“Look, Caio,” Becky interjects. “I know you love me, but tomorrow it’s just me and her,” she says with a wink.
Caio pretends to be offended and puts his arm around my shoulder.
“We don’t care, do we, Lipé? Tomorrow it’s also just me and him,” he says, and from the sound of his voice, he’s a little drunk.
I am, too, but that doesn’t stop me from breaking into a cold sweat because Caio is practically hugging me. To my disappointment, the moment only lasts three seconds. Caio lets go of me, almost tripping in the process, and then jumps on Becky to say goodbye.
“Don’t you dare go forgetting I exist, you hear me?” he says, his face shoved against his friend’s neck.
“I never do,” Becky responds.
We say goodbye to the girls and make our way home. I’m surprised when Caio puts his arm around my shoulders. I’m a few inches taller, so he has to walk on the tips of his toes.
All of a sudden, I feel brave again. I can feel the adrenaline running through my body from the top down. I take a deep breath, raise my arm, and let it fall around Caio’s shoulders, too. We’re hugging each other now.
We need to stop walking because, for a moment there, we’re a tangle of arms, and even walking is challenging in this position. But he won’t remove his arm, and I won’t, either.
Caio looks me directly in the eye and stomps his right foot on the ground, and I immediately understand what he wants to do. We go the rest of the way in coordinated steps.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Right.
When we get home, I do my best to heed my mother’s orders. I try to open the front door quietly and, as expected, fail. Caio whispers something I don’t understand, and I burst into quiet laughter for no reason.
After a few frustrated attempts at getting the key into the right hole, I manage to lock the door and head to the bedroom while holding Caio straight, since he’s trying to bump into every wall in the house. I throw myself on the bed, and Caio stands in the doorframe.
“I need water,” he says in a low voice.
And before I can say anything, he starts ambling down the hall. When my head touches the pillow, the world begins to sway. I try to find the lonely star on the ceiling, but the booze multiplies it into multiples. An entire constellation in my own room.
“I brought you some,” Caio says, coming in and closing the door behind him. He seems a little more sober, but when he takes a step forward to hand me the glass, he trips on a shoe that is lying on the floor, falls on his knees on his mattress, and spills the entire glass of water all over it.
The mattress softens the landing, which is great because the last thing I’d like to deal with now would be a hurt Caio. Or a broken glass.
“Is everything okay?” I whisper.
And Caio starts laughing.
This laughter is different from all the laughter I’ve ever heard coming from his mouth. The last few days have made me an expert in Caio’s laughter, and this is a first. It’s high-pitched but controlled. He’s trying to be quiet, but at the same time needs to let it out. When he tries to catch his breath, he grunts like a pig, exactly like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, and that gets me, too. I shove my face into my pillow and laugh until my belly hurts. In a situation not involving three or five cans of beer, this wouldn’t be that funny.
Suddenly, my face still against the pillow, I can feel a presence. I snap my head up, startled, and find Caio squeezed at the end of my bed. I’m not very good with numbers, but I believe 40 percent of his body is touching mine as he shoves me against the wall in his attempt to conquer more mattress space.
I go quiet. My head, which just a minute ago wouldn’t stop spinning, is now aware and alert. It’s as if I’d pushed a button that removed all the alcohol from my body in one second.
Satisfied with the space he took over, Caio turns to face me. His breath is heavy, and I can smell the alcohol on it. His eyes are wide open, but each blink lasts some time, as if he is fighting sleep. His hair is plastered against his sweaty forehead, and almost all his shirt buttons are undone.
“I’m not sleeping on that wet mattress,” he says, his face so close to mine that I can’t even see his mouth. All I can see are his eyes.
Caio lets out another piglike laugh. But this time I don’t laugh along.
“It … it’s okay. Y-you can have my bed. I’ll go down there,” I stammer.
I try to get off the bed (which is really hard when your head feels like it weighs about two tons), but Caio is quicker. He pushes my shoulders down, making me lie back in bed.
“No,” he says. “Stay here with me.”
And I do.
Caio leans his head against my shoulder and closes his eyes. I lie there, looking at the ceiling, not quite understanding what’s happening. I feel his chest go up and down in heavy breaths. I feel my heart hammering in my chest as if a band were marching through it.
My arm starts to go numb, but I don’t want to move. Because I don’t want this moment to end. So I close my eyes and think about how nice it would be to sleep like this every day, and suddenly I’m already asleep.
I WAKE UP EARLY AND it takes me a while to understand all that’s happening. My back hurts, my clothes are drenched in sweat, and my breath tastes like a mix of beer and corn. My head itches, and when I try to raise my hand to scratch it, I notice that my arm is stuck. Under Caio. Who’s still asleep. In my bed, in case that part was unclear.
You know all the things I said about Caio being a gorgeous sleeper? I guess they don’t apply when he spent the night before drinking. Caio’s mouth is open, and he’s snoring loudly, leaving a streak of saliva on my sleeve. Surprisingly, I’m not grossed out by it.
As carefully as I can, I pull my arm out slowly, holding his head so the movement won’t frighten him. I drag myself to the end of the bed, trying not to be loud, and stand up.
And that’s when the pain hits me.
I feel it in my eyes first, then it moves up through my head before looping around to the back of my neck. I feel a throbbing pain as if a gong were going off inside my head.
I check the digital watch on my nightstand. It’s not even eight o’clock yet. I walk toward the kitchen, prepared to take anything from the cupboard that will make this headache go away. I walk down the hall quietly, but as soon as I get there, I realize my discretion was pointless. My mom is awake, painting in silence.
“Sit down,” she says, not looking at me.
I sit on the chair in front of me. On the table I find a glass of water and aspirin.
“Hnnhn” is my attempt at saying “good morning.”
My mom puts her brush in a glass of water, cleans her hands on the hem of her shirt—which is already smudged with paint—and sits down across from me. With a grave expression on her face, she pushes the water and the pills toward me, and I take them. The feeling of water running down my throat already makes me feel considerably better.
“Look, Felipe. I don’t want to turn this into a lecture about drinking,” she says.
“What do you mean?” I try to play stupid because I can’t think of anything better.
“I know you’ve been drinking. From the moment you got here, from the two hundred tries it took you to unlock the door, from the way your clothes smell. I know.”