His father didn’t like that Chico only had part-time work. His mother was excited to find out he’d been sewing, although she was less than enthusiastic about the fact that he wasn’t getting paid for it.
This led to an explanation about Davi wanting him to meet people, with a carefully glossed over account of Chico’s first weeks there and the reasons Davi had been determined to make him a part of the world again.
They didn’t mention John, not once, which was perhaps the biggest indicator of how they felt about him. When Chico had dated someone during his time at community college and it ended because Kevin had transferred to a four-year school several hours away, his parents had literally mentioned Kevin every time he’d seen them for at least six months.
The first day down, whenever his parents weren’t all over him, he spent time with one of his nieces. Camille, he was tickled to learn, had started taking a tap class. She was staying the night so her parents could have time to themselves, but instead of sleeping in the little beds the kids used, she curled up on the floor with Chico and fell asleep with her hand over his face.
She kicked him twice and kept trying to smother him in her sleep, but it felt good to have her there. He liked the separation and distance of being up north, but he’d missed his family too. And it was always nice to hand Camille off to his sister when Camille began to insist Chico watch the same pony video with her for the seventh time. When he asked what kind of costume Camille wore to dance class and if she was going to be in any recitals, his sister marveled at him before telling him regretfully they were supposed to buy their costumes.
His mother consented to being dragged to the fabric store for curtain material. Much like Mrs. Winters, Chico’s mom was excellent at feigning reluctance for something before she dove headfirst into it. She insisted on buying him fabric for curtains, and also something thick but pretty to line all his coats for the “terrible mountain winters” she thought he was going to go through. She asked polite questions about tutus although he could tell she wasn’t certain what to make of Chico’s interest in them.
Down an aisle lined with every shade of embroidery thread in the world, she turned to meet his eye.
“And men?” His mother managed to sound uncomfortable and interested in the subject at the same time. She never changed.
Chico busied himself with different shades of pink and didn’t look back at her. “Something I’m currently not able to talk about.” But he ran his thumbnail along his bottom lip. It did nothing to banish the memory he was trying to avoid. “If I talk about it, I’ll think about it, and I’m not the best at making those kind of choices, am I? So… just not thinking or talking about it. Sewing. That’s what I’m doing. Lots of sewing. I’m not so bad at that.”
“Is there a new one who is making you think this way?” His mother pulled herself up into an indignant posture. “You’re not bad at anything. My sweet Chico is excellent at everything he chooses to do.”
Chico glanced around before trying to wave her and her maternal pride down. “No! Mom. Oh my God. He doesn’t—that is, there’s no new one! We aren’t talking about this.”
“Ah, so I should call Davi.” She uttered that threat, then took the thread from his hand and dropped it into the cart.
Chico narrowed his eyes at her, but had no way to stop her from calling Davi. Davi, missing his own mom, would do anything his precious Auntie Glória said, and answer her every question.
“There’s no new one,” Chico muttered to her at last. “There is someone who got me sewing again. But he’s not new, not mine, and not something I should be trying after the last time anyway. Look at me, being sensible Chico.” He stuck out his jaw to prove he could be stubborn.
His mother raised her eyebrows after his declaration but then patted his hair. “Okay, baby. No talking.” She was going to call Davi anyway, probably before Chico had been in the car five minutes for his drive home. “But if you sew tutus, am I invited up to see them in use?”
“Of course!” Chico sputtered at her before realizing this meant she’d be driving up to visit him in Brandywine. So much for being sensible. “Okay,” he agreed a moment later, in the same tone she’d used. “But no talking about this. I mean it. I am being smart this time.”
His mother yanked him in for a rib-squeezing hug. “We’ll play it cool,” she assured him, way too pleased with herself for vowing to be cool. “I’ll tell your father. Leave it to me.”
Chico spent a few fleeting, panicked seconds imagining his father watching ballet, his father seeing Rafael and how he gazed at Chico, his father
knowing
, for all that he wouldn’t say a word. He shut his eyes as if that would make it all go away.
