The Kiss Principle (Hazardverse: Sidetracks)

11

“Because if I wanted a human-sized pile of dickcheese stealing my shit,” I shouted, “I’d put a call out on Prowler!”

“You’re being ridiculous, Fernando.” Mom was doing one of her better tricks, putting on an earring as she stepped into her heels. “Cannon didn’t steal anything.”

The dickcheese in question was hiding behind her, shoulders hunched. “Like, bro—”

“The adults are talking,” I told him. “Shut the fuck up!” To Mom, I said, “That was my watch. Mine. And now it’s gone because this little fuck-funnel hocked it!”

“Please don’t be so dramatic.” She did the next earring. “Cannon didn’t take your watch.”

“Well, it’s gone! What the fuck do you think happened? Did it grow a pair of legs?”

“Don’t be so dramatic, dear. It’ll turn up.” She pulled her hair over one shoulder and gave Cannon a smile. I recognized that smile. It was the see-how-hard-my-life-is smile. The look-what-I-put-up-with smile. “We’ll get you a new one. That watch was ancient, Fernando. We’ll find you something much nicer.”

“Augustus gave me that watch.”

Frowns meant frown lines, so Mom didn’t frown. But she did purse her lips. “I don’t remember that.”

“Big fucking surprise. You were probably at Camp Vicodin!”

The sound of TV voices, some sort of children’s program, filled the chasm between us. Mom’s eyes welled with tears.

“Bro,” Cannon said apologetically, “now I’m going to have to fight you.”

“Do it, jizz lips. Take one fucking step.”

Mom put a hand on his chest. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

Cannon’s face melted into sympathy, and he clutched her hand.

I slammed the door on my way out of the room.

Zé was out on the deck, walking Igz. His eyebrows were drawn down. His mouth was tight.

“Get your shit,” I said.

The wind pulled at his hair. Behind him, sunlight caught the haze over the valley. He rubbed Igz’s back, his eyes moving over my face.

“Are you deaf?” I waited, but he still didn’t say anything. “We’re leaving.”

I left him out on the deck. In the kitchen, I packed Igz’s diaper bag. The sound of Mom’s crying filtered in from her bedroom, competing with the cartoon voices from the TV. The door behind me opened. Zé padded barefoot across the kitchen. When he came back, he’d slipped into his cracked Hurley slides. Today’s outfit was a graphic tee with a stylized wave. I’d seen him wear it at least a dozen times; the hem was frayed to tatters. The board shorts were turquoise and printed with birds of paradise, and he had to knot the drawstring because if he didn’t, they’d slide right off his ass. He watched, and when I slung the bag over my shoulder, he settled Igz against his chest and followed me out to the SUV.

We drove for a while in silence. The May afternoon felt hot inside the car, so I lowered the windows, and the air smelled like exhaust, so I put them back up again. Zé didn’t say anything. He faced forward, but he had one arm contorted behind him so he could keep a hand on Igz’s leg. In the rearview mirror, her little face was unreadable, but I could tell she wasn’t thrilled with this change of events.

“He’s a mile-long trench of boy pussy,” I said. “And I swear to Christ he stole that watch.”

We rocked over an uneven patch of asphalt. I looked at Zé.

“Maybe,” Zé said. “He’s insecure. You’re older, smarter, more established. You’re much better looking. He’s competing with you for your mom’s attention.”

I had to pretzel my brain around that one before I said, “What kind of hot-dogging psycho-bullshit is that?”

“Is that something Americans say? Hot dogging?”

“I am not trying to fuck my mom.”

Zé wasn’t bitchy, which was a real downside in his character, but he did do something dramatic with his eyebrows, and then with his eyes, and then I thought maybe he secretly was bitchy, and I needed to work harder to bring out this side of him. With exaggerated patience, he said, “He doesn’t think you’re trying to fuck your mom. He doesn’t like how much attention you get.”

“What attention? Here’s how my conversations with my mom go: either she talks nonstop about herself and whatever new mumbo-jumbo horseshit she’s trying, like coffee enemas, and her flavor of the week—sorry, Cannon—or she’s asking me for money. That’s it, Zé. That’s the deep, rich relationship I have with my mom. You know what? If that goose-fucker wants all that attention, he can have it.”

