Chapter 14
Jason
“Oh, c’mon. You’re still upset about what happened back there?”
“I’m not upset. I’m disillusioned.”
“About?”
She whips her head up and gives me a disbelieving stare. “You. I thought you were one of the good ones, but then you got people to boo me. And my face was on the damn Jumbotron.”
“You took that ball from a seven-year-old. Have you no shame?”
She lifts her chin defiantly. “It was my ball. I risked injury to my hand to catch it. That kid just stood there with his dopey eyes and chocolate-smeared cheeks.”
“Oh, okay. So you don’t have any shame.”
She rolls her eyes.
I’m so damn tempted to tell her that I know what she’s up to, but it’s also fun as hell to mess with her. I reach over and shake her hand playfully. “It was a joke. No harm, no foul, right?”
“Right,” she says, her gaze clouding. “I’m over it.”
She’s probably wondering how it all went wrong, but I’m not educating her about shit.
As our server clears our table, I spy Vanessa taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, as if she’s decided to shake off the preceding train wreck and pivot to another tactic.
“How’d you end up a Mets fan?” she asks. “I thought all Nuyoricans rooted for the Yankees.”
“When it came to deciding, it was easy. My dad—my real dad, I mean—was a Yankees fan. So I chose the Mets.”
“But why?” she asks with a laugh.
“Because he’s a piece of shit, and I didn’t want us to have a baseball team in common.” The words just fly out of my mouth as if they couldn’t wait to escape. Fuck. I was so proud of myself for one-upping Vanessa, I forgot that I need to be on high alert around her at all times.
Before I can tell her to disregard my outburst, she says, “That’s an excellent reason.”
And just like that, my little tantrum isn’t as uncomfortable as I thought it would be.
Because this is what Vanessa does: She lulls you into being open with her, and then she passes no judgment when you say too much.
At first, this aspect of her personality charmed me, but now I know it’s a part of her power.
She gets people to reveal themselves while she remains hidden behind an infuriatingly attractive mask.
“So Nelson’s your stepdad?” she prods.
“He’s my mother’s second husband.” I shrug. “My sisters call him Papi, but that sounds weird to me. I mean, he’s been a constant in our lives for a long time, yet I have a hard time thinking of him that way. Doesn’t really matter.”
“I wonder if it matters to him,” she says softly.
“He doesn’t seem to care.”
As far as I’m concerned, Nelson’s fine. My mother’s happy now, and that’s all that matters. Although he’s been around awhile, the moment the situation changes, he’ll be gone too. I’ll make sure of it.
“Or maybe he cares, but he doesn’t want to ruffle any feathers by pushing you one way or the other.”
“You mean he’s hiding his true feelings.” I draw back and pretend to be shocked. “People do that?”
She shakes her head, her lips twisted, then she says, “C’mon, you know they do.”
“You’re right. I definitely do.” I inwardly wonder if she’s thinking about the double meaning behind my words. I hope it’s making her squirm on the inside. To her, I say, “In the end, though, Nelson and I are on good terms. We like each other. Respect each other too. Our dynamic works for us.”
“Fair enough, then.”
“So now that we’ve dissected my relationship with my mother’s husband, tell me about being a financial planner. Was that what you always wanted to be?”
“Definitely not. But I’m good with numbers. And I’m super organized. Managing other people’s money takes advantage of my skill set. I needed a well-paying job with long-term stability, mostly because I wanted to be able to support myself and send any extra money to my parents.”
“So no burning desire to be a James Beard Award–winning chef? A prima ballerina? A world-class athlete?”
“Too risky,” she says, shaking her head. “Even if I’d had the talent, which I didn’t, I couldn’t let my future be dictated by chance. I wasn’t choosing a career for me; I was choosing a career for my family.”
I stare at her for a moment before I speak. Why are this woman’s layers so damn interesting to me? I really wish they weren’t. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself.”
She shrugs. “It’s what poor, first-gen college students do.
The ones who realize not everyone gets the opportunity to improve their family’s situation, at least. Chasing some unrealistic dream would have squandered the chances I’d been given.
Thanks to me, my parents have a retirement fund.
It isn’t much, but it’s something. And once they sell the store, I’ll help them find a home of their own.
A place like Suenos. Knowing they’ll be okay helps me sleep at night. ”
“Those are some serious oldest-daughter vibes.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What about Lisa? Does she help?”
