Chapter 1
chapter one
juan pablo
The flex is really fucking real.
I grinned as I tapped the caption onto the photo of me cheesing with my glass of XO on the rocks in the private motherfucking jet I was taking to the Dominican Republic.
I ran my fingers over the corner of my mouth as I posted on Instagram with more hashtags and shit than necessary, but who could blame my ass?
“Juan Pablo, get off that phone, sweetheart, and take it easy on that liquor. We haven’t even taken off yet.”
I rolled my eyes, pocketing my phone as I looked behind me to where my parents were sitting. “Okay, Ma, it’s only my first drink.” I protested as I pointed at the glasses of champagne she and my dad were sipping on. “And that’s not water.”
My father smiled, at my whining. “It is an open bar, Irene. Let him live.”
My mother shook her head, making her dark curls bop on her shoulders as she moved up to kiss my dad gently on the mouth—both of them looking like lovesick teens, even after almost forty years.
“I can’t take you two anywhere,” she said, without even a hint of annoyance. She then turned to the other side of the aisle where the rest of our group was looking on with amusement. “Odette, you have to help me keep these boys in line.”
Okay, so yes, both my parents were on the jet with me. As was my best friend Patrice, his partner Easton, and Patrice’s parents. We were on our way to our other best friend’s wedding: Camilo. So I wasn’t exactly ballin’ on this trip. Camilo was, however.
He was marrying a zillionaire who seemed to live for showering him with every luxury he could get away with.
Which meant we were travelling like fucking moguls.
We would be, anyway, if we ever got in the air.
We’d been held back because at the last minute, a few other passengers were added to the flight.
I turned around to ask P if he’d heard who else was coming when I heard the flight attendant’s radio come alive with a crackly voice giving her instructions.
She smiled in our direction and gestured toward the still open door of the plane.
“Looks like our final passengers are here. We should be heading out very soon.” With that, she went to meet whoever had finally arrived.
This shit of travelling in a private jet was pretty fucking swank.
I mean, no security line and you basically just rolled up to the plane, which was waiting in a hangar at the Westchester County Airport.
I could fucking get used to this. Also I needed the vacation.
I’d been taking my time decompressing after coming off of what seemed like an interminable post-season.
I loved working as a physical therapist for my beloved Yankees, and the job definitely gave me superhero status in my Puerto Rican-Italian family.
Still, I was due for a break, like yesterday.
This trip to the DR was exactly what I needed.
I heard her before I saw her, talking to her mother and father—whose voices I’d also recognize anywhere—and felt that sickening dip of excitement mixed with barely contained want that always took over whenever Priscilla Gutierrez was near. Fuck, I wasn’t ready for this.
I knew I was going to see her; her entire family was coming to the wedding.
But I thought I’d have time to get there.
Get my bearings. I never knew how my heart would conspire against my head when it came to Pris—just knowing she was boarding this plane made a tornado swirl inside my chest. My heart started pounding and my vision blurred a little as she chattered with her mother.
I had no clue how to act and for some reason, panicked at the thought that she would be caught off guard by me being here. But before I had time to turn around and get some information from Patrice or Easton, she was walking onto the plane.
It was November so even though we were headed to the Caribbean, everyone was wearing fall attire.
Pris was in what I always called her Bronx Girl Chic.
Fancy leggings and sweater combo with pristine, matching Nikes.
The whole thing was a mess of fall colors, olive green and terracotta and bright yellow.
She’d taken her braids out and had her hair pulled back into a messy top bun. Glossy baby hair framing her face.
“Oh wow.” She had that sickly sweet tone she used when she was too tired to even look aggravated, and as I stared straight ahead, it did not escape me that she was avoiding looking at me.
Which in a tight space, like a private jet, required a hell of a lot of effort.
I mean I was in the wedding party, so she knew I’d be in the DR, but I wondered if—like me—she’d been hoping for a little more breathing room.
Or maybe she just didn’t want to deal with my ass.
At thirty-five and after years of working a job that had toughened her, she still looked so much like that sixteen-year-old girl that made my heart race every time I saw her.
When she finally looked up from talking with her parents and saw me, she seemed hesitant.
Like she didn’t know if she was up for managing my presence. Like thinking about it made her tired.
Fuck, had it really been almost a year since I’d seen her?
There had been a time when we couldn’t go more than a few hours without touching or talking.
Now months could go by without so much as a word.
She, of course, recovered quickly, not about to give me stank face in front of our parents.
Instead, she started greeting everyone and giving me an impressively wide berth given the size of the cabin.
With each kiss hello, she pressed on a cheek that wasn’t mine or offered a smile to someone just beyond where I sat in silence, the luxurious and intimate interior of the plane now feeling flat-out oppressive.
“What’s the good word, detective?” That was my dad. He always asked Pris about her job with more than a little bit of pride in his voice. He’d been her mentor since the day she joined the academy. Just one more way in which our lives were thoroughly tangled together.
I’d tried to tell myself for so long that was why we were better off as friends.
Too many people with their noses in our business.
But I’d weaned myself off my habit of not confronting my bullshit.
Nosy relatives and friends was not the reason why Priscilla and I didn’t work out.
No, that was all on us, on me for being a careless fuckboy and on her for being stubborn and prideful.
“Rafa.”
Pris’s affectionate tone as she went in to hug my dad wrenched me out of my seemingly ever-present regrets playlist.
The kisses, hugs, and back slaps went on for what felt like hours until she finally got to me, and I knew I wasn’t imagining everyone looking at us.
Like she always did, Pris kept it surface and polite in front of the parents.
We could go at it behind closed doors as much as we wanted, but our parents would never ever see any of it.
Not if she had anything to say about it.
“Hey, J.” She bent down to give me a quick peck on the cheek. But she popped back up so fast I could barely get a whiff of the expensive lemon verbena shower gel I’d gotten her addicted to and now couldn’t use myself because it reminded me too much of her.
“Hey yourself, you looking fresh like always.” I said, proud of myself for not sounding like a thirsty scrub.
“You ready for this?” I asked, looking around the plane full of our raucous family and friends.
Puerto Ricans, Haitians, and Dominicans were notorious for their excitement whenever the time came to go back to their islands.
Hell, we practically had our own terminal at JFK airport.
We were rowdy by nature, but holy shit, when we were on the way to the homeland, we could reach rapture levels of celebration.
Pris smiled, looking around. “Let’s hope Thomas got us a DR/PR/Haiti proof plane, because this open bar is about to pop off.”
My own parents were on their second glass of wine and we hadn’t even taken off. I was about to make an awkward comment about her Nikes when the flight attendant came by asking us to finish up our drinks, since we’d be in the air soon.
That broke the tension and by the time she was done giving us instructions, Priscilla was seated next to me.
To be fair, it was the only seat left and she had Easton, her best friend, on the other side of her.
I had no time to fret on things getting awkward or weirdness between us, because within seconds we were all in an easy conversation about the wedding, the obligations and tasks Camilo had given each of us.
It was familiar and natural to be with Priscilla, but then again, that had never been our issue.
Coming together had always been easy. It was staying that way that never seemed to work out for us.