Igz began to fuss, and Zé turned around in his seat to murmur to her, his hand rubbing her tummy. I drove, taking us out of our neighborhood and toward—well, I hadn’t decided yet. The beach, maybe. Laguna Beach. I started in that direction. I figured if I changed my mind, I could always drive us off a cliff later.

After a while, Igz settled down, and Zé turned forward.

“You don’t have to say anything,” I said.

He looked at me.

“I shouldn’t have raised my voice.”

I zipped through a yellow light. He still hadn’t said anything.

“I’m an asshole.”

“You don’t need to apologize for getting angry.” His hand rested on my forearm, the touch light, casual. I thought about his hands on my sides, pulling my body. I saw, in my mind, the cock-drunk look of that kid in the video. Oh no, I thought. Abso-fucking-lutely not. Zé was still speaking. “Anger is important. Anger helps us set boundaries. Your mom crossed an important boundary, and it’s good that you let her know how you feel.”

I was still so fixated on not thinking certain things—like how that messy, tousled hair would feel if I plunged my hand into it—that I forgot to watch my guard, and the words slipped out. “Augustus gave me that watch.”

“I heard you say that.”

I shook my head as Zé rubbed my arm, and I was surprised that my eyes stung. “I don’t even know why I care. It wasn’t a great watch. And it was my fucking money; the little wiener just picked it out. But he wanted to give me a Christmas present, and what was I supposed to tell him?”

Traffic thickened as we made our way to the beach, and our progress slowed. In front of us, a Bentley idled at a red light. A bumper sticker said STUDENT DRIVER.

“You have got to be shitting me,” I muttered.

Zé laughed. Then he said, “It sounds like he loves you a lot.”

“He’s an unretracted foreskin. Who the fuck knows what he’s thinking?”

We drove some more. Zé’s hand moved lightly on my arm.

“Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have dragged you out of the house. It’s your day off, and you’ve got stuff to do.”

“Not really.”

“I can drop you off at the house.”

“I’d like to spend the day with you.”

Not Igz. He’d said, With you . Not With you and Igz . Which didn’t mean anything, I told myself. He felt sorry for me. But it was a nice thing to say.

“I practically raised Augustus,” I said. Once again, the words seemed to slip out before I could stop them. “There’s almost eight years between us. His dad was out of the picture before his cock was dry; we have different dads, in case you hadn’t figured it out.”

“What about your dad?”

“He died.”

“Oh, Fernando.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sure if he’d lived longer, I would have realized he was a tremendous disappointment. My mom’s taste in men is un-fucking-real.” I adjusted the vents even though they didn’t need adjusting. “I was only three or four, I think, so I don’t remember much about him. He’d take me to the park; I remember that.”

“He must have been a good dad because he raised a good son.”

I shrugged. “He did stuff for me. All the stuff Mom didn’t want to do. And when he was gone, somebody else had to do it.”

When I looked over, the expression on Zé’s face was too intense, and so I focused on the road.

We drove around Laguna Beach for a while, looking for parking. It was crowded—it’s always crowded—but after a while, we lucked into a spot as a Honda Pilot was pulling out. I parked the Escalade, and we got Igz into her stroller. Zé did it, I mean. No fumbling with the buckles. No messing around with the straps. I tried to set up the stroller, and he was kind enough not to laugh as I made a jackass of myself. He made a gimme gesture with one hand, since he had Igz in the other, and then he did some sort of twist-yank-shove movement, and the stroller popped open.

“Are you a fucking ninja?”

“Fernando, I don’t have a lot of life goals, but I would be happy if Igz’s first word wasn’t fuck.”

I grinned. “Too fucking bad.”

He gave me a look as he got her settled in the stroller, but I was starting to be able to tell the looks apart. This one made me grin harder.

The buildings around the beach itself were a mix of styles—a lot of concrete and glass of Late Modernism, but some holdout, squat brick mid-century stuff, and, even older, Craftsman bungalows with shake roofs. They weren’t homes anymore, but now they housed coffee shops and bistros and little art galleries. There were microhotels and tiny two-story strip malls. There were yoga studios and places that did a million kinds of facials and clothing boutiques the size of a box of rubbers. All very charming. I fit right in.

We took our time walking toward the beach, stopping to window-shop, stopping again to get coffees, stopping because we found a little park, and the shade was nice, and the smell of the ocean mixed with the perfume of the trees in bloom. Something was bothering me (not, for a change, Mom), and it took me a while to put my finger on it. A pair of guys in expensive shoes and matching shorts stared at us as they passed. An elderly man smiled and nodded and made way too much eye contact. A woman in an enormous floppy hat stopped to coo over Igz, and as she straightened, told me—us—“You have a beautiful daughter.”

