Did that make him the family failure? Chico had recently become acquainted with that role. After years of being the queer cousin, after Davi of course, he could definitively say being the family sad story felt far more shameful. Alone, broke, and practically homeless at thirty-four was bad, but possibly being the administrator and teacher in a family of dance legends was worse. Maybe that’s why Rafael could be so understanding with nervous wrecks like Chico.
Chico jumped when a door at the end of the hall opened, abruptly aware that he was alone in the foyer with only the distant sound of multiple strains of music and that he’d been staring at a picture of Rafael Winters for way too long.
He turned quickly to see Davi approaching him with both thick eyebrows raised. He and Davi had the same large eyes, in identical shades of deep whiskey brown. It was the family color. But Davi liked stubble at his jaw, which Chico couldn’t stand, and had a simple, short haircut and a tendency to wear flannel. His cousin could be depressingly masculine when Chico needed advice about clothes, or hair, or boys, but he knew Chico better than anyone else.
He was short, only an inch taller than Chico, and his sleeve tattoos were visible when he wore a T-shirt. He threw up his hands when he saw Chico. “Where the hell have you been? I wanted the group to meet you so they could see where they can use you.”
Chico gestured vaguely at the walls. “I was here. I got here, I mean. That should count for something. I left the house.”
Davi gave him a look that said he knew Chico had dragged his feet and showed up late.
Chico deflated. “Volunteering?” he asked, like he’d asked the first time Davi had mentioned it. The annual graduation ballet performance for all the students was a town event, but it also cost money. So props and costumes were repurposed, and volunteers painted all the sets. Chico sighed. “I’m no good at things like that. And I’m tired.”
He’d
been
tired, before he’d stepped into that dance class. Now he couldn’t have settled down for a nap if he’d tried.
“Bullshit.” Davi rolled his eyes. “Anyway, you could be garbage and we’d want you. We need the help. But more importantly, it will get you out of the house.”
“You keep saying that.” Chico’s heart was beating fast. He glanced quickly at the picture of a younger Rafael. “And do okay. I need to get out of the house. I admit it. But maybe not this.” He had stuttered and tripped all over Rafael like someone who’d never seen a handsome man. “It… it’s not time yet.”
“Oh, it’s time. I live next to you, remember? It is fucking time,” Davi enunciated each word in his gruff voice. “And this will be fine. You can hide in the background and do whatever. No pressure.”
Chico couldn’t help a small twitch at those words. Apparently his fear was visible to everyone, family and strangers alike.
Davi paused to consider him. “Where were you anyway? Not out here the whole time.”
It would really show him if Chico said he’d taken a dance class. But he’d have to talk about stumbling in there, and going speechless around the instructor, and yeah, no, he was not going to do that. Davi would be too happy to hear it and insist that he come back and take a class for real.
Chico finally shrugged and turned away from the wall of photographs. “I got lost. Come on. I’m tired. I wanna go home.”
“Of course you do,” Davi grumbled. But he caught up to walk alongside him after he left the building, and stayed with him as they walked home.
THE WALK
took about ten minutes, and they parted ways outside Davi’s garage. All the houses along Alberi Lane were older and large. Davi’s property had several outbuildings, as if the previous owners had wanted a giant complex of cabins when they’d built it in the twenties. Chico lived in an apartment above the detached garage, where a chauffeur or mechanic must have lived back in the day.
Davi had renovated it into something more modern and livable, with the intention of renting it to tourists or a local looking for something low-cost, but he had offered it to Chico when he’d become aware of Chico’s situation. He was sweet about it, really. Chico paid for his share of the utilities and his Internet, but no rent, at least for now.
It was the best Chico could afford, between moving expenses, only finding part time work up here, and the financial devastation that occurred when kicked out of the shared life with his boyfriend with no warning.
