#diego lopez

He barely made it through the door before Josefina was on him.

“You didn’t come home last night and I tried to cover for you but Mama’s pissed!” she said all at once.

Mateo blinked at her. He should care about that, he was sure. He’d been fighting with – everyone – more, since he’d discovered The Cat. Even once he’d come home after the mess that was his coming out, and he’d felt like he was walking on eggshells, the undercurrent of tension had never fully ebbed away. He was beginning to think living on Rico’s sofa had been his happiest moment, and wasn’t that pathetic?

“Oh yeah?” he asked, a beat too late. His throat was full of sand.

Fina’s brow creased, and her little grin fell into a frown. “What happened? You don’t look afterglow-y.”

Unbidden, a squawk of laughter burst from between his teeth. If only she knew. He wiped at his mouth as if to stifle it, and still didn’t cry.

“It’s – it’s not that,” he said, when Fina only looked more and more worried. He still couldn’t quite feel it, was the thing. It was like the hole in his chest was swallowing up everything he should be feeling and leaving a numbness in its wake. “It’s – I ruined it, I think.”

“What?”

Then her hands were on him, half guiding, half yanking, until they were in her bedroom and the door was closed – the closest thing any of them had to privacy with walls this thin. It was Saturday. Mama would be at work at the doctor’s place, and Tiago would be with his wife, or working, and Raul might be around, or he might be out checking in down the street. It felt strange, not to know for sure. For so long, they’d lived in each other’s pockets.

“I... I fucked up, Fina,” he said, after she’d prodded it out of him. “I...”

“What happened? How?”

“I can’t tell you the details,” he said. He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I promised. I swore.”

“Okay. But the broad strokes?”

“I slept with someone I shouldn’t have,” he admitted, and wondered if it was strange to be telling his little sister this. She’d always been his confidante – even before Raul. She was only a couple of years younger than him, but still, it was weird, wasn’t it? His head ached and his mouth was full of cotton. He grimaced, even as Fina huffed a little laugh.

“Oh, is that all? As long as everyone was consenting—”

“In Fly’s bed.”

“What.” Somewhere between appalled and amused. Some confidante.

Mateo stared at his hands, the blunt fingers and brutally short nails and scarred knuckles. They opened and closed restlessly.

“His ex, I think,” he admitted. “In his bed. I didn’t realize it at the time. I was pretty drunk. But after. He found us.”

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah. So, uh.” He let out a shuddering breath, and the world blurred at the edges. His words crackled. “So I fucked it up, Fina. I can’t – I can’t go back. They all – they all hate me now, I think.”

“Oh, Mateo.” Then her arms were around him, squeezing him fiercely, and the tears came like rain after drought, and he lost himself in it for a while.

#

He couldn’t look at the bed. He couldn’t look anywhere but the bed. The stink in the room made his lungs itch and his palms sweat. Rio still used the same perfume, after all these years. He hated that he knew that, now. Hated a lot of things, if he was being honest.

Rico was dimly aware of a couple of things: Diego in the living room, snarling at Dett as they argued in low voices; the quiet metallic clinking of his fidget ring as he worked at it with his thumb; the silence downstairs, with The Cat closed. The stink of the room.

The knowledge that he was being a little bit dramatic.

Overdramatic, maybe.

Who reacted like this to their ... friend finally getting laid?

But it was a knife in his throat, knowing who and where and -

What the fuck, Mateo?

Yeah, he was aware of that, too, the thought circling through his brain in a hundred different intonations?

What the FUCK, Mateo? WHAT the fuck, Mateo. What. the. Fuck. Mateo. 

He needed to – shower. To shower, and change, and sleep. The exhaustion pulled at him, even if his buzz had long-since fled. It had been a long night.

But the bed.

His teeth ached. It took a moment to unlock his jaw.

“Rico?” Dett, with her make-up sweat-smudged and her mouth a worried twist and her hands on his shoulders. “Hey. You with me?”

“Always,” he said, and summoned up a smile. Overdramatic, that was it. It wasn’t like Mateo knew—

Knew what? Which bed was yours?

He brushed aside the concern, but Dett was not so easily shaken off. She tightened her grip instead.

“Here’s the plan, Flyboy,” she told him, firmly, her eyes on his. “You and me, we’re going shopping. While we’re out, Diego’s going to deal with – that,” she said, jerking her chin. “Then, breakfast, alright?”

He was pretty hungry. It felt like he shouldn’t be. But he was starving.

“Yeah,” he said, eventually. Dett smiled at him, and her shoulders dropped in naked relief, and behind her Diego was hovering with his mouth set and his hands full of garbage bags, and Rico felt like the worst kind of asshole, worrying them both. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m just tired, guys.”

