Chapter 9
Abel did not have any words for his brother. That night, he left him on the street, going back home without saying anything to him at all. At some point in the night, Abel heard his brother come home, but he didn’t come into his room or make any attempt to talk to him, which was fine by Abel. He wouldn’t have known what to say anyway if Rafael had tried to talk to him.
That night, he lay in bed, thinking about everything that he and his brother had gone through. The death of their parents when they were young and then the death of their only other caregiver when they were teens. It seemed that the two of them only had each other for their entire lives. The truth of their lives was just that Abel had come to depend on and trust his brother more than anyone else in the world.
The whole thing swirled around in his mind in a cloud of confusion. Rafael had had feelings for Camilla this entire time, and he never told him. He did not understand why, either. What had Abel ever done to cause mistrust in Rafael? Did he think he would make fun of him? Or hold it against him? Or…
His stomach turned as he realized. Camilla was the daughter of the man he had killed. Of course, Abel woul
d have judged him if he’d known. He’d have told him who she was and cautioned him not to get mixed up with her. And if Abel had known about her, he’d have stayed as far away from her as possible. Being with Camilla was basically the romantic equivalent of returning to the scene of a crime.
Rafael set the whole thing up to show Camilla the kind of man he was. He could have helped him find a job elsewhere for no reason other than self-preservation. But, instead, he brought his little brother to work in Camilla’s restaurant to show her. Look at what a nice guy I am, helping my brother. It was like some twisted kind of love language.
The more Abel thought about it all, the sicker it made him. If the tables had been turned, he would never have dreamt of doing this to Rafael. Abel went to bed that night feeling more betrayed than he ever had in his entire life. The black-and-white of the situation was that Abel had given up ten years of his life so that his brother could be free, and his brother sold him out the first chance he got. And it wasn’t even for money or out of fear or any of the other reasons that people turn on each other. Rafael’s betrayal had been for something that wasn’t even real in the end.
It had been real for Abel, though. He closed his eyes and thought of how Camilla felt in his arms and how sweet her kiss was. He could still feel their softness pressed against his mouth and still smell her sweet lavender scent. The way her eyes seemed to sparkle when she was happy…when she looked at him.
He’d been through hell and back in his youth and, in fact, lost most of it. But despite it all, Camilla had come to him like a boon. She had been like a sign from God telling him that he would be all right. That he might finally be free from the depressive bonds of his existence. Camilla had been the greatest thing to happen to him in the last ten years. And his brother blew it all up.
The next morning when Abel woke up, the smell of cooking filled his room. He lay there as the sunlight cast its rays across his body, warming him and urging him to get out of bed. In the few moments before full wakefulness came over him, he hoped that the night before had all been just a terrible dream. His reality didn’t actually include his brother’s betrayal and why should it? Rafael had never done anything but protect him. He’d so hoped that he could get up, get dressed, and come down to breakfast, where Rafael would spin some kind of wisdom about staying out of trouble before he went off to work.
Then he sat up and his jaw smarted with pain and radiated down the side of his neck. He pressed his fingers to it, gingerly touching the sore spot from where his brother had punched him. Nope. Not a dream. It was all real.
Disappointed but far from surprised, Abel got up and out of bed. He decided that there was no talking anything out with Rafael this time. He did not even know if he wanted an apology and even if Rafael were to offer it, he did not know if he would want to hear it. All Abel knew was that it was in his best interest to avoid Rafael at all costs. He didn’t know how long he was going to be able to do that, but in all honesty, that hardly mattered. He could only think about the now, and right that second, he just wasn’t interested in anything Rafael might have to say.
He got into the shower, washed quickly, then dressed, and started making his way out. As soon as he stepped out into the living room, he was met with a, “Hey. You not having breakfast?”
Abel looked up to see Rafael standing at the kitchen door. He was wearing t-shirt and sweatpants, spatula in one hand. His face was a little bruised from Abel’s punches, but otherwise, he looked the way he’d did every morning since Abel got out of jail.
“I don’t think so,” said Abel. Rafael sighed and shook his head. He then set down the spatula and walked into the living room. “How long are you going to be mad at me, ‘mano?”
“I do not know. Forever sounds good.”
Rafael didn’t crack a smile or even pretend to act as if Abel might’ve been joking. “It wouldn’t have worked out,” he said. “You understand that, right? I had to do what I had to do.”
“The crazy thing is that I think I might understand if that was actually why you did it,” said Abel. “But that is not why, is it? There was no way all that last night was about protecting me.”
“If you two continued, you would have told her the truth eventually.”
“Stop with the crap,” Abel barked. “This is me, man. Your brother. You cannot stand there and lie to my face—”
“It’s not a lie,” he snapped. “You can’t be with her because of what happened. That is the truth.”
