Page 31 of Raspados & Regret

Thank God this is a family business because my ass would have been fired a long time ago if it wasn’t. Then I’m back at the workbench with my phone in my hand like a weak man and an even worse liar. I open his Instagram again, and my eyeballs are graced with shirtless Elías, who smiles up at me from the screen.

My chest feels tight and my stomach feels worse. I scroll because apparently I am committed to making myself suffer.

Maybe eternal damnation too. YO-fucking-LO

There are more pictures. Elías in a soccer jersey at a game. Elías wearing gray sweatpants and a black hoodie, glasses on, sticking his tongue out at the camera like a menace.

One that makes my mouth water: Elías bare-chested in tiny denim shorts at Pride, one arm around Anita, both of them laughing, his silver earrings catching the sun.

Then Elías, holding his baby niece Fatima, face soft in a way I had never seen in person.

That one stops me.

He’s smiling down at her, not performing, not smirking, not trying to win the room over with his ridiculous humor. Just soft. His glasses are crooked because the baby has one tiny hand grabbing the frame.

It hits somewhere under my ribs, and it’s tender.

I close Instagram—immediately.

Nope. I can handle horny. Horny is physical and can be dealt with. Horny doesn’t ask questions about why my chest feels weird because Elías looks sweet holding a baby.

I am not doing tender.

Tender is where people get stupid.

Tender is how you end up helping an ex move apartments on your only day off after she cheated on you. Tender is how you remember coffee orders and how someone gets under your skin so deep you start changing plans around them.

Absolutely not.

My phone buzzes again.

Junior

Bro, another video, and these comments are worse.

¿Qué chingados es yaoi?

u alive?

Then another video, and this one is from a different angle. Posted by someone else. It has over 200k views already. It catches the moment Saturday night when Elías and I are alone behind the booth, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. It catches him saying something to me and me leaning in.

It catches the look on his face when I tell him to watch his mouth. The audio is replaced with some ridiculous romantic song. The text reads: “I need these two fictional men to be real.”

Fictional? We are real.

Unfortunately.

Junior was right… These comments are worse.

This tension has tension.

Someone tell Crop Top Papi I support his journey.

Glasses is trying to get folded behind that booth, and I respect that.

Not me invested in raspado yaoi at my grown age.

Papi said, ‘Watch your mouth,’ and I got pregnant.