Now kiss me you fool!

Joe doesn’t hate Christmas, but he hates that every year Christmas is everywhere until he feels like he can’t breathe anymore. Every December he misses Booker and his campaign against ‘Christmas egemony’. Nowadays he can count on Andy, who is as atheist as it gets, until Andy leaves to spend the holidays with Quỳnh and her family. Quỳnh’s family is hilariously different than Andy, but they love her and respect her boundaries, especially when Andy misses her own sisters and all the other people she has lost.

Yusuf lost people too. He still has his mother, but this year he hasn’t visited her in a while, he won’t risk her getting sick. Christmas doesn’t mean anything to him, but now that he’s sad, his mood is a brusque contrast with the forced cheernes of the holiday decorations all around him.

Yusuf meets Nicky again during a period of dull sadness, where days blur together in a smudge of ash gray paint. Yusuf’s sadness is the underlying stream in his own heart, the secret foundation of the way he acts around people. Yusuf is kind, funny, warm; he tries to live surrounded by people he loves to make the stream quieter.

He’s waiting in line in a small supermarket perennially populated by a scarce pack of old Italian ladies when he sees a man walking, a white mask covering half of his face and a black hat to hide ears, hair and forehead. What’s left to see is a pair of eyes, even the hands are gloved. If it wasn’t Nicky, Yusuf would never be able to recognise the man. But it’s Nicky, and his Nicky-ness is unmistakable: he walks with his hands in the pockets of a green jacket that looks a bit too short and too light for the weather. A striped scarf circles his neck and it’s so Nicky –Nicky loves scarves and knitting– that Joe’s heart screams again: it can’t be anyone else. 

The man’s walk is the same as years ago, not too fast but not slow either, without pauses, eyes fixed in front of him as if he’s following a distant light. It’s Nicky in the broad shoulders and the nice built, in the way he doesn’t cross the street because the light has just turned yellow. It’s Nicky in the way he looks up to the dark blue sky and the streetlights that make everyone look a sick yellow. It’s Nicky with an ugly brown bag that looks heavy and old, the leather frayed by use. 

It’s Nicky. 

Joe doesn’t panic. He is elated, his heart is on the verge of exploding because it’s trying to hold inside too many feelings and memories. He feels as much as he remembers how happy he was in the morning when they were in high school together, when Joe turned around the corner and could see Nicky waiting for him by a lamppost in front of the school. He remembers and feels again the thrill of seeing Nicky while the other didn’t know he was already there. The moment when all Joe could think about was the day awaiting them, the hours they could spend together. The moment before Joe ran to Nicky and hugged him from behind, laughter shaking him even before hearing Nicky’s scream of surprise, Nicky’s feeble attempts at avoiding Yusuf’s grip. 

This is what will make him panic in a moment, this surge of feelings. Joe remembers everything. His love for Nicky is stored in a secret place that sadness can’t change. 

Joe pays quickly, almost giving the poor woman behind the counter dollars instead of euros, but he still loses precious seconds helping the frail lady after him packing her food in a trolley. The lady rewards him with a suspicious look and a spark of mirth in her eyes, like she’s thinking she didn’t need any help and Joe is being charmingly ridiculous. Still, Joe hopes she’s smiling under the blue mask. 

He runs, careful not to break the eggs and the bottles of tomato sauce and olive oil, but soon he realises he doesn’t really care much about the eggs, so he runs faster. Does he really want eggs tonight? (Nicky likes only the white of hard-boiled eggs because he’s secretly a flavourless freak.)

He can’t miss Nicky. Joe prays like he hasn’t done in a really long time.

Joe turns the corner and Nicky is looking at him, waiting. At first he doesn’t realise that Nicky has stopped walking and is looking right at him, but then Nicky takes a step in his direction and Joe stops abruptly, plastic bags swinging slightly. He ran after Nicky like a madman, but he doesn’t have the strength to take the final steps and fill the distance between them. Distance which is approximately two meters, three exes, two years. A thousand moments spent missing him but never calling.

“Yusuf,” Nicky says, and his smile is visible despite the mask. He sounds so happy, the right kind of surprised. 

