21. Rule #20
STORMS CHANGE YOU; LET THEM
CAI
La Vaquita is a small cafe that sprang up when I was in high school.
It used to be a gas station. Now there are small tables and plastic chairs inside and outside.
They serve strong coffee, sandwiches, and bottled drinks from a fridge.
They aren’t open in the evening, and they aren’t fancy, but the coffee is consistently tasty, and they are open even right after a hurricane.
I come in, order a cortadito and some bocaditos, and claim a plastic table just outside. Trevor pulls up in an Uber a few moments later.
His hair, normally light brown, has streaks of blonde, as if he has spent the whole trip spraying it with Sun-In.
His skin looks darker, obviously tan, and he is dressed in a white t-shirt and cargo shorts.
I used to think he was so attractive. Now he looks too thin.
Lanky. His features are sharp in that Joker-ish, mischievous way that suddenly feels mean instead of charming.
He comes over, smiles, and sits down across from me with a simple “Hey.”
I gesture to the coffee and small sandwiches in front of me. “Coffee or bocadito?” He looks at it with mild disgust.
“No thanks,” he says. “A bit too… exotic for me.”
Bocaditos are simple bread rolls filled with ham paste. Not exactly escargot.
The memory of Sonny happily trying everything at dinner last night hits me hard. I sigh.
Trevor doesn’t seem to notice. “So this isn’t what I expected.” He gestures quickly at the surroundings.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Just like, you know… It’s Miami. You think it’s going to be like beaches and Lamborghinis and shit. This is just… lame. Like this could be like somewhere in the Midwest.”
I look around. There are locals chatting, a family laughing, and the post-hurricane hustle that feels like appreciation and relief after a storm. “Well, we did just have a hurricane pass through. Sorry, we didn’t get Daddy Yankee to roll out the red carpet for you.”
Trevor puts his hands up defensively. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to touch a nerve, geez.” Nothing about his tone is sorry. “So… What’s up?”
I can feel the anger rising. He is going to act like this is just a casual conversation? “Are you kidding me right now? You need me to tell you, ‘What’s up?’ Put that on the list of worst questions asked next to, ‘Mrs. Lincoln, how was the theater?’”
Trevor rolls his eyes and pulls an obnoxiously big Monster Energy drink can out of his backpack. “Ok, ok, so you want to talk about Puerto Rico.”
“What? No, Trevor, I don’t want to talk about Puerto Rico.
I want to talk about you going to Puerto Rico and getting close to a woman you have, it seems, been secretly friends with for a long time.
I want to talk about you letting me know you weren’t coming back via text, then blocking me so I couldn’t get ahold of you or even ask what the fuck was going on.
I couldn’t give a shit less about Puerto Rico.
” My voice is rising, and people are starting to look our way.
Trevor takes a large swig of his drink and pinches the bridge of his nose as if he’s getting a headache. “Ok, I shouldn’t have blocked you, but can you blame me? You can be a little dramatic.” He is gesturing to me as if I am demonstrating his point right now.
I try to keep my voice level as I say, “Gotcha, and I should’ve reacted calmly when you told me you were staying in Puerto Rico indefinitely as if the last year meant nothing?”
“I didn’t say that,” Trevor says. “But I didn’t want you putting yourself through any trouble thinking this was a bigger deal than what it was.”
I grab my phone, thinking I’ll show him exactly what he said, but get distracted by a text from Crispi asking when he can expect me back. He needed help clearing around the house.
Taking note of my distraction, Trevor says, “What’s going on?”
I shake my head. “It’s my brother asking for some help around my parents’ house.”
Then I have a thought. “Tell me, Trevor, if I asked you to come with me now and help with some yardwork around my parents’ house, what would you say?”
“Come on, Cai. I just got off the plane. I’m pretty sure I’m getting a headache too.” He rubs his forehead to drive the point home.
“Mmm,” I nod in understanding. “And if instead I suggested that you come eat with my parents, tios, siblings, cousins, Abuela—the whole family basically— where they’ll grill you and ask you all kinds of questions about us, what would you say to that?”
“I mean, it sounds pretty terrible…” Trevor eyes me suspiciously.
“And if I asked you to pay half the rent? Pose for a Christmas card picture? Take an interest in any of my hobbies?”
“Fuck fine!” Trevor throws up his hands in a sign of surrender. “If that’s what it takes to be done with this stupid conversation, fine, I’ll take a picture with you for the fucking Christmas card.”
I don’t want that. I don’t want any of it. I would be embarrassed to be seen with him. I’m struggling to see what I ever saw in him in the first place.
“Trevor, you have until the end of the month to find somewhere else to live.”
“Come on, I said I would do it!”
