Boy sat at the laminate and chrome table in La Buena Bakery. It was the only piece of furniture in the sitting area besides the six chairs and the glass counter bisecting the big rectangular room, and old cantina. Boy had gotten into a morning routine where he walked to the bakery, ordered a coffee and sat at the table in a way he could see the baker baking, Meche, his childhood coquet.
He smiled at the attendant, Meche’s daughter, who by now had tempered her scowled with a non-expression, as if he wasn’t there. Boy saw this as progress.
Meche had gotten used to, even looked forward to Boy’s visits.. She went about baking and looked back at him. They smiled at each other. When everything went into the oven, Meche would come out and sit at the table with Boy and join him with a small coffee and chat about old times, mostly elementary school.
“What were the names of those twins who were with us in elementary, totally different looking, one bigger and a lot lighter complected than the other?” Meche asked.
“The Flores brothers, Roy and Ernesto. Didn’t look like twins at all. We nicknamed Roy Neto so it sounded like his brother’s, Nesto, in that way making them seem more like twins. Neto y Nesto,” said Boy.
Meche laughed uproariously.
The best point in their daily encounter came when their small talk paused and they silently sipped their coffee and gave each other tiny smiles.
Boy felt as if he could pass the rest of his life this way.
Nobody caught tiny smiles outside the Southside. When Boy first left to go to college, he thought it would be a matter of time before he met somebody who did. So he flashed and flashed them. Yet nobody caught them. Everybody took it as shyness, sullenness, too ethnic.
He eventually gave up and made sure to talk instead. That did get noticed de amadres. And the rest was gatcho history.
Meche as anxious about what would come next. She recalled it was this way when they were chavos. She wanted her first kiss, and he seemed oblivious.
“We’re still chavalones, no, Boy?” she asked him eventually.
Boy breathed deeply before he responded.
“Simón. Lots of life still ahead of us, if that’s what you meant,” Boy finally said.
Meche shook her head. That wasn’t what she meant.
Boy knew what she meant. But he only looked at her.
They were back in the sixth grade.
“Say you like me,” he tried to tell her telepathically.
“No we’re still chavalones and have time to wait?” she said.
“Say you like her,” he told himself silently.
They sat together quietly a long time.
“More empanadas!” they heard from the counter.
Meche got up and went to the backroom to bake.
