CHAPTER 2

The Nikko family was gigantic, and they lived in the same housing complex. All of them. His grandparents had fought day and night to build an entire housing town development where the Saravias could live.

When the story I've had such a hard time telling started, that explosion in someone else's mind, Nikko had convinced his parents that I could stay over there. We were happy and excited about the novelty.

I met his parents, Adelaida and Nicolas; I also got to know his brother, Estefano, and some cousins, Eusebio and Harry (they are brothers and only one year younger than my boyfriend). I met Catalina too, a cousin of all of them contemporary with Nikko, and Marcelino, a sweet-faced but physically imposing boy, who was younger than all of us.

My nerves were attacking me as the hours passed, and more so when they made me settle in Nikko's room. He was older not only in age but in... experience. I had only a few kisses from a few guys since then.

So, without all the fuss, Nikko became my first man. It was my first time, and that one turned into something much deeper.

The day we celebrated half a year of dating, after going to the movies and eating, Nikko and I arrived at his house on October 04. After meeting everyone, we locked ourselves in his room to appease the desire that had heated our brains since the movie screening. We're so hot and tetchy, and Nikko was so devoted... but the next morning I found myself alone in bed.

I got out of the sheets, took a shower, and went out in search of him.

"Are you looking for Nikko?" talked his brother, Estefano, only sixteen years old, sitting around the big dining room. "He's not here. Sit down and come to breakfast."

"Nikko is not here?" I felt even more lonely and much further away from home.

I accepted his invitation. And as I talked with Estefano, I thought it was true that the Saravia's stood out based on a unique gene spread in their anatomy, both brothers (and their cousins) were very similar to each other.

"So you don't know where he is?"

"I can find him for you, pretty girl. He's probably gone to study. Nikk always studying," he explained and complained.

"Do you think he went to Braga?" I asked in disbelief, hadn't thought of that possibility. The discomfort increased.

"I don't think so. With you here? Nahh. I'm going to call him."

I nodded and sat in front of the dining room drinking an orange juice.

I leaned back against the back of my chair and relaxed. The wind on the roof stirring the trees in the backyard and the bushes in the front, wanting to enter through the wide windows welcomed winter and described northern Portugal in its most impressive season.

I began to detail the place. Mrs. Adelaida, my mother-in-law, loved the souvenirs and ornaments she brought on the trips she took with her husband. The mobiles were hanging in various corners. Their tinkling sounds pierced the room and managed to comfort me. The night before, I had lost my virginity, and I felt so weird... It wasn't an ugly feeling, but Nikko was gone.

I wandered through my thoughts, my decision to drop out of education to go into theater performance, telling my parents and brother...

"Aunt Adelaida?"

A somewhat childish voice brought me back to earth.

"Aunt Adelaida? Aunt Adelai...?"

The most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life was standing in front of me, not far from the dining room, petrified, speechless, staring at me.

Suddenly, a cute little dog ran past him and came running towards me.

"Such a cute little puppy! Is it yours?" I asked the boy, who didn't answer me.

I touched the little dog's head, returning the emotion to that brown ball that tried to lick my hands.

I raised my face and tilted my head to one side because of the tenderness that this precious boy with his almost blond hair also exuded.

But he was looking at me seriously. And the wind suddenly stopped.

"If you're looking for your Aunt Adelaida, I'm afraid she's not here."

The boy was stiff, like a stick, over there, under the big plaster frame that welcomed him into the dining room; a stiff little body that made me lose my smile.

"Ehh..." I scratched my neck, I made a face of circumstances.

"Maël! What are you doing standing there? Can't you see that Bobby is bothering her?"

"No, he's not bothering me."

"Sorry, Delu. I was late because my brother didn't answer me. Dad asked him to go to work urgently and couldn't say goodbye to you. He told me to excuse him and not to leave. He will take you to Braga in Dad's car."

I nodded, thanking him for the information. I turned my face again to (now I knew his name was) Maël, and he was gone, as the dog.

But after a while, I could see that the Maël Boy had not left at all. He was watching us hiding behind one of the walls of the corridor. I smiled.

"Whose son is that child?" I asked Estefano.

"My Aunt Antonia and Uncle Carlos. He's the younger brother of my cousin Marcelino."

I remembered the other brother.

"Ahhh, of course, Marcelino. I remember him. I don't know your uncles yet."

