The North Down South - 9. 9. No distance will make us grow apart

“So does this mean therapy makes you horny?”

“It wasn’t the therapy!”

“It totally was! You weirdo!”

“Oh my God, shut up!”

“You shut me up!”

Our lips crashed with mighty strength as we fell down on the bed. The little demon I called boyfriend had been teasing me since we got on the bus and after weeks of abstinence I was not going to hold back any longer.

My shirt was off in a flash. He held me in place for a second, his skin flushed, his hair a dark mess. We’d barely done anything and I was already breaking a sweat. My hands hovered over him. There were too many spots I wanted to touch, too many spots I wanted to kiss.

It’d been way too long since we’d last been like this.

He said: “Let’s try something.”

He was moving, and I was moving, and then he was on top of me. The look on his eyes was roguish, wild.

It’d been way too long since he’d been like this.

“I want to do you.”

My eyes widened.

“Do me? You mean, like…?”

“I mean like this.”

In a single motion, he lifted my legs to rest atop his shoulders, and bent down so his face was merely inches from mine. I let out a shaky breath as I felt him against me.

“What do you say?”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and brought him in for another kiss, our tongues essaying a prelude of what was to come.

I didn’t have to say anything. Both of us knew every breath I drew was yes.

***

I couldn’t believe I still had any energy left to go to the study group-turned-friend-group thing. I found it even harder to believe Lauti had any energy left in him to do anything at all.

And yet there we were, on a D line train, sitting down only because it wasn’t rush hour and it was one of the last trains before service ended for the day.

We held each other’s hands, and he let his head rest on my shoulder. I could still faintly feel a ghost in his shape inside me, and it was hard not to giggle out loud at the thought that it’d been just a couple of hours since I’d lost my V-card to my boyfriend.

I checked the address again to distract myself.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone out to a bar for drinks. To be fair, that had never really been my type of plan. The bar in question was a little too high-end for my taste, and it was smack in the middle of Palermo (which was especially annoying since I didn’t have La Gorda with me, and going to Palermo when you depend exclusively on public transport is a nightmare), but I found myself actually wanting to hang out with the Caffa and the other guys, and I was especially glad I’d brought Lauti with me.

Hold on.

Lauti.

Lauti’s here.

It was only as we were walking up the bar’s stairs that I realized I never asked Caffa if I could bring Lauti with me.

Fuck.

That was a thing you were supposed to ask permission for in advance, right?

It was a little late to worry about that.

Lauti’s hand squeezed mine as we reached the table where everyone was. Caffa was the first to spot me.

“Valen!” he shouted as he stood up. “And… company?”

An apologetic smile was all I could come up with as a response.

“Hi,” Lauti put on his most polite smile, extended his hand, and greeted Caffa. “I’m Lautaro.”

“Hi, Lautaro,” said Caffa. There was a smile on his face too, but ‘polite’ would have not been the word used to describe it. “I’m Lautaro, too. You can just call me Caffa, though.”

“Caffa,” I said, taking my turn to greet him. “This is my boyfriend, Lauti. Remember I told you about him?”

I conveniently neglected to mention I had not told Caffa about him in the context of us coming to this particular event.

The two exchanged a look. I got the feeling they could both sense I was not handling the situation very well.

“I recall,” Caffa said. “So he’s the reason I’ll keep having to go by my nickname with you, huh? Pleasure to meet you!”

If Lauti had found any of this awkward at all, he didn’t show. He could be really good at this sort of thing when he felt like it.

That was another thing I envied about him.

We did a small round of greetings with the rest of the attendees, and then sat down at the very end of the table, with Caffa seated next to Lauti, and me seated next to him.

For some reason, I was not a fan of the arrangement.

I let myself fall into the flow of the group as the topic of our math classes was brought up, and before I could realize it I was participating in a heated discussion over who was the closest look-alike to our professor, the stern-looking man from my first day of class who’d let me in late because I’d been wearing my Riquelme shirt. One of the guys, Harold (yes, his name was actually Harold) brought the incident up, and after a good minute or so of laughter the conversation moved to football.

It wasn’t long before I learned Harold and another of the guys, Uriel, were both River Plate fans.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so unconsciously loud.

