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When Eddie was seven years old, he fell in love for the first time. True, deep, unimaginable love that he was certain he would never top again. This was it, he thought. This was the love of his life, and he was so lucky to have discovered it so soon.
Delia was her name. He liked the way her jeans had sunflowers sewn onto the knees, the way she loved to play pirates with him on the playground. No one had ever done such a fantastic job at sailing the seven seas; he would always hoist the sails and dig for buried treasure if she was the one demanding so.
In fact, he was so certain that Delia was the true love of his life that he declared it one day over dinner, a fork full of food lifted as a salute. “I’m going to marry her one day,” he declared solemnly. He didn’t exactly know what marriage was, but he knew it was what he was going to do with her. “She’s my soulmate.”
“Your soulmate,” his mother said frankly, “and you found her at seven years old? Come on, Edmundo. Just say you have a crush.”
It wasn’t just a crush. He knew it wasn’t just a crush, the same way he knew he would always split his snacks with Delia, the way he knew she was his best friend in the entire world.
He didn’t think crushes felt like this. Crushes were giggles and butterflies, something silly and childish and far beneath his superior level of maturity. This was something comfortable. He wasn’t nervous about Delia; she made him happy, and wasn’t that what love was?
He told her one day, sitting together underneath the slides. “I’m in love with you,” he whispered behind a cupped hand, pressed in tight to her ear to keep it as a secret just for her.
She stuck out her tongue, eyebrows scrunched. “I still think boys are icky,” she told him sadly. “You’re okay, though. But not like that.”
“Oh.”
“Can we still keep playing pirates together?”
“Of course!”
So, maybe Delia wasn’t the one true love of his life. Eddie thought that that might be okay, because they still got to be best friends and play together at recess, and she still gave him half of her graham crackers if he gave her half of his potato chips. He thought that maybe this was still love, just a different type than he had expected.
_____
His next great love came a few years later, just cresting into his teenage years. He liked to think of himself as older, wiser, with the experience this time to know what love didn’t feel like. Maybe everyone else had a point; maybe love wasn’t just someone who made you smile. Lots of people could make Eddie smile. It had to be deeper than that, he just knew it.
He thought maybe he was onto it when he saw Luis on the baseball field. They weren’t very close despite being on the same team; Eddie had just turned thirteen a few weeks ago, staunchly the seventh-grader, while Luis was fourteen, an inherently cool eighth-grade student who pitched lefty for their middle school team.
Eddie thought he liked the line of his body, the way he leaned when he threw the ball, leg outstretched behind him. He had never been all that great at art, but whenever Luis was pitching, he wished he was; he wanted to be able to sketch the way he threw, to capture him in paper and charcoal and do him justice.
This was love, right? The way his heart jumped whenever Luis ever so much as glanced at him, the nod he would give when they passed in the hallways between classes, the tap on his hip when Eddie hit a triple at one of their games. It wasn’t the same thing he had felt for Delia; this was a type of lightheadedness he had never experienced before.
He thought he could tell his parents. Sophia was at that age where she was chatting with their mother about the boys she thought were cute, the two of them bonding over the fleeting crushes she seemed to gain and lose day after day.
Eddie wasn’t nearly as close with either of his parents. He was thirteen, and he was a man. It was his job to take care of his mom and his sisters while his dad was gone, which felt more often than not those days. There was a disconnect between him and his parents, where he didn’t know when he was man and when he was boy, and at times it was simpler to just stay quiet.
He thought that this could be his opportunity. If his mother could bond with Sophia over the boys she liked, maybe he could do the same. Maybe if he told her about the boy he liked, the way his heart seemed to speed up whenever he thought of Luis, they could get to be closer. He could giggle just like Sophia did.
He picked the perfect time to do it, while the girls were playing in the backyard, his mom prepping dinner in the kitchen. She was cradling the bowl in one arm, whisking with the other, humming under her breath when Eddie decided to make his move.