“As long as you’re happy, Francisco.” His mother planted a fat kiss on his cheek that made Chico open his eyes again. “And we miss you and want to see your new life.”
“I don’t have a life,” Chico grumbled at her, feeling about seventeen, but smiled when she stopped at a display of metallic thread.
Afterward she took him around to some of the relatives’ houses, where he was given coffee and enough sweet bread to satisfy him and Davi for a week. About the same time, he started getting notices on his phone from friends who must have somehow heard he was visiting, but he ignored them like he ignored every message from his traitorous cousin.
He did his best not to cry all over his dad when his dad packed his car for him, and he sniffled at his mother for giving him more food—fish she’d soaked the night before and cooked that morning, just for him. She protested when he took her pile of sewing and embroidery in need of repair with him, but it was a weak protest. He’d enjoy the busy work and do it well, and she knew it.
He did give in, tearing up a little in the car, since there was no one but other drivers to see him, but by the time he was an hour into the drive, his wet eyes were long gone. He was hungry and tired and sore from camping out on the floor next to a six-year-old, but he was going to be home in time to sit outside for a while, eat his fish, and think about everything he’d been avoiding thinking about for two days.
Like how he missed his family more than most of his friends, even though he hadn’t seen them every day when he’d lived in the city, so nothing had really changed. Maybe it was simply being around people who knew him, and let him care for them. Chico had been used to freely showing affection with people, once upon a time.
Back in Brandywine, he went up to his place without stopping to see Davi first. He sat outside while he went through the messages on his phone. Davi had been very drunk on Saturday night and apologized for it on Sunday morning, but he took the time to tell him Rafael hadn’t hooked up with anyone. Other people were sad they’d missed Chico’s visit south, annoyed he hadn’t said hi while he was there, and curious about what he was up to.
He needed another update on how his life was going but didn’t feel like sharing his stars again.
THE NEXT
day, on his lunch break, he called the number from the slip of paper he’d taken from the poster at the restaurant.
ETHEL WAS
possibly the most unpleasant person Chico had ever met, and he was including his ex in that list. An old lady of eighty-two, Ethel had pale brown skin and freckles and far fewer wrinkles than her gray hair indicated she could have. She complained about the sun in her face when she sat by the window, and then that she was cold in the shade. She had achy bones, she claimed, but moved pretty damn fast if someone offered her pudding.
She lived on her own but spent most of her days at the senior center doing puzzles with Alonzo. Alonzo had skin whiter than milk, with the veins showing through, and wore shorts in a way Chico’s grandparents would never do. He was seventy-eight, liked fishing, hunting, and apparently, back in his day, “sweet little things” like Chico.
Ethel had snarled at him for that one and called him a gross old man. Alonzo had retaliated by chuckling and telling her to go put her combat boots on, and it figured that when Chico had hesitantly offered to be a companion to some lonely older people, the man at the desk had sized him up in his spangled T-shirt and necklaces and sent him in to befriend the two old queers in the back.
Between this and the fact that towns in this area banded together to have their own Pride celebration, Chico figured there was some history around here no one had told him. He would have asked Alonzo and Ethel about it, but they talked about what they wanted to talk about and that was it.
Spending his afternoon with them instead of going to the studio wasn’t hiding. Chico firmly told himself that. Most of his work there was done anyway, and he was supposed to be interacting with more people than his cousin and Rafael.
And Rafael hadn’t slept with anyone, and Chico wanted to ask him why and touch him and kiss him again, and this was better than being that stupid. He was trying. He met people and spoke with them. He had a strange afternoon finding out Alonzo’s most serious boyfriend had died of AIDS, and Alonzo had been kicked out of their home by his boyfriend’s children and moved up here where the housing was cheaper, and that Ethel had lived up here her whole life and was related to the family who’d founded the town. The two of them liked to sit together and bitch about the activities the senior center “made” them do.
Chico assured them he wasn’t going to make anyone do anything. He couldn’t even if he wanted to.
