Chapter 3
chapter three
juan pablo
Three hours into this flight, and it was sort of a scene.
I mean, you got a plane packed with Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Haitians, an open bar and free food…
it’s a fucking party. But something was missing.
I spotted Pris sitting by herself on one of the seats furthest from the cabin.
She copped that spot from the beginning of the flight and even though she’d come and chatted with the rest of us, I could see she was keeping herself at a distance.
Of course, I assumed it all had to do with me.
We didn’t need to be like this. I wasn’t going to push for more again. I swore to myself I’d keep my ass in check on this trip. No drunken begging Pris to take pity on me or greasy behavior. That wasn’t what I wanted, I just missed her.
I looked around again and saw that people had finally settled down a little bit. Figured, just when we’re about ready to land. I almost went over to P and tried to kill time talking with him and Easton. But they were sitting so contentedly. P’s big ass arm like an oak branch draped on his man.
It was a fucking trip, really, to see my friend who never let himself show too much looking like the very picture of contentment.
I wasn’t going to say he was glowing, but he looked really fucking happy.
I must’ve been pulling a face, because P’s eyes went right to Priscilla, who looked like she was trying and failing to fake sleep.
I didn’t have the energy to have an eyeball conversation with P, so instead, I did what I’d wanted to do since Priscilla stepped onto the plane.
I didn’t even know what I was going to say once I got there but I had to make sure she and I were cool.
Just the thought of an entire week around all our friends and family while Priscilla and I tried our best to ignore each other made me feel a deep, bone-level exhaustion.
“Hey,” I said, and she opened one brown eye.
“Hey yourself. You kill that $200 bottle of Henny yet? We only have like another forty minutes in the air.”
My mouth twitched at that. Of course, she was going to give me shit for freeloading on the booze. I smacked my lips and took another sip, knowing it would piss her off.
“I’m working on it. I see you haven’t availed yourself of much of the free food and beverages. You sick or something?”
She snorted but didn’t answer, finally training both of those chocolate brown eyes in my direction. “I’m trying to pace myself since we’re about to go on a five-day binge in the DR, but thanks for asking.” This was us, always, giving each other shit from the moment we opened our mouths.
Fighting or fucking, that was me and Priscilla.
But that wasn’t true either, we were—we’d always been—a lot more than that. I looked up at her again and my stomach flipped thinking it would be like this for us now. That we’d have to find fake shit to talk about, because we didn’t know enough about each other’s lives to know what to ask.
I saw her reach for her phone and raised an eyebrow.
“Tying up work stuff?” I spoke before giving it too much thought.
Her job and how much it interfered with her personal life was definitely in the red zone for us.
I cringed when I saw her put her back up, her mouth twisting to the side.
I braced for the tongue-lashing I knew was coming, but at the last second, she deflated.
“Nah. It’s all under control. This new team requires a lot less from me.
” She lifted a shoulder and pushed out her lips, feigning an indifference I knew was not really there.
Not for her job. Never for her job. “I’m not really sure how I feel about it, but at least for this week I’m off duty.
Fully at the disposal of Camilo and his man. ”
That smile was real and I was sure a twin to the one on my lips. “He’ll want us at his beck and call as soon as we get there.”
“That’s Camilo. Although Tom has gotten him to chill out a bit.”
“Not enough that he won’t be a fucking monster this week. You know how he gets.”
She laughed at that and grabbed my glass. It was one of those things that we’d done with each other forever, but the stakes felt high. The moment she slipped the glass out of my hand and moved to take a sip, she widened her eyes and thrust it back into my hand.
“Sorry.”
I tried to give it back to her. “Come on, Pris, you can take a sip of my drink. Just because—
I almost said “we didn’t work out,” but I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth. One thing was to know that’s how it was. Another was to say it.
“Take a sip, woman. That’s XO and you don’t want it to go to waste.” That last part made her smile and she did take the glass from my hand for a small sip.
When she handed it back, she smiled ruefully at me.
“God forbid we leave any of the food and alcohol intact on this flight.” I fake shuddered and she laughed, cracking something open inside that I didn’t realize had been cutting off my breathing from the moment she’d walked onto this jet.
Pris and I could still be us. Maybe that could be what I did this trip, remind her of that.
I was mulling on that when the flight attendant started moving around the cabin asking everyone to get ready for landing.
The energy immediately shifted in the plane, everyone buzzing with anticipation; I leaned over so I could look out at the same deep turquoise water I’d seen on yearly childhood trips to Puerto Rico, and later when I’d come with Pris or Nesto and the guys for spring breaks in the DR. Like everything else with us, Pris’s and my own roots were inexorably tangled.
