Chapter 5
5
Natalia
senior year
“Can you take me to the bookstore after school today?”
I look at Lucy. Her shoulder is leaned up against the locker neighboring mine as I rub lotion into my hands. She extends her left hand toward me, silently requesting a small dollop.
“Sure,” I answer, squeezing a pea-sized amount of the coconut vanilla cream onto her hand and tossing it back in my locker before slamming it shut. “Is there something you were looking for?”
She shrugs. “Just wanted to look around.”
“Can I come?” our friend, Yuri, asks from my side as she pops an Ice Breakers mint in her mouth. “There’s this Victorian romance book I’ve been wanting to get. ”
“Is it like the last one you read? Something about a duchess and the stable boy?” I ask, poking fun at her love for romance novels that revolve around steamy sex scenes and forbidden love interests. Her most recent one included a particularly sexy romp where the main characters were caught in a rainstorm and stuck in a secluded stable.
“Doth thou accept my most treasured declarations of love,” Lucy calls dramatically with a fist clutched to her chest, making us all break out into laughter.
“I’ll see you guys later,” Yuri calls before walking off to her fifth period class. Lucy and I wave at her as I turn to see Hayden across the hallway. His back is up against a wall, and Jenny Chen is pushed up against his chest. Their faces are less than an inch away from each other with smiles that cut into their cheeks and reach all the way up to their ears. Just as I’m about to look away, I see their tongues tangle together.
I look back at Lucy, shaking the image of the intense PDA I just witnessed. “Carmen emailed me about this book she thought I might like. Maybe I’ll find it while we’re there,” I say.
Lucy’s gaze follows where I was looking, where Jenny now has her arms up around Hayden’s neck, and his hands are roaming down her waist, traveling further south.
“She’s so lucky,” Lucy croons wistfully.
I chortle, rolling my eyes as I turn to walk in the opposite direction. “Yeah,” I say sarcastically. “So lucky.”
Lucy nods a lazy goodbye as we separate, her walking into her English class and me right into bio where I’ll have to sit next to Hayden for an hour and wonder what it is about him that Lucy has deemed Jenny such a “lucky girl.”
I’m already reaching into my binder for our homework assignment when Hayden finally saunters in with a lazy smile plastered on his face.
“Hey, Marquez,” he says with a relaxed edge to his voice as he slides into his seat.
“Marquez?” I question. “I didn’t know we were on a last name basis.”
“Are you kidding?” he responds, the disbelief creasing his brow and deepening the curve in the corner of his mouth. “You’re the only one that knows how dirty the inside of my mouth is.”
I cringe, mentally recalling a recent assignment when we had to swab our own soggy saliva onto agar plates for bacterial and fungal growth. “Don’t remind me.”
He chuckles, nudging my shoulder with a fist as Mr. Khan powers up the projector, calling our attention to the front of the class.
present
By Monday morning, my hangover still hasn’t abated. The multiple tequila shots Lucy forced down my throat, ones that Hayden couldn’t intercept, with my sister’s hip attached to my side as she grew drunker and clingier, have a lot to do with it. The lingering nausea, along with a dull headache, remind me that I’m no longer in my early twenties when I can bounce back after a night of binge drinking as quickly as it takes me to pop two Advil. Still, as I watch Lucy shove her belongings into her matching lavender-colored suitcases, I can’t regret the weekend that we had.
“Text me when you land,” I instruct. “I’ll be at work, but call my office if you need anything in the meantime. ”
She heaves her suitcase, the smaller of the two, and hoists it into the trunk of the yellow cab with ease. “I will.”
She looks significantly peppier and brighter than I do. The day before, while Carmen and I stayed in bed well into the late morning, Lucy was already up, exploring the city and bringing us a tray of coffee and turkey BLTs by lunchtime.
We embrace in a tight hug. My arms cling to her as I say goodbye, knowing that the following months we’re going to spend apart will only remind me that my baby sister is an independent adult before we unwillingly separate.
“Bye, baby girl,” I tease, bracing my hand against the open car door.
She rolls her eyes and slides into the back seat as I close the door behind her. “Bye, Natty,” she calls from the open window.
I watch as the cab drives off, and she pokes her head out the window to wave back at me. The cab disappears into the sea of traffic and busy New Yorkers on their daily commute.
After my own twenty-minute pedestrian commute, I walk into the building that houses my office, riding the elevator as it climbs up the high rise to the thirty-sixth floor. Dern Tech Solutions has been in the business of software design and computer hardware manufacturing for eight years. I came on board as a product manager with nothing more than a communications degree, learning the field of tech as I worked closely with our marketing department. I’ve grown comfortable in the field, learning to keep up with the fast-paced digital age that consists of tablets and computer apps. It’s a job that’s kept me busy when my life revolved around building a life together with Matteo. One that I had no idea would crumble so quickly when I broached the subject of a future.
“Good morning, mi amor !” a cheerful voice calls as I place my laptop bag on my desk chair .
I turn to see José, a member of our marketing department who has literally become my work husband, standing too energetically for a Monday morning at the doorway to my office.
“Good morning,” I say quietly, the nausea resurfacing as the scent of José’s onion bagel permeates through the wax packaging in his hand.
“Uh-oh,” he says, noticing the greenish-gray undertone of my complexion. “Fun weekend?”
“It was fun until Saturday morning and I remembered that I’m not twenty-two anymore.”
He laughs, oblivious to my aversion to his breakfast and peeling back the crunchy sounding wrapping in front of me. “How about we go out for lunch today? My treat.”