“Sure,” Dett agreed, and guided him into the shower. There were clothes waiting for him on the toilet lid when he finished scrubbing on autopilot. Dark jeans and clean boxer-briefs and a black tank he’d had since senior year, butter-soft from wear and age. For a long minute, he just petted over the fabric, wanting – something. It was like there was a balloon in his chest, blown up and squishing everything else out of the way. He wanted to let the air out, and didn’t know how.

Dett and Diego were maybe the only two people who knew how much he liked soft things against his skin. No tags on his shirts, nothing scratchy. They knew him best.

So why didn’t it make him feel better?

He dressed and headed out, and Dett intercepted him with his boots and the car keys before he could get back to his room.

“I got the keys from Papa,” she told him. “Let’s get going, yeah?”

In the other room, Diego swore over the sound of rustling cloth. Rico’s stomach gave a terse flip.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”

In the car, Rico couldn’t shake it, the distant feeling. Like he was walking around in a glass box. He wanted to shake it. Wanted to give Dett the attention she deserved. He was being stupid and overdramatic.

But.

“Sorry about this,” he said, quiet over the German metal she was playing at a whisper. The sun was bright and hot. It was going to be a beautiful day.

“Nothing to apologize for,” she told him without looking away from the highway. “Wasn’t your fuck up.”

“No, I mean. I’m being overdramatic about this.”

She shot him a sharp look over her sunglasses, but he pressed on. “I am. I didn’t flip this bad when Diego fucked – whatsisname, Carlos, in my bed a couple years ago. We laughed about it, remember?”

“Rico, that was different,” she said, achingly gentle, like he was some kid dying of cancer and she had to break the news. He grimaced and looked away, rubbing his mouth. Sun glinted like knives off a distant mirage.

“It shouldn’t be,” he insisted. “I’ve got no claim on Mateo. We weren’t dating – weren’t anything.”

They were a maybe. An almost. Mateo was shiny and new and he wanted everything the Queer scene had to offer and he wanted it now and Rico didn’t want—

He didn’t want to take advantage. That was all. He didn’t want to be a regret.

So he turned aside Mateo’s clumsy advances with care, and tried to look out for him. To make a brother of him, as he had Diego all those years ago.

Well. Look how that turned out.

Same actions, different response. Wonder why that is, genius?

“It’s not like he knew,” he went on slowly. “About Rio, I mean. And he seemed pretty out of it...”

He glanced over, and Dett’s expression brought him up short. Something cold slithered into the pit of his stomach and stuck there, gnawing. “What?” he asked.

Dett looked back out, biting her lip. “I told him,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know you hate talking about it, but Diego caught them in the back-alley a month back and he wanted to know why he was to ignore her.”

Rico’s stomach sunk into his boots.

“Oh,” he said.

Dett pried a hand off the wheel and put it on his knee. “I’m sorry. You know I never would have if I had a choice. I didn’t give him details. Just – you used to run together and it went bad. How you gave us a scare. He seemed to get it. I never thought he’d...”

You gave us a scare – that was how Papa described it, too. A few days white-knuckled at a bedside, praying and swearing and hoping, grey with stress and grief. But sure. A scare. Like he’d taken off for a long weekend without telling anybody.

He’d feel worse if he remembered any of it. Recovery was a haze of the good stuff and white walls and scratchy fabric. Day time TV and a lot of weird dreams and pain lurking like a sleep paralysis demon at the edge of his awareness. He didn’t remember getting stabbed. He didn’t remember much of that night at all. The docs said it was normal. Rico wasn’t sure if he wanted to remember at all. Seemed better not to poke the bear.

But despite himself, Rico flinched. A scare. He’d scared them. He looked to Dett, chewing the inside of his cheek. She offered him an apologetic grimace, damp at the edges. Rico covered her hand with his own.

“Thanks,” he said. “For taking care of it.”

“Not that it did much good.” He tightened his grip when she tried to retreat.

Well. There wasn’t much to say to that. Rico’s attention flicked to the window and he watched the horizon slip past.

They ended up at a mall, wandering through the mid-morning crowd of families and teens and babies. Dett didn’t let go of his hand, and he didn’t let go of hers. Their rings pressed together, and their shoulders bumped, and they didn’t let go.

They were huddled in a Wayfair petting bed sheets and avoiding the clerk when he looked up suddenly.

“Do you think he did it to hurt me?” he asked, soft as the organic cotton against the back of his fingers. “Because I wouldn’t...?”