A tangent discussion on the last set of matches both teams had played (and a whole lot of football trash-talk) managed to capture my full attention so thoroughly I completely missed the moment when Lauti and Caffa broke away from the group and began talking to each other by the balcony.

A little panic settled over me.

My eyes searched for Lauti’s, and after a brief moment, he looked back and smiled at me. Caffa repeated the gesture.

They appeared to be having… fun?

At least I was not the only one. That could only be a good thing.

Right?

As the night progressed I decided to make use of the biggest upside of not bringing La Gorda with me, and ordered a couple of beers that I probably didn’t realize just how much I was needing.

When had I last had a drink?

I lost track of time—alcohol and good conversations will do that to you—and the next time I checked the time, it was already 2 am. The numbers on my phone screen were a little too blurry for my taste, and when I looked back up my motion sickness reminded me that I’d already downed three pints and we hadn’t had anything for dinner.

Huh.

We hadn’t had anything for dinner.

No wonder three pints were hitting like six.

I turned to Lauti, who was still talking to Caffa, but now looked significantly less excited about it. Even as drunk as I was, I could still tell his eyes were heavy with exhaustion.

I made my way over with wobbly limbs and tried to be as conspicuous as possible as I took Lauti away from what appeared to be a (mostly) one-sided conversation.

“You dummy,” I whispered in his ear. It was probably a little louder than a whisper, but the music in the background was way too loud. “You kept me distracted. We skipped dinner.”

He didn’t say anything to that—or maybe I simply didn’t hear him say anything. I couldn’t really distinguish the look on his face anymore, either.

He left my side, and I found it hard to stand upright the moment he was gone. Luckily for me, he was promptly back, and Caffa was beside us.

He said: “Let me know when you get home, okay?” But I wasn’t sure to whom he was talking.

Lauti said something back, and I managed to mumble out something reminiscing a goodbye.

Next thing I knew, we were on a cab heading home.

My head was resting on Lauti’s shoulder. His hand kept stroking my shoulder, and I couldn’t stop thinking it was such a nice feeling, and I never wanted it to end.

“I’m sorry.”

I looked up at him—or rather, I tried to.

“What for?”

I felt him place a soft kiss on my forehead.

“I’m not sure what I did to deserve a boyfriend like you.”

I wished I could put into words all the reasons. But words have never really been my strong suit, and the soft lull of the engine was calling me back to sleep again.

***

I woke up to a drill boring a hole through my left temple.

The first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was the empty Lauti-sized spot next to me on the bed. Finding the willpower to get up from the bed was a challenging task, but I eventually managed to drag myself out of the bedroom one sluggish step after the other.

My eyes set on the kitchen (I could’ve killed for a glass of water), I nearly missed the Lauti-sized lump on the living room couch.

“Lauti, love?” I sat down next to him. “What are you doing out here?”

The lump shuffled under the covers, but he didn’t say anything.

“Did you sleep on the couch?”

“...No?” was the muffled response.

Gently, I shed away the covers and let my arms take their place. Lauti’s eyes were red and puffy. He was still wearing last night’s clothes.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m scared,” he said. His voice was a shaky whisper.

“What are you scared of?”

A single tear fell from his eye, and then another. I felt both of them like stabs to the heart.

“Of you leaving me.”

“Lauti, why would I leave you? I love you, you know that.”

He shook his head.

“Don’t you see me? I’m a mess, Valen.”

“Lauti, I am never going to leave you. Ever.”

Our hands met as my hold on him tightened. Right then, I would’ve given everything away to kiss his tears away.

“You sound way too sure about that.”

“I am. It’s the one thing I’m absolutely certain of.”

The corners of his lips inched upward ever so slightly. A victory.

“Wow,” he said. “That’s kind of sad, honestly.”

I kissed him. I kissed his hands, his neck, his eyes. Somehow, it still felt like none of it was enough. It felt as though none of my love could ever be enough.

“Let’s go make breakfast, okay?”

***

“My goodness, Valentín, you’ve grown so much!”

“Mom,” Tomi groaned. “It’s been six months since you last saw him.”

Delia blew a raspberry at her son. “Six months is a long time. I used to see this boy every other day. Now he’s neglecting us!”

“Delia, please,” Tomi’s dad, Néstor, said as he adjusted his glasses. “Leave the poor boy alone.”