"They live in the house across the street," he pointed to his right side with the knife with which he was still spreading butter on his bread, "but because of Uncle Carlos' work, they travel to Lisbon. My cousins sometimes stay here." He chewed some of his bread and swallowed almost without biting. "Now they've given Maël a dog and he's always going up and down like crazy after Bobby. And the worst thing is that the dog is a disaster."

I laughed a little.

"It's a puppy. They're all that messy."

He shrugged.

"Yes, maybe."

"He looks cute," I assured him.

Estefano laughed.

"Who, the dog? But he's a ball of pure fur."

"No, the boy!" I joked.

"Oh, well, yes. The girls always love puppies and children," he said with a mouth full of bread.

At the end of breakfast, Estefano invited me to watch TV with him in Nikko's room. Bobby joined us. I took an immediate liking to the little dog, and consequently, Maël came after, chasing his pet down the hall.

After settling down on the mattress in front of the big TV, we watched the boy arrive at the threshold of the entrance to the room. My brother-in-law didn't see what I did, I'm sure of it. And I'm not talking about his arrival, precisely, but about something else that was already starting to generate curiosity and a renewed discomfort in me.

Maël stopped again, like a leaf captured by a camera lens. He didn't manage to enter the room immediately, he just stood still, glued to the door frame, looking at me in a way that no one had ever done before.

His gaze was hard to decipher. That serious-faced, yet somewhat hostile child, standing there without taking his little eyes off me, anchored a kind of fearful but firm barrier.

Something was on his little head, something that was unusual for a child. I dare say that this look couldn't be made by an adult even if he wanted to, of course not, it was expressly and uniquely created by a minor. Who would dare to compete with the expression emanating from a child's secret?

"Why don't you come in, you fool?" his cousin asked. "C'mon! Or do you like the girl?" he mocked, pointing his thumb at me.

Despite the mockery, Maël didn't stop looking at me so strangely... He was a beautiful little boy and looked very much like his other cousins, of course. Brown hair, very light, brown eyes, very nice features for such a young boy, and I was curious about his whole attitude towards me.

That day ended well and time went by. Little Maël's gaze was repeated many times on all the occasions I visited Nikko. I can confirm that even his cousins noticed the trance into which the youngest fell when I appeared. They would make jokes about it, even bullying him. Jokes focused on the idea of him having a girlfriend named Delu Vaz: "Maël is in love, Maël is in love with Delu!" On very few occasions when we're all in a group, I found myself grabbing Maël's tender cheeks and even planting little kisses on him, making him red with embarrassment. In the end, I did manage to play along a bit; I understood that it's always attractive to be flattered, even if it's only by a baby's drool. After a while, the infant moved with his brother and parents to Lisbon, I never saw him again.

And I forgot that desolate, astonished, and mute look thus; a look didn't expand with the fortuitous discovery of a minor but remained nailed, keeping its original form. I'm sure that Maël at that age knew how to hide well whatever he felt; important and strong, I'm sure of that, something very important in his life.

For the next seven years of my relationship, I concentrated with Nikko on living that courtship to the fullest, between the university changes and my full incorporation in the Portuguese theater. I was busy loving Nikko with the madness of a former teenager, dazzling myself with his tall and well-shaped, hard and well-defined body. I fell madly in love with him. In seven years we experienced in bed as much as we could, in the street as much as we should. Together, we knew the adventures of hotels; for him, I cried scandalously and laughed pleasurably, with pleasure and joy. What didn't I do with Nikko? But time doesn't come alone and brings change, and our relationship adapted to them to the extent of whether were good or bad.

We ended the relationship many times, and in the same amount, we would return to each other's arms. The more I was in love with him, the more I realized that Nikko didn't love the same way I did. I got used to questioning him about his missing and him about mine. Although mine weren't as many as his.

That's how we were: pulled to one side, pushed to the other. At the bottom of it all, Nikko and I still needed each other. When we had been dating for seven years, things became a little more atypical, difficult, and strange because after I turned 25, the Maël boy's family came back from the capital and moved into their old house opposite my couple's. When I found out, I immediately remembered that look, that strange complicity formed between the two of them: woman and child; one of those caresses that the air gives between two human beings who do not know each other at all, when the times weren't right for anyone yet, and that inside the head of each one, thoughts, questions and doubts grow like mountains around. That time I saw the little cousin again, I realized that things, people, and situations change, everything changes completely, and nothing returns to its course, when instead of covering you, those threatening mountains are no longer surrounding you, but now are you. Things got too stubborn with Maël back in Nikko's life.