“Nicky, it’s you. I recognised you–”

“I saw you running–”

They stop at the same time, smiles frozen in place. Then Nicky shakes his head: “It really sucks that I can’t hug you. Doesn’t feel fair.”

“I know. But I am so happy to see you.”

“Me too,” Nicky answers immediately, voice charged with emotions. This is who Nicky is, small words for big feelings. Joe misses him again in a pang of past emotions. 

“What are you doing back here?” Nicky asks, “Let me help you with the bags, I can walk you home.”

“Stay for dinner.”

Joe is a bit drunk off Nicky’s presence, Nicky tangible and alive beside him. Quarantine reduced his social life to video calls, leaving loneliness as the main guest sitting with him in front of the tv. Now Nicky is there and Joe’s heart stops beating when he takes one plastic bag from Joe’s hand.

“I can’t, I have errands to do. I would love to, though.”

Of course Nicky can’t stay. He has a life —a boyfriend, Joe wonders—, but then Nicky clears his throat and adds: “I actually have to buy presents for my nephews and I am terribly late.”

“Oh,” Joe remembers Nicky’s nieces as small babies crying in Nicky’s arms and then in a photo Nicky sent him a few months before. “How old is Matteo again?”

“Matte is 7, Giacomo is 5. Matte draws, he is very good,” Nicky looks at Joe with softness. “Do you still draw?”

“Yes. I do it for a living, actually.”

“I want to see your work then.”

They’ve started walking towards Joe’s rented flat, Nicky always a little behind on the narrow sidewalk. They both act with genuine enthusiasm but struggle with the awkwardness of the mundanity of their meeting, there is no moving soundtrack to fill the silence, only the sound of their shoes jumping over the puddles in the concrete. Joe thinks that they both want to go back to old times, so they could. No one is stopping them from acting like it’s been three months and not two years since they last saw each other, but it’s not that simple.

Nicky looks at him every time Joe looks away. At least this old dance that hasn’t changed.

“I could help you find something for Matte?”

Nicky bumps shoulders with him, and Yusuf doesn’t have to see his face to know Nicky’s smiling.

•

Memory is fickle. It fails under the weight of the memories and the feeling stitched to them. Yet Joe remembers everything. And it seems that Nicky does the same.

“For dinner nothing with bell peppers, right?”

Yusuf blinks. Nicky’s cheeks redden.

“I thought—”

“You’re right. No bell peppers.”

•

Nicky cooks in Joe’s flat. He insists he has to be the one doing the cooking because Joe helped him with the gifts for the kids, and it’s true. Nicky is terrible with gifts, Joe stopped him from buying a stuffed horse that looked possessed by a the ghost of a Victorian widow —Joe’s words. Nicky put the horse back on its shelf, looked at it, then whispered: “Oh, God, I can see her.”

“Don’t disturb Miss Havisham any longer. Buy these pencils for Matte instead.”

“Joe, these are perfect!”

Joe is shaken by each smile Nicky gives him. He holds them close to his heart when he goes to sleep, replaying Nicky’s words in his head over and over until they lose meaning.

Nicky, looking at him over a plate of pasta, eyes bright. I really missed you.

Nicky remembering there are few things Joe hates more than doing the dishes, so they split the work. I am sorry I stopped calling.

Nicky hugging him right before leaving. We should do this again. Call me.

•

Nicky calls again the next day. And the next. And the one after that. Joe answers every time.

It’s weird, existing during a pandemic. Joe has never walked this much in his everyday life, he usually had to drive, but now he has nowhere to go –he works from home– and Nicky joins him in his wandering strolls, agreeing with him that they can’t become one with their sofas and turn into netflix amoeba. 

They visit all the parks around Joe’s neighbourhood, which are not many, then move to the area around the city centre, where Nicky lives in a small flat with a window facing the Asinelli tower. Joe visits the flat and takes too many pictures of the red roofs and the two towers, but his favourite shot of the day turns out to be one of Nicky, leaning on the wall holding a cup of tea with two hands, head turned to look outside the window. Winter light is perfectly white that day as if it’s snowing: it paints Nicky in little strokes of muted colour, and Joe’s heart aches and feels... not colder. Just a bit lonely. Wanting. 

