Chapter Forty-One – A.J.
Who’d be the first to break?
I guess we're alike that way
He said, she said
Conversations in my head
And that's just where they’re gonna stay forever
Unsaid Emily - Julie and the Phantoms
I open my eyes, eager to say good morning to my girl, but I don’t find Alexandra beside me. The anticipation really is the mother of disappointment.
But I can’t complain, it’s been about a week that this has been our room, and I can barely believe everything we’re living. The routine, the affection, the feeling of sharing a home and life with the girl who gave meaning to my music... it’s way better than I ever imagined.
Being happy, making her happy, and knowing that even after eight months in each other’s lives, we’re still just getting started — that’s what makes me get out of bed, cross the dark floor of the room to the sliding door that leads to the bathroom, and do my morning hygiene just to find her.
But before I get there, I hear my phone buzz on the nightstand. I go back, worried, it could be Victor.
But it’s not.
Dani 3: I remember when you used to love me and tell me everything.
It’s the fourth time I’ve received a message like this in the last week. This one came before nine, I was still asleep.
Dani 3: Now I have to speculate, along with the fans, why you haven’t kissed anyone and who’s the girl you wrote that song for.
Dani 3: You’re not going to say anything? Like, nothing? These pictures of you two walking around, completely in love, without me getting any confirmation, are killing me!!!
These came around ten, I scratch my neck, heading to the bathroom and laughing. Dani’s desperation to picture me with someone else is only outdone by the shock she’ll feel when we finally admit it.
Dani 3: I hope you two just devoured each other like animals, I hate you both.
Even though everyone in the band knows by now, after our performances of “Maybe” and “Always Us” in the last few shows, we haven’t told anyone yet, and the fun of the secret has been exciting.
But I know Dani is about to show up here at my place.
She just hasn’t done it yet because, in three days, we’ll have Christmas at her place with the family.
I finish brushing my teeth, wash my face, stretch, ready to meet my girl.
The second I open the door, I hear the soft strum of a guitar, making me smile.
I walk slowly, heading toward the entrance of the hallway, while the sweet voice of an angel singing in Portuguese guides me to the living room.
But then Alexandra stops playing, and I stop moving, realizing it was just the song ending when she starts another one, and the very first line grabs my attention.
At that table, he always sat, always telling me what it means to live better. At that table, he would tell stories that now I carry in my memory and I know them all by heart.
At that table, he’d gather people around and cheerfully share what he’d done that morning, and in his eyes there was so much light that more than a daughter, I became his biggest fan.
I didn’t know how much it would hurt, a table in the corner, a house, a garden.
If I’d known how much life can ache, this pain, so sharp, wouldn’t have stung quite like this. Now there’s just a table in the room, and today no one speaks of his mandolin anymore.
At that table, he’s missing, and the longing for him is hurting me. [8]
After she repeats the last line twice, she goes back to the beginning.
I try to keep walking toward the living room – just three more steps – but my body doesn’t move. Two tears slip down my face as I finally understand what Alexandra meant when she said that when her mother died, she lost her father too.
The day I chose my career, I lost my parents.
And even though I’ve moved on, built the life of my dreams away from them, and achieved everything I set out to do, I still miss them both. I miss the family we were and the love that filled that house, right up until I let myself be seduced by an empty promise of success.
It’s been years since I last spoke to them. No sweet messages, no phone calls like my bandmates always share with their parents. And that hurts, because deep down, I never wanted Guilherme’s house to be my only option for a family Christmas.
But Alexandra ’s voice, trembling with nostalgia and emotion, gets softer and then falls silent after a few seconds. I take a deep breath, forcing my legs to move again, wiping the tears away.
I was the one who left. I have no right to stand here crying.
Right now, I can consider myself a lucky guy.
Alexandra starts another song and I enter in the room.
“Me too,” I interrupt my girl.
With a smile that lights up the room in a way winter sunlight never could, she sets the guitar down on the couch and stands up to hug me.
“What a perfect way to wake up, my girl singing,” I whisper against her lips before pulling her into my lap and kissing her.
“It’s just that my labrador wrote a song in Portuguese with me, and it lit up all my love for my favorite songs again,” Alex says, running her fingers over my neck while I wrap an arm around her waist.