“They think we’re a couple,” I said out loud.

Zé laughed. He laughed hard. He laughed so hard, in fact, that he had to stagger in a circle, and then he winced and rubbed his knee, but he kept laughing.

“Go on,” I said. “Enjoy yourself. This is going to be a great fucking memory when you have a peg leg.”

Eventually, he stopped laughing. Not that I minded much. He had these perfect laugh lines that bracketed his mouth. He was usually so calm, so tranquil, and I enjoyed the way happiness made a riot of his face. And listening to him laugh reminded me how long it had been since, well, that had been part of my life. Since Augustus had left. And that had been years ago.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he rubbed his knee. “It’s, I thought you knew—I mean, that old guy winked at you.”

“He didn’t—”

Zé had a tiny, hidden grin.

“You assclown!”

“They think we’re a couple.” He repeated my words with what sounded like despair.

“Well, I didn’t know, weasel-dick. How the fuck was I supposed to know?”

But at the same time, it actually hadn’t been a surprise—more of a revelation, if I had to put a word on it. Like the pieces had been there, and my brain had been trying to put them into place. The way we walked next to each other. The way he caught my arm when he wanted to show me something. How he asked for something out of Igz’s bag, and I got it for him. How I’d put my hand at the small of his back to steady him when we went up the stairs to the coffee shop, and the feeling of firm muscle and warm skin. Everything, in fact, about how we moved around each other, shared each other’s space, talked and laughed. And then the part of my brain that was one hundred percent Fer added, Everything except fucking.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, but I could tell he still wanted to laugh. “Does it bother you?”

“Of course not. It should bother you. And you should definitely have higher standards.”

He smiled, but it was a strange smile, the amusement tempered with something else—something that, on anyone else, I might have registered as hurt. But all he said was “Why would it bother me?”

“I don’t know. I’m old. I’m out of shape. I look like I just rolled out of the laundry hamper. Should I go on?”

And I didn’t think, until it was too late, that I could have said—might have said— Because I’m straight .

But then, was I?

I’d told Augustus once that sexuality was a buffet, that you could try a little of everything. Because even back then I’d suspected. In elementary school, and in most of middle school, his friends were mostly girls. And although that had changed in high school, it was hard not to notice the rest of it: the horsing around with his friends, the excessive physical contact, the videos of them all going shirtless and pretending to make out. And that was fine; whatever made him happy, that was fine.

I’d always stuck to one side of the buffet, though (if you didn’t count that time I’d let Cesar spank it for me, or that insane chicken-choking episode from a few nights before, which I blamed entirely on that damn massage). I’d considered, at various times, the possibility that I was bi or pan or that I didn’t need a label. But that had always been theoretical. It was moot; it didn’t matter. Except now, of course, it did. Or I thought it might. If I wasn’t a complete and total moron, which, I know, was probably giving me too much credit.

Too late, I realized Zé had said something, and I’d missed it. What? What had he said? I’d been saying— I’m old. I’m out of shape— and he’d said something, and now he was looking at me, his eyes asking me something.

The silence had gone on too long, but for some reason, it only made him smile more. He touched my cheek and said, “Good God, Fernando,” and he laughed.

“What?”

He shook his head and raised the brakes on Igz’s stroller.

“What?” I asked again.

“You might be the definition of impossible,” he said as he got unsteadily to his feet and started to push the stroller out of the park.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

We were getting close to the beach when we passed a clothing boutique, and the idea hit me. When we went inside, the bell jingled. It smelled like patchouli and something resinous, and rows and rows of clothing racks and mannequins and shelving units made the space so cramped that the stroller barely fit.

A fancy boy with flawless skin unlimbered himself from a stool and slunk over to us. He gave each of us a long look, and then he settled on me. He gave me a smile with lots of beautiful teeth, and it registered at only slightly warmer than frostbite. With a hint of camp, he said, “Welcome to Into Summer. How can I help you gentlemen today?”

Zé was busy with something in the diaper bag, and, because he truly was a petty little bitch underneath all the saintly kindness, he was hiding a smile.

I knew I’d have to do it carefully. I knew, from how he’d responded when I’d basically had to blackmail him into accepting a place to live, that it wouldn’t be easy. But I thought, if I were careful, I could do it.