“Sure.” I settle behind my desk and hear my Slack message ding on my desktop as soon as I power it on. I roll my eyes and look at José. “Mark is already messaging me, and it isn’t even nine a.m.”
He shakes his head. “Which means I probably have a message waiting for me too.”
José’s wide mouth clamps onto his bagel, and he inhales almost half of it as he turns to walk away. I type a response to Mark’s message asking me if I’ll be attending this afternoon’s meeting with the marketing department, José’s department. I smirk as I see José’s name pop up in the group chat window.
Before I know it, I’m elbow deep into our meeting’s agenda and responding to three days’ worth of emails from Mark. A heavy pile built up in my inbox, as I took the day off on Friday for Lucy’s arrival. Mark working through most weekends, this past weekend obviously not the exception, doesn’t help either.
I’m responding to an email from one of our software engineers about a new iOS program and the compatibility for our users when José knocks on my glass door .
“You ready?”
My eyes squint, looking at the clock on my monitor and finding that it’s already close to one o’clock. And as if on cue, my stomach rumbles softly.
“Yeah,” I say, reaching for my wallet and locking my computer. We walk out of the office in silence, falling in step with others on their way out for their lunch break. “Where did you want to go?” I ask when we approach the elevator.
“I’ve been craving a really good fish taco since last week,” he says, followed by a quick, thoughtful hum.
“Las Tres Vientos?” I suggest as the elevator arrives at our floor. My mouth starts to water thinking about the creamy flan coated in the gooey syrup and savory sweetness I always order after a steamy plate of fajitas.
“Oh yes!” José answers excitedly.
There’s a pep in our steps as we walk out into the afternoon sun. The late summer air is warm but breezy and fresh, and I’m so relieved. It looks like the days of having to carry around an extra stick of deodorant in my purse can be tucked away until next year.
“Ah, I feel like I can finally breathe,” José comments, whipping out a pair of sunglasses. “That summer humidity was doing horrors to my skin.”
“I think we can stop bugging Jason to sneak us into the Soho House now. I’m pretty sure I got my money’s worth on that neon orange bikini from Saks,” I add, referring to our lazy weekend pool days when José’s boyfriend, Jason, snagged us guest passes to the rooftop pool at the Soho House.
“I think we can get in one more pool day before the weather gets too chilly,” José says. “I got these new swim trunks, four inch inseam. It’s so hot. Pink with palm leaves all over it. Jason’s going to see what he’s got when he sees all the man candy eyeing me.”
I laugh and José tosses his head back, making a show of flipping an imaginary tail of hair over his shoulder .
On our way to Las Tres Vientos, we pass by Pour Toujours. I smile to myself, remembering my run-in with Hayden and our trip down memory lane at the party. Before Friday, I had nudged away the memory of our friendship, something that felt personalized and was meant for only us two during the short year that filled our senior year. And now here I am, peering into the storefront of his workplace, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. It’s as if we were always meant to be a part of each other’s lives, and time or distance is irrelevant in the matter.
José is talking animatedly about his Saturday morning with Jason searching for vintage furniture during their trip to Newport, Rhode Island over the weekend. I laugh when he tells the story about how Jason was approached by a woman, pixie blond hair and visibly in her fifties, making a pass at him when José stepped away to get gelato.
“Natalia!”
Both José and I turn at the sound of my name to see Hayden halfway out of Pour Toujours before he lets go of the open door and bounds toward me.
“Are you on your lunch break?” He stands with one hand braced on his hip and the other cupping the back of his neck.
I nod. “Yeah, we were having a hankering for some Mexican food,” I answer, tilting my head in the direction we’re headed. “This is José,” I say, gesturing toward José as they shake hands and smile. “José, this is Hayden,” I add as José’s eyes bounce between me and Hayden.
“I didn’t get a chance to thank you on Friday night,” Hayden says, turning to face me. “Dex and I had fun. I hope Lucy wasn’t feeling too hungover the next morning.”
I smile, remembering Lucy’s intoxicated haze as she slumped on the couch once the crowd dwindled back down to just the Marquez girls, as David started endearingly calling us, and David.
“She handled it better than I did.” I laugh. “She left this morning. ”
His head shifts into a sympathetic tilt. “Aw, so soon?”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, frowning slightly at the sudden pang of missing my sister. “Next time she’s in town, I’ll let you know. I’m sure she’d love to catch up again.”
“Sure, that sounds like fun,” he answers. He turns when a man calls his name from Pour Toujours’s door, waving at him to come back inside. “Hey, if you ever want to hang out or get drinks, text me,” he adds, facing me again.
“Okay,” I say softly.
We hear his name being called again, this time more urgently and with the telltale sign of irritation. “I gotta go,” he says apologetically as he points a thumb behind him.
“Oh yeah,” I answer awkwardly in contrast to Hayden’s natural confidence. “I’ll see you around.”
“See ya,” he calls as he jogs back toward the restaurant. I watch as the man who was calling his name swats the back of Hayden’s head before he walks through the door.
“Who was that?” José’s voice is full of curiosity and insinuation. “And why haven’t I met him before?”
“We went to high school together. I haven’t talked to him since we graduated, and I ran into him on Friday,” I answer, resuming my steps toward Las Tres Vientos. “My sister invited him when she had her little party on Friday.”
“He’s cuuute ,” he exclaims, dragging the last word as he quirks his brows.
I roll my eyes at him as we round the corner. My stomach rumbles once again when my eyes land on the mauve sign embellished with a margarita glass and a cactus. I think about salty tortilla chips and spicy salsa while pushing away the thoughts of Hayden’s attractiveness and our second run-in in less than a week.