“You’re not very bright, are you, sugarpuss?” Alonzo said as he petted the back of Chico’s hand. “You could make a man do anything.”
Ethel smacked Alonzo and scolded him for scaring away all the visitors, and Alonzo had promptly stopped being creepy, like his heart hadn’t been in it.
He scooted over to let Chico stare at the puzzle with them and tap the pieces into place for them when neither of them could quite manage to maneuver the smaller ones. Chico got them both some juice after a while and left before their bus came to take them home, and though he hadn’t really done anything, he smiled when they asked if he was coming back soon.
He went home, dropped off some foil-wrapped bread at Davi’s, and went to bed. He surprised himself by sleeping just fine.
It was only in the morning that he thought about how he might have been expected at the dance studio, and how John would have been pissy if Chico had gone off to do something without asking him first or telling him about it.
A SLOW
day at work meant he got sent home early, but he couldn’t make himself mind. Playing hooky from the dance studio had made him feel guilty about the outfits he’d left unfinished, so he went home to change and then walked over.
He had no idea what Rafael must have thought when Chico hadn’t shown up yesterday but now it felt like something to worry about. He could be thinking Chico had rejected him and everything to do with him. He could not have noticed Chico was missing at all. He could be angry. Or maybe he would be happy to see him and interested in what Chico had done with his free time.
With all that rattling around in his head, it was easy for Chico to let himself get distracted by the sight of the senior center bus parked in front of the studio. It might have been parked there on other days when Chico had shown up, but he hadn’t had any reason to think about it.
Now, he walked up to the entrance as five or six seniors shuffled off the bus, and fell into step beside Ethel.
“What is this? No one told me you guys came here,” he greeted her, while some of the other seniors turned and shushed him as though they were in a library.
“What are you doing here, sugarpuss?” Alonzo’s flirting was the opposite of light, but it didn’t make Chico blush. Anyway, Alonzo had a hold of Ethel’s arm, and he wasn’t letting go. “You don’t get to take my dance partner. Find your own.”
“Dancing?” Chico echoed, though of course they were there for dancing. They weren’t in yoga clothes, and anyway he could not picture Ethel tolerating anything remotely devoted to finding inner peace. “But don’t you guys already know all these dances?”
“We like dancing, and the rates are discounted.” Ethel glared at Alonzo without pulling away from him. They were dance partners and grouchy best friends for life, apparently.
Chico flapped his hands anxiously as they walked inside. “Who… who teaches you? Or shows you what you already know, I guess? Mr. Winters?” He looked up at the board. Another Look at Familiar Steps, with the subtitle “introductory and intermediate level,” was listed as the class of the afternoon.
“You interested?” Alonzo evidently decided he didn’t need Ethel after all. “I can sneak you in as my partner.” He leered dramatically. “You can pay me back later.”
Ethel shook her head. “You’re disgusting. Men are disgusting. Don’t listen to him,” she said, in an aside to Chico, as though he wasn’t a man too. Then she frowned grumpily while Alonzo tried to take her hand again.
Chico glanced down the hall toward the main dance space and followed the two of them through the office door. The office was once again unoccupied, but the door to the smaller practice room was open this time.
No music greeted them as they walked in, Chico trailing behind his seniors. “I’ll just watch for a while,” he said, justifying his presence to them, although they had no way of knowing why he’d be avoiding the rest of the studio.
“No one just watches. That isn’t how you learn to dance,” Rafael answered in his teacher voice, then stopped to stare up at Chico in wonder. “Chico,” he said, sounding surprised but not unhappy. Chico let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Rafael straightened from tying a shoelace on one of the old women’s sneakers. “What are you doing here?”
Rafael looked good, on the verge of needing a nap, maybe, but the performance was in a few days and here he was teaching a class he wasn’t supposed to be teaching. He had on a blue shirt that made his eyes look amazing, and he was smiling at Chico as if he couldn’t be happier. Maybe he had thought Chico wouldn’t come back.
One kiss—a few kisses—weren’t going to scare Chico off.