14. Jenna
Jenna
We spend the afternoon walking aimless, up and down Northern with paper cups of bodega coffee that tastes terrible, but at least there’s caffeine in it.
We talk about work, which is easy. Hailey has funny stories about her boss’s “visionary” leadership, which apparently involves daily stand-ups where nobody is allowed to stand, and quarterly business reviews that unfold much like the reading of a will.
I tell her a cleaned-up version of my life in Chicago—the manic CEOs, the drama of the last deal, the way auditing expense reports is simultaneously the most and least power I’ve ever held.
We talk about Mom, and Dad, and what would change for either of us if we just . . . stopped coming home. There’s a mutual understanding that we never would, but the exercise is freeing, like holding your breath on a dare and realizing your body takes what it needs, no matter what you want.
When it’s time to head back, we stop off at the bakery I ordered the birthday cake from.
It’s flawless. Pink fondant, piped roses, impossibly smooth, the surface stamped in gold with Happy Birthday, Maria. We both cradle it out of the bakery like it’s the finest artifact in Queens.
“Oh my God, nenna. Ma is gonna love this.”
Vanilla bean. Ma’s favorite. I balance it on my forearms like a newborn as we walk the last block, and the street is pale with late afternoon, a wind skimming up Northern and carrying the grit of the city across anything that stands still.
We’re both smiling, the earlier tension replaced by something easy I’d forgotten we could be.
That smile goes brittle the moment we open the door.
Ma is planted at the kitchen counter when we come in, arms folded, eyes laser-pinned to the hallway. The wine glass is back in play, and her perfume—the good stuff she only wears for special occasions—bleeds into the air like a warning.
“Well,” she starts, voice pitched to a frequency that can strip paint. “Look who decided to slink back.”
I blink. The cake is still balanced in my arms, but Ma’s eyes are fixed on it, burning holes through the pink box.
“You two ran away so you wouldn’t have to be with me on my birthday?” she demands, though it’s less of a question and more a preamble to a dissertation.
Hailey edges behind me, as though maybe a few inches of height advantage could slow the artillery. “We went to get your cake,” she says, gently, the way you might try to reason with a venomous snake. “You know, the one Jenna ordered? From the nice bakery.”
“And you left me here,” Ma repeats, slower now, her gaze narrowing. “Alone. On my day.”
“You were napping,” Hailey says, and I can hear the crack in her voice.
The pause is infinite. Hailey is looking at me, at Ma, at the cake, doing the calculus of what will go off first. I brace for the explosion even as I’m still in the door.
Ma fixes on the box. The tension in her arms telegraphs down the length of the kitchen. “Let me see it.” She snaps her fingers, actually snaps, like a mob boss collecting tribute. I bring the cake closer and set it on the counter.
She stares at the label, then at the edge of the fondant where the bakery’s sticker is just visible.
“You bought a cake?” She says it with a scorn so thick you could use it to frost the damn thing.
“Couldn’t even be bothered to bake one yourself?
” Her eyes flick up, wet and wild. “You think your store cake is better than the ones I made for you every year? You think you’re so fancy in your fancy coat, you forget what you were raised on?
You girls think a hundred-dollar cake means you’re better than this family.
Your father always liked things easy, too. ”
Hailey’s face is a mask. She doesn’t even look at me—she’s staring down at the cake, mouth a flat line, body coiled to receive the next hit.
I take a breath. “Ma. I work sixty hours a week. I live in another city. I traveled four and a half hours just to show up for your birthday.”
“You want a medal?” Ma takes the wine glass and shoots it back in one, then sets it down so hard pink liquid beads out around the rim. “You want a fucking parade because you show up once a year and pretend you remember how to be a daughter?”
I hold her gaze. It flashes, sharp, the way it always has. “No, Ma,” I say, quiet and even. “I don’t want anything.”
My mother’s face collapses in on itself, then hardens so fast it’s like watching concrete set.
“Nothing,” she repeats. “You hear that, Hailey? She doesn’t want anything. Too good to want anything from us.”
“Ma,” Hailey says, voice thin. “Stop.”
But Ma is already moving.
She grabs the bakery box with both hands.
For one absurd second my body reacts as if she’s only repositioning it—turning it toward the plates, making room for candles, doing something normal women do on their birthdays with cakes their daughters bought them.
Then she lifts it, walks the three steps to the trash can, and drops the whole thing in.
The sound is soft.
One hundred dollars of vanilla bean and piped roses giving up quietly in the kitchen where I learned not to ask for too much.