John hadn’t physically pushed Chico from their apartment, but he hadn’t really left him any other choice but to move out. He’d come home from work and informed Chico that he was dating one of his coworkers and that it was serious, which hadn’t left Chico a lot of other options. Stay in their apartment and make himself sick, or leave and lick his wounds somewhere else.
Chico hadn’t been thinking clearly at the time. If he had, he would have remembered how vicious and cutthroat the Bay Area housing market was and how all his friends were paired up and settled and in no need of a roommate. He would have thought about how little his job made compared to John’s, and how he didn’t have enough in his savings to pay anything close to what was now demanded for rental deposits across the Bay Area.
He’d stayed on couches, with his things at the apartment, and thought numbly about the money he’d already spent on Christmas presents and holiday plans for the two of them before John had decided that the two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving was the time to tell Chico it was over.
Chico’d had neither the energy to take the gifts back to the store nor the interest in the store credit he would have been offered. He’d stopped looking for apartments sometime in January and wound up at his parents’, curled up in a sleeping bag on the floor of his old room, now the room his nieces and nephews used for nap time when his mother watched them, which was almost every day.
He’d gotten in trouble at work for showing up late, for not looking his best, and he couldn’t blame them. No one wanted to buy expensive suits from someone with dull eyes and hair and tired smiles.
Chico’s parents, who still spoke to Davi even when his own parents wouldn’t, must have contacted Davi, because in March, Davi had driven down and intervened. He’d taken Chico to get tested again while cursing his cheating boyfriend, then picked up Chico’s things from his old apartment for him—neatly boxed up by John’s new boyfriend, how thoughtful—and taken most of them back up to Brandywine with him. Before he’d left, he’d told Chico to make arrangements to live up there for a while.
Chico could admit to himself, away from his cousin’s smug attitude, that coming up here was good for him in a lot of ways. Not worrying about where he’d sleep or how to get a lot of money in a hurry helped. Distance from his friends was nice too. He didn’t need awkward reminders of how they now hung out with John and his new boy and felt guilty about it. John’s coworker was probably better for him. Same job, same interests, same boring conversations to have over dinner with those friends, who, honestly, hadn’t known what to say to Chico even before he’d fallen into a depression.
But he didn’t need to go out. He wasn’t ready for that yet. Work, dealing with the public, and selling things took enough of his energy right now.
So he watched Davi head into his house and then began his slow ascent up the stairs along the side of the garage. He’d left the light on inside, which at least made it easier to unlock the door in the shadows of evening, because of course he hadn’t flipped on the porch light. Little things like that were the worst for making him feel like a failure all over again. Chico had once been on top of things—Christmas lists done by Halloween, Halloween costumes done in September, clipped coupons in a side section of his wallet, specially tailoring his clothes to fit his small frame.
His clothes really were too big for him, and he hadn’t even
noticed
until today. He unbuttoned his dress shirt the moment he was through the door, and left it draped over a chair in the kitchen—something else he never would have done when living with John.
The blinds were all up, and he’d never bothered with curtains because there was no one here to care if he undressed. Davi had turned on lights in his house but was probably already in his living room, working on his computer. Chico took off his shoes and pants and set them on top of some boxes he’d never unpacked. He wondered if living in a small room among the redwoods was the adult version of running away to live in a treehouse.
The only mirror in the place was above the sink in the bathroom. Once upon a time, Chico would have insisted on a full-length mirror too, but it hadn’t occurred to him. No wonder he hadn’t realized the toll the past months had taken on his body until he’d seen his reflection at the dance studio.
A lot of his muscle was gone. He’d never been buff, but he’d walked San Francisco’s hills every day, and it had showed. Good thing he wasn’t planning on dating anytime soon, because no one would be interested in a sickly, scrawny little thing, especially one who didn’t have his own home at his age, who had been so easily replaced.
His stomach growled, so Chico grabbed a pint of ice cream and a spoon for his dinner, and dragged a blanket with him as he went out to his favorite spot in the world. At the end of his living room and bedroom was a sliding door that led out to a small balcony overlooking the driveway. Davi had thoughtfully put two deck chairs and a small table out there.
