Julian
The Maldonados have gone all out for Andrew’s birthday.
The kitchen has been taken over by trays of barbecued meats, refried beans, Spanish rice, and drinks of all kinds (but mostly alcoholic).
Hell, Mrs. Maldonado’s three-in-one Crock-Pot takes up the entire back counter.
The apartment smells heavenly and has made my stomach grumble all day as I helped put up decorations with Elena and Diego.
“Think it’s too late to ask your parents to adopt me?”
Elena laughs. “You’re Andrew’s best friend, which automatically makes you one of us.”
The smell of warm tortillas whips my head around.
“No way your mom is making those from scratch.” It’s clear I’m wrong, though, as both of us watch from the living room while Mrs. Maldonado flattens out a small portion of the dough with one hand while flipping a tortilla on the comal with the other.
“Is it clear Andrew’s the favorite yet?” There isn’t a hint of derision in Elena’s tone, even though something nags at the back of my mind.
The Maldonados have been here for over an hour setting up the apartment for Andrew’s surprise party with one notable exception.
Every few minutes, I catch myself staring at the front door, waiting for Leti to walk through it.
“I’ve only ever had store-bought tortillas at my birthday parties,” Elena continues. “Times like these, Leti’s feud makes perfect sense.”
“Your sister?” I ask, if only to keep up the ruse.
Against my will, I stare at the door over Diego’s shoulder, as if the sound of her name spoken aloud is enough to summon her.
We’ll have to spend the entire night pretending we don’t know each other, a prospect I already regret agreeing to.
Yet here I am, craving Leti’s presence and all the complications it’s sure to bring with her.
“I can’t remember the last time your parents threw Leti a birthday party,” Diego says. “Not even when she lived with them for two years after she graduated. Did she not want one?”
“As if that would stop them,” Elena scoffs. “Andrew has no idea we’re throwing him this party.”
“So, why’s Leti different, then?” I ask her.
She opens her mouth to respond but stops as the door cracks open and Mr. Maldonado steps inside. My shoulders deflate, the breath I was holding loosened as the door shuts behind him.
“The banners look great,” he says, glancing around the living room we’ve spent the last hour and a half decorating.
“From the smell alone, you and Mrs. Maldonado did an amazing job on the food,” I tell him. “It’s gonna be a great party.”
Once he’s a safe distance away in the kitchen with his wife, I turn back to Elena and ask the question I’ve bitten down for the past two hours. “Where is your sister anyway? Shouldn’t she be here helping us set up?”
“Knowing her, she’ll show up at the last possible moment.” Her nose scrunches up in a way that reminds me so much of Leti, I nearly gasp. Luckily, I’m able to cover my odd reaction by faking a sneeze.
“Wasn’t she supposed to bring the plates and silverware?” Mrs. Maldonado calls from the kitchen. “We told her to be here by two.”
As she and Elena go back and forth about Leti’s whereabouts, I pull out my phone.
Me: Where are you? Your parents are asking for you.
Leti: Yeah, yeah.
I wait a few beats, but when it’s clear a further response isn’t forthcoming, I let out a sigh.
Me: Did you not get your sister’s text about being here by 2? You’re two hours late.
Leti: The party doesn’t start until seven. They’ll be fine without their precious paper plates until at least 6:30.
When I let out a disgruntled noise, every head swings toward me. “Everything okay, man?” Diego claps a hand on my shoulder. Hastily, I lock my screen and shove my phone back in my pocket.
“I forgot that we still need…” I rack my brain for something, anything, when it comes to me. “Cups!”
“You don’t have glasses in your cupboard?” Mrs. Maldonado asks, turning around to check.
“Not enough.” I shake my head. “I meant to grab some paper cups from the store earlier, but it must’ve slipped my mind. I’ll be back.”
Outside, I bound up the stairs to her apartment. I ring the doorbell and wait, but there’s no answer. Sighing again, I pull out my phone.
“Are you really calling me about paper plates that no one will need for another three hours?”
“It’s not about the plates, Leti. Your parents really want you to be here,” I say. “Now, come on. I’m outside your apartment. We’ll go to the store together.”
“That’s highly unlikely.”
“We’ll be sneaky. No one will know we went together.”
“Not that,” she says. “I mean about my parents wanting me there.”
“Come on. That can’t possibly be true.” But then I remember what Diego said about them not throwing their middle child a birthday party. Meanwhile, Andrew’s entire immediate family is downstairs pulling all the stops for his twenty-fifth. “Is Bella home?”
“No, why?”
“What about Mari?”
“They’re with Luis for some play the kids are putting on at the school. What—”
I smash my finger on the doorbell, pressing down on it over and over.
“Julian.”
“Leti.” There’s no helping the smirk quirking the side of my mouth. “Get your ass out here.”
“You can’t tell my ass what to do.”
“I can if you want me to stop.” I keep my finger on the bell, ringing it incessantly. “I swear to god, if you don’t open up in five—”
The door swings open, a disgruntled Leti on the other side.
She’s still in her pajamas, her feet bare and hair piled at the top of her head in a messy bun.
Her arms cross over her chest, and I immediately notice she’s not wearing a bra.