“She does. Lisa’s the one who’s been keeping an eye on them while I got to leave home and make a new life in Chicago.
She works her ass off at her own job and does shifts at the store on the weekends.
But financially? I don’t really expect her to.
She’s not swimming in money, and she deserves to save for her own future. ”
“What about what you deserve?”
She lets out a bitter laugh. “Believe me, I’ve gotten more than I deserve.”
And see, this is the shit that kills me. I want to be able to feel nothing in this moment. To take her word for it. But the sum of Vanessa’s parts have me in a damn choke hold. What is it about this woman?
Maybe it’s her contradictions. She’s a person who’ll pretend to like me as part of a silly scheme meant to hook me up with her sister.
She’s also a person who will think of her family first when choosing a career.
Yeah, people are complex and complicated and all that, but something tells me I haven’t even gotten to all the layers that make Vanessa who she is.
And damn, that intrigues me. So I dig a little deeper—because I can’t seem to help myself. “Why don’t you feel entitled to more?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it, though. By saying you’ve gotten more than you deserve.”
“I meant that I’ve had my fair number of breaks. Private school. College on a mostly full ride. An excellent job right after graduation. That’s enough for me. Other people deserve good breaks too.”
“Like your parents. And Lisa.”
“Exactly.”
“I understand now.”
Her eyebrows quirk up. “You do?”
“Yeah, you feel guilty.”
Her eyes go impossibly wide, and then she stands abruptly. “I need to use the restroom.”
I stand with her. “Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you—”
“You didn’t,” she says, waving me off as she looks around. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
I watch her leave, not wanting to care about her as much as I’m starting to. Even though I should know better. Even though I do know better.
Vanessa returns a few minutes later, the skin at her temples damp, as if she sprinkled water on her face to cool off.
She slowly lowers herself onto the chair, her lips pressed tight.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. I just…”
“Whatever you’re going to say, it’s fine. Tell me.”
She opens and closes her mouth, then opens it again. “Remember when I said I wanted to take things slow?”
“Of course.”
“I meant that about everything. The conversation we had a couple of minutes ago? That was more than I wanted to get into today. Too much. Too soon. Can we just enjoy each other’s company without trying to uncover every facet of our personalities?”
Ah, I see what’s going on here. She’s saying what a person would say when they have no intention of building a future with someone.
She doesn’t need to get to know me—not the real me—because that isn’t what we’re about.
More importantly, she’s warning me not to delve too deeply because she’s terrified to let anyone get to know her—the real her.
“We can go as slow as you need to. And we’ll stick to the basics. Like, when’s your birthday?”
“February twenty-third,” she says, her body noticeably less tense now that I’ve let her off the hook.
“You’re a Pisces. Explains a lot.”
“I’m not even going to ask. People who pay attention to astrology scare me. When’s your birthday?”
“June twentieth.”
Her eyes narrow as she does the calculations in her head. “Ooh, that’s next Thursday.”
“Yup.”
“Any plans?”
“Nope. I’m not big on celebrations.”
“Noted. Favorite snack growing up?”
“Easy. Now and Laters.”
“Nice. What flavor?”
“Grape, of course. You?”
“Green apple Jolly Ranchers,” she says. “Used to swipe them from the ten-cent bin in my parents’ store.”
“Sticky fingers too. I’m not surprised. Well, my favorite color’s blue. What’s yours?”
“Red.”
We stare at each other, then I burst out laughing. “See how boring this is?”
She smiles. “We don’t have to go to extremes, you know. We can find a middle ground. Something that works for both of us. Something that satisfies your need to be nosy and satisfies my need to be—”
“Guarded? Cagey? Evasive?”
She draws back and narrows her eyes. “Chill out, Mr. Thesaurus. I was going to say mysterious.”
“You say mysterious, I say evasive.”
“You say evasive, I say careful.”
“You say careful, I say circumspect. I can do this all day.”
She smiles. It’s a genuine one this time. Big and assured. And I love that something that I said transformed her face that way. “I like you, Mr. Torres.”
“I like you, too, Ms. Cordero.”
And that’s a problem. Because as much as it’s true, I can’t be with someone who’s as deceitful as she is. It figures that the one person to spark my interest in years is the one person I could never trust.
Fuck, this sucks.