Robame
The dance was going well for Meche, maybe too well.
She was dancing with Boy, her childhood sweetheart, with whom she’d never danced before. It was an unrequited dream she’d had throughout her school years. She gave it up only after Boy moved away from their hometown after high school. Now that he’d returned after almost an entire lifetime and took her to a dance in El Chuco, that dream seemed not only revived, but now finally and totally fulfilled.
They proved to be good dancing partners, as she’d always assumed they would be.
“Is there more?” she could not help but think.
Meanwhile, she saw that Boy was having a great time, continually smiling and keeping his eyes mostly closed. The expressions on his face all seemed quite familiar, what she’d grown up seeing and what used to dominate her dreams in high school. And they were now finally hers. What she’d always wanted. She was almost there.
Helplessly, the sensation of near-fulfilment convoked a memory of when she eloped with man a few years after high school. Her first real boyfriend. He was not like Boy at all, neither in appearce or manner. Güero, suave but machote, he was a type of vato Meche had never been close to.
In Meche’s mind, there was never a courtship. Straight to elopement on the second date. Se la robó. They then moved away from the Southside, where she was born and raised. Her family and friends didn’t like it. But she left anyway. Then, after years of homesickness and continual low-grade conflict with the vato, she had a baby girl. Life immediately looked very different after that. The baby looked up at her one day, and at that instant she realized that, for the baby’s sake, she needed to go home and raise her in the Southside. So she came back home and gave up on love until Boy walked through the doors of her café one day many years later.
Now here they were dancing as she’d once dreamed.
“Now what?” she thought.
At that moment, Boy opened his eyes and looked at her and nodded backwards her to ask the same question.
“Robame,” she said.
Boy didn’t seem to understand. He grimaced and nodded backwards again.
Meche smiled to assure him that he understood the question. She waved to him to come closer, and he complied. Then she embraced him hard—harder than she’d ever embraced him.
“What?” he asked her.
“I wanna robar you,” she said.
“I wanna robar you too,” said Boy.
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