“Yeah, you did.”
“And now you’re using it against me.”
“Looks that way.” I shot him a look. “Don’t your parents get a say in this?”
“Not if I can help it.”
He walked up to his desk and took out a yellow legal pad. He threw himself back on the bed. “These are the names I have so far: Rafael—”
“Nice.”
“Michelangelo.”
“That’s nuts!”
“This from a boy named Aristotle.”
“Shut up.”
“I don’t do ‘shut up.’ ”
“Like I hadn’t noticed.”
“Ari, are you gonna hear me out? Or are you gonna editorialize?”
“I thought this was a conversation. You always tell me I don’t know how to talk. So I’m talking. But I’ll shut up. Unlike you, I know how to do that.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said.
“Look, just listen to the list, and then you can throw in your irony and sarcasm after I’m done.”
“I don’t do irony.”
“Like hell you don’t.”
God, I wanted to kiss him. And kiss him and kiss him and kiss him. I was going fucking nuts. Did people lose their minds when they loved someone? Who was I? I didn’t know myself anymore. Shit.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll shut up. Read the list.”
“Octavio. Javier. Juan Carlos. Oliver. Felipe or Philip. Constantine. Cesar. Nicholas. Benjamin. Not Ben, but Benjamin. Adam. Santiago. Joaquin. Francis. Noel. Edgar. That’s what I have so far. I’ve eliminated all the ordinary names.”
“Ordinary names?”
“John, Joe, Michael, Edward, etc. What do you think?”
“You do know a lot of those names sound very Mexican.”
“What’s your point?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Look, Ari, I want him to be Mexican. I want him to be all the things that I’m not. I want him to know Spanish. I want him to be good at math.”
“And you want him to be straight.”
“Yes,” he whispered. I couldn’t stand to see the tears running down his face. “Yes, Ari, I want him to be straight.” He sat up on his bed, covered his face with his hands—and cried. Dante and tears.
I sat next to him and pulled him close to me. I didn’t say anything.
I just let him sob into my shoulder.
Eleven
ALL NIGHT I DREAMED OF Dante. Of him and me.
I dreamed his lips. I dreamed his touch. I dreamed his body.
What is this thing called desire?
Twelve
I WAS DOING MY HOMEWORK at the kitchen table when my dad came in, looking tired and sweaty. He shot me a smile—and just then he looked young again.
“How was work?”
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night—”
I interrupted him and finished his sentence: “—stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
My father looked at me. “So you’ve memorized our motto?”
“Of course I have. I memorized it when I was seven.”
It seemed like he was on the edge of tears. I was almost certain that my father had felt like crying many times in his life—it’s just that he kept his tears to himself. I was a lot like him. Sometimes we couldn’t see what was right in front of us. Things had changed between us. I thought I hated him—but that had never been true. And I thought he didn’t give a damn about me. But I knew now that he’d thought about me, worried about me, loved me in ways that I would never fully understand.
Maybe he’d never kiss my cheek, like Dante’s father did. But that didn’t mean he didn’t love me.
“I’m gonna take my shower.”
I smiled at him and nodded. His ritual shower. He did that every day when he came back from work. And then he poured himself a glass of wine and went outside and smoked a couple of cigarettes.
* * *
When he came back into the kitchen, I had already poured him a glass of wine. “Is it okay if I sit with you in the backyard? Or is that kind of your private time?”
He walked toward the refrigerator and grabbed a can of Dr Pepper. He handed it to me. “Come and have a drink with your father.”
My father. My father, my father, my father.
Thirteen
Legs and I went for a run in the morning. And then I bathed her—and then I took a shower. I got to wondering about bodies and, well, I don’t know, I got myself all worked up. See, this love thing, it’s not just a heart thing, it’s a body thing too. And I wasn’t all that comfortable with the heart thing and I wasn’t all that comfortable with the body thing either. So I was screwed.
I thought about Dante all the damned time. And it was making me crazy and I wondered if he thought about me all the damned time too. Not that I was going to ask him. I. WAS. NOT. GOING. TO. ASK. HIM.
* * *
“Wanna go swimming?”
“Sure.”
“How’d you sleep, Ari?”
“That’s a funny question.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I slept fine, Dante.”
“I didn’t.”
I didn’t want to have this conversation. “Well, you’ll sleep better tomorrow. I’ll send Legs over. You can sleep with her. I always sleep better when she’s next to me.”
“Sounds good,” he said. There was a hint of disappointment in his voice. And I thought maybe he would rather have me sleeping next to him than Legs. I mean, did guys go over and sleep with their girlfriends right under their parents’ noses? Nope. They didn’t. Sleeping next to Dante in his parents’ house? Not going to happen. In my house? No. Hell no. Shit!
People say that love is like a kind of heaven. I was beginning to think that love is a kind of hell.
* * *
My mom was drinking a cup of coffee and looking over some notes.
“Writing a new syllabus?”
“I don’t like teaching the same class in the same way over and over.” She looked right at me. “You were dreaming last night.”
“Well, I’m like that.”
“You’re fighting a lot of battles, Ari.” She got up and poured me a cup of coffee. “You hungry?”
“Not really.”
“You really love that boy, don’t you?”
“That was a pretty direct question.”
“Since when have you known me to be indirect?”
I sipped my coffee. My mom knew to how make good coffee—but her questions were impossible. There was no escaping her and her questions. “Yeah, Mom, I guess I do love that boy.” I didn’t like the tears that were running down my face. “Sometimes I don’t know who I am, Mom, and I don’t know what to do.”
“No one’s an expert at living. Not even Jesus knew everything. You ever read the Bible?”
“You know I don’t.”