The islands our people came from only divided by a small stretch of sea.
We both sat back after a minute, our eyes still half focused on the view when Pris spoke. “How’s the Uptown Center?”
The Uptown Center was my father’s post-retirement labor of love, which, like everything he did, had taken a life of its own.
I smiled, thinking about the bustling operation my dad now ran.
A social services agency that served retired cops and other first responders from the Bronx.
The idea had come from his own struggle finding services when he was recovering from the gunshot wound that shattered his leg.
“It’s good, he just got another full-time social worker, so they’re doing some support groups now, too.
A friend of Camilo’s from grad school. He’s good, Papi likes him. ”
She nodded and smiled. Pris has a special bond with my retired cop father. He’d been her mentor and friend completely separate from anything she and I ever had. I loved that they were close like that.
“You still helping out in the off-season?”
I nodded, feeling the jet starting to lower itself in the air.
“Yeah, I’m there three afternoons a week, unless I have to go down to Miami to work with the players that go south.”
She peeked over to where our family was having the best time ever and then turned to me. She looked…unsure, which was so unusual for Priscilla.
“What’s up?” I asked, genuinely worried.
It was so rare to see her hesitant. Hell, that had been part of our problem.
We’d gotten together in high school, both obsessed with joining NYPD, with making a difference.
I to follow in my dad’s footsteps, and Pris to, in some ways, fulfill her own dad’s dream.
He’d yearned to be a cop, but by the time he was able to get his papers, felt like he was too old to try.
But after my dad got shot senior year of high school, I couldn’t do it.
Priscilla, of course, would not be deviated from her plan.
Instead of being supportive of each other, we turned those choices into personal affronts and before too long, things got rocky.
From then on, we’d been on and off. I ended up dating a classmate from my master’s program for a couple of years.
She never got serious with anyone, but in the end, we’d come back and try again.
Until the last time, when we said we just needed to quit trying.
Pris’s laugh brought me out of the swirl of regretful memories running in my head, and when I looked up, her smile was almost as maudlin as my thoughts.
“So you ask me to tell you what’s up and then you go all into your head?” Her tone was a lot softer than her words and I wondered if she guessed what I’d been thinking about.
“Sorry.” I tried for a wink and a smile, but gave up. “Tell me what’s going on.”
She ran a fingertip over the rim of the glass, her usual strident confidence still not there. “I’ve been thinking of putting together these workshops through Come as You Are.”
“Oh?” I tried to keep my tone neutral, because Come as You Are was her online sex positive toy shop and I was still trying to figure out how that had anything to do with my dad’s retired cop center.
This time Pris did laugh. “Oh my God, Juan Pablo, your face right now.” She pointed at me, grinning. “Your eyebrows are almost flush with your lineup.”
Well, I could at least still make her laugh at my expense.
“You’re imagining me showing up at Uptown Center with mad strap-ons and dildos right now, aren’t you?”
It was really hard keeping a straight face, but I managed. “No.”
Another cackle. “Liar!” She waved her hands dismissively, telling me I had the wrong idea.
“It will involve a few toys, eventually. I was just thinking that it might be fun to offer a class for spouses of cops. Something about sex-positivity for people living with chronic pain or injuries. I’ve been taking all these online courses and certifications for sex-ed. ”
She looked so adorably unsure about this. I’d never seen Priscilla this earnest. Her side-hustle always brought a different, playful side of Pris. Being a cop suited her—no doubt she was a badass and she did her job well.
But the sex positive stuff just made her glow. The more I thought about it, the more I thought I’d pay good money to see her in a room full of cops and their spouses with all her prostate massagers and fancy lubes. “Do say more,” I said encouragingly.
“It’s this new thing I’m working on. I was going to tell Rafa I could volunteer to do it at El Espacio. I also have the M&M class.”
I knew about that one. It was a meditation and masturbation class for women she’d been doing for a while.
I lifted a shoulder and looked at my dad.
These days he was getting more and more irreverent.
I was pretty sure he’d be up for it. “I think he’d go for it.
He’s all about mindfulness these days, and self-love.
Taking care of all parts of life. Since you put him onto yoga, he’s pretty much obsessed. ”
She nodded and smiled, but it didn’t exactly reach her eyes. “Good. I need to be better about my own yoga. I haven’t been as consistent as I should be.”
That was surprising.
“Oh, been working a lot?”
Another shrug and her tone was decidedly less friendly when she spoke. “Something like that.”
“I’ll tell Papi about it. You know he can’t say no to you.”
And neither can I.