“I think I’m in love,” he told her, a little less certain than he had been the first time, a little more cautious about how she would react.
Her whisking paused just for a moment, her eyes flitting up to his before dropping back to the bowl, continuing her mixing. “Really?”
He tried not to be disheartened by how dismissive it sounded. “Really!” he said, as perky as he could manage, trying to match the tone Sophia had when she talked about her crushes. “I really do.”
“Alright, Edmundo,” she sighed. “Go on. Who is she?”
“Um, Luis.”
“I didn’t quite catch that. Louise? Lois?”
“No, Luis.”
She dropped the bowl. To Eddie, it felt like the bowl fell for hours. Ceramic, blue with yellow flowers. A wedding gift, if he remembered correctly, one that Eddie had never been allowed to touch, tumbling down until it slammed into the ground, shattering into shards, cracking into pieces through the flowers, food splattering across the kitchen floor.
For a moment, no one moved. Neither of them said anything, Eddie’s eyes trapped on his mother while hers were screwed tightly shut. Her chest heaved with the force of her breaths.
“Edmundo,” she said slowly. It was cold, nothing like how she spoke about Sophia’s crushes. “You are not in love with Luis. You don’t even have a crush on him, okay?”
Eddie’s heart stuttered. This wasn’t how he imagined this going at all. “But I am! I get butterflies whenever I’m near him, and I want him to smile at me all the time.”
“It isn’t a crush,” she snapped. “Boys don’t have crushes on other boys. Boys have crushes on girls. You’re just confused.”
“But I’m not confused,” he insisted. He was certainly confused on how she was reacting, but not on Luis. “I know I’m in love with him. It just makes sense.”
“It doesn’t make sense.” She threw the whisk into the sink with enough force for it to clatter, her hand going to rub at her forehead. “You’re a man, Edmundo. Right?”
“Yeah, I am,” he said. He was told he was a man, anyways. He didn’t know what made him more man than boy, why he was a man and not a boy in this instance, but he knew better than to argue about this.
“Men have certain duties. One of those duties is falling in love with a woman, getting married, and having kids to continue the bloodline.”
Eddie didn’t know what was so important about a bloodline. They weren’t royalty, and there were twelve other Diazes in his grade, none of them related to him, so there probably wasn’t anything special about his own lineage. But with the way his mother was staring at him, piercing through him with such aggressive intensity, he couldn’t help but nod slowly in response.
She sighed, some tension leaving her shoulders. “Good. Then you understand why you don’t have a crush on a boy, and you will never have a crush on a boy.”
He actually didn’t understand. He felt close to tears, like the dream of him and Luis was drifting further and further from his grasp. But he was a man, and he had to pretend to understand. “Okay.”
“And look at what you made me do,” she groaned, gesturing at the mess of what remained of the bowl and food. “You’re grounded for this. I’ll figure out what your punishment is later, but for now, you’re cleaning this up.”
She stepped away, pulled out the trash can and some rags for him. He took the rags gingerly, sunk down to his knees to clean up the mess that he caused. He wasn’t exactly sure how it was his fault, but he knew what he had said was wrong, wrong enough to force his own mother to ruin their dinner.
He reached out, almost immediately cutting his finger on a small shard of ceramic. He hissed quietly under his breath, but he ignored the way the blood bubbled onto his skin. He was a man; men didn’t cry.
“And Edmundo,” his mother said shortly, pausing on her way out of the kitchen, “don’t tell anyone about this. Not your friends, not your sisters, and certainly not your father. Don’t let this mistake overshadow your future.”
So maybe Eddie still didn’t know what love was. He really thought he had it this time, but he guessed he was wrong. Maybe Luis wasn’t the one true love of his life, wasn’t his soulmate, wasn’t anything besides a lapse in judgement. He could try again. He could keep searching. Now that he knew it would never be another boy, maybe he would have better luck the next time.
