The song changes and now it’s superfast, but Rufus stills me and puts a hand on my hip. “Dance with me.”
I thought we were dancing already. “Am I doing it wrong?”
“You’re great. I meant a slow dance.”
The beat has only increased, but we place our hands on each other’s shoulders and waist; my fingers dig into him a little, the first time I’m getting to touch someone else like this. We take it slow, and out of all the ways I’ve lived today, maintaining eye contact with Rufus is really hard; it’s easily become the most intense intimacy ever I’ve ever experienced. He leans in to my ear, throwing me into this weird phase where I’m relieved to be free of his gaze but also miss his eyes and the way he looks at me, like I’m good enough, and Rufus says, “I wish we had more time. . . . I wanna ride bikes through empty streets and spend a hundred dollars at an arcade and take the Staten Island ferry just to introduce you to my favorite snow cones.”
I lean in to his ear. “I want to go to Jones Beach and race you to the waves and play in the rain with our friends. But I want quiet nights, too, where we talk about nonsense while watching bad movies.” I want us to have history, something longer than the small window of time we’re actually sharing, with an even longer future, but the dying elephant in the room crushes me. I rest my forehead against his, the both of us sweating. “I have to talk to Lidia.” I kiss Rufus again before we break through the crowd. He grabs my hand from behind, following me through the path I’m clearing.
Lidia sees us holding hands right as Rufus lets go and I take hers in mine, leading her toward the bathrooms, where it’s a little quieter. “Don’t slap me,” I say, “but I’m obviously into Rufus and he’s into me and I’m sorry for never telling you someone like Rufus is someone I would be into. I thought I had more time to accept myself, you know, even though I never really saw anything ugly or wrong about it. I think I was waiting around for a reason—something beautiful and awesome to accompany any declaration. It’s Rufus.”
Lidia raises her hand. “I still want to slap you, Mateo Torrez.” She wraps her arms around me instead. “I don’t know this Rufus character, and I’m not sure how well you know him either after one day, but—”
“I don’t know every detail about his past. But what I’ve gotten out of him in one day is more than I feel like I ever deserved. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“What am I going to do without you?”
This loaded question is the reason I didn’t want anyone to know I was dying. There are questions I can’t answer. I cannot tell you how you will survive without me. I cannot tell you how to mourn me. I cannot convince you to not feel guilty if you forget the anniversary of my death, or if you realize days or weeks or months have gone by without thinking about me.
I just want you to live.
On the wall there are markers of many colors, most of them dried out, hanging from rubber cords. I find a bold orange marker that works and I tiptoe to reach this blank space where I write: MATEO WAS HERE AND LIDIA WAS BY HIS SIDE, AS ALWAYS.
I hug Lidia. “Promise me you’ll be okay.”
“It would be a huge lie.”
“Please lie to me,” I say. “Come on, tell me you’ll keep moving. Penny needs you at one hundred percent, and I need to know you’ll be strong enough to take care of the future global leader.”
“Damn it, I can’t—”
“Something is wrong,” I say. My heart is pounding. Aimee is standing between Rufus and the Plutos and three guys who are yelling over her. Lidia grabs my hand, like she’s trying to drag me backward a bit, to save my life before I can get caught up in this. She’s scared she’s going to have to watch me die and I am too. The shorter guy with the bruised face pulls out a gun—who could want to kill Rufus like this?
The guy he jumped.
Everyone notices the gun and pandemonium rages in the club. I run toward Rufus, guests charging into me as they run for the door. I get knocked down and people are stepping on me and this is how I’m going to die, a minute before Rufus gets shot to death, maybe even the same minute. Lidia is screaming at everyone to stop and back off, and she’s helping me up. There haven’t been any gunshots yet, but everyone is steering clear of the circle. This stampede is impossible to get through and I can’t reach Rufus and I’m not going to be able to touch him again while he’s still alive.