Chapter Fourteen
Okay, so what do we have? And how do I eat it?” I gaze over the colorful platter he’s crafted.
“Mackerel.” He points to a row of white fish with a gray rim. “Sea bream, two types. Sea bream is my favorite, this one specifically.” His finger moves above another white fish with a pinkish edge. “And lastly, this is an anchovy. Americans seem to have some bias against them, but keep an open mind.” He opens a plastic cooler and takes out a loaf of bread. “With bread and butter.”
In another small tub is a red paste with different-colored flakes mixed in. I can smell garlic and tomato.
“Wow, you’re so prepared. What if I wouldn’t have gotten off the yacht?” I ask him, playfully but curiously.
He rips off a piece of bread, rubs butter and the tomato paste across it, and adds a thin gray anchovy before topping it with large flakes of sea salt.
“You would have. I was certain. But I live here, so I have food. Always.”
I look around the boat. “You live here, like on the boat? Or…” Confusion draws my brows together.
I guess I should have wondered why there was a mattress on the boat. Jealousy pricks at my skin at the thought of how many women he’s slept with on this boat. I almost ask, but he stops me by nodding, and says, “Yeah. My dad has a piso, a flat type, that was his childhood home, but it still smells like my mare, and I can’t stand being inside for long. So I’ve been living on my boat since I was… sixteen?”
I wish I would have paid more attention to the room we were in. If I had known it was his living space, I would have memorized every inch of it.
I hesitate before asking, “Can I ask about your mother?”
He nods. “If you eat. Try this and be honest if you don’t like it.” He opens his mouth, gesturing for me to do the same.
I’m nervous to try something new, but that’s why I’m here, and it smells so, so good. I open my mouth and say “ahh” and take a bite as he feeds me. The taste is so much different from what I expected; flavor bursts in my mouth, coating my taste buds. As someone who uses their senses more than the average person, this dish tastes like it was made for me. The smell of garlic and tomato; the salty, earthy flavor of the fish; the buttery crunch of the bread. I chew, nodding in approval.
“Oh my god!” I roll my head back and Julián claps in relief. “It’s so good.” I talk with my mouth full, not caring about manners.
“So, so good.” I snatch the other half of the piece out of his hand and eat it.
The expression on his face should be painted or photographed. It’s wonderful and beautiful and proud, like he’s letting me in on the secret that food is something very, very dear to him. What a gift for him to share it with me.
“You’re always snatching food from me,” he teases, light and pure satisfaction beaming from his stunning eyes.
“Now have this one. It’s softer than it looks, and you just eat it.” He sprinkles the flaky salt on and folds the slice of fish, bringing it to my mouth.
I close my eyes, not knowing what to expect. Again, I’m floored. It’s not as full of flavor as the anchovy and bread, but it’s so light, so fresh and airy. I open my eyes and nod again.
“More?” he asks.
“Please.” I scoot closer to him.
The sun is still high in the sky, but it’s lowered since I got onto his boat. I haven’t checked my phone, and if it wasn’t for my mother, I wouldn’t even think about it.
“I can’t remember the last time someone made me a homecooked meal,” I say both to Julián and myself.
“Don’t you have private chefs at your beck and call?” he says, no judgment, just stating what he assumes.
“We had a housekeeper-slash-nanny for me, who was basically family, and she used to do meal prep for us, per my mother’s requests, so she did make everything, but my mom and I never ate together, and by the time I got the dish, it was in a plastic Tupperware. So homemade, yes, and delicious, but not like this. I usually eat alone.”
“Meals are meant to be shared, treasured,” he says, a hint of loneliness present. I wonder if he mostly has his meals alone too. “And where is she now?”
“She retired.” Sadness fills my voice, but I try to bat it away. “I’m happy she doesn’t have to work so hard anymore, but I miss her terribly. The house became so quiet after she left, but at least my mom showed her more kindness than I expected and paid her what she was worth, which was a lot. And rightfully so. We still keep in touch. She calls every few months.” I straighten my back, remembering the shock I felt when Sonia told me that my mom bought her a house in her home country of Honduras so she could live near her grandchildren. She had missed their childhood while tending to mine.
“She is where the tiny bit of Spanish I can understand comes from, but it’s obviously different from yours.”
I look past him, remembering her warm smile, the way she always sang songs under her breath as she worked. The sound was so comforting to me that I nearly asked her to record it for me before she left.
“She must have been lovely to help raise you.”
I nod, a lump in my throat. Today has been a roller coaster of emotions, to say the least.