“I need some clothes for work,” I said. “Business casual stuff.”

“Of course, sir.” He made it sound like Daddy . “Right over here.”

“I didn’t know you needed clothes for work,” Zé said in a low voice.

“Is this okay? We’re not on a schedule or anything, are we? I want something new for that interview with Lou’s team.”

“Of course it’s okay.”

“You don’t mind helping me pick something out? I’ve lost some weight, and I want a few things that fit better.” That wasn’t a lie; Zé, for all his easygoing, surfer bum hair, for all his meltingly soft eyes, turned into a nutritional dominatrix the minute he set foot in the kitchen. Ten pounds in four weeks was a lot, but when this leather-and-stiletto bitch threw out all your ice cream and potato chips and, I shit you not, inspected your takeout for contraband, it wasn’t actually all that hard. In fact, it was kind of easy to lose weight with Zé in the house. All I had to do was not murder him every time I got hungry. “Normally,” I said, “I buy everything and then FaceTime Augustus. I put it on mute for the first ten minutes, and then I turn the sound back on and get something helpful out of him.”

The smile only touched his eyes. “I don’t mind.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure, Fernando.”

“It’s not weird?”

The smile in his eyes deepened, and he pushed me to get me moving. “You’re starting to make it weird.”

The fancy boy walked us through the men’s section, and at Zé’s advice, I got a pair of polos, a couple of button-ups, and two new pairs of chinos. They had a dressing room, and Zé refused to let me buy the clothes without trying them on. As I changed, I heard him making small talk with the fancy boy, although I couldn’t make out the words. Something made Zé laugh, though—more of the low, quiet, rolling laughter that I couldn’t seem to get enough of.

When I stepped out of the dressing room, Zé took one look at my face, smirked—an actual, honest-to-God smirk—and said, “None of your business.”

“Fuck you, you dicked-down horse dildo.”

The fancy boy gasped. Like, a Broadway-quality gasp.

Zé, though, only smirked some more and went to work inspecting the clothes. He ran his hand down my chest, smoothing the polo. He fixed the sleeves. He ran his fingers inside the waistband of the chinos and tugged, and for a moment, I had this weightlessness in my gut, and I remembered how he’d gripped my hips the other night, how easy it had been for him to move me. Zé pronounced the clothes acceptable and sent me back to change.

I took extra long, but I only managed to get myself down to a semi, and I was pretty sure the fancy boy noticed. Sue me. They were mesh shorts; what the fuck was I supposed to do?

“You’d look good in this,” I said, picking up a T-shirt at random. I handed it to Zé. “Try it on.”

He held it, and he was still as he looked at me.

I grabbed a pair of shorts. They weren’t board shorts, but that was a purposeful decision on my part. Zé had great thighs, and what the fuck good were they swimming around inside a pair of board shorts? These were black, and they had a nice cut, and they’d hit him mid-thigh, which was about perfect. “And these.”

He took the shorts. He still hadn’t said anything.

“Okay, I know it’s getting close to summer,” I said as I picked up a lightweight hoodie, “but you’re always cold in the mornings.”

“Fernando,” he said quietly. Not his usual quiet. This was ultraquiet, so low I was sure he didn’t want the fancy boy to hear us.

“I bet they have slides.”

“Fernando.”

His voice pulled on me. I looked him in the eye.

“This is sweet of you,” he said. “And I appreciate it. But I don’t need you to buy me clothes.”

“I didn’t say you needed me to buy you clothes.”

He was holding the T-shirt and the shorts all wrong, letting them hang from his hands like he didn’t know what to do with them.

“You helped me out,” I said. “The fashion advice, or whatever you want to call it. Let me pay you back.”

“Fernando,” he said again, this time with a note of exasperation.

“I want to do it.”

“Thank you, but no.”

“Why not?”

“I appreciate it. I do. You’re a generous person.”

“You wear the same shirt three or four times a week.”

“Fernando.”

“Your clothes all have holes in them.”

The fancy boy was drifting closer, drawn to the bloody chum of my rising voice.

“If you don’t like the style, fine. Pick out something else. Or we’ll go to another store.”

Zé turned to the fancy boy. “We’re ready to check out.”

“No,” I said. “We’re not. We’re having a conversation.”

