Ana Oliveira

Six years ago...


The first week with my boyfriend was amazing, but I had no idea that the weeks would turn into months and soon we would be celebrating our first New Year’s Eve as a couple. I could sum up 2016 as the year I "resurfaced." Josiah was like my hero, like someone who pulled me out of the pit my parents had thrown me into.
He had everything in the perfect measure for me, with his lips that fit perfectly against mine, his romantic and rebellious view of life, with his beautiful drawings that I discovered in the first week of our relationship, his love for tattoos that kept appearing on his body, his perfect and strong touch on me...
Josiah was like a gift. As if God knew I needed that, that I needed a way to come back to life. And wow, it was so good to live with him. For months, I woke up with that delightful scent around me, with delicate kisses on my ear, with sleepy and sly smiles as he caressed suggestive parts of my body, always provoking me, hoping I’d open up to what he was dying to have, to the places he wanted to explore.
And I was almost giving in, almost going beyond the silly caresses we would give each other... But I was so scared. Scared of his size, scared of discovering it wasn’t the right time, scared of not knowing how to take care of myself and ending up with a baby. There were so many fears... My boyfriend never verbalized that he wanted to have sex, he just... touched me. And the touches were so good, with his hands, with his lips... Even though he never reached my intimate parts, every place he teased suggested mischief.
I was hardly ever home. I’d go to school, and kiss him a lot there, to the point that our guardians were called because we couldn’t keep our hands off each other in class. And the talk Marta had with us, telling us not to do it anymore, didn’t even work, because I simply couldn’t bear to be away from him, from that well of perfection. I wanted to be glued to Josiah all the time, and I think in the end the teachers gave up, no longer caring about how much time I spent in his lap during class.
Isabela and Bernardo became such good friends that I started sitting with Josiah at our shared desks, and they would sit in front of us, chatting away as if they’d known each other since childhood. During breaks, the four of us would hang out like an unbreakable group, and those moments were so beautiful, so... happy.
The losses I had were horrible, almost... unbearable, but those people were saving me. They showed me a good side of life, they gave me reasons to want to stay, to want to live. And one day, I got so emotional watching them laugh that I started crying and got a group hug, where I expressed everything I felt, how much I loved them, all four of them, for being so important to me.
And when I went home, Josiah was always there, eating my aunt’s delicious pasta, lying on the living room couch watching movies with her while I finished my chores. And then I would always go to sleep with that perfect boy, in that dark, warm cave that was Josiah’s room.
My aunt wasn’t the same person anymore, she laughed very little, was almost never home. Marina always treated my boyfriend with affection, just as she did with me, but there was such a big emptiness in her eyes, a lack of life. I was afraid she would leave me. It was an irrational fear, but sometimes I noticed how relieved she seemed when I said I was going out or spending the night somewhere else. As if she was happy I was leaving. Sometimes, I thought it was just in my head, that it was my fear of rejection whispering in my ear, telling terrible stories about how I didn’t deserve to be loved.
Marina had received a promotion at work, an offer to live abroad, after all, my aunt was a secretary to a sales manager at a multinational company. She said she turned it down, explaining that she had me to take care of, and she was even afraid of losing her job. I didn’t like the idea that I seemed like a hindrance. I know she loved me, but I also know she never wanted to have kids and ended up being forced to act as if she did.
Finally, we graduated from high school, and we got drunk to celebrate. It was that November day when I became friends with Luana. She was already in college, studying Economics. That woman was the craziest person I’d ever met, she introduced me to tequila shots, something that was definitely wonderful but made me super drunk.
I remember we were kicked out of the bar because Isa, Bernardo, and I got so wasted on our first drunk night that we climbed onto the bar counter saying we were Coyotes, like in the movie *Coyote Ugly*, and started dancing. Josiah was really worried, sipping his beer and watching us, then had to bribe the cops who were called to take us home when other customers reported a bunch of drunk teenagers causing a scene at a bar in Lapa. “I’m eighteen, sweetheart!” Bernardo kept saying to the cop, flaunting his ID card, but Isa, Jow, and I couldn’t say the same, right? I know the night ended with a lecture from Marta to all of us, Isabela vomiting in the hallway bathroom at Josiah’s house, Bernardo telling my mother-in-law that he was also going to join the army, and me laughing, not understanding a thing. “Just imagine, me, Ber, hot and in uniform!” I had no idea where that delusion came from, after all, he never mentioned anything about joining the army, and “also”? Who was going with him?