“What guy wouldn’t write a song in a language he barely speaks to impress the girl he’s crazy about?”
“I think a lot wouldn’t,” she laughs. “But how was your night? Did you sleep well?”
“With you? Always,” I promise, settling onto the couch with her in my lap. “I missed you in bed, though. Couldn’t sleep?”
“I woke up so early with a call from Thalia that… wow,” she says with genuine irritation.
“What happened?”
“She wants to know what’s up with us, of course. Seriously, it was six in the morning in Brazil, and she’s already like this,” she grumbles, frowning.
“I love seeing you all annoyed, you know? Makes you even hotter, cuter, sexier. Everything’s better.”
“Stop,” she says, trying to hide her smile, but her eyes give her away.
“You know what else makes you gorgeous?” I lean closer. “Singing in Portuguese.”
She rolls her eyes.
“You didn’t even hear it properly.”
“Maybe I did…” A crease of doubt forms on her forehead. “Is that song about the table yours?” I ask, trying to hide how much it moved me, but the crease in Alexandra ’s brow deepens, and she bursts out laughing.
“Oh my God, no! It’s, like, one of the biggest samba classics ever. Honestly, A.J.” Alex keeps laughing while I narrow my eyes at her because I’m not seeing the humor.
“Since when does my labrador pout like that?”
“Since you’re mocking my lack of musical knowledge.”
“It’s from the sixties, but you’re right, sorry.”
“You’re forgiven. But tell me… do you think of your dad when you sing?”
“It’d be impossible not to,” she says, her fingers fidgeting before she meets my eyes again. “I’m totally at peace with my career, A.J. I know what I want, and I’ll do everything—everything—to make it happen. But he wasn’t a bad dad, you know?”
“Does Thalia ever talk about him?”
“I asked her not to,” she says, taking a deep breath. “But he… he sent me a message after the last show.” This is news.
“He said he misses me, that my talent’s really something, and… he asked if there’s something going on with us. I laughed because the question came with a screenshot from some gossip site with a picture of us, singing the way we do…”
“All tangled up in each other, I get it,” I say, earning a slap for stating the truth. “So what’d you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“When I left Brazil, we had a terrible fight, and I’m living the best moment of my life, Anthony. The last thing I want is another argument that’ll stain this time. When it’s over, I’ll go back and talk to him. But for now… I just want this: me, you, and the music.”
I smile at the sweetness in her voice, at the tender way she smooths my hair.
“Are you really okay with that?” My question makes her glance away and swallow hard, but Alexandra lifts her head and looks me dead in the eye, her voice steady and sure.
“No. But I wasn’t okay before, either. I grew up as just the little girl of Mr. Luiz, almost like his shadow.
We had… a bond.” Alexandra swallows, blinking twice, probably fighting tears.
“Now, it’s hard to know there’s this huge gap between us.
For me, it’s exactly like the song says: I didn’t know how much it would hurt to think about who he was, about who we were… ”
“Being an only child does that, huh?” I say softly. “You end up tied to both of them, for different reasons. Even if it’s not the same intensity, that bond is still there—it’s a part of you.”
“What did you get from your dad?” she asks, shifting off my lap and studying my face.
“He never holds onto things. For Patrick, it’s like, if ‘it’s over, it’s over!’ Forgiveness is always there, no grudges,” I say with a nostalgic smile. “My mom used to say people took advantage of that, but he never cared.”
“The world’s so twisted, huh? It scolds people for being good instead of going after the ones who take advantage,” she says thoughtfully.
“Yeah,” I agree, scratching the back of my neck. “And from my mom, I got patience. Life with her was light, no drama, just cozy days, couch, TV, hot chocolate.”
She studies me more intensely.
“So how’d you end up in music?”
“I think… just being a sensitive kid. Back then, everyone hated girls but still wanted to date them; I liked the girls, but most of the time, I just wanted to date their brothers, who never looked at me back, at least, not in public,” I point out.
“Music, and those movies and shows I watched with my mom, it let me express myself. Singing covers, rewriting lyrics, writing my own songs… it became how I learned to love and accept myself as a boy who liked boys… and girls.”
“So music was your bisexual awakening?”