“Igz and I will meet you outside.” He leveled a cool challenge of a look at me. “Unless you didn’t need to buy new clothes.”

I paid. And the clothes cost a fucking fortune.

Zé and Igz and I covered the last hundred yards to the beach in silence. The waves crashed. A gull cried. People thronged the beach, and their voices competed with each other—and, of course, with the music from portable speakers. Since this had been an impromptu trip to the beach-slash-escape from the house, we didn’t have any of the right gear. No blankets. No sunscreen, which I didn’t think about until Zé tugged the stroller’s little awning into place to cover Igz. Not even my sunglasses from the car. Zé was shading his eyes.

“Can you watch Igz?” His voice was its usual even calm. “I need to pee.”

I grunted and tried to find a way to stash the new clothes in the stroller’s cargo area—which was a losing battle because that diaper bag was so damn big. Zé moved off toward the public restrooms. He was limping. We’d walked a lot, and of course, I hadn’t thought about what that might do to his knee. He never said anything about it. He never complained. But the way he moved now—the unsteadiness, the stiffness—told me he’d been actively working to hide the strain.

Because he didn’t want to be a burden. That thought rang clearly in my head. Like he hadn’t wanted to accept the offer of room and board. Like he hadn’t wanted to accept the new clothes, even though I thought I’d done a pretty fucking fine job of making that seem casual. You do so much for—

I caught myself almost thinking our family . And that’s what I meant, of course. Igz and I were family. But it sounded different in my head. Like that wasn’t the family I was thinking of.

You do so much for all of us, I tried again. You cook and clean. You get up with Igz when you don’t have to. You gave me that massage (although the less said about that, the better). You found those weird taro chips and tried to convince me I’d like them, even though they tasted like cardboard ass. You make me laugh. I wake up in the morning thinking about things I want to tell you.

I texted Zé, We’re running a quick errand. Then I wheeled Igz around, and we crossed the street to a strip of shops facing the water. The closest one was a sunglasses store, and the guy working—white, twentyish, with a great tan and long, blond hair and off-the-radar fuckboy vibes—was happy to sell me a pair of sunglasses. I bought myself something cheap, another pair I could throw in the glove box, but I picked out a nice pair of Ray-Bans for Zé. They were the right shape for his face, I could already tell. As the guy put everything in a bag, I ran through my list of reasons. This is a gift, I’d say. I want you to have this because I’m grateful for all the things you do for our family. It wouldn’t sound as weird, I was pretty sure, when I said it out loud.

Igz and I found him in front of a surf shop. He was staring at a longboard in the display window—an elegant piece with a wood deck and impossibly perfect lines. We got closer, and he stood there, staring. A woman bumped him, and he shifted his weight, but otherwise he didn’t even seem to notice. I recognized the look on his face. I had one junkie brother and another I’d spoiled shamelessly (well, once I could afford to). I knew what pure, unadulterated desire looked like, and I was seeing it right then on Zé’s face.

“Do you surf?” I asked.

He startled, turned, and for a moment his face was blank. Then he looked like Zé again, and he bent to check Igz as he said, “It’s been a while.”

“Because of the surgery?”

His voice was guarded when he said, “Yeah.”

“Do you like that board?”

Zé’s laugh tried a little too hard. “Anyone would like that board. It’s one of the best longboards out there.”

“Let’s go in and look at it.”

I turned Igz toward the surf shop’s door, and he grabbed the frame of the stroller.

“What?” I asked. “It’ll be fun.”

“I think Igz might be hungry,” he said. “And I could use something to eat.”

“We’re going to look.” And then I grinned. “And maybe get an idea for your birthday present.”

“No.”

A couple of middle-aged beach bums, shirtless and leathery, passed us. One of them, I shit you not, was talking about “that gnarly wave.”

“It was a joke,” I said.

“I know. Why don’t we find somewhere to eat?”

“But if I want to buy you something for your birthday, I’m going to.”

He looked out at the water.

For some reason, that only made me angrier. I took the Ray-Bans out of the bag and tossed them, still in their case, toward him. He caught them reflexively.

“I bought you those,” I said.

“I don’t want you to buy me anything.”

“Too fucking bad. It’s my money, and I already bought them.”

Zé shook his head and held them out toward me.

“Then throw them away.”

He was looking at the ground now. A hint of red showed under the dark brown of his skin.

“They’re a gift,” I said. “Because I like you. And because I’m grateful for you.”