Joe realises he’s living more than he’s remembering. He goes back to knowing every little detail of Nicky’s face, every lilt of his accent. He feels sad only when he reminds himself that Nicky’s smiles don’t mean anything, just like the thrill he feels when their hands brush and Nicky’s hand lingers.

Days become weeks and it’s Christmas Eve when Nicky has to say goodbye for a few days, he’ll stay with his parents for the festivities. There’s a broken moment when Nicky takes one step more than usual and words get stuck behind his teeth as he says goodbye.

 “Joe, do you remember...” he looks at Joe searching for answers, for clues. Joe fears Nicky can read him too well, he isn’t good with secrets. “...never mind.”

Joe chases those missing words in the air, but Nicky’s mask is already back on his face, green eyes unreadable.

“Just wanted to ask you if you were free the 26th.”

•

Nicky is shit at gifts. Joe’s birthday is the 27th, at the edge of the new year. They both act like they don’t know it is a few hours away, which makes their meeting after Christmas more awkward than usual.

Nicky keeps looking at him, eyes unblinking. 

“You really look like an owl right now,” Joe laughs. Nicky is sitting on a bench in their favourite park, but the wood is frozen and damp so he is actually perched on the bench, hugging his knees to gain balance on his heels. He’s wearing the black hat with flaps Andy got him from Russia, and his nose is red from the cold. He is weirdly adorable.

“Don’t make fun of me, I am freezing.”

Nicky waited for him for half an hour because he is always early or late, never on time, and Joe wants to take Nicky’s hands in his to warm them. Even if they held hands briefly a week before, when Joe wanted to show Nicky a shop window and the other wasn’t fast enough to follow his directions, Nicky wore gloves at the time. Joe thinks quarantine is making all of them a bit crazy. He could die from hand holding. 

He doesn’t take Nicky’s hand, but they start walking aimlessly as usual —they have a usual again, what a wonderful thing— and Nicky says: “I missed you,” like it’s a terrible truth, because Nicky is made of absolutes.

Joe feels a what if waking in his ribcage, its eyes blinking open again after too many years. A what if with Nicky would be shaped like a cat, Joe thinks, not like a bird ready to fly away, not scary, not smouldering, not insincere.

When it comes to Nicky, Joe still thinks in poetry.

“I wrote poetry for you when we were in high school,” Joe confesses, he has always been brave. Nicky rewards him with a stunning blush on his cheeks that has nothing to do with the cold. They choose the path that leads to the open gates, where a busy street separates the park from one of the doors left from the medieval walls of the city, and the city centre. 

“You never told me,” Nicky sounds hurt.

“It was private,” Joe defends.

“Not if it was for me.”

“I wasn’t out. You were my only friend.”

“Everyone liked you,” Nicky corrects him, but his words lack their usual drive. Maybe ‘Everyone liked you’ isn’t what he really wanted to say. 

“You were the only friend that mattered.”

“I wouldn’t have been ready, you know that, right?” Nicky waits until Joe is looking at him, eyes worried. “Even if I loved you and couldn’t bear the thought of living without you. Even if you are my best friend. It wasn’t the right time.”

“I knew you didn’t reciprocate my feelings,” Joe exhales. Joe is sure that if he turned around quickly, he would see seventeen year old Joe, curls wild and heart in pieces hearing Nicky’s worde. He would see the Joe who kept his eyes open while Nicky played, because Nicky never looked back, too lost in the music. Even if it hurt, Joe always ended up opening his eyes to look at Nicky.

He wishes he could turn around quick enough to tell himself he was enough, no buts. Even if his love was silent, even if he wrote letters but never sent them.

“That’s not what I said. I said I wasn’t ready, it’s different. I don’t think we would have been good together at the time, but I loved you.”

Nicky stuffs his hands in the pockets of the green jacket and walks faster, eyes downcast. 

