What If It's Us
Page 11

Dad glances sidelong at Mom. “Mara, don’t you think you’re being a little bit—”
“What, Michael? What am I being?”
“You don’t think you’re overreacting? Just a bit?”
“Because I don’t want our sixteen-year-old son prowling around the underbelly of the internet—”
“I’m almost seventeen!”
“Craigslist?” Dad smiles. “You think Craigslist is the underbelly of the internet—”
“Well, you would know,” Mom snaps.
Dad looks confused. “What’s that supposed to mean—”
“Okay, please stop,” I cut in. “Obviously, I’m not doing this. I’m not wasting my time searching for some random guy I talked to for five seconds. Okay? Can we just chill?”
I look from Mom to Dad and back to Mom, but it’s like they don’t even see me. They’re too busy pointedly not looking at each other.
So I leave. Grab my laptop. Exit stage left.
My heart’s beating so fast, it’s almost stuttering. I hate this. It’s never been like this with them. Yeah, I’ve seen them get snippy with each other. We’re not robots. But they could always joke their way out of it. It’s just that these days, even the jokey moments feel like a temporary cease-fire.
I sink onto the living room couch and shut my eyes—but I swear I’m being watched. By horses. Specifically, by the giant oil painting hanging above the table, which I can only assume is an early portrait of BoJack Horseman painted by Leonardo da Vinci himself.
Mom’s voice drifts in from my bedroom. “. . . home early. Excuse me? I rescheduled two conference calls to be . . .”
“Yeah. Like I said . . .” Dad’s voice drops off. “. . . early.”
“Oh, come off it. Are you kidding me? That’s not . . .”
“You’re reading too much into . . .”
“Okay, you know what you’re not going to do, Michael? You’re not going to spend the day playing computer games in your boxers, and then come after me for—”
I open my laptop. Click into iTunes. Spring Awakening, original cast album. I jam my finger down on F12 until the volume’s as high as it will go.
“Mara, can you please—”
And I let Jonathan Groff drown them out.
Because that’s what cute boys are for.
Chapter Six
Ben
I wish I felt Puerto Rican out in the world the way I do at home.
Some friends in middle school told me I wasn’t really Puerto Rican because I’m so white-passing and only know a dozen basic Spanish phrases, stuff like te amo and cómo estás. I told Pa that day, begging him to put Post-it notes on different objects around the apartment to teach me Spanish so I wouldn’t get bullied again. Pa was happy to do so, but he broke it down for me that being Puerto Rican didn’t come down to my skin or knowing Spanish, but my blood and family. I really liked that. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not constantly having to basically say, “Hi, I’m Ben. I’m Puerto Rican.” Pa’s complexion is the darkest in our family, though still really light, like a white person’s tan, and how he looks is how everyone expects me to look. No one ever questions my dad being Puerto Rican.
If only everyone could see me at home, completely killing it while I’m on sofrito duty, mellowing out to Lana Del Rey while mixing the cilantro, peppers, onions, and garlic, along with the fresh oregano my mom’s coworker gave us. My dad prepares our plates with salad first, piling his rice and pigeon peas on top. He hooks me up with extra pegao because I’ve always loved crispy rice since I was a kid, maybe because it’s crunchy like some of my favorite candy. My mom sets her coconut pudding in the oven and we’re pretty good to go.
Ma taps my shoulder and says something I can’t hear over the music. She pulls out one earbud. “What’s going on with you?” Her dark hair rests over her shoulder, smelling like cucumber shampoo from her post-work shower. She’s a bookkeeper at Blink Fitness, and even though she’s in an office all day the smell of sweat clings to her like a gym bro on a pull-up bar, so she’s always quick to hit the showers when she gets home.
“It’s been a day,” I say.
“Hudson?” Pa asks.
“Ding-ding.”
Pa shakes his head while cleaning the pots and pans before we eat so the dishes won’t seem as mountainous when our stomachs are filled, a trick Abuelo taught him. The soap foams over his hands.
“Diego, hurry up, I’m starving.” Ma hands me utensils. “Benito, set the table. Catch us up after prayer.”
I set the forks and knives on our individual place mats, these impulse buys at the corner store when our money situation was a little better than it is now. Ma’s is shaped like an owl, her favorite animal. Pa’s is a black-and-white linen stitch that he always scratches while waiting for us to finish our dinner. And mine has a T. rex trying to drink from a water fountain, which hasn’t won a smile out of me since I broke up with Hudson.
We sit really close to one another. There’s never been a time where my parents are both sitting at the heads of the table. Ma says it feels too regal, like we’re eating a feast in some castle’s massive dining room instead of a super-cozy two-bedroom apartment. And Pa just doesn’t like being that far away from Ma.
We take one another’s hands and Ma says grace. My parents are big on faith and we like to say we have a healthy relationship with religion. We’re not old-school Catholics who live by the Bible and conveniently ignore all the verses that contradict the hate coming out of their mouths. We’re the kind of Catholics who think people shouldn’t go to hell for being nonhetero, and that was before I even came out. My parents pray to God on the regular and I jump in during dinner. This evening Ma is thanking God for the food on the table, for my abuelita who fell getting out of the car and my aunt who’s taking care of her, for Pa’s modest pay raise kicking in at Duane Reade, and for everyone’s well-being.
“Okay.” Ma claps her hands. “Hudson. What’s going on with him?”
I like that my parents are so in my face but know to give me space too. “I was trying to help him out in class and he flipped on me.”
Pa’s eyes narrow. “I thought you said he wasn’t the fighting type.”
“He’s definitely not,” I say, and he cools down. Two years ago I got robbed outside a grocery store and my parents locked me down with tight curfews, which felt like punishment for being a victim, but I know it was all love with the way Pa trained me to throw up my fists and run. Still, that was a summer I lost, and it’s not like they come around as quickly as weekends. “He just shouted at me in front of everyone. And I didn’t argue back.”
“Good,” Ma says.
“Also good that you can take him if you need to.”
“Definitely.” There was that one time where I picked up Hudson and kissed him against a wall because we saw a guy-girl couple doing it in a movie and we wanted to see what it was like for a guy-guy couple. Then we flipped and even though we’re the same weight, he had a harder time carrying me.
“Okay, barbarians.” Ma shakes her head because she’s not about any talk of violence. She doesn’t even like action movies, which Pa and I are openly fine with since she will ask you ten thousand questions during a movie, even if everyone is seeing it for the first time. “I hope it smooths over soon.”