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Cayetana has never been someone who is particularly good at keeping still. She thinks maybe she was a bird in a past life, with jittery wings flapping on instinct and tiny legs moving a mile a minute in hopes of reaching any destination on time, never feeling fully free until finally soaring above the clouds.
Cayetana, like in every other aspect of her life, is deprived of this luxury—the ability to escape—and so, instead of wings she adopts hobbies to busy herself with, calming nervous hands with detailed stitch work and easing anxiety by distracting her brain with new design ideas. An unforeseen consequence of this innate inability has regularly resulted in long nights awake at the counter when the rest of the world has long ago succumbed to sleep. Today is no different.
Her chosen task of the evening is a rough sketch of a pink tulle dress she hopes to finish by graduation, a day so far into the future that she struggles to conjure up an image of it in her daydreams. Yet the grandeur of the project and it’s demands of generous deadlines intimidates Caye into her current position, hunched over the slightly crinkled paper with a stubby pencil in one hand and a nearly finished black tea in the other as the clock in front of her ticks dangerously close to tomorrow.
It’s almost reassuring how serene the deep silence of the night can be, when a clothespin dropping from her hand is the loudest noise around her. A drastic contrast to her noisy mornings of slamming lockers, ferociously whispered gossip and clicking noises of blocky heels against stone tiles.
The vaste quiet echoes so deep she almost shivers. That’s what makes the sudden knock at her door all the more startling.
Cayetana falls off her chair in the scramble to reach the booming noise before it spreads throughout her house and wakes everyone else’s slumber. During her haste she takes the gamble of opening the door without looking through the peephole and mentally prepares for whatever horrifying disturbance has presented itself. Her mind chases memories of the last white envelope sent to the house and prays her mom paid enough bills this month to keep the landlord, and his promise of eviction, away for the night. What she finds waiting at her doorstep is much, much worse.
“Polo, what happened?”
The words slip from her mouth before she has the sense to stop them. They’re more rhetorical than much else, it doesn’t take a genius to guess the aftermath of his and Guzman’s reunion after taking a glance at Polo’s shivering body and swollen eyes, the way the angles of his face have almost sunken in, the distinct tear tracks running across his cheeks.
“Polo,” she repeats questioningly, more quietly now that the shock of a visitor has been washed away and replaced with concern.
He struggles to speak, she watches him open his mouth once, then twice but not a single word comes out. The anxious unease swirling in the pit of her stomach only grows as he stares at her with nothing but exhaustion in his gaze. If she looks closely it’s almost as if he sways with the wind, too weak to stand upright, like the mere fact that he’s even made it to her house is enough to have him whither away into dust right then and there. She can’t stand it.
Cayetana doesn’t think twice before reaching around Polo and pulling him into her arms. Probably a little carelessly considering how there seems to be an invisible ‘handle with care ’ sign floating above his head.
Her suspicion is confirmed as he winces slightly in response and she has to consciously force herself to loosen the grip boxing him in against her.
“Caye,” he finally breathes out into the crux of her neck—his face wet with tears pressed onto her bare skin, sending chills along the back of her spine—and she swears she’s never heard a sadder sound.
It’s as if the sight of him distraught unlocks an instinctive part of her brain, maybe the same one as that night he almost drowned, almost killed himself, that has her moving on pure adrenaline. Her arms and legs move without her conscious decision, like she’s reacting off her gut alone and this unrelenting need to soothe the pain radiating off him. She takes his hand and leads them away from the house, not bothering to grab a coat for him knowing even the soaking one he’s wearing now will keep him warmer than any of the imitations she has in her closet.
They end up at a little pond just around the corner of her house and she carefully guides for Polo to sit on the cold metal bench facing the water. It’s not particularly special, she knows for a fact it’s not even an eighth of the view Polo has from his bedroom window, but it’s quiet—apart from the few bloodlust mosquitos humming around them—and calming, especially if you focus your eyes on the way wind seems to play against the gentle current of the waves. Throughout all her time knowing Polo, he’s seemed to appreciate those traits over dazzlingly beautiful anyway.
“You were right” is the first coherent sentence out of his mouth, muddled with shame and blurted out in confession. It’s fitting, she thinks, that he would prioritize the validation of another person’s ego over his own wellbeing. She can practically feel his heart beating erratically, like ripples when a stone slices straight across the surface of a pond and the water’s delicate tension is broken.
His next sentence isn’t much better. His next sentence is so brimmed with panic, each word packed with such shaky desperation that Cayetana doesn’t think it actually even qualifies as a sentence.
“He didn’t- When I got there-”
“It’s okay,” she interrupts immediately.
It’s selfish, she knows, to force him to swallow whatever heaviness he’s carrying so deeply in his bones, all alone, but one of them needs to be okay right now and she certainly won’t be if she hears what Guzman did to him.
