ALONE [manxman] ✓

nine: when you've been holding your breath.

NINE:: when you've been holding your breath.

Carlos Vera was in- fact gay and Rilee was once again 100% right.

He had big, brown eyes and the first thing that I ever noticed about him was how full they were. My parents moved us from Florida when I was twelve, that was also the age I realized that my mind worked in a creative way. All the boys in Michigan were pretty stoutly, like they farmed or something, Carlos Vera played volleyball.

My cousins, Ivan and Daniel, moved in when my Aunt Rebe had her second heart attack, family had this open-door policy, and they were around my age but they liked cars, they liked pretty girls and batting cages and Pete always looked up to them.

I didn't have a brother in that sense, Milo became reserved when he turned 14, he had some ego phase that shifted hard into jock his sophomore year.

And Carlos Vera was in one of my classes even if he hung with my brother, they both played sports, were around the same people but Carlos was nicer.

Carlos was so nice, he had this Aeropostale hoodie that he was always wearing and a cheesy smile that paired well alongside his best friend, Gabriel Melendez's jokes. He liked pranks, was always attached to the latest and sometimes he posted vines that were Michigan-famous.

He played basketball with Landon Ross and I would always find myself at his games.

Michael Martinez-Jones, my dad, he co-owned a moving company -ironically going by Martinez and Sons to seem relatable despite his whiteness- like a real bootstraps, grassroots company, he did home improvement on the side to make up money for Milo's soccer ambitions that never really led anywhere.

There weren't many family dinners; my father's business nearly went bankrupt by my thirteenth year. Milo didn't want to work and the apps like TaskRabbit had just launched, people were hiring regulars and renting vans to move and there just wasn't a line up of families around the block moving to or from Brighton, Michigan.

And I'd just hit a weird growth spurt, body completely mis-proportioned; I was taller than my cousins... I hid it with larger clothes to feel less awkward, slowly becoming aware that we never had any common interests. I latched onto my older female cousins to fill the space and Milo would play soccer with Ivan and Daniel instead.

Maybe it was always obvious that I wasn't interested in video games and contact sports and pretty girls but the boys never noticed, just stopped inviting me places.

Milo was never home, he was sixteen with dad's beat up old Audi and a lot of angst, maybe it had to do with the lack of attention in an all-boy household. Everything was shared, nothing was his and his alone except soccer.

Dad stopped funding sports when Milo started smoking weed, staying out at all hours, fucking some trailer-park white girl from Wixom.

But Carlos Vera. He was fourteen, closer to my age, he'd been held back a grade and something about that felt, almost, cool. His being already had a maturity to it, his voice was deeper, he had a definition to muscle and a crooked smile.

And he was kind.

It felt embarrassing, how attractive I found him, and standing next to him in any given moment made my knees shake.

He would walk with a sureness about himself, a lightness and gracefulness and he would hold hands with the prettiest girl in school. Carlos Vera always annoyed me... until the Ross Twins had moved to town.

: : :

There was a stack of boxes in the back of Carlos Vera's midnight blue Ford pickup truck when he exited Highland, tanned skin blotched over and sweat dampening a furrowed brow. A cigarette perched itself between my two fingers as I watched him stand on his toes to tug a box closer to the edge.