I snorted a bitter laugh. “So, what makes you think you can be with her? Just because she doesn’t know I took the rap for you doesn’t mean I’m the only one with something to hide.”
“What do you want from me, huh?!” He shouted it. His arms flew up in the air uselessly. “You are my brother! You can’t end up with Santiago’s daughter. That just cannot happen here. You know, I could see where this whole thing was headed. As soon as I realized what was happening, I saw it coming. You two were going to get close and eventually, she was going to ask what you did time for and you were going to tell her because you’re not the kind of guy who can just keep his trap shut—”
“Just stop!” I said, backing away from him. “Jeez, Rafael, this isn’t about me! It is about you! You! You were the one who wanted her, but she chose me instead, and you couldn’t stand it.”
“Don’t make this out like it’s some stupid teenage crush,” he insisted. “It’s just so much more complicated than that, Abel. Okay, yes, I do feel something for Camilla, but whether I do or not, you still can’t ever be with her. Don’t you know what it means if she finds out you did time for me?”
“I know it means she’ll run from you. Which is what I need to be doing.” I started walking away. He followed me, grabbing my arm and stopping me before I could reach the door.
“Wait. Please, ‘mano. We are brothers. Brothers are supposed to protect each other. I was just trying to protect you.”
Abel took in the pleading in his eyes. Whether true or not, Rafael meant what he was saying. It hurt to see him that way, determined to uphold his duty to protect his little brother. He thought about the night before and his heart ached. Rafael was in pain and Abel felt like he was the cause.
When he didn’t say anything more, Rafael released him, turning his eyes to the floor shamefully. “I know you’ve got to go to work,” he went on, “but let me make it up to you tonight. We can talk this out like adults. I will pick you up and we will go work it out over pizza.”
Abel’s stomach was turning. As if this could be worked out over bread and cheese. Still, he didn’t like how this was hurting Rafael. It wasn’t fair that his pain should be so absolute over who Abel was falling for.
He backed away from him. “You have to give me time with this,” he said, finally. “What you did…I can’t just forget that.”
Abel did not know what else to say. Rafael shifted his feet from one to another. “I’m still your brother,” he said. Abel did not respond. He just turned and walked out of the door.
On the walk to work, he started working it out in his mind and the further away he got, the clearer his mind became. Rafael might be apologetic for his misdeeds, but he still lied. He still ruined things with Camilla. He still betrayed Abel’s trust. For all his talk of them being brothers and wanting to work it out, not once did he ever apologize for what he had done. He just tried to justify it, tried to explain to Abel why blowing up his life was the best thing for him.
Abel was beginning to wonder if Rafael ever thought of him as anything more than a means to an end. He’d used him to get closer to Camilla. Now, he wondered if he was going to try to make things right or just use the entire situation to endear himself to Camilla. It seemed far-fetched, but so did Rafael punching him out in the parking lot. Could he really ever trust him again?
At work, he stayed in the kitchen as much as possible. Usually, throughout the day, he’d emerge from the kitchen to help at the front desk or in the restaurant. His doing that had become so commonplace that now as he stayed in the back with the heat of the pizza ovens on the back of his neck, he noticed the girls at the front desk peering in at him through the window, separating them to make sure he was all right.
And he did not see Camilla all day. He knew she was there. Camilla would never miss a day of work, even because of a heartbreak. Whenever he did leave the kitchen to go to the bathroom, he’d catch sight of her closed door and know she was in there avoiding him. It wasn’t right that he should be shut off from her this way. By the time the noon rush died down, Abel could not take the silence anymore. He had to fix this...but how?
He went to her office door and paused, second-guessing himself. She wanted to be left alone and he should respect that. He took two steps away, then realized that he wasn’t going to be able to let this go until he’d said his peace. He turned around, took a deep breath and knocked three times.
“Yes?” he heard from inside. He opened the door and walked in. Camilla was sitting at her desk, typing on her computer, a flat look on her face. She glanced up long enough to acknowledge that it was him, then looked back at her computer screen as if he weren’t there at all.
“Can I help you?” she asked coldly.
“I think we should talk.” She did not say anything. She just kept typing. Abel went on, “I know how bad everything looks, but…but it’s not what you think it is.”
“Why did you come here?”
She stopped typing and looked at him directly, daggers shooting out of her eyes. Abel swallowed hard.
“I didn’t know—”
“Would it have made a difference?” The question was rhetorical. He could see it in the angry look on her face that she had no intention of allowing him any kind of answer. “You are lucky I did not fire you on the spot. I can’t believe that you came to work here knowing—”
“I didn’t know,” he said. “Not right away. You said it yourself. This place was different back in the day. How could I have known?”
