“Me too. Hey, if you want, you can call me Yami.” I think she’s earned the nickname. I get up to leave, because if I stay sitting on Bo’s bed any longer, I won’t be able to resist the urge to kiss her.
18
Thou Shalt Not Commit Adulting
I wake up in the morning with an insatiable need to dance. It’s not enough to watch a performance. I want to move. I march into the living room, where Bo is already set up playing some fighting video game. Her speaker is sitting on the table, just asking to be used.
I can’t bring myself to take it back to the room. Bo made me dance to her favorite music. It’s only fair if I make her dance with me to mine, right?
“Everything okay?” Bo asks, and she pauses her game.
“Yeah. Um. Are you busy right now?” I’m making it awkward. Why wasn’t it awkward when Bo wanted me to dance with her?
“Nope. What’s up?” She puts the controller down.
“Remember when you made me dance to your favorite music?”
“Yeah.” She’s smiling.
“Want to hear mine?” I ask.
“Yeah!” She hops up, and I offer her my hand.
“Do you know how to cumbia?”
She shakes her head. I play “Baila Esta Cumbia” by Selena, and show her the moves. She follows my feet until she gets the basics, then we start messing around with turns and dips and all that fancy shit. When I pull Bo up from our first dip, she looks impressed. I grin, chin up. Yeah, I’m strong enough to dip her. To impress her, I twirl her and do it again. This time she comes up giggling, face red.
“Again!” she squeals, and I happily oblige. Then I take her hand above our heads to twirl her. This time she just keeps twirling. Of course it didn’t take long for Bo to revert to her go-to move of spinning in circles. She has so much fun doing it that I start spinning with her. She giggles when I join her, and oh my God, her laugh. I could listen to her laugh all day.
I spend a good chunk of the next day sitting on the couch in the upstairs living room, hoping Bo will come out of her room to hang out with me. She’s been in there all day, and I don’t want to bother her unless she wants me to, so I just sit here waiting.
After what feels like forever but really is only about another hour, she finally comes out of her room. She marches over to the couch like she’s on a mission. Instead of sitting down next to me, she towers over me.
“I’m gonna do it,” she says, chest out.
“Do what?” I sit up straighter.
“Confront my parents. About what we talked about after the baile folklórico show. But I need you to come with me. For moral support.”
“Of course,” I say, happily getting up off the couch.
She leads me downstairs, where her parents are sitting on the couch watching Netflix. Bo just stands there without saying anything until they pause the show.
“Everything okay, you two?” Rick asks.
Bo opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. She sticks her shaking hand out to me, and I take it and squeeze. “I . . . um . . . I have something I want to say to you guys,” Bo starts, voice uncertain.
“What is it?” Emma asks.
Then there’s another uncomfortably long pause from Bo. “Okay, so . . . you know how you guys have all these Chinese decorations and stuff around the house?” she starts, squeezing my hand harder than when we watched that horror movie with Amber.
“Yeah . . . ,” Rick says slowly, like he’s waiting for Bo to continue.
“Well, I was thinking. Maybe I’d like it if you two kind of . . . took a step back from all of that, you know?”