“I’ll be gone until then, so you can take the next two weeks to collect your things.”
“You’re being so dumb. I didn’t do anything. I could’ve, but I didn’t.” He sounds like a petulant teen.
“You can leave the key in the apartment. I don’t think there’s anything else that needs to be said.” I begin gathering my things and throwing them into my purse.
“Is this because you met someone else?”
I stop for a moment to look at him. No way does he know about Sonny; how can he? Nah, he’s grasping at straws.
“Trevor, I don’t know why I bothered to have this conversation with you. I should’ve known you’d be a jackass.”
Trevor takes my response to be confirmation.
“Oh, that’s rich! You want to give me shit about Cecilia, and meanwhile, you’ve been slutting it up with someone else.
I left an island full of baddies, fucking Jenna Ortega-level hotties, to come here and talk to you!
Well, let me tell you something, I might be a jackass, but I know men, and he isn’t going to put up with a woman who brings as much drama as you do and has an ass that wide. ”
I know Trevor is trying to hurt me, lashing out in an attempt to get me to say something or change my mind. But instead, all it did was make me cringe at the person I had wasted the last year with.
“Thank you,” I say and begin to walk away.
“Wait!” Trevor calls out.
Now, who was being dramatic? I turn around slowly.
“Don’t you want to know why?” He adds, smiling smugly as if this is the ace up his sleeve.
I think about this question for half a second. “No,” I say simply. “I really don’t care.” I meant it, and I understand now what Sonny meant about the “why” not mattering when I was really over him.
With that, I turn on my heels and walk back to my family with the man I thought was the one, standing outside a refurbished gas station, with his mouth open, watching my “wide ass” walk away from him.
SONNY
The conversation with Ben kept me engaged until we reached the tiny executive airport. Once on the plane, I take out my laptop and join the dev team on a virtual call to discuss improvements they are working on based on the focus group feedback.
The call’s led by a guy who goes by Mack, a brilliant developer, but he always sounds uninterested, bored even, when he has to present information.
“So, per the results we received, we started with some of the most easily executed and clearly defined points to task out first. Namely, the female character model for the story quest, Maggie.”
The character model fills the screen. Brown, stick-straight hair and a body type that closely resembles the male character model. “And this is a stagnant option, right? It’s part of the story mission, so they can choose Maggie or Mark, but there’s no customization from the player?”
“That’s correct,” Mack confirms. “The feedback we got was that Maggie seemed generic, unremarkable, and boring, and players rarely choose her as an option, even by players who described themselves as more likely to choose a female avatar.”
“Well, I can see their point,” I say. “I think originally we thought she would allow players to mold them to their appearance, but it looks like we neglected her a bit. What have you come up with?”
“Right, so we made some adjustments and…” The image on the screen shutters briefly but appears to be unchanged.
“What am I looking at here?” I ask.
“Oh, we uhh… added to her hair.” Mack spins the avatar so that I can better see that the bottom quarter of her hair is now pink. Mack is a good developer, but creative he is not.
“Ok, we can do better than that,” I say, leaning in to get a good look at the screen.
“Let’s start with the proportions; let’s exaggerate them for now at 32/26/40, and then we can adjust as needed.
We want the two character models to be obviously different even without seeing their faces.
” Mack types on his end, and the image sputters back with a more hourglass form.
“Ok, great. Now the hair is too flat. Do you have the design we did for the hair in the Aquarius game’s underwater scenes? Let’s try that on her, but lower the shine and make it static.”
Again, more typing and the image changes. She now has a wild head of golden hair.
“Let’s do Black with flecks of gold.” A few clicks are heard, and the hair color switches to black.
“And the face is wrong too. Her eyes should be bigger, more dazzling. Her mouth should be smiling. She should look like she’s finding the humor in things, even if they’re not intentionally funny.
She should also have a softer feel about her curves.
They should be more inviting. Maybe we pose her with a hand on her hip so that she looks like she has some spunk to her, a little more sex appeal, and are we tied to this outfit?
There might be some pop culture tees we could…
” I stop talking, suddenly realizing that the clicking and clacking have stopped and nothing is changing on the screen.
“Uhhh…” Mack starts. “Do you maybe have someone in mind we could use as a character model? It sounds like you have a very specific idea of what you want…”
Oh God, what am I doing?! Am I seriously trying to make the female character in my game look like Cai?! I can feel the heat rise to my cheeks. “Well,” I say quickly. “I think you get the idea. Work on refining some of that, and then we can reconvene and see what you come up with.”
I log out before they can protest. Before they can push me for any more answers. But boy, if she is this entrenched in my thoughts when I just saw her a few hours ago, am I in trouble!