This is the moment when Joe should make up an excuse to go back home alone to nurse wounds that have actually healed years ago, their what if warm on his shoulders. But Nicky turns around to watch Joe stuck on his feet, tilts his head to the side, are you coming? and Joe thinks he is close to snapping in two. 

“You liked me back?”

Nicky looks up, down, eyes looking for something to grab on to. “Of course, but please, Joe, I don’t want to do this now.”

Joe blinks incredulous, anger curling around his heart: “Nicky, this conversation is seven years late. I think we waited enough,” he snaps “or is too embarrassing to talk about you having feelings for me in high school?”

“What, no! Joe, I am just trying to do this properly,” Nicky pleads, but Joe is not having it. He feels like his heartbreak is a word away from bleeding again. 

“Do what? Turn me down? You don’t have to, it’s been years. It was a long time ago. It’s in the past,” he doesn’t know if his words are meant to hurt Nicky or himself. Nicky freezes as if he’s been slapped.

He turns to him, eyes bright. 

“It’s not in the past,” he says, with a look that makes Joe’s heart beat faster and louder. “That’s the point, Joe. It doesn’t matter if it was seven years ago. It took me five years to stop thinking of you every time I ate peppers and a week to realise I loved you again. I was trying to do things properly, because I owe it to you now and I owe it to us seven years ago.”

“You broke my heart,” Joe whispers when he feels Nicky’s hands on his.

“I know. You did the same.” Nicky’s eyes say Sorry. Joe laces his fingers with Nicky’s, feeling weightless and strangely balanced by the cold wind and Nicky’s touch.

“What did you mean with doing this properly?”

Nicky blushes, but he doesn’t look away.

“I asked a friend of mine if I could have the keys to his private garden, right in the middle of the city centre, the houses are built around it. From the outside you can’t even imagine that it exists, but it was quite common to have one and anyway,” he clears his throat. “It’s beautiful. You once said you wanted your first kiss to be after a picnic date.”

“I was fifteen, Nicky.”

“You don’t like flowers anymore?” Nicky is hiding a smile in the corner of his mouth, small and private. “I already know it’s too late to ask for your first kiss, don’t worry.”

“I mean, how can you remember that?” Joe vaguely remembers that spring afternoon of their first year as friends, Nicky and him reading under the shade of a tree. There were couples scattered all over the park, kissing on the grass wity lazy smiles on their faces. At the time, Joe didn’t even like Nicky, not yet, he was just thinking out loud, imagining a future where he had someone kissing him surrounded by flowers. Joe talked about the future so he could try it on, see if the idea felt right. Nicky listened to him with eyes closed, book forgotten. I can see the appeal, Nicky had said. You deserve flowers.

“I always listened to what you had to say. I’ve always liked you.”

Joe knows that this is happening, but he also understands that they need time. They are on the verge of something, something good and right and meant to last, but they just met again after a long time, and it seems that even if they remember everything, they also never said so many things out loud.

“We need to do this properly,” Joe agrees, and Nicky nods. They’re both smiling and trying not to, which results in Joe huffing a laugh and Nicky’s ears becoming a lovely shade of red.

“I was just going to ask you on a date. I know a friend with a cool garden.”

“I ruined your plans, didn’t I?” Joe laughs, relishing on the way Nicky doesn’t look away even if he’s clearly embarrassed. “My Nicky,” he tests the words on his tongue, how right they feel.

“I had everything ready, everything!” Nicky says, his accent so dear to Joe. “I even found a horrible frame to give you for your birthday, you used to say you always forgot to frame your favourite photos and then you lost them all. I have an old photo of us, too—”

“Shh, don’t spoil our date.” Joe leaves his fingers on Nicky’s mouth for a moment longer.

Joe inclines his head, knowing Nicky will remember and fill the distance until their forehead touch.

“Head bonk,” Nicky smiles. They’re whispering in the middle of a park. How wonderfully ridiculous.

“A classic.”

“After my surprise date, please surprise me with one of your poems.”

“I’ll consider it. But I have more to write.”

Joe looks at Nicky and Nicky is looking back.