_____
Eddie was seventeen, and he finally decided that love must have been him and Shannon. He wasn’t sure at first; it didn’t really feel all that different from how he had felt about Delia all those years ago, but it probably was love this time.
That was what his friends told him anyways, when Shannon started leaning a little closer when they talked, when her laughs became breathier and her words became sharper.
Love wasn’t the word they used, exactly. Not even close. But he didn’t know how to think about it besides in terms of love, as finding a soulmate.
In some ways, Shannon did feel like she could have been his soulmate. She was whip-quick, witty in ways he had never seen before. She filled his silences easily, never once complaining about his propensity to keep to himself, matching his moods easily.
Was that what a soulmate was? Eddie wasn’t sure. He thought maybe. He thought that if everyone else assumed he loved her, maybe he did. Maybe he was just still so unaware as to what love felt like that he couldn’t help but miss it when he had it.
Maybe that was why, when Shannon first pressed her lips against his cheek, chaste in a way that made him glow red, he decided to ask her out, to have a girlfriend. He tried not to think about the way it made his mother relieved, the way his father nodded solemnly and told him it was about time he had a girlfriend. As if there was something they had been concerned about, some fear that this quelled.
Having a girlfriend was nice. It was nice to have a built-in friend, someone who he knew he could talk to if need be. He could go to her house after school if he wanted, or walk in the park with her, and no one would bat an eye.
His friends kept leering at him over her, kept nudging him and insinuating things that he didn’t know how to handle. Wasn’t it enough to love Shannon like this? Wasn’t it enough to just want to sit by her side and listen to her talk? He felt connected enough to her already; he didn’t need anything else. The pecks on the lips already made his stomach squirm enough.
But maybe it wasn’t enough, with the way Shannon was eyeing him. Maybe this was just another way that he was supposed to be a man, another thing that he was supposed to want. It certainly was what his friends thought he wanted. Every time he said he was going to her house after school, they jeered in a way that made him feel slightly sick, like he wanted to defend her, say she was more than just her body.
He went with it, finally, once they were eighteen. He was officially a man, and he needed to be what everyone expected; no hiding behind his boyhood anymore. And it was awkward and quick and probably disappointing for Shannon, but maybe that was because he had to get used to it.
There was no choice, anyhow. The decision was made for him when Shannon pulled him to the park after school, two positive pregnancy tests in shaking hands.
Eddie Diaz was a man. He was eighteen years old, and he’d been a man for longer than he hadn’t. He knew what he had to do, knew what it meant for him and his future.
This had to be what love was. He had to be sure of it, because he didn’t have any choice in the matter. He was going out of order, but he had found a woman, he was determined to marry her, and he was going to continue the bloodline. Shannon had to be his soulmate, had to be the love of his life, had to be who he was meant to be with. There was no other option.
_____
Eddie didn’t think love was supposed to be like this. He thought that love was more than the space between fights, than broken promises and unfulfilled expectations. He thought it should have been something he didn’t want to run away from.
He wasn’t sure. He had watched his father run away from his mother more times than he could count, long days at work excusing the time away from the family like it made it any better. They didn’t fight like this, but maybe Eddie just hadn’t seen it. Or maybe his mother wasn’t as strong-willed as Shannon was, unwilling to speak her mind or beg for a partner.
Eddie wanted to know what love was, but he would acquiesce to this. If this was as close to love that he would ever get, he would learn to appreciate it through every spiteful word, both given and taken.
_____
It was different, in Los Angeles. Eddie was a different person, molding into a shape his parents couldn’t touch. Shannon was a different person too, less bitter and more self-assured.
With her back, he thought he could have his chance again. He was willing to take that leap with her. Maybe they just needed the time apart to be able to come together, to love each other to the best of their abilities.
He was less willing to take that leap for Christopher. He could risk his own heart, but he could never risk his son’s. Not until he was sure that she could love him the way that he deserved, even if she couldn’t end up loving Eddie.
