redirect, to avert.

And so I did what I always did with Chuy: no fucking mercy.

“I don’t need help getting Igz to bed,” I said, and I gave another, harder pull. It was cheating because I was using his bad leg against him, but I didn’t care. He was lying to me. About something. Somehow. I had a sixth sense for it. And all my fear, all my adrenaline, everything that still needed an outlet—it flared up in the white-hot heat of my anger. “I want to make sure you’re okay.” Yank. “In your car.” Yank.

Zé was taller, but I had more muscle (well, more mass, anyway), and more importantly, he was off-balance. He made a few objecting sounds, but all he could do was stumble along.

I stopped at the car. Enough light filtered in from the street that I could make out the interior. The sleeping bag. The jugs of water. The clothes piled on the passenger seat.

How long, I wanted to ask. And why didn’t you tell me?

“All right,” he said, and his voice was an imitation of its usual easy happiness. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow—”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I shook him by the arm. And like that, two weeks’ worth of struggling to keep my mouth shut flew out the window. “You should have told me, you stupid nut-rabbit!”

I don’t know if he was trying to get free or if I simply shook him too hard. Whatever the reason, he stumbled back a half-step, and then his knee folded, and he let out a sharp breath.

“Zé, Christ—”

“I’m okay. Oh shit. Oh shit, my knee.”

Holding on to him turned into holding him upright. He wouldn’t—or couldn’t—put any weight on one leg.

“I need to sit down,” he said, fumbling in his pockets. “Could you open the door—”

“For fuck’s sake, you’re coming inside.”

“No, I’m fine—”

“No, you’re right. It’s a fucking fantastic idea for you to crawl into your fucking car and be left alone right now.”

He ran the back of his hand across his mouth. The reflection of the streetlights made it hard to read his eyes, but I could feel how pain tightened his body.

“Inside, jack hole. Right fucking now.”

Maybe I couldn’t read his eyes, but they definitely got a little wider.

We made our way inside, the three of us—me balancing Zé on one side, and Igz swinging against my leg on the other. She didn’t help at all, of course; after nearly giving me a heart attack, she was sleeping peacefully.

I got Zé to the sofa, helped him lie down so that he could keep his knee straight, and retrieved an ice pack from the kitchen. He propped himself up on one elbow, mouth open to protest, so I said—a little too loudly—“Oh, I’m sorry, did you have another great fucking idea?”

He shrank back down to the cushion.

I sat next to him and placed the ice pack on his knee. Then I didn’t know what to do with my hands. It felt strangely intimate, sitting so close to him, touching him. The Quiksilver tee rode up to expose a band of smooth skin and the hint of his treasure trail. His belly rose and fell slowly. His arm came up, and he put his hand on my thigh. He doesn’t know what to do, I told myself. He’s scared, and he’s touching you because he’s hurting.

But I didn’t see pain on his face. Or fear. I saw something unreadable. It made me think of sun catching the snowpack.

“Let me get Igz back in the SUV,” I said, “and then we’ll go to the hospital.”

He shook his head.

“Yes, absolutely. If I fucked up your surgery—”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re not okay. You couldn’t even stand.”

His hand rubbed my thigh slowly. It was like someone stirring up sparks from a fire; it had been a long time since someone had touched me, even like this. “You can take the ice pack off.”

I peeled it away.

He sat up and scooted until he was propped up by the arm of the sofa. Then, slowly, he tested his knee, bending it, straightening it again. A hint of dusky color came into his cheeks. “It’s okay,” he said again. And then, more firmly, “I’m okay.”

“This is all very fucking convincing.”

He laughed very quietly. “I’m sorry. I thought I felt something, and I was so afraid—” He stopped, and then, to my total amazement, he blinked away tears.

“Zé.”

“No,” he said thickly, shaking his head at whatever I might have said. “I’m fine, I promise. It’s just been a lot.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but when the silence stretched on, I asked, “What kind of surgery was it?”

“My ACL.”

“Ouch. What happened?”

“That’s the stupidest part. I was messing around with some friends. I slipped, tried to catch myself, and pop.”

I winced, but I was only halfway concentrated on his story. His hand was slowly rubbing my thigh again. And the little dicklet shorts that Augustus had bought me left a lot of bare skin for him to chafe.

Once again, the silence had gone on too long. I opened my mouth to say something, but Zé spoke first. “I’m glad Igz is okay.”

I made an agreeing noise.

“You realize the shirt and the shorts are sending a mixed message, right? All those Bible verses. And then—” He plucked at the hem of the shorts, high up my thigh.

“That’s because I’ve got a gayball brother who also thinks he’s a comedian.”

In that quiet voice of his, he said, “You have a lot of pictures of the two of you. You must love him a lot.”

“Oh no. Nice fucking try.”

He closed his eyes.

“You’re living in your car?”

“Don’t yell; you’re going to wake Igz.”

