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“I don’t think I’d ever leave New York.” Gonzalo says, deep and thick with something he can’t quite place. He reaches for the plastic bag of mangos settled on the floor, sun-warmed, perfectly ripe. “Ma would never leave, either. You know she’d die for this place, just like dad.” His voice softens when he talks about their parents, lets his fingers dig into the flesh of the fruit and pulls . “I don’t think she’d be lonely, though. You know how she is.”
He does know how she is. As a councilwoman, the scope of people that she’s acquainted with is more than the average person, but she’s also just—like that. Something about her makes people want to approach her, and she’s made a community out of their neighborhood. She takes care of them, they take care of her. It’s how she got through— how she’s getting through — her grief.
Their mother spent the majority of the morning hacking away at their grandmother’s mango tree and handed a decently-sized basket of mangoes to the both of them. She urges them to eat as much as you boys like, okay? tenemos mucho as if they’d ever complain about not having enough, as if they ever had in the first place. Miles can place the feeling in Gonzalo’s voice, then, picking into ripe fruit harvested by someone you love. His brother hands him the mostly peeled mango and Miles feels it, too. It’s almost devastating to be this fond.
“She’d be happy to hear you say that.” Miles grins, his mouth full of fruit. “You don’t like Florida?”
“I do.” Gonzalo picks into another mango and tosses its skin onto a flattened plastic bag. Miles watches it drip past his fingers and forearms. “Hialeah and South Beach remind me of Ponce. Todo aquí se visten asicalao…”
“But?”
“But,” Gonzalo swallows, not bothering to wipe the mess he’s made around his mouth. “It’s not New York. That’s it. This would be … Estaría bien con morir aquí, pero like– living here? Nah.”
“That’s why it’s popular to retire here.” It makes sense that Gonzalo thinks that, Miles thinks. Unlike him, Gonzalo was born with this knee-jerk uneasiness that comes built in with New York. If anyone has taken root here, it’s him, and Miles has always loved that about him. But— “You seriously wouldn’t ever leave? Nothing out there gets you excited? All the people you could meet?”
A cool breeze follows and Miles is reminded of the thin film of sweat he’d developed from sitting in their grandmother’s backyard for so long. He feels present. The stickiness of his fingers and the faint smell of smoke and oil coming from an open window. He’s been meandering passively throughout the days, floating about in this stupid, love-drunk, pathetic way ever since they established — this. Sun-warm and perfectly ripe kind of love that he sits with. That he’s sitting with, praying that the chorus of cicadas is loud enough to muffle his pleading, begging heart. I want to see the world with you.
There isn’t an instant answer. Gonzalo finishes his mango and tosses it aside, reaches for another.
“Wherever you go, I’ll follow.” His answer feels almost child-like, the kind of sibling bond you’re supposed to outgrow. Where you can’t imagine living away from them because you’re barely four, almost-five and there isn’t anyone in the world who understands the profound strangeness and consonance of being a twin so the only logical thing to do is make an empty promise to stick together, forever. Gonzalo takes a bite into it, the juices spray onto the floor. “Simple.”
Gonzalo doesn’t even look at him when he says it, like he’s stating the obvious. As if Miles doesn’t spend the majority of his time wondering if this , the thing he hasn’t given a name, means more to him than his twin. He learns that they’re fruitless now, and his heart hums the same tune as the cicadas and—
Gonzalo’s still talking.
Miles likes this— he loves today. How talkative Gonzalo is being, watching his mom interact with her mother like a young girl and reacting timidly when her mother scolds her, how honey-slow and persisting today is, how it melts sweetly in his mouth. He listens, for once.
“I meant me, alone. If I didn’t have you, for some reason, or you found someone else. I just– wouldn’t be able to leave here, even if I didn’t have anything else that tied me here.” He’s on his third mango, and if Miles weren’t too busy thinking about kissing him, he’d have made a glib jab about how he’s inhaling the mangoes, and to leave some for him. “I would wanna see it with you, though. I don’t care to do it with anyone else.”
When Miles kisses him, it’s unintentionally wet. It’s damp with mango juice and equally as sweet, it’s unhurried—Miles kisses him just to taste him, because the urge came up and he didn’t feel the need to deny himself of the affection he’d wanted to give, that he would continue to give in Italy one day, or Greece, or Brazil—he wanted to taint every corner of the Earth their affections.
“ Pérdon — I know we’re not inside and you told me to be careful but–“
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Gonzalo mumbles against his lips, nudging them together for more, licking into his mouth open and hungry like they aren’t sitting in the backyard, near an open window, where anyone can—
“Okay, okay– que carajo, God, you’re gonna get us caught.” Miles can barely contain his laughter, it bubbles up out of him. Miles’ hands stained his twin’s shirt but neither of them can find it within him to care. “ You’re the one who warns me the most about being careful.”
“Then don’t kiss me outta the blue.” Gonzalo says coolly but his dopey little smile is a dead giveaway. Miles wants to kiss him right where his laugh starts. “I’ve been dying to touch you since we got here.”