But what choice did he really have? At the end of the day, he was a man, and she was his wife, and what was love if not that? What could love have possibly been besides a commitment, the decision to try and try and try until your lungs were collapsing under the pressure?
This had to have been love. There wasn’t another option.
_____
Love died in shades of yellow and red. Yellow and flowers. Eddie thought of ceramic bowls.
_____
A man should not have been hung up like this, looking for the ghost of a woman in the face of every partner he ever tried to make.
But maybe, real men didn’t need love, or want love, or deserve love. It all blurred together anyways. If soulmates were real, and Shannon had been his soulmate after all, it wouldn’t have even made a difference.
But there was Ana, and there was Marisol, and they were everything and nothing all at once. Everything that could have made him a man, nothing that could have made him alive. Did he die with Shannon? Or had he ever lived with her at all? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that being a man meant smiling through the dullness, finding a woman to be a mother, building a family with a man and a woman and a child.
Never anything else.
_____
It was three months into Christopher’s time in Texas when Eddie and Buck sat together on his balcony, the growth of the plants blocking the light of the streets. Eddie held a lemonade in his hand, cool glass dripping condensation against his skin. He was trying to drink less beers, less alcohol in general and replace it all with juice.
Buck was watching him carefully from five feet down, his own drink sat on the table beside him. Sometimes it was easier to forget how much he needed to be a man, when Buck was near him. He could just be Eddie, and it would be enough.
Buck took a sip of his lemonade, nice and slow, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the swallow. “Do you believe in soulmates?”
Eddie could have choked.
What a question. He wasn’t sure if he had the answer to it anymore. He had so many certain soulmates in his life, people he thought he was destined to love, each one lined up now in his mind like shadows of mistakes.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I don’t think I can.”
“What does that mean?”
Eddie didn’t know how to put it into words. He didn’t know how to explain to Buck the way he couldn’t discern friend from love, love from duty, duty from desire. It all melded together into a singular mess, a mix of soulmates that never amounted to more than different textures of heartache.
He couldn’t say that. Instead, he simply shrugged, kept his eyes down low enough to hide any stray emotions. “I thought I believed in soulmates. I think I would have known by now if they were real.”
“Maybe they are,” Buck suggested. “Maybe everyone has a ton of potential soulmates, but they only ever become your real soulmate when you put the work in.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing?” Eddie asked, perhaps a little meanly. “Have you been putting in the work?”
Buck didn’t take offense. Eddie was lucky, really, that Buck understood him so well, didn’t rise to his bait. “I think I love too much, sometimes. I see pieces of soulmate in so many people that I forget to consider who sees pieces of soulmate back in me.”
Eddie wished he could relate. He thinks he might have been able to, at seven and thirteen and seventeen, when manhood was more a vague concept and less a suffocating duty. Back before the bowl dropped especially.
He tried not to think too hard about that bowl.
“I think it’d be hard not to see pieces of soulmate in you, Buck,” Eddie said, more honest than he intended.
But it was true. Buck carried so much goodness in him, pure intentions and earnestness that had to be compelling even to the darkest of souls. It was hard, Eddie thought, to look at Buck and not feel a touch of yearning, for what he wished he could have. He didn’t want to think about what that meant, though, so he tucked it away and drowned it with lemonade.
_____
Eddie had hit that age where the number didn’t really matter so much, where the years of his thirties didn’t feel quite so distinct as seven and thirteen and seventeen, but it didn’t matter so much. It was now that he realized that maybe he had found the love of his life, his soulmate.
How else could he explain the way he felt entirely grounded and uprooted at the same time? That lingering desire under his skin when Buck tilted his head just so, when the light hit his smile marks just so, when his knee brushed against Eddie’s just so, when, when, when. It wasn’t even just carnal; he wanted Buck in every way that mattered, in every way that he would let him.
