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Jaime is a collection of the people that he loves.
He is his mother’s eyes, his father’s nose. He is the laugh that he shares with his sister – the same breathless way they draw in air before bursting into giggles all over again. He is the sharp wit that Rudy has taught him, and the curse words he told Jaime not to repeat. He is the steady hands passed on from his Nana, the gentle way she kisses his forehead.
He is the beaded bracelet Rudy slipped from his own wrist and onto his nephews when Jaime was eight. When he had come home crying with a split lip earned from bullies who had shoved him to the concrete at school, and Rudy had given him the bracelet, claiming it would give him super powers. Then he’d driven Jaime to school the next day in his Tacoma and told Jaime to point out the boys that had pushed him.
He is the skills his Nana taught him. Like how to mend his own clothes, because he would fall from his skateboard so many times that she would get sick of doing it for him.
He is the burn on his arm from the time he and Milagro were trying to cook their mom breakfast for mother’s day, and Jaime accidentally leaned too close to the pan of frying eggs. His mom had bandaged the burn in a Pokémon Band-Aid, Piplup because that was Jaime’s favorite, and kissed it all better. When Milagro falls from her bike for the first time, Jaime will stick a Charizard Band-Aid onto her knee and do the same.
He is his father’s necklace, heavy around his neck and cool against his skin and the newest addition to the patchwork of what makes him him. It is the same chain he used to pull at as a baby, breaking the clasp one time when he yanked it with a chubby fist. The same pendant he used to try to stick in his mouth when his apá held him close. Jaime does not remember this, but his mother does when she presses the necklace into his hands at his dad’s funeral and tells him it is his.
Jaime does not know if it fits.
But it rests over his heart when he tucks it under his shirt and feels like a kiss to his knuckles. Like calloused hands ruffling his hair. Like when he told his dad he got into college and the man hugged him so tightly Jaime thought he just might never let go. He wears it like a promise now.
Jaime is a collection of people that he loves, and he carries them with him always.