His voice was small when he said, “I don’t need you to buy me anything.”

“That’s the whole fucking premise of a gift, dick-drip.” It was hard to make a dramatic exit with a stroller, but I think I kind of managed it. “I’m going to change Igz.”

By some miracle, the public restrooms had a changing table in the men’s room. Igz fussed a little as I got her changed, and I thought Zé was probably right—she was hungry. When I came out of the restroom, Zé was standing there, still staring at the ground. He managed to look both miserable and pathetic. I started down the sidewalk. The jingle of a bell as someone sold ice cream out of a handcart. Children laughing. A gull screeching. Movement in the corner of my eye made me turn—the damn bird was flying straight at me—no, straight at Igz. I ducked, shielding Igz as I waved an arm, trying to knock the bird off course.

It didn’t come anywhere near us. I understood that as soon as my brain caught up with my body. The gull veered off, shrieking as it flew away. But my body didn’t care about that. My adrenaline was still up. I was starting to shake.

“Are you okay?” Zé asked. He was limping worse than ever, but he tried to jog to catch up.

“I’m fine,” I snapped. But the anger was fading along with the fear. “Jesus Christ, these fucking birds.”

“One time, one of them took a hot dog right out of my hand. I screamed like a girl.”

I laughed, and after a moment, Zé laughed too. He was still holding the sunglasses, but with his free hand he touched my arm, and then he leaned over the stroller to check Igz.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Apparently, I’m a flincher when it comes to seagulls. And I’m starving. And I’m mad at myself because I ruined our day.”

“Our day started with you yelling at me to get my stuff because you were in a fight with your mom.”

“You understand how that doesn’t make me feel better, right?”

That got me a real Zé smile, the slow one.

“Asshole,” I muttered. “Come on. How about there?”

There was a beachside cantina—barely more than a wooden frame, with three sides open to the beach. Inside, the aesthetic was driftwood and Modelo, and lazy ceiling fans spun overhead. I ordered a Modelo—hey, advertising works—and Zé got water.

As I unbuckled her, he said, “I’ll do it.”

“No,” I said. “It’s your day off.” And then, because Augustus comes by his pettiness honestly, I said, “I don’t need you to do extra work for free.”

Unhappiness etched his face, and he wrapped both hands around his glass.

Once I had Igz contentedly sucking down a bottle, I took a sip of my beer.

Zé held up one finger.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means.”

I took a longer drink.

“I’m serious, Fernando. You’re driving.”

I set the bottle down. It clinked against the wood.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Zé said, and his voice was so quiet that over the whoosh of the fans, I barely heard him. “It’s…hard for me.”

“You’ll have to be more specific, dick-drip. What’s hard for you? Because it sure doesn’t seem hard for you to boss me around and tell me what I can drink and, let me guess, what I can eat.”

“Either the shrimp tacos—grilled, not fried—or the beach salad.”

In spite of my best efforts, I smiled. “That’s got kind of a controlling vibe.”

“Or I guess it could be your cheat meal. You want a burger, don’t you?”

“I want you to tell me what’s going on. I’m not exactly a master of communication, but believe it or not, I picked up on some weird fucking energy a few minutes ago.” I took another drink of my beer and, after a minor struggle, added, “I’m sorry for shouting at you.”

For some reason, that made him smile, and he relaxed—those long limbs loosening, his shoulders opening. “Fernando, I don’t care if you yell at me. It’s kind of cute, actually.”

“No, it’s not. It’s terrifying.”

“If I cared about you yelling at me, I would have quit, like, the second day.”

“I was nice to you on the second day! I was nice to you the whole fucking time, right up until I caught you living like a sneak-ass bitch out of your car!”

“I was playing the xylophone with Igz, and you screamed—screamed, Fernando—from your office that you were on the phone, and maybe it could be musical playtime literally at any other point in the day.”

“Oh my God, I forgot about that.”

Zé wiped condensation from his glass with his thumb.

“But I didn’t swear,” I said.

“But the xylophone ended up in the trash.”

I burst out laughing. “I didn’t think you noticed that.”

He gave me those fuzzy, quirking eyebrows again, and I laughed harder.

“I don’t mind you yelling,” he said again. “Honestly, it doesn’t bother me. Or the language, although I wish you’d watch what you said around Igz. I—I’ve worked hard to be independent. That’s important to me. This isn’t about you. You’re such a good person. You’re so generous, so kind. I appreciate that you want to give me something. But I need to live life on my own for a while.”

