Chapter 3 #2
I drift off for a nap while I plan this week’s meetings with site crews.
Not only will I want build updates, I’ll also want reports from the various union reps.
There have been some rumblings among the carpenters and bricklayers.
On paper, we only hire union workers. But in reality, just like the other families, we pay under the table since sometimes these jobs need a little more than discretion when we have things that need to disappear from or at the other families’ sites.
I can’t get Tre off my mind.
Like it’s turning into more than a mild obsession.
I took my tux to the dry cleaner the day after the wedding, and I caught a whiff of her perfume on my coat.
I caught sight of her nail marks on my back two days after the event.
That’s normally something I absolutely forbid, but I’d relished it at the time.
Now the fading red lines are a sad reminder that she used me.
And feeling that way makes me pathetic. Why I fantasized for even a moment that our one-night stand might be more than that makes me delusional. She didn’t lead me on. I led myself on. But still…
“Mamá, I had a good time that night, but it was what it was.”
My mother’s giving me that look that says she knows I know I’m full of shit. She hasn’t directly asked me what went wrong, but she knows I’m disappointed. She likely believes I deserve it since I’m certain she thinks it’s my turn to feel this way.
It’s not like I’m some bastard who strings women along, but there have been women more into me than I was into them.
But that comes with the territory when you’re a Diaz.
I don’t have the luxury of bringing women into my inner circle for casual relationships.
I can’t let anyone too close because there’s too much risk.
That’s why belonging to my BDSM club works so well for me.
I can get off when I want. I can have a constructive outlet to my naturally controlling nature.
I can pass the time when I’m not working or with my family.
All the while, I don’t have to give anything more than the superficial.
That’s what I can handle. That’s why these lingering feelings are so troublesome.
“Have you tried to talk to her?”
“How? She didn’t give me her number. Toria is on her honeymoon, so I can’t easily ask her. Do you want me to call Carmine and ask him to ask Serafina?”
My mother knows the answer to that question.
“Why didn’t you get it from her?”
My face is on fire.
“Mamá…”
The woman exasperates me at times. Especially when she shrugs, like she just did. It’s not like she believes I’m some cloistered virgin, but it doesn’t mean I want to admit that Tre and I got straight down to fucking, then the woman ran like her ass was on fire when we woke.
“Look her up online.”
“I’m not stalking her. If she wanted me to have her number, she would’ve given it to me.”
“Do you want me to look her up?”
“No!”
“I could stop by one of the bakeries.”
“Mamá!”
“What? Serafina’s talented. It’s not like I don’t get things from her shops anyway.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Just not on days when you or your brothers will stop by. I wouldn’t get a crumb if I did.”
“We aren’t that bad.”
“Oh, yes, you are. You three come in like a hurricane, whip through the kitchen, eat everything in sight, then kiss me goodbye.”
I’m duly insulted.
“We do the dishes.”
“Small consolation, mijo.”
Luciana Diaz is the most loving woman you could ever meet, but she’s also the mother of three adult sons. She has no shits left to give.
“Mamá, it just wasn’t meant to be.”
“You talked to her for nearly three hours at the reception, and you didn’t think to get her number?”
I hadn’t realized how long Tre and I spent talking and dancing until the next morning.
The time whizzed past me, and it shocked me to realize it was three hours.
I mean, I knew it was most of the night since other guests were leaving when we did.
But it just didn’t feel like that much time passed.
I was having too much fun, which is something I generally don’t have when I’m at public events. Not even ones my family hosts.
“I enjoyed hanging out with her. I didn’t know that the night would progress the way it did. I didn’t think that far ahead. I suppose I assumed there’d be time before we parted ways.”
“She really just offered you cupcakes?”
Now my ears are burning too.
“Yes. And it wasn’t a suggestion that I come and get them to see her again, or that if she dropped them off, we’d hang out. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she sent a delivery person if I’d agreed.”
“I’m sorry, mijo. I can tell you really liked her.”
“I did, Mamá, and I feel like such an idiot for it.”
“Don’t. That solves nothing. Do you think I wanted to be attracted to Papá? I was supposed to marry someone else. I was already involved with someone else. But I couldn’t help it. I fell for Papá, and that was that.”
“Lo sé, mamá.” I know, Mama.
I know the story of how my parents met. It’s sweet in the most Cartel kind of way.
Mamá was to marry a man my abuelo chose to end a feud.
The man happens to have been my cousin-in-law’s father.
If history had worked out differently, Pablo might have married a woman who would’ve been my illegitimate half-sister.
Instead, Papá set his sights on Mamá and wouldn’t back down.
Mamá didn’t love the other guy and was only going to marry him out of obligation.
Rather than wind up with a man she came to despise, she had an all-too-short marriage to Papá. They were the love of each other’s lives. Devoted until Papá’s last breath. There’s no way Mamá will ever remarry. She won’t even date. They were soulmates in this life and the next.
For a fleeting, drunk moment, I thought that’s what I might have with Tre.