After the park, Tiago and I walk to a bakery and buy sonhos, a delightful fried confection with soft dough, custard filling, and powdered sugar.

“I’m in love with these,” I tell him as I wipe sticky whiteness from my face. 

“Casal lindo,” the woman behind the counter says, nodding at Tiago. “Muito lindo.”

“Obrigado,” Tiago says.

I wait until we’ve left the shop before asking. “What was very beautiful?”

“Us.”

“Us?” I raise an eyebrow.

“She said we are a beautiful couple. I didn’t correct her.”

“Ah.” I nod in understanding. “Yes, I probably wouldn’t either.”

We walk the ten minutes back to his grandfather’s house. Tiago’s aunt has returned with her two small children, and they’ve taken up residence in the room across from mine. Tiago heads back to his house to see if his mom needs anything, and I go upstairs to my room. 

The little girl, who looks to be about six or seven, follows me. She’s darling with a head of thick black curls, large black eyes, and the perfect nose.

“Hi,” I tell her, and she runs off. I think I’ve frightened her until she returns with a music player. She sets it up on the other bed and loud, happy, Brazilian music pumps through my room.

“Vamos pular!” she shouts. She jumps around on the floor and the bed, then comes and grabs my hands and jumps around with me, shouting along with the chorus until I catch on enough to sing also.

“Vamos pular, vamos pular, vamos pular!” 

It repeats the same words over and over, which is lucky for me. Vamos is let’s, and I’m guessing pular is jump or something like that. I collapse on the bed when the song finishes, hot and sweaty, and she collapses beside me, giggling.

“What’s your name?” I ask her in Portuguese, one of the phrases we practiced enough in class that I have it down pat. 

“Ana,” she replies. “E tu?”

I give a mental fist pump. She understood me! “Lucia.”

“Lucia, vamos—”

I lose the rest, but I hear the inflection at the end and know she’s asking me a question. I shake my head. “Não entendo.” I don’t understand.

She takes my hand and hauls me from the bed, then leads me over to the window in the bedroom. It overlooks Grandpa’s terrace and the swimming pool, which yesterday was green with filth. Today, though, pool workers clean the grim from the surface. Ana points down to it and says again, “Vamos nadar?”

“Piscina?” I say.

She nods vigorously. 

Pool. Okay. Why not? “Claro que sim,” I say, smiling, parroting another phrase I learned in class. 

Communicating with Ana is exhausting. I didn’t know my brain could feel stretched and pulled, but after half an hour in the pool, I’m mentally worn out. She chatters nonstop and I try to pick out words, but I feel like I’m at a shore getting sucked under water every time I try to catch my breath. I plead for a break forty minutes after we start, pointing to my sunburned skin and using that as an excuse. Ana looks disappointed and starts to follow me out, but I dissuade her by miming sleep.

I escape to my room and pull out a novel. It’s written completely in English, and I caress it like an old friend before laying down in bed with it. My brain needs a break.

***

I am Ana’s new best friend.

She wakes me in the morning and takes me to breakfast. She talks at me and I nod along, remembering just yesterday how I longed for something to do besides sitting in the house.

Her mom tells her to leave me alone, but Ana looks hurt when she turns her large eyes on me. She asks me something, and I guess at the content of the question.

“No, no, it’s fine. Está bem,” I say.

Ana’s face lights up.

We take a walk to a playground, and I wonder what Tiago is doing. We’ve seen each other every day since I got here. Does he wonder why I haven’t showed up at his house? Or does he think I’m still sleeping?

Tiago is at Grandpa’s house when we return. I ring the buzzer to the gate because I don’t have a key, and he comes to open it. He looks at me holding Ana’s hand, her other clasped around an ice-cream cone with at least half of it smeared on her face, and he laughs. He bends down and says something to Ana, and she releases me to throw herself at him. He wraps her up and stands with her cradled in his arms.

“Do you want to stay and play with Ana, or do you want to come to my house he asks me?” he asks.

I exhale, trying to hide my relief. “Just let me get my book.”

