Page 38 of The Kiss Principle

“Of course not. It should bother you. And you should definitely have higher standards.”

He smiled, but it was a strange smile, the amusement tempered with something else—something that, on anyone else, I might have registered as hurt. But all he said was “Why would it bother me?”

“I don’t know. I’m old. I’m out of shape. I look like I just rolled out of the laundry hamper. Should I go on?”

And I didn’t think, until it was too late, that I could have said—might have said—Because I’m straight.

But then, was I?

I’d told Augustus once that sexuality was a buffet, that you could try a little of everything. Because even back then I’d suspected. In elementary school, and in most of middle school, his friends were mostly girls. And although that had changed in high school, it was hard not to notice the rest of it: the horsing around with his friends, the excessive physical contact, the videos of them all going shirtless and pretending to make out. And that was fine; whatever made him happy, that was fine.

I’d always stuck to one side of the buffet, though (if you didn’t count that time I’d let Cesar spank it for me, or that insane chicken-choking episode from a few nights before, which I blamed entirely on that damn massage). I’d considered, at various times, the possibility that I was bi or pan or that I didn’t need a label. But that had always been theoretical. It was moot; it didn’t matter. Except now, of course, it did. Or I thought it might. If I wasn’t a complete and total moron, which, I know, was probably giving me too much credit.

Too late, I realized Zé had said something, and I’d missed it. What? What had he said? I’d been saying—I’m old. I’m out of shape—and he’d said something, and now he was looking at me, his eyes asking me something.

The silence had gone on too long, but for some reason, it only made him smile more. He touched my cheek and said, “Good God, Fernando,” and he laughed.

“What?”

He shook his head and raised the brakes on Igz’s stroller.

“What?” I asked again.

“You might be the definition of impossible,” he said as he got unsteadily to his feet and started to push the stroller out of the park.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

We were getting close to the beach when we passed a clothing boutique, and the idea hit me. When we went inside, the bell jingled. It smelled like patchouli and something resinous, and rows and rows of clothing racks and mannequins and shelving units made the space so cramped that the stroller barely fit.

A fancy boy with flawless skin unlimbered himself from a stool and slunk over to us. He gave each of us a long look, and then he settled on me. He gave me a smile with lots of beautiful teeth, and it registered at only slightly warmer than frostbite. With a hint of camp, he said, “Welcome to Into Summer. How can I help you gentlemen today?”

Zé was busy with something in the diaper bag, and, because he truly was a petty little bitch underneath all the saintly kindness, he was hiding a smile.

I knew I’d have to do it carefully. I knew, from how he’d responded when I’d basically had to blackmail him into accepting a place to live, that it wouldn’t be easy. But I thought, if I were careful, I could do it.

“I need some clothes for work,” I said. “Business casual stuff.”

“Of course, sir.” He made it sound likeDaddy. “Right over here.”

“I didn’t know you needed clothes for work,” Zé said in a low voice.

“Is this okay? We’re not on a schedule or anything, are we? I want something new for that interview with Lou’s team.”

“Of course it’s okay.”

“You don’t mind helping me pick something out? I’ve lost some weight, and I want a few things that fit better.” That wasn’t a lie; Zé, for all his easygoing, surfer bum hair, for all his meltingly soft eyes, turned into a nutritional dominatrix the minute he set foot in the kitchen. Ten pounds in four weeks was a lot, but when this leather-and-stiletto bitch threw out all your ice cream and potato chips and, I shit you not, inspected your takeout for contraband, it wasn’t actually all that hard. In fact, it was kind of easy to lose weight with Zé in the house. All I had to do was not murder him every time I got hungry. “Normally,” I said, “I buy everything and then FaceTime Augustus. I put it on mute for the first ten minutes, and then I turn the sound back on and get something helpful out of him.”

The smile only touched his eyes. “I don’t mind.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure, Fernando.”

“It’s not weird?”

The smile in his eyes deepened, and he pushed me to get me moving. “You’re starting to make it weird.”

The fancy boy walked us through the men’s section, and at Zé’s advice, I got a pair of polos, a couple of button-ups, and two new pairs of chinos. They had a dressing room, and Zé refused to let me buy the clothes without trying them on. As I changed, I heard him making small talk with the fancy boy, although I couldn’t make out the words. Something made Zé laugh, though—more of the low, quiet, rolling laughter that I couldn’t seem to get enough of.

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