“Is that bad?”
She smiles, threads her fingers through mine, and pulls me closer.
“I love the smell of henna.” She kisses me again, but it’s barely more than a chaste peck. I want it to last longer. To get lost in it. In her.
But she pulls away and sighs. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Nishat.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean … this … you … I’m …” She shakes her head.
“Confused?” I remember when I felt like that too. I was confused because I couldn’t see the appeal of all the men that everybody else considered attractive. I could see it in an abstract, distant way I guess. But they never made my heart race the way that girls did. That girls do.
I guess I was less confused about what I felt than I was about what other people expected me to feel.
But how can Flávia be confused after she just kissed me like that a moment ago?
“Scared,” she admits finally. In a small voice. “Of telling people. Chyna.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I know what it’s like. Telling people. My parents … didn’t take it too well.”
“I told my mom.”
“You did?”
She nods. “A while ago. Last year … when … I mean. There was this girl …”
Something flares inside me that feels oddly like anger. Jealousy? I push it down as deep as I can, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible as I say, “Oh?”
“I mean, it was … different. From this, from you. Nothing happened. But I was confused and … I trust my mom, you know? We’re close. So I told her that … I don’t know. I said that I thought I might be bisexual.”
“And …?”
She smiles. “She was … I mean, I don’t think she was expecting it. And it took her a while to wrap her head around it. But I think she’s okay with it. She’s never made a big fuss or anything.”
“Oh, that’s … that’s good. I’m glad.” I am glad, but that feeling, something like jealousy, rears its head inside of me again, crawling through my skin and clawing at my heart. This time it’s not about some girl but about the way that Flávia seems so nonchalant about her mom not making a big fuss. I’m jealous that it’s come so easy to her, this revelation. When it has cost me my family.
Flávia tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and her fingers brushing against me sends heat scalding down my skin. We’re still so close to each other that we could touch at a moment’s notice. I have to get my thoughts back on track. Just the sight of her, the thought of her, sends me into a jumble.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“If you knew you were bisexual … why were you so weird after the Junior Cert party?”
She looks down at her stained orange palms like they will have the answer to my question. “Do you know any Brazilians, Nishat?”
“I know you.”
“Other than me?” She smiles.
There are a lot of Brazilians in Ireland, but in our school, Flávia is the only Brazilian girl I know of. So I shake my head slowly.
“Well … you know, it’s not exactly easy to be Brazilian here. When people think of Brazil, they think … I don’t know, futebol, Carnival, partying—whatever. And all the boys think because I’m a Brazilian girl, I’ll be up for anything. You don’t know the way they look at me, the things they say. And Chyna doesn’t get it. She kind of encourages it. After that party, I just kept thinking how much worse it would be if it was true that I was bisexual. Brazilian and bisexual? I would never hear the end of it.”
“I get it,” I say, even though I don’t think I really do. But I want to. I’m trying to. “Is Chyna really that important to you?”
“It’s not just Chyna …” she says hesitantly, like she’s really picking and choosing her words. “It’s just that … my mom brought me back here because she thought it would be good for me to get to know my dad and his side of the family. Even if they’re a little conservative. A little different from us. And … yes, Chyna and I have had this bond our entire lives. I don’t know how to explain it. I can’t exactly throw that away.”
Flávia might not understand it, but I think I do. After seeing the way they were together, with no inhibitions; that’s the way you are with people you love.
I don’t say any of this to Flávia. Instead, I say, “Family can be difficult. Complicated. I get it.”
She pulls me a little closer and says, “I’m sorry, Nishat. I’m going to try and take care of it.”
I’m not sure if she will, or even if she can. What I do I know is that I want this moment to last, to stretch into a million moments that we share. So I nod, choosing to believe her.
28
I WAKE UP ON SUNDAY STILL THINKING ABOUT KISSING Flávia. I’m buzzing with a kind of happiness that I haven’t felt in a long time. Sure, my parents are still super weird about my sexuality. And the entire school knows, and is actively whispering about me behind my back—when people aren’t doing things like refusing to use the same changing rooms as me. But none of that holds much weight right now.
Later that morning, Chaewon and Jess show up at the restaurant with bright smiles. It’s just me there. Priti stayed home, deciding not to emerge from her bedroom since breakfast.
“I’m ready to be beautified!” Jess exclaims, sliding into the booth and flipping through my design book. Chaewon rolls her eyes, but shoots me a grin.
“Have you had many customers yet?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Chyna … decided to have a party yesterday during the time my booth was open.”
“Seriously?” Chaewon asks. I shrug. After all, what else is there to say?
“We need to get back at them!” Jess bangs her fist against the table, before pulling her hand back and rubbing her fingers. “Hard table,” she says sheepishly.
I swallow a smile. “Come on, let’s forget about it, okay? You’re my first customers of the day!” Surprisingly, they drop the subject and let me apply henna to both their hands, from the back of their fingertips all the way up to their elbows. They look wedding-ready by the time I’m done. I even throw in a friends and family discount, even though they insist on paying the full price.
No other customers show up. I’m not exactly surprised, but I can’t help the disappointment that floods through me.
Flávia: Still at the restaurant?
Flávia’s text comes just as I’m packing everything up, ready to go.
About to leave! I type back. The three dots indicating Flávia is typing show up immediately, like she’s been waiting for me to text her back.
Meet me in town in 15?
So that’s how I find myself at Gino’s fifteen minutes later, sharing an ice cream with Flávia. It’s only forty degrees outside, so ice cream probably isn’t the best idea, but if the people in Ireland let the weather stop them from having ice cream they’d rarely get the chance to indulge in it.