She’d always found it so endearing how every emotion seemed to flicker across Polo’s face. It was a rare sight, both where she was from and within the frosty walls of their school, where each facade—each dynasty—was in danger of collapsing from even a single noticeable twitch in their expression.
She doesn’t find it very endearing anymore. Not after the amount of times she’s seen his expression crumble, like it is right as he mumbles, “I can’t believe I didn’t realize — ”
His hands are shaking so she takes them both into hers but hers are so small that she can’t manage to soothe his trembles, leaving both of them jolting awkwardly anytime a particularly strong tremor runs underneath Polo’s skin.
Lingering distress and too much caffeine has left her mind rattled, an uneasiness she’s made all the more aware of as she stares down at Polo. Cayetana forces herself to find false comfort in the familiarity of the situation. Polo falls apart, Cayetana tries to hold his pieces together for just a little bit longer. This is a role Cayetana knows well, and her skills of deception are nothing if not practice in making her the best damn actress this city has ever known, if anyone could pull this off it’s her.
The warmth she’d once associated with Polo has seemingly vanished, all she feels now is ice as her long fingers sweep up the length of his back and into the nape of his hair. She doesn’t have to so much as nudge the back of his skull before he’s curling against her.
“I think you knew,” she starts out, intentionally gentle and praising, “deep down. I think maybe you were just a little blinded by hope.”
And that was the other tragedy about Polo Benavent, he’s never quite been able to let go of his naive latch on hope. He had somehow made it through his childhood without spiteful hands shattering the illusion of this concept for him, he had escaped them unlike her. Until now that is.
The universe had been a little crueler with him, only now cementing the reality behind this lie as he’s forced to face harsh consequences—for harsher actions—the world had not prepared him for.
She can’t help it, it’s inherent that she both envies and pities Polo because of it.
In a reaction to her words, Polo tightens his curled palm around the curve of her shoulder, reinforcing his grip as if he’s worried she’s heartless enough to abandon him in this state. As if previous experiences have proven this theory right before.
“You must think I’m so stupid,” he murmurs hushed and low.
She can’t tell if it’s intentional whenever he does this, whispering self deprecating statements into the silence between them, the edges of his voice tinged with longing that she’ll be quick to disagree. She would sigh at his comment if she didn’t think the soft exhale would accelerate the already spiraling self-hatred no doubt already consuming his mind.
“I think,” Cayetana starts carefully, her words meticulously stringed together with ambiguity, she’s learned that if she’s not careful there’s a dangerous ramification to comforting Polo—things turned out well the first time she exposed her own vulnerability to him, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to make the same mistake twice—so she’s purposefully vague as she continues, “if I had people that were as precious to me as those old friends are to you, I would do everything I could to keep them in my life.”
She doesn’t say ‘you’re all I have’ or ‘I know that to you I’m nothing more than a temporary comfort, but you are the only person who’s ever really seen me.’ No, she let’s those particular set of words die on the tip of her tongue and fill her mouth with acidity.
‘I can’t blame you, I would do much, much stupider things to keep you mine.’ She doesn’t even let that thought reach her lips before she’s blinking it away.
The hum of gratitude Polo lets out as he turns his face slightly towards her so that his nose is pressed against the side of her jaw is proof enough that she made the right decision. The sigh of relief Caye huffs out is hidden between the strands of Polo’s sweat slicked hair.
Just when Caye thinks that maybe the exhaustion won over Polo’s body and she’ll need to find a way to drag him to her bed, Polo whispers his second confession of the night into the junction of her neck, “Sometimes, I feel like I’m still underwater, waiting for my air to run out.”
Cayetana can feel her own chest constrict at the thought. She lets the fresh air of the crisp night lodge itself into her throat and painfully swallows before responding, “just take some of mine.”
“Like last time,” she adds. Cayetana is not as brave as her words so she hides her doubts with impulsive action, pulling Polo down with her against the metal ridges of the bench.
Polo shifts away from his hiding spot flush against Cayetana and she resists the urge to chase after his body. The distance between them doesn’t last very long but its effects are immediate, Caye crosses her arms against her chest as the wind seems to breeze through all her layers. Until finally Polo brushes some hair from Caye’s neck, making sure she’s looking before he tells her, “I’ve already taken too much from you”
He’s smiling at her but it’s so sad, the corners just barely maintaining their perkiness, and she can’t bare to look at it for a second longer so she presses her lips softly against his before admitting, “I’ve taken just as much, your bank account can attest to that.”
Polo huffs out a laugh, one she knows is more for her benefit than genuine considering how he usually hates any reference to his monetary aid and the connotations that come with it but she revels in the sound anyway.
