Boy was happy. Coming home seemed to have worked out well fast. He was settling into his new house, reawakening old friendships, and getting a whole new perspective of himself and his future. Most outstanding was the re-blooming of his relationship with Meche.
They’d known each other since elementary school, not playmates per se but close enough that they practiced flirting with each other as children.
“Nice lisa, Boy. Trying to impress someone,” Meche said to Boy one morning as they passed in the hallway in the sixth grade.
“Pos, you,” Boy said.
Meche giggled.
“Nel, got it for my birthday but had to wait until it got warm enough to wear,” Boy added.
That giggle later led to a brief kiss in junior high— just practice. The real kiss didn’t come until prom night when they were juniors.
But they were never boyfriend and girlfriend. Boy was too focused on school and getting out of the Southside, which he finally did when he went away to college. He never came back for long, and he never saw Meche again.
Upon coming back much later in life, the idea of reconnecting with Meche became his main focus. And it was going well. All was perfect, except for the counter attendant, Meche’s daughter. She never turned up the scowl she gave Boy when he first walked into the bakery.
Meche welcomed him warmly when he showed up out of the blue. From the morning he walked in on, an old dream came into clearer and clearer focus.
He went by every morning and replayed old lines from the past.
“I bet you’re one of those people who think they’re not beautiful when obviously you are,” Boy said, reprising one of his first hits.
Meche laughed uproariously, for she remembered the line from their childhood.
“We should go on a trip together,” Boy said one morning.
“Oh, sí? To where?” asked Meche.
“To the back to make more empanadas,” interrupted Meche’s daughter.
“I’m gonna put the quahedas to this,” she added adamantly.
Meche looked up at Boy, and gave him a rapid succession of expressions: embarrassment, whimsy, truculence and longing.
Boy took a while to respond.
“Me cuajaste, but me des-cuajé. Let’s go to the back, Meche. No?” said Boy.
Meche giggled. Her daughter raised her shoulders and turned her head up exaggeratedly— defeated.
