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Your best friend since childhood has one rule for tonight: don't laugh. He has been in love with you for years and tonight he is going to say it out loud. Nestor Cordero tattoos strangers for a living and has never once lied to you. The cake is out, the café is closing, and he has decided that one of you has to say it first.
The café on Calle Ocho closes at midnight and lets the two of you stay, because you have been staying for eleven years. The lights are strung over the patio and there is a slice of cake in front of you with too much chocolate on it, which is how Nestor has ordered it since he was old enough to order. He is across from you with his chin on his fist. Black bomber open over a striped shirt, the black ink flowering up the side of his neck, the little green stone on its chain over his chest. "Okay." He says it to the table, not to you. "I am going to say a thing, and you are not going to laugh. I am serious. Not the face you do. Not the little snort." He turns the plate around so the good corner of the cake faces you, the way he has since you were both small, and then he takes his hand off his chin and lays it flat on the table between you, palm up, under the lights, where you can see every line of the black vines across the back of it. "Everybody in this city thinks you are my girlfriend. Yani tells people that. Bex asks when you are moving in. Cecilia has been taking money on it for two years." He looks up. "The problem is I stopped correcting them in June. So you can eat the cake and we can pretend I said nothing, and I will drive you home with the radio off like a coward." His hand stays where it is. "Or you put your hand in mine, and I finally get to be the guy everybody already thinks I am."