“A toast!” Becky says, nodding at my can.
“Ah, yes,” I say, picking up the can and trying to act naturally—to not make it obvious that I’ve never had beer in my life.
“To festivals in the square that are kind of meh, but I love them, anyway!” Becky announces, raising her can.
“To forró bands that play the same four songs the whole night!” Caio adds, touching his can to Becky’s.
“To my hair, which looks beautiful but will, in a few seconds, stink like barbecue smoke,” Melissa cheers, shaking her ponytails.
“To corn on the cob, the best thing at this festival,” I say timidly, but it makes me happy when the three of them laugh.
Caio takes a gulp of his beer, then I take a deep breath and do the same.
I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty bad. Bitter and strong, and it must not be my lucky day, because mine is warm. I grimace so hard that Becky notices right away.
“You’ve never drank before, have you?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“I swear it tastes better with time, and not all of them are warm like this. Warm beer tastes like piss.”
I shrug as if I don’t care and keep sipping little by little.
The band starts to play and we have to raise our voices to hear one another. We spend some time listening to Mel and Becky talking about their relationship. Mel’s grandparents live in town, so she uses that as an excuse to come see Becky. They say weekends are always too short, but love trumps distance. I smile when they say that, but deep down I find it a little cliché.
“How did you two meet?” I ask them.
“I love that story! Tell him, tell him!” Caio says excitedly, poking Becky’s arm.
“It was Carnival, and fate brought Melissa to town—” says Becky.
“Fate, in this case, being my grandparents’ anniversary,” Melissa interrupts.
“I prefer to call it fate,” says Becky. “Long story short: Caio and I came to a street party in this very square. It was seven o’clock, and his mom was already calling him desperately, telling him to come home, and Caio, always the softy, just left. Totally abandoned me here, by myself, at the most depressing street party of all time.”
“Draaaama,” Caio says softly, in a high pitch.
“Then I stumbled upon her,” Becky says, wrapping Melissa in her arms. “Literally.”
“I had lost one of my contacts,” Mel says. “I knelt down, certain that I could find it. Becky apologized a thousand times for bumping into me. I said it was fine, but that I had to find my contact. And you know what she said to me?”
“ ‘You’ll never find it. You can stop looking now and kiss me instead,’ ” Becky answers right away.
I laugh out loud. “And did you?”
“I stared at Becky from up close because I couldn’t see very well,” Mel continues. “Then I covered my left eye to try and get a better look and she said, ‘I know you can’t see very well, but I swear I’m pretty.’ So I kissed her.”
“And it was the best kiss in the world. I’d have kissed her forever, but after a few minutes someone threw a beer can at my head because this shitty town would rather see a public hanging than two girls kissing,” Becky says. “And speaking of beer …” She gets up and doesn’t finish the sentence.
And I know she went to get more.
That’s when I realize that, as I was listening to their story, I finished my can. At some point, the beer went from being really bad to acceptable.
“Now I want to hear your kissing stories,” Mel says to Caio and me, propping her elbows on the table as if she is getting ready for a long and captivating tale.
The question throws me off, and my thought process goes more or less in this order:
She wants to hear the story of how Caio and I kissed?
Probably not, as we never have.
Which is a shame.
So she wants a general kiss story, is that right?
Which is still kind of panic inducing, considering I’ve never kissed anyone.
Before I can think of how to get myself out of the situation (grabbing some corn on the cob on the way), Becky comes back with more beer, and Caio is already talking.
“So, I have a kiss story. But it’s not a beautiful one like yours. It’s kind of depressing, actually,” he says, a little embarrassed.
“I love depressing stories!” says Mel, with an exaggerated expression that I can’t tell if it’s genuine or a joke.
“Last year, Becky and I went to the next town over, to an alternative club,” Caio starts, but he’s soon interrupted by his best friend.
“Worst. Club. Ever,” she says. “We had to dupe Caio’s parents and get fake IDs that in the end we didn’t even need, and the DJ only played David Guetta.”
“And that wasn’t even the worst part!” Caio adds, trying to hold back a laugh. “When I realized the party was going to be a disaster, I decided I was going to kiss the first person who showed any interest in me. I ended up kissing this boy named Denis. He was kind of cute, actually …”
“He was not,” Becky interrupts again.
“But Denis’s kiss was the worst thing I have ever experienced in this life,” Caio goes on, disregarding Becky’s interruption. “The big problem was, Denis liked to bite while kissing, and I don’t know who came up with this idea that biting and kissing should mix, because they shouldn’t. Denis was just chewing on my mouth for like five minutes until a Black Eyed Peas song came on, and I had to pretend I liked it. I said, ‘Ohmygod, I gotta dance ’cause this is my jaaaaam!!!’ And then I went on to dodge the guy for the remainder of the night.”
Becky and Mel are laughing along, and I have a tight smile on my face as I’m trying to delete the mental picture of Caio’s mouth being chewed on by another guy. Whose name is Denis. Who most certainly is not fat.
“Your turn to tell us a kiss story, Felipe! Good or bad,” Becky says, and the three of them stare at me.
I’m nervous and exasperated and feel like disappearing. In the background, I notice the band is playing a forró cover of Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” which is at the same time horrible and wonderful.
I take a deep breath and a long gulp of my beer, then tell them the first story that comes to mind.
“I have a great-aunt, Lourdes, who comes to town every year for All Souls’ Day. One time, when she came to say goodbye, I moved in for two kisses, one on each cheek, but she surprised me with that old saying, ‘You need three if you want to get married!’ Which doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. I wasn’t expecting a third kiss, so I turned my head by accident, and that’s how I ended up kissing my sixty-four-year-old great-aunt on the lips,” I say.
Everyone goes silent.
The next second, the three of them are guffawing. And I start laughing, too, because what else can you do after admitting to having kissed your great-aunt on the lips?
I look at the beer cans on the table, and I’m overcome with gratitude. Because if it hadn’t been for the beer, I doubt this story would actually be funny.
We share stories for the rest of the night. Some are really fun (the time Caio’s dad gave him his mom’s Christmas present by accident, and Caio opened the box to find a red lace thong and decorative candles), while others are tragic (like when Mel had to get an emergency heart surgery right on the day of her college admission exams, so she couldn’t take the test and ended up with a huge scar on her chest).