“You’re allowed to say no,” Dett snapped, reflexive. “Whatever reasons, you don’t have to fuck every baby-gay with a crush. His actions are on him.” Then she paused. She pressed her lips together. A muscle in her jaw worked, and she wordlessly passed him a set of pale blue jersey sheets to feel. It was like petting an old t-shirt. “I wouldn’t think he had it in him,” she admitted. “But it seems a little deliberate, doesn’t it? Your bed, out of anywhere.”

“He seemed pretty drunk,” he ventured. “And surprised.”

“You don’t have to defend him, you know.” It felt like a reflex. Might as well not blink, or breathe. “But. I don’t know. Maybe he’s just a fuck up.”

That startled a laugh out of him, the glass around him cracking. Dett grinned at him. “Yeah,” he said, and bowed his head. “Maybe.”

Eventually, he picked a set of cotton-bamboo sheets. Steel blue. High thread count. He wasn’t thinking about the price until he saw the total and went cold all the way through. Dett slapped down her card and shouldered him out of the way when he tried to stop her.

“It’s too much,” he told her. “Let me—”

“Too late,” she chirped, and shoved the bag into his chest. She crumpled the receipt in her fist and threatened to eat it if he didn’t drop the whole thing.

As he ranted at her about it – neither of them made enough to justify that, what are you doing, Dett, you should have let me at least go halfsies – she steered him back into the food-court and into the line for Cinnabon.

“Look,” she told him, no bullshit, and, God, he loved her fiercely. “You buy breakfast. Then we’re square.”

Rico threw up his hands and paid for breakfast.

“Do you remember when we were just numbskull kids,” she started, once they’d settled down with coffee and pastries.

“So, like, last week?”

She kicked him under the table and sucked a smear of icing off her thumb. “Do you remember when we were numbskull kids,” she began again, louder. “And that fucker on the football team took me out and tried to get into my pants, and when I told him where to go, he told the entire school that my dick was bigger than his?”

“Yeah,” said Rico immediately. “D and I took care of him.”

“Obviously. You fed him his own teeth, but before that, do you remember what you did?”

He raised his eyebrows at her, and drank some coffee. Most days, highschool seemed like another life. A different person.

“You dragged me outta my bedroom and mopped up my face, and took me shopping. We combed that mall for hours, and you musta spend all of it on that couch outside the change rooms, but you didn’t complain. Shit, you spent two hundred dollars on a dress for me, the perfect fucking dress, and you said, ‘Mami, you’re gonna be the hottest girl in the club, just you wait,’ and you and Diego took me out dancing. You remember that?”

It had turned out to be a good day, even if it had started out shitty. By the time they’d found the perfect dress – and heels to match because fuck boys who didn’t like tall girls – Dett was laughing at his shitty jokes and letting him needle her, and they’d had a blast that night, the three of them bouncing from club to club, tearing it up. After, there’d been blood and a wrong had been righted. But first, there’d been dancing.

“Yeah,” he said at last, and looked up from his second cinnamon bun. “I remember.”

She met his eye, flinty, and leaned across the table to grab his hand. “Good. Tonight, we go out dancing.”

After Diego inhaled the cinnamon roll they’d brought back for him, and the coffee, they’d all crashed on Rico’s bed, breaking in the new sheets. They slept in a tangle, with the window thrown open and the curtains yanked shut. Everything smelled fresh and clean and new. Diego had changed his trash, and there was no sign of the garbage bags he must have filled with debris from the night before. Even his comforter had been washed and dried, smelling of fabric softener. 

In that warm, hazy place between waking and sleep, Rico turned and mumbled his thanks into the space between them. Diego butted his head into Rico’s shoulder with a sigh. “No big,” he rasped. “Fuck that guy.”

I wanted to. But the words wouldn’t come.

“He shows his face, I’ll pound him,” Diego went on, turning into Rico’s chest with a grumble. He arm slid around Rico’s middle and stayed, warm and heavy.

Dett let out a murmur of agreement, and burrowed more firmly into Rico’s other side, restless fingers at his chest, toying with his St. Jude pendant. He was helpless to do anything but draw them both closer and give them a place to rest their heads. He could do that, at least, as their legs tangled and sleep rose up in a black wave to drag him under. He could at least do that.

When they woke, they were hungry and restless and wild at the edges, clawing at the walls. As the sun went down, Dett applied her make-up like war-paint, and each layer of clothing was another piece of armour. Rico smeared his eyes with dark liner, and left his shirt unbuttoned to the navel, and forgot, for a while, about the empty space at his side.

Soon, they’d deal with Mateo.