He thought maybe this was what a soulmate was. Someone who he had known for years, had built a life with unintentionally, but also with more intent than he could have ever explained. Someone who cared for him at his lowest, celebrated at his highest, and stayed by his side in all the in-betweens.
He was certain of it now, in a way that he had never been certain of anything before. And he didn’t need to ask permission to love, or beg for connection, or do anything besides express to Buck just how much he meant to him.
That didn’t stop him from picking up the phone and dialing. “Mom,” he said firmly, once she picked up. “I found the love of my life.”
“Oh, not this again,” she groaned. “Edmundo, I have heard you say you have found the love of your life half a dozen times by now.”
“This time, it’s real,” Eddie said, biting the syllables, “because it’s not the love of the life you wish I led. It’s the love of my life, the one I’ve built for myself and Christopher, and you don’t have any space to say I’m wrong.”
“Fine,” she huffed. “Who?”
“It’s Buck,” he told her. “I’m gay, Mom. No matter how much you didn’t want that for me, it’s true. I’m gay, and I’m in love with Buck, and I know he loves me back.”
There was silence for a moment, just an inhale of time, before she finally responded. “I don’t know where you got this idea in your head that I’m homophobic, Edmundo. I’ve always supported the gay community.”
Eddie’s heart stuttered. “Oh, you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to pretend that you didn’t uproot my entire fucking life when I told you I had a crush on a boy.”
“I don’t remember this. Are you sure you didn’t just imagine it?”
“You broke the bowl, Mom. You fucking shattered that blue bowl with the flowers on it when I told you I had a crush on Luis. You grounded me for telling you I had a crush, and you made me pick up all those fucking shards by hand. I bled for liking a boy.”
“No, you knocked the bowl over,” she said, like she thought she was correcting him, like she thought that suppressing her guilt would be enough to exonerate her from it. “That’s why I grounded you, because you weren’t careful in the kitchen.”
Eddie felt hot with his anger, felt tears welling up in his eyes over it. “You can lie to yourself all you want and say you’ve always been the perfect supporter, but I know the truth, and I’ll never forgive you for it. And it’s damn time that I pick up my son. I’ve waited too long, but that’s about to change. You don’t get to take everything from me and play the martyr.”
_____
Telling Buck was the least scary thing that he had ever done. He thought maybe that was all the difference, the way that he could see Buck, just a few feet from him, and know that everything would be okay.
“I’m learning it’s okay to love,” Eddie told him, unprompted.
Buck smiled. Eddie could tell he knew where this was going. “It might be the best thing any of us can do,” he said seriously.
“I think it took me a long time to get here.”
“Soulmates are worth waiting for.”
Eddie snorted out a laugh, a little wetly. “I should have known from the beginning.”
“You shouldn’t have,” he said firmly. “We weren’t soulmates then.”
Eddie reached out for him then, an arm outstretched, fingers splayed invitingly. Buck took the bait and intertwined their fingers, stepping into Eddie’s space like he was just coming home. “You make me believe in soulmates again,” Eddie said. “I thought I had given up on them, but there’s no other explanation for you.”
Buck grinned, wide and unabashed, cheeks straining for it. “And you’re everything I had ever wanted. I just needed to look right in front of me.”
Eddie couldn’t help but lean in and press his lips tenderly against Buck’s in a way that felt more like love than anything else he had ever felt in his life.
By the look on Buck’s face, it seemed like he agreed.
____
So, Eddie Diaz knew what love was. True, deep, unimaginable love that he was certain he would never top again. This was it, he thought. This was the love of his life, and he was so lucky to have discovered him at all.
Love was cooking with Buck in the kitchen, throwing vegetables at each other just to make the other laugh. It was Christopher laughing in the background, pencil scratching at his homework while he waited for dinner.
Love was what he made. Love was what was in this house, what he had put in this house, what he would always keep in this house.
And he had to admit: it felt perfect.