I ran my thumb around the mouth of the bottle, tracing the ridges in the glass. “God, you ended up in the worst fucking family, then.”

“That’s another reason: you have all these people who need things from you. I don’t want to be another one of those people in your life. You’re already giving me a place to live—”

“That’s part of the job,” I said. “That’s your compensation. You earned that.”

He gave me a sad smile.

It took me a moment; my throat was tight, and I didn’t trust my voice. “I…appreciate that. Honestly, I do. You don’t know—” But I didn’t know either. Didn’t know how to finish that sentence. Didn’t know how to put into words how hard it was sometimes, or what it meant to have someone who didn’t want something from me. Didn’t know how to explain, even to myself, why Zé’s stubborn refusal to accept anything from me also awoke a baseline panic in me, why it made me feel, with doubled urgency, the need to find something, anything, to give him. I managed to add, “I’m sorry again. Sorry I ruined the day. I was having a nice day.”

“Even though people thought we were a couple.”

“Real fucking funny.”

That slow smile was spreading across his lips again.

I pointed my beer at him. “You should be so lucky, with that badger-fucker excuse you call a face.”

It only made him laugh, of course.

When the waiter came, I ordered the shrimp tacos. Grilled, not fried. Zé got ceviche. Igz was asleep in my arms, and I thought about putting her back in the stroller, but she felt good where she was, the weight of her grounding me. And maybe someone will think, again, that we’re together. That thought came out of nowhere, and when it did, I didn’t know what to do with it.

“You didn’t ruin our day,” Zé said, and it took me a moment to track the words back to what we’d been saying. He was playing with the napkin-wrapped bundle of silverware, tearing little strips off the paper. “We had an argument. But we worked it out, right? I mean, that’s an important part of any relationship. If we’re going to be in each other’s lives like this, we’ve got to know how to work out disagreements. And it’s good that we’re, you know, compatible. You can yell at me, and I don’t care. And then, when we’re both calm—well, you’re good at making me feel...safe. So we can talk. Even when I might not, you know, want to talk.”

“That was excruciating to listen to,” I said. “You know that, right?”

He threw some of the wadded-up paper at me.

“And give me a break. You’re the kindest human being in existence. Get into disagreements, Jesus Christ. I was an asshole. I’m always the asshole; I know that.”

“No, you’re not. I acted badly today.” Before I could respond, he rushed to ask, “But we’re okay, right?

“I don’t know. What are you going to do with those stupid sunglasses?”

The look he shot me was genuinely distressed, and I almost relented. But he was right about being in each other’s lives, and this was another thing we needed to figure out.

“Fernando.”

“I should be able to do something nice for you. I understand that you want to be independent; that’s great. I respect that, actually, because I had to do it, and I know how hard it is. But you do all sorts of things for me that go above and beyond your job, like—” And it almost slipped out: that fucking massage. Instead, I scrambled to course correct. “—taking care of Igz even after I get home, or waking up with her in the middle of the night, or watching her on weekends.”

“I’m happy to do those things. I like doing those things.”

“And I like doing nice things for you, dipshit!”

It was about a six out of ten on the roar scale, and Igz startled in her sleep but didn’t wake. People turned to look. I threw some dirty glances in every direction. One white lady who was up to her tits in rosé spritzes said, “How rude.”

When I turned back, Zé ducked his head to hide a grin.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s funny?”

The ceiling fans—and the white lady with her spritzes—made it hard to tell, but I was pretty sure he giggled.

“I will try,” I put emphasis on the word, “to keep the gifts to a minimum, because I know they make you uncomfortable. I hear you, okay? But it’s my money. And if I want to spend some of it on you, I’m damn well going to.”

He nodded, and although it looked like a struggle, he said, “Thank you.”

I watched him for a moment: that big, sprawling body; the long, strong lines; the way he’d giggled, and how young that had made him sound. I shook my head and smothered a smile. “Jesus Christ, Teixeira.”

He wrinkled his nose at that. “Oh God, the straight-guy last-name thing. No, no, no. We’re not fraternity brothers or golf buddies or high school football players.”

“Of course not,” I said, and for some reason, I picked up my beer, and it was empty now, of course, and I was thinking about how badly I needed another when I said, hearing myself from a long way off, “We’re friends.”