Love Was No Easy Thing

Things were happening, at last, and living was so much better than dreaming. Gil was about five years older than me, which was a lot considering that I was still a teenager, but he was a loner, like me, some kind of precocious philosopher who couldn’t relate to anybody, and we had found each other, which made me ever so happy.

Gil would call me everyday, and we would speak on the phone for hours. He would tell me which Pink Floyd song he was listening to, and he would sing me the verses he liked. He especially liked that song that went something like "The lunatics are in my hall" and "There’s someone in my head but it’s not me."

He would pick me up from school sometimes, my colleagues would check him out from top to toe, not only because he looked quite peculiar, but also because, as I was always so reserved and lonely, every time I was seen with someone else, be it Sara or my brothers or whoever, that person was always subject of interest.

We would go for walks with no particular destiny.

We would walk down to the shores of the city river to sit by the water and talk, and listen to the traffic noise over us, passing the Golden Gate look alike bridge that crossed the Tagus, or we would walk all the way up to the city castle, and goof around and feel as if we were back in time, to the period when Portugal was born, or we would simply sit somewhere, anywhere, and become instantly involved in never ending conversations about anything we could possibly imagine.

We would sometimes catch the train at the central station of Rossio and travel all the way to Sintra, to go to the woods and to the castle above the villa, or to get lost in the secret cages under the gardens of the Regaleira mansion.

Gil would suddenly stop and ask me, very seriously:

"Lara, can’t you hear an ancient chanting in the distance?"

And, although I couldn’t, I would smile and believe that he really could.

When I saw his brother Otto again he seemed to be miles away from me, as well as his charming girlfriend Luciana, as well as Sara and Andresa. In fact, everybody seemed to be progressively separating from our world every since Gil and I had become best friends.

Gil told me he felt the same. We couldn’t even keep our relationship a secret anymore because we were now so close and inseparable that it soon became pretty obvious to everyone that we were seeing each other every single day.

It was strange because there I was, in love again for ever and ever, and I was only sixteen, and Gil was twenty-one, and I felt horribly young and confused with so many feelings in my heart. How could I, for instance, truly be with Gil some day, if I still liked his brother?

Imagine for a moment that Otto would realize that he liked me at the same time that Gil would ask me to marry him? What on earth would I do then? How could I choose? How could I love one of them more than the other if they were both equally special in their different ways? Or did I simply not love anyone? Or was I polyamorous? Or was I weird?

I truly didn’t know what to think anymore. It had always been so simple, I loved Rock and he died, I met Otto and he had a girlfriend, I dreamed of Sand and he was so far away. And now Gil was there, he looked into my eyes and I knew he felt the same, he played some song for me on his guitar, he spoke so softly, he spent his whole days with me, around me, calling me.

I knew he was in love with me too, and I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle seeing Otto, and the pictures of Rock, and the films with Sand. I was almost glad that Gil was older than me, that he felt responsible for me, and that our love was forbidden.

We wouldn’t talk about it, but we knew it, and we were both pretty close to not knowing what to do next. Time had come for us to move forward into something that we couldn’t move forward into.

Or could we? After all, no one had yet said anything to us, except for Gil’s aunt, and she didn’t sound too judgmental. She sounded more protective than anything else. Well, and tipsy.

"Do you still like my brother Otto?" Gil asked me, one night when he was walking me home.

"Yes," I answered. "Do you like me?"

"Yes," he said, a bit surprised by my question. "You know I do."

"Then you must know I like you too."

He smiled, again surprised.

"No, I didn’t know. You told me you liked Otto, and I believed you."

"I do."

"I see. So you like us both?"

"Yes. Is that too weird?"

"I don’t know. I guess not."

"You told me you were too old for me."

"I never said that. I said I was older than you, not too old. My Aunt Agate was the one who said I was too old for you."

"That’s true."

We shut up. We didn’t know what else to say. So we liked each other, we were walking towards my home, up the street, and we had no idea what to say next, which was strangely uncomfortable, considering we’d always had so much to tell one another.

"Here we are," he told me, unnecessarily, once we got to my building door.

"Yes, so… would you like to come up?"

"Oh, better not… your father… you know."

"Yes… I know… so…"

So he came close to me, as if he was going to kiss me with those gorgeous lips of his, and then he suddenly stopped and said:

"No," and smiled.

"No… what?" I asked him.

"I don’t know. I guess if I’m going to kiss you, I want to do it when I can’t help it anymore."

"All right," I agreed. "Fine with me."

"Good! See you tomorrow!"

"See you tomorrow!"

But I didn’t see him the next day. We never kissed. The next day my father had had enough of our love affair.