“I should go,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Enjoy the rest of your birthday, Ma. Hails, I’ll call you soon.”
I collect my overnight bag from the living room, ignoring the barbs flying at my back, and step out onto the street and walk until the yelling doesn’t reach my ears anymore.
My chest is tight and the backs of my eyes burn. My head is swimming, brain on fire. But the farther away I get, the looser I feel. I stop and lean against a brick wall, willing my breathing calm.
Maybe I’m a coward. Or maybe I’m finally doing the only sensible thing a person can do when someone throws a birthday cake into a trash can because somehow I’m the ungrateful one.
I stare at a mural across the street—some bright cartoon skyline painted on the side of a laundromat that used to be a pharmacy, because Queens is always becoming something else while insisting nothing has changed.
My hands are shaking. Not enough for a stranger to notice and ask if I’m OK.
Just enough that when I unzip my bag to find my phone, the metal teeth chatter under my fingers.
There are three missed calls from Hailey.
One text.
Hailey:
I’m so sorry. Please don’t leave without telling me where you are.
Another arrives while I’m looking at the screen.
Hailey:
She’s crying now. Obviously. I hate this house.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard.
Me:
I’m sorry.
I delete it.
Me:
I’m around the corner. I just needed air. Do you need me to come back?
Hailey:
God no. Run! Save yourself!
Love you, big sis
Me:
Love you too.
I stare at the heart emoji until my vision blurs, then I back out of the thread and move my thumb to lock the phone, pausing when I see the unread text I missed.
DO NOT ANSWER:
I know you said you’re fine. I’m choosing to believe you’re a liar. Call me if you need an extraction. Or a felony. I’m flexible.
I lift my hand for the next cab out of habit more than strategy. There is always a next cab in Queens. There is always a way to leave if you keep your bag zipped and your chin up and don’t look back at the house that made you.
A green cab noses toward the curb, and I almost step off.
Then I look down at Dominic’s message again.
Call me if you need an extraction. Or a felony. I’m flexible.
My throat does something stupid.
I don’t think. Thinking has gotten me nowhere good today. Thinking bought the cake, booked the ticket, boarded the train, walked back into that kitchen with a little hope wrapped in pink cardboard. Thinking is overrated.
I wave the cab off and tap his name.
He answers on the first ring.
“Jen?”
One syllable. That’s all it takes.
My throat closes so fast I almost laugh.
It’s insulting, honestly, the efficiency with which his voice reaches across state lines and rearranges my central nervous system.
I was standing on a Queens sidewalk with my mother’s cruelty still under my skin and my hands shaking, and now Dominic Cruz says my name in that low, careful way and some treacherous part of me unclenches and I hate him so much my eyes burn from it.
I hate him because it feels too good.
“I’m fine,” I say, because apparently I have chosen death by muscle memory. My voice comes out bright and brittle enough to cut fruit. “Just checking in. How’s the movie?”
There is a beat.
Then Dominic says, very calmly, “No idea.”
I frown at the mural. “You don’t know what movie you’re watching?”
“I’m not watching it.”
“You didn’t go?”
“No.”
The wind pushes at my coat. Somewhere behind me, a car horn blares, long and offended. “Why not?”
“Because I’m in New York.”
The entire city seems to drop out from under me.
I straighten off the wall too fast, my heel catching in a crack in the sidewalk. “You’re what?”
“In New York,” he repeats, like he’s confirming a lunch reservation.
“Is this for work?” I ask, because that’s the only thing that makes sense right now. “Did you have a client emergency? Is there a meeting?”
“No, you infuriating woman,” he says, and his voice drops, rough and immediate. “I’m here for you.”
My hand tightens around the phone.
“For me,” I repeat, because apparently I’ve become a person who needs simple sentences notarized.
“Yes.”
“Why? I . . . I haven’t been very nice to you lately.”
He chuckles, soft and deep. “I came in case you needed me.”
Oh.
Fuck.
I press my free hand over my mouth.
Dominic’s voice goes quiet. “Do you need me, sweetheart?”
The tears arrive so suddenly I hate them on principle.
They fill my eyes, hot and humiliating, blurring the laundromat mural until the cartoon skyline turns into bright, meaningless color. I nod once, as if he can see me, because language has become a luxury item I cannot afford.
“Jen?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “I need you.”
There’s one second of silence, and in that second something in him changes. I can hear it. The line goes still in a different way, focused and lethal.
“Tell me where you are.”