Chapter 10
Ten
T ori’s parents’ house was a vibrant contrast to the relative silence Mia had been living in. She didn’t hear the loud salsa music echoing in the suburban neighborhood as much as she felt it vibrating through her feet and resonating in her chest.
The cars parked on both sides of the street banished her concern that all the stuff jammed in Tori’s trunk was an exaggeration. She forgave her own skepticism. It had been years since she’d been to an event with a whole roasted pig and enough booze to make a bootlegger blush.
“Change your mind?” Tori asked, forearms flexing from carrying two cases of beer while they walked around the side of the house.
Mia shifted the bag of ice in her right hand to cradle it in her left. She let the grocery bags slide down to her elbow when she grabbed the handle on the weathered wooden gate leading to the backyard.
“Not a chance.” She wiggled her brows. “You’re getting your cute little ass kicked at dominos.” She pulled back the door that caught on the uneven path. It required another hard yank to open.
“Oh, yeah?” Tori’s laugh, open-mouthed and bright-eyed, was contagious. “And when’s the last time you played?” She couldn’t hide her love of trash talk. “Lots of grandpas running around Philly challenging you to a game?”
Mia’s chest tingled. A flurry of sensation rippled over her skin when she grinned. “Talent like mine doesn’t fade, baby.” She waited for Tori to step into the backyard first. “I’ll bet you designated driver duty that you can’t beat me.”
“Like I’d let you drive my Jeep,” Tori countered when they turned the corner
Feigning offense, Mia gave Tori a near-lethal side-eye. “Did you forget I’m the one who taught you how to drive?”
Tori didn’t miss a beat, returning the volley exactly where Mia placed it. “Did you forget all the dings you put in your mom’s car with your skills ?”
“I said I taught you how to drive—not park.” Mia couldn’t hold back her chuckle. Couldn’t slow the pulse dancing in her throat. “You used to be a much better listener,” she teased, raising a single brow even if she couldn’t turn her expression serious.
Tori rewarded Mia with both dimples and a blinding smile. The world grew silent, music and laughter fading into a gentle hum. Mia was instantly caught in something. An unseen force field rooting her sandaled feet to the patchy grass.
Inches from Tori, the air between them shifted. Mia’s breath tangled in her throat and didn’t make it to her lungs. There was something in Tori’s expression. Something she wasn’t saying. Something Mia was sure that she’d pay any price to hear.
“Mia!” Tori’s mom’s voice was a rush of warmth flooding her spine and crashing in her belly.
Bounding toward them, Rita was short where Tori was tall. Fair where Tori was naturally tan. Her energy, though, was as bright as Mia remembered.
“Rita! Oh my gosh, you look amazing.” Mia shuffled the bags in her hands again, eager to reach out for a hug.
“Juan Carlos! Come help the girls,” Rita called, and a teenage boy broke off from a group throwing a football around. A moment later, he’d gathered some other kids and Mia’s hands were free. They bounded off with Tori’s Jeep key in hand.
“Sweetheart, I’m so happy to see you.” Rita pulled Mia into a crushing embrace. “I’ve been thinking about you so much, mi vida.” She ran her hand over the back of Mia’s head, stroking her hair with the most maternal touch she’d felt in months.
Mia wanted to linger there, but she didn’t trust herself not to cry if she did. Today she wanted a day without the crushing pain of grief. To live in the light and color of a family…even if she was only borrowing it for the afternoon.
“It’s been too long,” Rita whispered the words that nearly dismantled her.
Emotion pricked the back of Mia’s eyes. It made her skin too tight. Her bones too heavy. She wanted to agree—to tell her that it hadn’t been her call—but she hugged her back harder instead and released a different truth. “It’s good to be home.”
Tori’s entire family poured out from everywhere to greet her. From the half-a-dozen long folding tables setup in the shade. From the house. From under the two tents where several games of dominos were going on at once. Like a human tidal wave, they descended upon her.
As if no time had passed at all, Mia slipped right back into a tribe that felt less like a loan and more like a gift. She was plied with food that tasted too good to care about calories. Asked a million questions at once while photos of kids and grandkids were flipped in her face.