“Don’t yell? I’ll yell if I want to yell.” But I did lower my voice because I wasn’t an idiot. “What the fuck kind of shit-slurry do you have for brains? What have you been doing every day when you walk out of here? Where do you go? Tell me, right now. And you’d better not try to lie to me.”

He opened his eyes, and they were silver with tears. He couldn’t quite blink them all away, and the ones that fell traced their way down his cheeks. “Are you firing me?”

“What? No. God, no.”

“I’ll be here on time every day, like always. I’ll be rested and focused, and I’ll take good care of Igz. I don’t steal food. Sometimes, I’ve showered here, but only after I do yoga. And if you want me to stop, I won’t do it anymore.”

“I don’t steal food,” I said. “Give me a fucking break.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say!”

“I want you to answer my goddamn questions!”

He shrank back. His hand fell from my thigh. He’s young, I had to remind myself. He might be taller than you, he might be knitted out of all that long, lean muscle, but he’s Augustus’s age, which means he’s practically a kid, and he’s hurting, and he’s alone, and he’s trying to do everything on his own.

“Yes,” he finally said. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I sleep in my car.”

“Where?”

“In my—”

“No. Where do you park your car?”

After a pause, he shrugged. “There are places.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. Donkey balls, you are going to get yourself killed.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“You’re doing a great fucking job of it so far.”

Then his eyes did come up to mine, and for the first time, I saw him angry. “If you’re not firing me, and it’s not affecting my work, then it’s none of your business.”

“Of course it’s my business.”

The best he could come up with, apparently, was a baffled, “Why?”

“Because you are in my life, and that means I’m responsible for you!” My face heated as I heard my own words, and I hurried to add, “And because I have no fucking idea what I’d do with Igz if something happened to you, you big sackless wonder.”

The corner of his mouth turned up, and in a tone I didn’t recognize, he said, “You big sackless wonder.”

“This is how I talk. Is that going to be a problem?”

It was definitely a smile now. He shook his head. “What’s a nut-rabbit?”

“What do you fucking think? And it’s not because you’re gay. And it’s not sexual harassment since I said it out of a place of anger.”

“And how can I have donkey balls and be a sackless wonder at the same time? Is it because I have a shit-slurry for brains?”

“Look, I didn’t mean—I can try not to, I don’t know, say stuff like that. But I can’t promise anything about the swearing.”

Zé shook his head. He still wore that tiny, unreadable smile. “I kept wondering what you were holding back. You’d get so mad at something on TV, or that time someone knocked over the trash can, or when you stepped in that dogshit, and I could see it building. And then you never let it out, and I wondered what it was.”

“If those two brainfucks would keep that fucking dog behind their fence—” I drew a deep breath. “I, uh, will work on it.”

His smile canted. It was something else now. Deeper. More, if that could be a thing—if a smile could be more. “You don’t have to work on it, except maybe around Igz.” And then, with nothing to explain what the fuck he might possibly mean, he added, “It’s cute.”

I was suddenly aware again of our positions: his long body stretched out on the couch, propped up by the armrest, the tilt of his head that displayed the strong lines of his neck. That ridiculous hair hung in his eyes again. We were so close that I couldn’t help noticing the freckles sprinkled at the hollow of his throat, or the stubble that accented his jaw, or that his lips were slightly chapped.

“Yeah, well,” I said, “we’ve gotten off topic. You’re not sleeping in that car anymore.”

Zé opened his mouth. “I don’t need—”

I spoke over him. “I’m not going through the hassle of finding Igz another nanny. Manny. Whatever. I will blow my fucking brains out before I have to deal with that again.”

“Fer, I’m fine. Thank you, but—”

“It’s not a discussion. This is a new condition of the job.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Can. Did. I’m exclusively looking for a live-in nanny. Manny. God, why does that sound so fucking stupid when I say it? I don’t expect you to take care of Igz in the evenings; your nights and weekends will still be your own. But I need you here because we may occasionally have to flex your hours. And because I have this strange thing where I like knowing that my manny isn’t going to be gutted and tossed in a dumpster by a band of murderous hobos.”

“I’m getting an apartment. I’m waiting for the lease to roll over.”

“What did I tell you about lying to me?”

I didn’t expect the resistance in his face, but maybe I should have. I remembered how much it had cost him to say please, to ask for the job in the first place. How hard it had been to admit that he needed it.

“Say yes, jackass,” I said in a low voice. “It’s a bedroom. A place to sleep. I’m not asking you for anything else.”

“Fine.” Then he rubbed his face, and I thought I saw tears again.

“What do you need from the car?”

“I can—”

“Try getting off that couch. See what happens.”

He let out a wet laugh and wiped his face. The struggle was there again. And then he whispered, “Thank you.”

I pushed some of that windblown hair away from his forehead, and he smiled. It was a nice smile. And then I realized what I’d done. I pulled my hand back and stood, and my voice sounded rough when I said, “And you need a haircut.”

But, of course, that only made him laugh.