He goes inside with her and delivers her to his aunt while I run up the stairs to collect my book.

“Ready,” I say, coming to his side and interrupting his conversation with Ana’s mom.

We turn to leave, and Ana shouts, “Espera!” She throws herself at me and then smears my face with ice-cream kisses. “Tchau, te amo!”

I know all those words, and my heart melts at her declaration of love. I decide I can handle her incessant chatter and exhausting energy. “Também te amo,” I say, returning her kiss on each cheek.

Tiago chuckles as we head outside. “She adores you.”

I shake my head. “Buy a girl an ice-cream . . .”

Now he laughs. “Is that all it takes?”

“Well, maybe not.”

“You seem to be understanding a lot more.”

“She doesn’t stop talking. And besides, I already knew te amo. Those were the first words I learned in Portuguese.” Oh, crap. I accidentally tiptoed right up against the line of forbidden subjects.

I hold my breath, afraid of what he’ll say next, but he says nothing, thankfully.

But I’m sure he’s remembering.

***

I settle into the computer room in Tiago’s house, which also has a twin bed, and begin to read. His brothers are fighting in the kitchen and I tense, ready to intervene if it gets ugly. But instead it calms down, and nobody bothers me.

The phone in the hallway rings. I pay it no attention until Tiago’s brother calls my name.

“Lucia!”

The phone’s for me? Is it my mom? I leave the room and find Rafael in the hall.

“For me?” I ask, forgetting to use Portuguese. 

He understands anyway and nods.

I take the phone. “Hello?”

“Lucia?” Little Ana’s voice carries through the line. 

“Ana!” I reply. “Como vai?”

She responds excitedly to my greeting, a happy babble of familiar sounds with words I can almost make out. I shake my head, laughing.

Tiago appears in the living room, and I gesture him over. 

“It’s Ana and I have no idea what she’s saying to me!” I whisper.

He leans in close, his chest bumping my shoulder as he listens to her piping voice. “Nothing important,” he says. “You can just say, Okay, tá bom.”

I nod and insert those words every time she pauses, which isn’t often. Tiago stays by me, and I turn to him when she asks a question.

“She wants to know when you’ll be back.”

“Okay.” I search for words so I can respond to her. “Voltarei hoje à noite,” I tell her in slow, precise Portuguese.

Tiago grins, and Ana says, “Tá bom, tchau!” and hangs up.

I go limp with relief when the call is over. “Well. That was interesting.”

“You did great.” He takes the phone from me and presses against me as he hangs it on the wall behind me. He takes a step back, his eyes flicking over my face. Then he kisses my forehead and says, “Também te amo,” just as I said to Ana when we left the house, and leaves me.

I stand there for a moment, my heart racing, frozen.

I also love you.

What does he mean by it? 

Surely not romantic love.

And yet I’ve always suspected he never got over me.

Should we talk about this? He knows I don’t feel the same. 

I slip from the hallway, moving quietly as a ghost, and enter the computer room. This time I close the door, wanting privacy. I sink into the twin bed, letting my feet dangle off the edge, and replay the scene.

The soft touch of his lips on my forehead. Também te amo.

I close my eyes, and I’m not here anymore. I’m sixteen in Arkansas, hanging out in Tiago’s bedroom, our exchange student, my best friend. We’re sitting on the bedroom floor working on my Spanish homework, laughing, joking, scribbling out poor translations and making fun of each other’s handwriting.

“Te amo,” he says. 

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“I love you in Portuguese,” he says.

“Cool,” young, naive, little me says. “This is I love you in sign language.” And I shape my hands into the signal, with the two middle fingers bent into the palm and the other fingers extended.

He makes the signal back to me. 

We finish our homework and he stands with me when I do.

“Good night. See you in the morning,” I say.

He surprises me by stepping closer and planting a kiss on my forehead. “Good night. Te amo.”

“Te amo,” I repeat, and I say it in sign language.

He does it back to me.

I go to bed, upstairs to my room, completely unaware of what just started between us.