It’d certainly been a while since I’d last seen Tomi’s family, but I was happy to find they hadn’t changed in the least.

There was an undeniable warmth to the Baglini household. It made sense, given what the youngest of them had grown up to be. Tomi had inherited the best qualities of his parents: his dad’s quick wit and good looks, and his mother’s gentle heart and charisma.

Delia beamed: “When Tomi told us you were coming, I knew I had to make carbonara agnolotti. Remember how I’d always make that for you boys when you would come over?”

I couldn’t help but smile at her. When I thought of what a “mother” was, the archetypal form of “motherhood”, Tomi’s mom was always the first to come to my mind.

“You really didn’t have to,” I said. But truly, I was dying to sit down and eat.

I spent most of my afternoons during the third year of high school at Tomi’s house. At first I would just walk him home, since his place was on the way to the bus stop (or at least that’s what I told him—he never found out there was another stop much closer to school). After a while, though, he began inviting me over for merienda, and we’d play FIFA or just talk about school and football over tea or mate.

Meriendas turned to dinners, dinners turned to sleepovers.

Dinners were always a family affair at Tomi’s. Up until meeting them, I hadn’t realized this was the norm for most people. Family dinners at my house were a rare and overly formal event that I never really felt like taking part in. On the other hand, Delia’s cooking and Néstor’s dry humor and Tomi’s laughter never failed to make me feel at home.

I stopped going to Tomi’s so much in the fourth year, when I realized my crush on him was a ticking time bomb and I really needed to take some distance if I didn’t want it to turn into something problematic. But his parents never stopped asking about me—if Tomi was to be believed—and every once in a while I simply had to cave in and visit. With them, it was always the same thing, the same sensation: this is what a family is supposed to look like.

When both parents were out of earshot, I subtly asked Tomi: “Did your mom seriously make agnolotti from scratch just because I was coming?”

He flashed a defeated smile. “I told you they were excited about seeing you.”

Honestly? It was hard to believe anyone cared that much about seeing me.

An occasion such as this could not be complete without a good bottle of red wine (not that I could tell good wine from bad), and despite me bringing La Gorda with me, I knew I could always simply crash on Tomi’s couch for the night if I had more than a cup. I wasn’t going to hold back from enjoying myself.

As expected, Delia and Néstor hounded me non-stop about my progress at university. They made sure to emphasize “just how proud” they were when Tomi first told them I was signing up for UTN, and that they’d “never imagined” that was the career path I would choose for myself. Tomi chastised them a bit for that last part, but I had to admit that not even I had really imagined this was the career path for me.

They asked about Lauti, too. They were no more subtle about their “shock” at having learned about me dating Nahuel’s (male) cousin, but at least they were nice enough to be really awkward about it. I believe we all left that part of the conversation feeling a little embarrassed with ourselves, but it was somehow endearing.

After all, I was only just getting used to talking about it myself.

Tomi eventually managed to get his parents off my case (though I wouldn’t have minded them asking questions and making bad jokes for a while longer), and just past midnight we drunkenly braved the cold and climbed into the roof, that safe spot where we’d spent countless nights before.

He lit up a spliff, took a long drag, and passed it to me.

We talked. Just like we used to before, we talked about everything. He told me about his classes, how he was learning to love university life, how he was still hung up on Florencia, how he somehow still missed the way things used to be when we were in high school.

We talked a lot about that.

Not seeing each other every day was such a weird development in our lives. Joaco, Nahu, Santi, Tomi and me, we’d grown up together, and now we barely saw each other anymore. No one tells you even the strongest friendships have a hard time withstanding the change of life cycles.

It was impossible for me not to mention Lauti at some point.

“How is he, really?” Tomi asked. “He pretty much disappeared after we graduated. And Nahu looked worried when he was brought up last time we talked.”

Tomi, ever so perceptive. Of course he would have noticed something like that.

“Lauti is…”

I wanted to talk about it, I really did. I wanted to talk about how I wished I had all the answers, and how I wished I could love his depression and self-hatred away. But the truth became a lump on my throat.

“Lauti’s okay. He’s just figuring stuff out, you know?

I knew Tomi saw right through me. But the only thing he said was:

“Alright, then.”

I suppose I was yet to perfect the art of talking about things.