“Pendejo, are we here to prepare the food or watch you suck on this one’s neck? Vamos muevete!”
Nesto flushed, gave me one more squeeze and went back to doing whatever he was doing to an enormous amount of chicken breasts. After a few minutes I finished peeling garlic and handed the mountain of cloves to Juanpa, who was waiting to take them over to Nesto.
“Here you go.” He smiled and took them.
“Thanks.” He shook his head, as he looked in Nesto’s direction. “Only for one of these assholes would I spend a perfectly good Saturday night up to my elbows in garlic and onions. Nesto! Where do you want this, man?” he called out.
“Is that the garlic?” Nesto asked, without pausing what he was doing. “Bring it over and we’ll grind them to finish therecao.”
Juanpa got moving and took the stuff over to the industrial-sized blenders. While he and Nesto were over in the area with the food processors and the gigantic tubs of meat, Camilo and I kept working on our chopping. After a few minutes he started talking, as if we’d been in the middle of a conversation.
“I’ve never seen Nesto break his focus when he’s working before, but when you’re around, every few minutes he’ll stop what he’s doing and look for you. Like he’s making sure you’re still there.”
I stayed quiet, not sure what to say. I’d never been that person for anyone. I was not the one who brought others to distraction: always an extra, never the protagonist.
I had friends and I had a life, but never that kind of connection with someone else. Even with my ex, Elijah, things had never felt intentional. More like we were trying something out with each other.
I shook my head and shrugged, going for lightness. “He’s just making sure I’m doing something useful.”
The annoyed look on Camilo’s face told me he wasn’t buying it. “No, that’s not it. Nesto doesn’t waste his time with people who don’t know how to makethemselvesuseful. He’ll tell you what he needs once, if it’s not done when he comes back, he’ll start doing it himself. That’s what I meant when I said I’d never seen him lose his focus. Nesto is a single-minded motherfucker, and he isalwaysworking on something. College, career, culinary school, opening the truck. He’s always after something, and whatever it is, it’s the only thing that matters.” Yeah, I was not touching that.
He smiled and looked over to where Nesto was throwing something into a giant mixer, while Juanpa power-blended vegetables.
“And you better be ready to be iced out if you get in the way or fuck with his plan. Other than Patrice, Nesto is themost intense guy I know, but with you, he’s all soft,” he said, sounding astonished. “I’ve never seen him like that.” He lifted his eyebrows at me like he knew I was the one responsible for this change, but he must have noticed the panic on my face because he laughed and shook his head.
“It’s a good thing.You’regood for him. He needs someone to give him a reason to stop and smell the roses a little bit. Remind him things other than his damn business plan are important, too.”
I looked down at the onions I was supposed to be chopping, because I was feeling too many things. I wasn’t sure what any of this meant. So far Nesto had seemed so casual, he was attentive and present when we were together, but there was no question his main priority was OuNYe. No matter how bad I may have wanted more, I hadn’t indulged in fantasies of a future. Hope was a dangerous thing for me in relationships. I couldn’t trust it and I certainly couldn’t count on someone picking me over a dream or a conviction.
My family had taught me that lesson very well.
And that wasn’t even fair because no matter how well things were going, or how close we got, Nesto hadn’t made a single promise. He was here for his business.
I shook my head and said, “He’s got six months to make OuNYe a success. That’s the most important thing right now.”
Milo gave me one of those whole-body eye rolls I’d seen him dish out throughout the day, and said, “Oh honey, that six-month plan was just a way for Nesto to appease his control freak ways. He can’t think past November because after that he’ll have to makedecisions, hard ones. He’ll either have to decide the truck, which is the only thing he’s ever taken a risk on, is a failure, or he has to decide it isn’t, and that means leaving New York City for good. Neither of those are easy choices and both of them require letting go of some control.”
I shrugged, trying not to let Camilo in on how much this conversation was affecting me. “Nesto is driven. I respect that about him; he works hard for what he wants.”
“Oh, it’s not that he won’t work for it. He will grind himself into the earth’s core going for something he wants, even if after he’s dug himself back out, he’s the only one left.” He sighed and looked over to where Nesto and Juanpa were running three machines at once. “Our mothers are lionesses, all of them. Mine, Nesto’s, Patrice’s, and Juanpa’s. We learned to be fighters from them; they taught us working hard and getting an education were the only ways that four queer brown kids from the Bronx would ever get ahead. And we learned not just from what they told us, mind you, but from what we saw. But we also learned other things: stubbornness, and an inability to stop, or ask for help.”
“He’s relentless.” I nodded because he was right. How hard Nesto fought me on dealing with Misty on his own was proof of that. Camilo had more to say though.
“Nurys is a great mother, she brought up Nesto and Minerva on her own. Kept them out of trouble, loved them, and was an amazing role model. When Nesto came out to her,” He scoffed, but his face shone with fondness and respect. “That woman marched into the principal’s office the very next day and told him she would gutanyonein the faculty who gave her son a hard time or didn’t make sure the other students left him alone.” He shook his head, that fond smile still on his lips. “But.” He put his hand up as if conceding a point to an invisible Nurys. “Not that she wouldn’t say this herself, she’s had no fucking luck with the men in her life. None.”
This time I was the one looking over at where Nesto was working, because this conversation kept getting more intense.
“Even if she would never speak ill of their dads to either Nesto or Minerva, he saw her struggle on her own. ‘Men come inyour life to fuck things up.’ That’s a lesson he learned well. So, Nesto doesn’t let himself get swept away.” He pursed his lips, as if trying to keep the rest of what he had to say inside his mouth. “Of the four of us, he and Patrice are the guarded ones. Juanpa and I, we get our hearts broken enough for everyone.”
He finished with a sad smile on his face, and I wondered if whatever Nesto and I were doing would last long enough for me to get to know Milo better. I liked how direct he was; he just said what was on his mind. It seemed like a very liberating and very painful way to walk through life.
In that moment I felt glad for Nesto and a bit sad for myself, because he had people in his life who knew his story. Who understood the ways in which he was strong and the ways in which he wasn’t, and they still loved him. Not despite, but because of it.
I’d made myself hold so much of the past inside for so long, I feared no one truly knew me, not even Carmen. I was about to say something to Milo when I heard a yelp from Nesto on the other side of the room.
“Holy shit! This is wild.” He came over quickly while tapping on his phone screen with a huge grin on his face. Juanpa was hustling after him, with an equally large grin on his own.
“Nesto, deja eso,” Milo said as he smacked him hard on the arm. “Tell us what’s going on.”