The material of the bench is unforgiving as it digs into the notches of her spine, giving her the inclination to think it’s doing the same to Polo too. If it was up to him they would probably just stay here all night, Polo’s conscience has a way of incorporating itself into every situation where there’s an opportunity for Polo to punish himself. Cayetana knows Polo thinks he doesn’t deserve even something as negligible as momentary comfort, which is why she's all the more persistent to give it to him.
Polo doesn’t object when she takes his hand from where its previously occupied tapping gently against her calf, he does however pull her back down when she tries to get up.
She nudges his side, and he takes a deep breath as if he’s mustering the courage before asking, “Can we just- let’s not leave yet. I want to look at you here, for just one minute.”
Both of his hands wrap around Cayetana’s waist and move her to sit directly in front of him before she can bring herself to protest her disagreement. One of his hands moves up, brushing against her shoulder until he reaches her head to pat down her hair, smiling to himself as he attempts to calm the chaos humidity has had on her frizz.
There’s an edge to how he’s watching her, like he’s studying her features to memory and Cayetana for the life of her can't figure out why that puts her in apprehension. Panic unfurls in her abdomen, she doesn’t like the finality in Polo’s gaze, doesn’t like how there’s nothing but her sharp inhale and noises of distant crickets to break the silence of the moment.
She decides to do something about her discomfort, jutting her arm forward between them to hold up her pinky finger toward him. The act is so sudden it takes Polo by surprise, enough so that the tense lines of his shoulder loosen up just the tiniest bit.
He tilts his head to the side, looking at her questioningly and she uses it as permission to grip his wrist tightly with her other hand, moving it towards as an indication of what she wants from him.
Polo questions, “Isn’t it common courtesy to tell someone what they’re promising before they accept?”
Cayetana, feigning offense, exaggeratedly states, “Don’t you trust me?”
“I don’t know,” he muses, his voice teasing as the echo falls around them, “that’s a lot of commitment.”
She pouts in response almost instinctively but can’t bring herself to actually be annoyed, not when Polo’s seemingly returning to the version of himself before whatever incident took place at Guzman’s house. Her sulk is what prompts him to finally cross his pinky finger with hers, his lashes fanning down to shield him from her stare. She thinks he means to hide his smile as he ducks his head forward but it’s so radiant she notices it anyway.
She turns her focus to their hands, the way purple veins are visible under his delicate skin, the way his knuckles are dusted with bruising.
“Will you tell me what I just promised now?” He asks again, softer and more fondly than he did the first time.
“To come to me, the next time you feel like you’re running out of air, to let me help and lend you some of mine,” she answers. She doesn’t look up at him, doesn’t need to to know the look of dejected desperation bleeding into his expression.
“Caye,” he pleads.
“You already promised.” she points out, feeling accomplished in her ability to deceive him into complying with her demands.
She knows it’s childish to take any remote amount of comfort in the promise. Besides, it’s not like anytime someone has made her a promise, it hasn’t just ended in catastrophic disappointment. After all, promises are nothing more than lies wrapped in foil and tied in a bow with gold ribbon.
She momentarily forgets that when she watches Polo untangle his fingers from hers, eyes the slightest bit shiny, before taking her palm to press his lips against the back of her hand.
“Come on, it’s getting chilly,” Caye tugs at his hold. Her entire body is covered in goosebumps but she’s not sure she can put all the blame on the icy current.
Polo frowns, but follows Caye away from the bench anyway.
“I don’t want to go home yet,” he says, petulant.
She smiles brightly, “You can stay the night with me,” then, as if it’s an afterthought, she adds, “we’ll just have to sneak you out in the morning.”
He squints at her, “I didn’t take your mom as the type to need sneaking away from.”
“Well, she’s not,” Cayetana admits, her smile widening as Polo arches a brow, then she whispers, as if revealing a grand secret, “but isn’t this so much more exciting? I’ve always wanted to hide around the house with a boyfriend.”
There’s a twitch in the corner of his mouth as he waits, deliberating, unable to tell if she’s serious or not.
She is.
Polo bites his lip and shakes his head at her for no more than five seconds—Cayetana counts each one—before a bubble of laughter erupts from his lips. A real laugh this time.
And she knows it then, despite her brain trying to trick herself otherwise months later when he’s 4 ft below the ground and unable to confirm so himself, that during those few moments as they slid under her sheets and watched the moon dance against the pale of her withering wallpaper, he was unhaunted.
Her mistake earns her a life of looking back on the memory of that night. When it’s so humid, so suffocating, that not even the outside air coming through the cracked window is enough to soothe her back to sleep.
She comforts herself with the guilt of not being enough for him to stay. It’s her punishment, she tells herself, for being too needy, too desperate, too selfish, for taking his pain and making herself the saviour of it.
Cayetana’s life is full of fleeting opportunities of happiness, each one managing to slip through her fingers. It was inevitable that her first love followed that list, because Polo had escaped and Cayetana was still firmly chained to reality.