Summer in our bones ✓

10 | eight million followers

It's been a week since the weekend in Valencia and I try to push thoughts of Nico from my mind but it's futile. His presence is like that sand in your shoes that's impossible to get rid of after the holiday. The phantom touch of his fingers on my skin is still here. One night. One single night with him and I have a feeling that I left a part of me in that foreign city.

I try to focus on my football and take out my pent-up energy on the pitch. My feet are faster, my shots on goal are perfect and on target. I might not understand what is going on with me when it comes to Nico Silva, but I got this. This I would always get. Football made sense even when life didn't and I try to forget what happened because it was clearly a one-night spur-of-the-moment thing, curiosity and horniness more than anything real. Completely irrelevant, pointless.

But I also try to figure out if I'm gay now by observing my teammates secretly to see if some of their body parts can cause a reaction that Nico's body has but it doesn't happen. Has this always been within me, merely waiting for the right person, for Nico to turn it on? I click on a gay porn video one night but it doesn't do much. I mean, I get hard but only because halfway through it I imagine it was him and I.

I imagine our bodies moving like that in perfect harmony, perfect synchronicity, grasping for pleasure and heat from each other. I imagine thighs to thighs, hips to hips, dick to dick. In the early morning, if he had stayed I would've pulled him closer, sunlight would've been falling through the trees outside and scattering in beams across all of him, illuminating all that naked skin. I could've kissed the hollow of his throat, kissed a slow line along his collarbone, down to his chest, the valley of his abs—would his skin still tasted like us? I imagine him rolling me on my back, his fingers touching all the places he wanted, spreading my thighs, swallowing my dick. Would he let me fuck his mouth while I tugged at his hair? Would he like it rough or gentle, fast or slow? What would I like? I imagine him being connected to me on a deeper level, different than he was with anyone else, my kisses, my touches sinking into his skin deeper, branding his insides and staying there so that nobody else before or after can compare.

Heat spreads in my chest. I am so far ahead of myself and this storm of emotions and confusing thoughts are boiling inside of me, everything is so slow to connect, none of my questions have answers. So when I decide to ask a girl out, a very attractive, sweet blonde that I was texting once in a while before my trip to Spain it's with the hopes of taking my mind off of a brown-eyed Spanish boy.

But it doesn't.

She's perfectly fine and we have a good time strolling around Piccadilly Circus and trying some delicious street food in Chinatown but I don't even make a move to kiss her at the end knowing I will not call her back. What I do when I go home is look Nico up online. And I fall into a bottomless dark hole called the internet.

Nico Silva has eight million followers on Instagram. And then there's Twitter, TikTok and God knows what else. I google his name and there's more. Magazine photoshoots. Selfies with Spanish celebrities. Parties on Spanish islands.

And then I stumble upon his vlogs on YouTube. I click on the top video on his profile and there he is, gorgeous face, bright eyes, staring at me, well, the camera and just a couple of million people in the world who viewed, liked and commented on his video. He talks in English, about a trip to Italy and parties he attended with some fashion brands. He shows the clothes and watches he was gifted. Why is it okay to prance around in those brands worth thousands when he didn't work a day in his life to earn it? Why is an eighteen-year-old flaunting all that money? People must know that it's not real. He is not real. He's probably empty and sad and doesn't know anything about what really matters. And why am I still watching this, I don't care what the newest model of Balenciaga shoes looks like but I can't stop staring at his face. Listening to his voice. Anger is slowly consuming me, I'm frustrated for thinking that I recognized something genuine on that empty beach, in those warm sheets. 

After twenty minutes I'm torn between smashing my phone on the floor and taking myself in my hand and jerking off to one of his YouTube vlogs.

I eventually go to bed and scroll through his Instagram profile once more. And I just look at him in a way I never let myself do in person. His face is flawless in those photos with just the right lighting and tilt of his chin and subtle pout of his full lips, but I know it is perfect in real life too. In every shade—in the darkness of the night or in bright blinding sun, under club strobe lights or dark shadows of the bedroom. And that's when something catches my attention. His last post.

It's a selfie he took in bed, his eyes puffy from sleep and lips rosy, chapped like they've been kissed. Bitten. I check the day, it was last Monday. Nico took this the morning after, in my bed, I recognize the room. I was right there, next to him, sleeping. I was to blame for the look of his mouth. He took this probably before he decided to leave.

But why did he leave without saying goodbye? He looks so happy in this photo. Not fake or staged or untouchable as he does in the others, there are no brands to promote, or perfectly matched colours to make it all alluring and stylish for his followers. This lone picture stands out from the rest like he's giving a middle finger to all the brands he advertises. I wonder what was going through his mind then. The caption says Ya te echo de menos.

Of course, I end up translating it.

Of course, after Google translates it to that haunting I miss you already I go back to his profile, tap follow and groan loudly into my pillow in frustration.