“That you won’t be coming home tonight?” I could tell her heart was beating faster. I could feel mine doing the same. Was she frightened?
“But you’ll take me if it stops, right?” she asked.
“I’ll take you wherever you want, whenever you want. Just say the word.”
I had to remember she was younger than me… Maybe she didn’t want to spend the night. Maybe it didn’t feel as urgent to her as it did to me now, as I could feel myself getting hard.
But my words seemed to relax her. I couldn’t help but try to remind myself:Relax, Thiago! Don’t fuck this up.“You want some macaroni and cheese?” I asked, turning on my tiny stove.
“Sure,” she responded, flopping down on the couch. As I started taking ingredients out of the fridge, she asked, “Do you know how to cook?”
Offended, I replied, “I’ve been cooking since I was thirteen.” I put on water to boil.
“If you think you can cook, then I should be onTop Chef,” she replied, standing and rolling up her sleeves. “I can promise you, you’ve never tasted macaroni and cheese like mine.”
Resting my hips against the counter, I said, “Don’t underestimate my culinary abilities.”
“Don’t underestimate mine.”
She was so much shorter than me that I had to look down, and it was hard to resist the urge to grab the back of her neck and pull her in for a kiss. She must have known that’s what I wanted, but I could tell it wasn’t the right time, so I smiled at her, and we got to work. It was amazing to be together like that, alone, at ease, without having to worry someone might interrupt us, knowing we were doing nothing wrong. After all, my brother now knew about us, so we weren’t lying anymore. I didn’t have anything to feel bad about, right?
I was kidding myself. I knew that. Making excuses to keep from feeling like an asshole. But I needed this. I needed this moment of intimacy with Kam. As for the guilt, the consequences—I’d deal with them tomorrow.
I put on some music, and we had dinner at the little table beside the sofa. I wasn’t ashamed of the place, but I was anxious to know what she thought of it, to see how she’d feel in that small space and to find out if our lives were really as incompatible as I’d always feared.
But they weren’t. Not at all. Kam even slipped off her boots and sat on her knees on the sofa, spooning big bites of macaroni and cheese as she told me all about her interview at Yale in a few months.
Another thorn in my side, because it reminded me that she would be leaving. She’d be gone, dammit. And there I’d be living in a piece-of-shit caravan. It wasn’t much, but it gave me my own private space.
There was one thing, though: I hadn’t told Mom yet. Taylor didn’t know anything, either. And I had the feeling that I should keep it a secret for now.
“Since when are you into campers?” Kam asked, finishing her plate and setting it on the counter.
“I’ve always kind of wanted one,” I said, cleaning up what little there was—just the dishes, one glass, and one empty bottle of beer. “I’d been considering getting one for a while; rent costs a fortune, and it’s not like the school pays me that well…”
“I love it!” she exclaimed, interrupting me. “It’s so homey, and it’s so…you!”
“Yeah. Wait till the first time you get up in the morning and you find a field mouse in the toilet.”
Kam hugged her legs and squirmed, looking all around, which made me laugh.
“Relax,” I said, “I’ve got the situation under control.” That was true. But the first night I’d spent here, I wouldn’t have wished on anyone.
“What does your mom think? And…” I knew she was going to sayTay, but she stopped herself.
“They don’t know,” I replied, sitting back on the sofa. She had made a little hollow there for herself, settling in against the wall. I wanted to get close and kiss her. But I went on, “With Taylor going to college next year, I’m kind of worried about leaving her alone. I might just kind of come and go and maybe not fully move out.”
“Wow,” Kam said. “That’s so sweet of you. A lot of guys would just move out, period.” She looked almost proud of me.
“Well, I’ll probably spend some more time out here for now, since things between Taylor and me are so tense, and I know Mom has been worried about that.”
Kam looked down, realizing my not-so-subtle way of bringing up the topic we really needed to talk about.
“Your brother will never forgive me for this,” she said.
“What do you mean bythis?” I asked.
“What I feel for you…”