She was buzzing by the time Tori put her arm around her shoulders to steer her away from her aunt’s detailed account of her cosmetic spider vein removal. Tori handed her a bottle of Heineken wrapped in a napkin.
“Ready to play?” Tori sipped her own beer and gestured toward a domino table where her uncle and his third wife were getting up.
With Tori’s arm draped so casually around her, with the scent of her skin so close and the overwhelming feeling of belonging making it impossible to breathe, Mia laughed.
She took a sip of the beer she definitely didn’t like and resisted the urge to whine when Tori pulled away.
“Oh, you want to team up?” Mia asked when she noticed Tori’s cousins still sitting at the table were playing as a duo. “You think that’s going to keep me from beating you?”
Tori sat on one side of the square wooden table, domino tiles face down and ready to be mixed together. She looked up at Mia, skin flushed from the heat and sweat dampening her temples. If Mia had been holding her phone, she would have snapped a photo of her right then. There was something about her expression that made Mia want to steal it and hoard it for later. To keep it with her in Philly during sleepless nights.
“I’m still going to win,” Mia said as she sat across from her, voice weak and lacking conviction.
Tori’s slow grin was the sunrise after a storm. She kept her gaze locked on Mia, giving her nowhere to run. “We’ll see.”
The thunder of white tiles crashing against each other and sliding across the well-worn wooden table shoved Mia back to her senses. The sound was a hypnotist snapping their fingers, prompting Mia to look down at the men pushing the dominos around to shuffle them.
Mia had chugged a third of her beer by the time it was time to pick ten tiles at random. The moment she locked in, she realized she didn’t remember a single strategy for winning. She reverted to how she’d played as a kid, and dumped the highest numbered dominos first.
Hours later, Mia had bullied her way into making Rita let her help with the clean-up. Most of Tori’s extended family had left, but a handful lingered inside where the AC made life bearable. Tori had volunteered to drive her grandparents home, giving Mia a chance to hang with Rita. It wasn’t that she had an ulterior motive exactly, but if Rita happened to drop a clue about why Tori had stopped talking to her in college, it might make it easier to broach the topic with Tori.
“Here, mi amor.” Rita handed her another stack of paper plates to throw away.
Mia held open the huge garbage bag nearing capacity. “When we finish this table, I’ll go grab another bag.”
“I wanted to take a minute, now that we’re alone.”
By the soft tone Mia was tired of hearing—the tone that preceded wide glistening eyes and bled with pity—Mia knew what Rita was going to say. Her stomach churned, pushing the taste of garlic into her throat.
“I’m so sorry about your mom.” Rita’s words were gentle, like she was trying not to startle a feral cat. They landed like a jab to the gut just the same. “Grisel was such a force. When Tori told me?—”
“The food was amazing.” Mia cut her off, desperate to avoid the undertow of grief threatening to drag her under. She forced a smile that felt like cheap plastic stretched over bone. It was the best imitation she could offer on short notice. “I don’t know how I’m going to go back to life without home cooking.”
Rita’s expression was so full of love and sympathy, it made Mia want to fold herself small enough to fit in her arms. Instead, she busied herself with gathering empty beer bottles and heading to the big trash can on the side of the house.
“I’m surprised Tori agreed to leave you behind,” Rita said when they moved on to emptying the leftovers and melted ice from huge coolers. “You’ve only been back together for what? A week? And already you’re inseparable.” She chuckled to herself and pulled the stopper from one of the coolers, letting water spill onto the patio stones.
“In so many ways, it’s like nothing ever changed.” Mia opened a second cooler and started pulling out cans. “In other ways… Tori has grown into such a different person.”
“You know she’s not one for the mushy stuff, but I can see that she’s so happy to have you back in her life. That time after high school was tough, but I knew she’d get over the crush. I knew that you two would find each other again.”
Mia reached for years of experience working in the hospital and made her face a mask. Expressionless while Rita kept talking, Mia repeated the word crush in her head. All at once, the past rearranged itself like a kaleidoscope shifting into focus. A thousand little moments clicked into place with jarring clarity.
Tori had a crush on me?