She just stared at him. Somewhere beyond all the anger in her face displayed hurt. Real, raw hurt. He wished like heck that he could take it away.
“So, when did you know? After the park? Or was it while you were kissing me on the dance floor?”
He lowered his head, the feeling of guilt getting to him. To some extent, he did deserve some of this. He didn’t end things with her as soon as he figured it out and he should have.
“Camilla,” he said with a heavy sigh. “If I had known who your father was, I promise you, I never would have—”
“When did you know, Abel?”
He didn’t want to go to this place with her. Not when it wasn’t even his crime in the first place. “The park,” he said. “But—”
“All the way back then,” she said in a musing tone. Her sapphire eyes were starting to water with tears. “You knew that it was my father you murdered all the way back then?”
“Listen, Camilla, there’s a part of this that you don’t know,” he said. “There’s a lot that you just don’t know, in fact.”
“What don’t I know?” She laughed and the sound was bitter and hollow. “Enlighten me, Abel. What more could you possibly tell me that would make this all right? Don’t you understand what you did to me? To my family? You took my father away from me.”
He almost told her then. It would just have been three simple words. It was not me. That is all. He just had to tell her that he wasn’t the one to do it. But he was struck completely dumb in that moment. Slowly, standing in the storm of her rage, he realized that if he told her that it wasn’t him, he’d have to tell her who it actually was. If she believed him, it might only make the whole thing worse. He imagined she would never want anything to do with either of them after that.
“You know,” she went on in his silence, “I talked to Rafael this morning. He called to apologize for his behavior and asked me to forgive you for your crimes. Do you know, he even asked me not to fire you? Your brother was kind enough to actually ask me for clemency.”
And just like that, the rage came back. Abel could feel it boiling up from his center. For all Rafael’s platitudes and I’m just looking out for you speeches, at the end of the day, things were turning out exactly how Abel suspected they might.
“He’s a better man than you,” she said, crossing her arms. “Better than you could ever be because at least he said he was sorry for what he’d done. You cannot even do that.”
Abel could not speak. He just stared at her in disbelief. The betrayal was complete now. Rafael wasn’t looking out for him and probably never was. Rafael was only looking out for himself. The ten years that Abel gave up so that Rafael could have a life as a free man meant nothing to him. He meant nothing to him.
“Camilla,” he said. “Rafael isn’t who you think he is.”
“Guess that’s for me to find out, isn’t it?” She smirked at him, then added. “Wonder if he likes to go dancing, too?”
It was as good as a slap across the face. Abel stepped back, tore his eyes away from her, then turned to leave as the tears started stinging his eyes. He got as far as the door before he said, “I’m sorry, Camilla…”
He walked out without hearing anything else from her and went back into the kitchen to work.
For the rest of the day, he stayed with the wounded feeling from the fight with Camilla. She had gotten him good with the implication that she might start dating Rafael. It made him sick to his stomach.
However, Abel was beginning to feel a little differently by the night”s end.
He walked home. Rafael had offered to pick him up, but that was the last thing that Abel wanted. He left a few minutes early, avoiding his nightly routine of staying behind until everyone was safely out. With the way he was feeling, he doubted that any harm would come to anyone if he passed on the ritual for one night. Besides, he wasn’t interested in waiting awkwardly in the parking lot as Camilla went out to her car.
He walked only a few blocks before Rafael’s car rolled up next to him. He rolled down the window and shouted. “Hey. Get in.”
“I’m good.”
“Come on, Abel. Do not tell me you are still upset?”
Abel threw him an annoyed look and kept walking. “I heard you called Camilla this morning. How long did you wait until after I left? Five minutes? Ten?”
“I was trying to keep her from firing you.”
“You were trying to get in her good graces. Well, lucky you, it worked. You win, I guess. The hero gets the girl.”
He went silent, his car rolling slowly to keep up with Abel’s pace. “She never would have chosen you, man. Just so you know. It was never going to be you. I was always going to be her man.”
That made Abel stop what he was doing and stare at him. Rafael stopped the car and the two of them stared into the darkness. “Camilla has been mine since high school,” he said, his eyes shining at him in the dark. “High school. I knew since then, man. It was never going to be anybody but me and her.”
“She wasn’t in high school but for a minute,” said Abel, his throat dry.
“It was long enough. And had it not been for her father, it might have been sooner.”
Abel felt his feet go numb and his stomach twist. “You’re a rotten brother,” he said. “You know that? Rotten.”
“I am the only brother you got. You are about to get in this car or what?”
Abel stared at him for a long time and suddenly, the confusion fog lifted. It was as bad as he suspected. It had always been that bad. He had just never seen it.
“I’m good,” he said and kept walking.
When he got home, Rafael wasn’t there. Abel went to the bathroom to throw up.