Carter’s smile is crooked and his gaze follows me up and down and back up again. “You’ll be there. So it’ll be worth my time.”
I can’t think of a single thing to say in response. Instead I clear my throat and say, “But you wanted to take me out first? Like a date?”
Carter nods and winks. “Well, it’s not exactly like we’re going anywhere. I didn’t plan anything elaborate this time…”
I wring my hands, the suspense making me want to throw a lightning bolt right at his head. “What is it, then? What best friends shenanigans involves us…staying home?” In my memories, there’s a jumbling, summery montage of him and me climbing the trees reaching up toward the sky all over Catalina Street, or digging through all of the sofas we could find for loose change for the ice cream truck, or leaving each other secret notes hidden under the rocks of our yards.
Carter’s shoulders drop just the slightest bit. “I don’t want to let you down.”
I raise a playful fist. “Carter Velasquez, if you don’t tell meright now…”
“Fine.” He lifts his hands. “Fine.” He walks over to the living room, lifting the top off one of the ottomans there, and procures a…CD?
“No way,” I breathe as he approaches, because no, it’s not a CD. It’s an old-ass edition ofMutant League Football, our favorite video game Abuelo Gene grabbed for us from the thrift store back in the day. Abuelo Gene, poor fellow, thought it was the more popular Madden game. But honestly “mutant” intrigued me far more—I’ve always loved the X-Men. Hello, Storm? A powerful superhuman who could control the weather? There is no alternative universe in which Teal Flores doesn’t love the idea of humans with strange and unusual powers.
Even though this game turned out to be less epically magical mutants, and more of the zombie and alien sorts, Carter and I still hadsomuch fun with it.
He stares at me, at my smile and my glee, and freezes, like thesight is too overwhelming to continue movement. “Carter! Put it on!” I shriek.
“Okay, okay, okay, mami,” he says, retreating back toward the living area, finagling with cords and video game controllers and whatnot.
I watch him, wanting so bad to bounce up and down but unable to because of not wanting to fall over in agony. “You actually got an old Sega Genesis?”
He gives me a sheepish smile. “They’re really cheap on eBay. It was nothing.”
The way he calls this nothing, like it isn’t everything to me. I half want to cry, I half want to laugh, I half want to rush to Bath & Body Works and buy every Pretty as a Peach body care product they have to help me regulate my emotions.
Instead, I do a few counted breaths. “Do you mind if I get ready for brunch while you do that?” I finally ask.
“Go ahead, mamita. I’ll have it ready by the time you’re done.”
When Carter winks at me, I basically have to run away. Only I can’t, so it’s more of an extra deranged hobble.
Mutant League Football—or atleast the one Carter has procured, probably the exact version we used to play—is an old-ass game. It’s pixelated, the players are coded to do, like, one of a total of three very awkward-looking actions at a time…and yet. Playing it with Carter, it’s literally like I’m eleven years old all over again, sitting in Nadia’s dark living room. It’s just me and Carter and this absurd video game. I don’t know how fucked up I am in the head yet, I haven’t yet hurt Carter as bad as I eventuallywill, I haven’t made so many mistakes that I barely even know where to begin in repairing them. It’s like some type of deep healing, in a way, this nostalgia. Even if it’s nostalgia that takes the forms of actual monsters playing football on the screen.
“Jesus, Teal,” Carter mutters beside me. “You bribed the ref again? You know I don’t like killing him, mujer.”
“It’s too bad that’s the only way to get him to stop,” I reply in a singsong voice as my zombie receiver rushes to the end zone. Before he can make it there, a fiery pit opens in the field and devours him whole. “That issounfair!” I moan.
I punch Carter in the shoulder when he cackles at me. “Ow, what was that for?” he yelps.
I gesture to his players, a collection of skeletons wearing only shoulder pads and shoes. “You think they really need that protection?”
“Don’t want to dislocate a shoulder.” Carter shrugs.
“But they’re made of nothing but bones, man! They don’t protect their hips or ribs or even their heads, but shoulder pads are the necessity, here?”
And as I’m distracted, Carter has one of his wide receivers rip the ref’s head clean off with his bare hands.
I roll my eyes. “That wasneedlesslybrutal.”
“Babe. You bribed him. You gave me no choice.”
“No choice but decapitation,” I respond dryly, and then without reason I erupt into giggles. Carter grins at me in return. And then he drops his controller and grabs my hips. “Come here,” he murmurs.
“Where?” My voice is breathless and shaky, but he doesn’t answer me. He carefully drags me over his lap, until I’m straddling him, my bad ankle thoughtfully tucked against a soft pillow.
When I look down at him, his pupils are blown, the inky blackmaking the honey of his eyes even lighter than normal. He’s so hard against my thigh, it’s unreal. “I don’t remember doing this when we were tweens,” I say.