Fucking lord, this woman. It doesn’t help that ever since our kiss, my hormones have gone into overdrive.
I’ve touched myself every single day this week to the memory of her knees straddling my waist, her tongue in my mouth, those little sounds and gasps she’d make…
“Happy?”
“Ecstatic.” I force my eyes away from the outline of her nipples through her white top and up to her face. “Go get dressed. I figure we can make it back by five if we hurry.”
“Whatever.” She shuffles toward her bedroom as slowly as possible—just to fuck with me, no doubt. I follow close behind, taking a seat at the foot of her bed as she disappears inside her closet. “How are preparations going?” she calls out.
“Fine. Your mom is making tortillas from scratch.”
“That figures.” Her scoff is muffled, but I make it out just the same. “Anything for the baby of the family. Meanwhile, when I asked for homemade tortillas for my twelfth birthday, I got a lecture for being ungrateful.”
“What do they usually do for your birthdays?” I ask, already sensing I won’t like the answer. But I want to know, and I’d rather hear the truth from Leti than her sister.
“Nothing.” She comes out wearing jean shorts and a T-shirt, her hair down in silky strands that fall to her shoulders. “Not since the disaster that was my quinceanera anyway. I’m not worth the effort.”
“That’s not true.” But nothing I say can negate the sadness shining in her eyes. She shakes her head, refusing to look at me.
“It is,” she says. “I’m the problem child. Too loud, too mean, too much. All because I’m the only one who’s willing to stick up for myself in that house, even when it fucks with their plans. Always have been, always will be.”
“Andrew was really that bad?”
She nods, but I still have a hard time imagining that.
“We both were,” she says. “But if anyone asks, don’t tell them I said that. Under no circumstance am I ever willing to admit I’m part of the problem.”
“You? Never.” She returns my smirk, but it falls when I ask, “What happened at your quince?”
“My mom’s word took precedent over my own,” she says.
“She overruled me on the dress and theme I wanted, and was frustrated that none of my damas could work up the nerve to ask a boy to be their escort. But the real icing on the cake was when I ripped the eight-hundred-dollar dress she picked out right before it was time to take pictures.”
“On purpose?”
“That’s what my mom accused me of. Her and everyone else.” She grimaces. “As fun as this trip down memory lane has been, can we go now?”
“Oh. Sure.” I watch as she picks up her purse from the floor and stomps out of her bedroom, contemplating how much I should push the subject. By the time I catch up to her, she’s tying her tennis shoes in the living room. “Leti—”
“What more do you want to hear, Julian?” She doesn’t raise her voice, but if anything, her even tone only scares me more.
“How humiliating it was to be screamed at by my parents in front of all my friends and family, even when I tried to explain that it wasn’t my fault?
How heartbreaking it is to realize my parents will always see me as the worst version of myself?
Or that for eleven years, my parents made good on their threat that if I so much as moved a toe out of line, it would be the last party they ever threw me? ”
“You were fifteen,” I tell her. “It’s unfair of them to punish you for so long.”
“It’s hardly a punishment,” she says. “What am I, twelve? I don’t need anyone to throw me a birthday party.”
“Yeah, but I bet it hurt watching them throw Andrew and Elena their own parties for the past eleven years knowing they wouldn’t do the same for you,” I tell her.
“It’s a punishment straight out of the manipulative, gaslighting parents’ playbook.
If you ever meet my dad, you’d understand how I know.
Your parents meant to make you feel bad about yourself. ”
She bites down on her lip to keep it from wobbling, her brown eyes swimming in unshed tears she keeps trying to blink back to no avail.
“This is why you didn’t want to come today, isn’t it?” The realization hits me square in the chest. “Leti, what happened to the dress?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
She glances up at me, a question in her eyes.
“I got in a fight with Andrew.” She clears her throat.
“We’d been bickering about one thing or another all day.
When I stood up from my chair, I felt the fabric tear and looked down to see his shoe stepping on the bottom of the skirt.
Even in heels, at least five inches trailed the floor behind me everywhere I went.
It was a big, stupid, poofy dress that I hated from the get-go, but it was my mom’s favorite on me.
Andrew probably had no idea he was stepping on it, but I accused him of doing it on purpose.
I knew the second my mom saw the tear I was in for the lecture of a lifetime.
The fight Andrew and I were already in? It escalated to a screaming match until my parents found us. ”
“Let me guess,” I say. “They took his side over yours.”
“He claimed to have nothing to do with the rip.” She shrugs. “Not even that it was an accident. He told me later he was too scared to face the wrath of our parents. That’s the whole deal with Andrew. He’s more concerned with how he looks to them than doing what’s right.”
“And that’s why you guys have such a tumultuous relationship?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “It’s the fact that I have a million more stories like that one.
No matter what he says or does, no matter how far he takes the joke, no matter that he’s broken my heart more times than he even knows, my family will always choose his side over mine. And I’m fucking sick of it.”
My chest burns for her. I can’t stand to see her so upset, but the animosity she has for my best friend makes sense now. How the hell am I supposed to ask her to be more supportive of her brother after everything she’s told me?
“Come on.” She grabs her keys off the hook. “Before I change my mind.”