Chico curled up in his blanket on one of the chairs and ate his ice cream while he watched the sunlight disappear behind the trees. He set the empty carton on the table and held his freezing hands to his chest while the first stars began to appear.
Stars like that didn’t exist in the city; even the priciest apartments didn’t get that view. By midnight the purple-and-black sky would be overflowing with them, streams of glowing white above the spiking, majestic treetops. If he lowered his head and squinted, he could see lights from the other houses and cabins down Alberi Lane, hints of other people, close but not too close.
He inhaled the clean, fresh, piney air that had startled him so much his first night here. Like the quiet, it took getting used to. With the sky so clear and still, there was nothing to do but think, or so he had thought. But he’d done nothing but think and worry for months, and one silent, starry night amid the redwoods after a tough move he’d fallen asleep in this very chair.
He stared up at the stars as they took over the night sky, then tilted his head to his shoulder. He had a few hours before any fog came up from the coast, if any was going to tonight. The distant lights among the trees were bright, as if other people were up late. He wondered what they were doing out there beneath the trees. Watching television, playing on the computer, maybe spending time with loved ones. They certainly weren’t going out. Brandywine had a few shops and restaurants that looked cute, but if people wanted an active nightlife to brag about, they’d have to drive a bit to find it. Chico supposed he ought to be missing movies, restaurants, sharing photos online of plates of food and tickets.
If he shared pics of himself at a dance class, wouldn’t people be surprised? Chico hadn’t died in the woods or been kidnapped by bigfoot after all; he was taking ballroom dancing. Too bad people didn’t take those classes by themselves, and too bad he’d embarrassed himself in front of the instructor. He shouldn’t have gone along with the lesson for as long as he had, and he had no excuse for it if the guy ever asked him why.
I liked it when you touched me
didn’t seem weird and pathetic or anything.
His dick had picked a terrible time to come back to life. He was just glad it hadn’t done it when he’d first met Rafael Winters. Nearly crying on the man’s shoulder had been bad enough, although it also settled everything, really. The man was attractive and, apparently, kind and gainfully employed and a great teacher, if today’s lesson was usual for him. His body wasn’t something Chico could currently think about without putting a hand to his cock. But Chico wasn’t interested in anything. That road was closed until he could imagine wanting someone enough to try again. Considering Chico was living in a tiny room filled with boxes from his old life, that wasn’t going to be anytime soon.
He took his eyes off the houses in the trees and considered the stars for another few minutes before he finally sighed and dragged his ass inside. Today had been a forceful reminder he needed to feed himself something other than ice cream.
He wondered if he had any solid food in the house.
Since he couldn’t remember his last trip to any store bigger than a gas station food mart, he guessed not.
IT TURNED
out that the other benefit to living in the middle of what was essentially the country, after the great view, was the proximity to farms and fresh food. The local communities all had farmer’s markets, and Brandywine was no exception.
True, the market itself was just six stalls of fruits and veggies, a flower vendor, a honey vendor, and a coffee cart. But Chico had been informed it grew in size during the summer proper. Sunday mornings in June would see additional stalls for eggs and milk and cheese and possibly one for the old Italian bakery that had recently been taken over by an ambitious baker from one of the towns along the freeway. The town council had plans for more than that.
Chico thanked the guy who’d made his latte, for the coffee and for the helpful news, then hefted his basket and moved on. He was determined to shop for healthy food like the adult he was, and he was even out of the house. He was outside, in the early morning sun, in clothes that fit him. This was progress.
Obviously Davi could never know.
Chico let sunbeams warm his bare shoulders and admired the glint of his rings in the light as he stepped up to the first stall. He noticed in approval that it had peppers of all kinds in addition to tomatoes and onions. The colors were appealing, even if he had no idea what he would make with them, or if they’d end up unused, rotting in his refrigerator.
“He runs out on me, and this is where I finally find him.”