“Lovely, yes, but I feel so guilty that she spent her life dedicated to me and my mom and not her own family,” I admit.
“Classism. It’s a very real thing, and not that I can relate to the side you’re on, the rich side, but I can relate to hers and I’m sure she not only cared about you but was happy to have a job.”
“I hope so. You know, I thought I heard my mom crying the night Sonia left. She would never admit it, but I swear I heard it from outside her bathroom door. I, of course, cried for days, and I’m not even a crier. I don’t know if I cried out of happiness for her, or because I knew my life would become even more lonely.”
He lets that marinate between us for a few moments.
“You’re very different from what I expected. Oriah,” he says thoughtfully, out of the blue. I smile as my heart soars.
“So are you, Julián Garcia.”
“We should both stop being so quick to judge, perhaps?” He raises a brow, and I agree with a small nod.
“Seems so. Speaking of my mom, I should text her just to save myself a headache later.”
I get up to grab my bag and send an I’m alive text to my mom, and he feeds me another bite.
“Now that I’ve told you something so personal, it’s your turn.”
“So, the short version of the story is that my pare, my father, and mare met at a mutual friend’s wedding. Not the most romantic story, but my pare was trying to get over his first love and my mare was doing the same. They hung out for a few weeks, she gets pregnant, they try to fall and stay in love, but it just…” He pauses, looking away from me.
“It just didn’t click,” we say in unison.
Nodding, he goes on. “It was for convenience, not happiness. The more they tried, the more they resented each other. Then she got sick… and my pare would never leave her, even though we both heard him call out that wretched woman’s name in his sleep, night after night. She ignored that, and the longing in his eyes, the photos he kept. My parents were roommates, friends at best, as she slowly died in front of us, never having truly lived outside being a mother.”
Wiping the tears from my eyes, I apologize for them. “Sorry, I— These aren’t tears of pity. I just… I don’t know what to say.”
“Tragic, I know.” He pops a piece of the sea bream into his mouth as I process his life. He must deal with trauma and tragedy with dark humor like me. It’s refreshing.
“Wow. His first love must have really messed him up for him to love her for so long after.”
“Yeah, she did. They were childhood best friends, then lovers. Promises of marriage, spent every waking moment together, and then one day she disappeared. Not dead or anything, just poof, left the island and didn’t even say goodbye. She wrote him letters over the years, and when he tried to toss them, I made sure to take every single one and hide it. I still have them all in there. I’m not even sure why, really.” He gestures toward the cabin we were in.
“Have you read them?” I wonder.
“No. Never. I think about throwing them into the sea one day but haven’t done it yet. I don’t know why, but something stops me each time I almost do it.”
He offers me a piece, but I shake my head.
“Don’t tell me I made you lose your appetite.” He groans, looking down at the nearly full spread.
“You didn’t,” I tell him, reaching for his arm. “Can I have more of the anchovy one with the bread?”
He smiles, nodding. I decide to share part of my own family mess with him.
“Well, my dad isn’t dead, but he might as well be. I’ve never met him and don’t know anything about him aside from his name. I wrote him on Facebook once a few years ago, but he blocked me. I guess his wife and kids don’t know about me and he wants to keep it that way.” I shrug, remembering their smiling family photos, dressed in matching khaki pants and white linen shirts in the middle of the woods.
“I used to wonder which was worse—death or abandonment.” I admit aloud one of my darkest curiosities.
Julián takes it in, his lips moving in a circle as he considers the thought.
“For me, abandonment, because it’s a choice. Then again, I have all these memories with my mare that haunt me, all these regrets and guilt, knowing I’m the reason she never got to have a life,” he tells me.
I don’t know when our bodies moved, but we’re inches away from each other now, his hand on my forearm.
“In a way, I’m the reason my mom doesn’t have a life either. She works constantly because of all my—” I almost slip.
Oh god, I was so close to saying it. The one thing I don’t want him to know. My ultimate sob story.
“My student loan debt and being a single mother,” I explain.
The lie slides down my throat like acid, sitting heavily in the pit of my stomach like a rock.
Guilt begins to eat at me the longer I look at him. I know it’s wrong to not warn him, give him a chance to run away now, but I can’t. It’s selfish, but I can’t. Thankfully, he chimes in before my lie has another chance to grow.
“So, we have another thing in common. We both ruined our moms’ lives and are incredibly judgmental.” He smiles, and our twisted laughter drowns out the itch to tell him every single detail that I’m desperate to keep hidden.