17. Dominic #2
“Speaking of reasons you shouldn’t do that—where’s your girlfriend today?”
He sighs dramatically. “Hannah couldn’t make it. She’s got a headache and said she has to concentrate too hard reading everyone’s lips. I’m gonna make everyone learn sign language to help her out.”
“Good call. I’ll start learning right away.” I point a finger at his chest. “But only if you turn your hazing dial down to low.”
He folds his arms across his chest, flattening his mouth into a thin line. “I require payment.”
“I see.” I mirror his stance. “What do you have in mind?”
Dustin’s expression flickers through five distinct flavors of opportunism before settling on the one I fear most. “Cupcakes,” he declares. “The fancy bakery kind. Chocolate.”
I reach for my wallet, forgetting it’s still in my suit jacket in the hall. “Fine. But you’re not going to eat six again and then throw up in the backyard like last Easter.”
His smile is all teeth. “No promises.”
“I’ll have them delivered for you tomorrow.”
He holds his hand out to me. “Deal.”
We shake on it and I turn and wave Jenna over. There isn’t a lot in this world that makes me nervous, but waiting to see how people treat my big brother is one of them.
Jenna hands the sticky toddler back to Mateo, tries to wipe her hands discreetly against her pants, then crosses the room toward us.
“Dusty, this is Jenna,” I say when she reaches us.
He looks her up and down. Takes his time. Nothing in this house ever goes quiet, but I catch my mother going still in the kitchen doorway, dish towel over her shoulder.
“So you’re the one,” Dustin says.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Nicky said you were tall. He didn’t let me know you were hot. That’s a joke, by the way. I have a girlfriend. She’s like me, but she’s deaf and reads lips. You can’t fall in love with me. Nicky is your only option.”
“I appreciate the full disclosure,” Jenna says, deadpan. Then she looks at the bowtie. “Mint green is a bold choice. Most men can’t carry it.”
Dustin touches the knot like she’s just confirmed something he’s suspected his entire life. “I know,” he says gravely. “I look incredible.”
“You do.”
“I need to remind you that I’m taken,” he says. “Hannah is very possessive.”
“I understand.”
“She gets it,” he announces to the room. Then, to me: “I like her. We’re keeping her even after you mess it up, which you will, because you’re you.”
He hugs her. Dustin hugs the way my mother hugs—total commitment, no exit strategy—and over his shoulder I catch Jenna’s face going startled, then soft, one full unguarded second before the locks re-engage.
“What’s your name again?” he asks, letting go.
“Jenna.”
“Jenny.”
“Absolutely not,” she says, in the voice that has made CFOs update their resumes.
“Jenny,” he repeats, delighted, and I stand there watching my wife lose a negotiation she isn’t even trying to win. Her mouth twitches. The armor holds, but the fist clenched around it loosens.
“Only you,” she says, warning and surrender in the same breath.
“OK, Jenny.” He wanders off.
Jenna grins and looks at me. “Are all of the Cruz men born bold?”
“Nah,” I say, lowering my voice. “Dustin is an outlier. Superior genetics.”
“Because of the bowtie?”
“Because of everything.” I watch him migrate to the snack table. “You’ll like him. But be careful—he’s running the long game.”
Jenna tilts her head. “What long game?”
“The one where he charms you, learns all your secrets, and extorts you with the information at a later date.”
She purses her lips, considering. “He can try. But I’ve already figured him out.”
“How so?”
“He has the same tell you do.” She looks up at me, eyes dancing as I look at her in question.
“I have a tell?”
She nods. “When you’re messing with someone, the corner of your mouth twitches.” She reaches up and lightly touches the edge of my mouth with her thumb. She does it so gently I almost don’t feel it, until her hand lingers at my jaw. “See?”
“Show me again,” I say, because I want her hand back there, and she does, and this time the touch is more deliberate—a thumb grazing the cut of my jaw, her palm just under my chin.
I know she’s aware the whole extended family is watching from the kitchen, but she doesn’t break my gaze.
“You’re doing it now,” she says, very soft, and somewhere behind her my mother is sighing like she’s been waiting a decade for this precise spectacle.
It would be completely appropriate to pull her in and kiss her, but I don’t. Not here. Instead, I put my hand over hers at my chin and turn my face to press my lips to the palm of her hand. “Come on, sweetheart. We’ve got a dinner to help get to the table.”
The kitchen only gets louder as dinner comes together. My mother has Jenna elbow-deep in a bowl of something wet and sticky. I hover near the door, beer in hand, and watch as the three matriarchs circle her, feeding her the way they’ve fed everyone since time immemorial.
Jenna glances at me occasionally, checking I’m still here. But she doesn’t cry for help.
Instead, she lets them teach her. I watch her posture adapt—shoulders looser, hands moving with their own confidence, matching the energy in the room. She doesn’t back away even when my mom corrects her technique.
On the third, “no, like this, watch,” I expect a mutiny, but Jenna just holds up her hands and grins, covered in dough to the wrists. She’s magnificent.
Every table is full by the time dinner starts. There are, by rough headcount, twenty-three people inside the house and another four in the backyard, plus two neighbor kids who show up whenever they please. A population density that would be illegal in most states.
The long table is set with a spread obscene even by Cruz standards.
Lechón and pastelón hold the center, flanked by arroz congrí, yellow rice, yuca slick with garlic, fried plantains, salads in glass bowls, at least five kinds of beans, and whatever happened in the slow cooker that’s been at the center of the table as a kind of edible mascot since before I can remember.
I direct Jenna to a seat next to me. Dustin takes the chair on her other side and immediately starts dishing his favorite things onto a plate for her.
“Jenny,” he says. “Do you eat pork?” She doesn’t even answer before he loads three slices onto her plate, then some yellow rice, and then corrects her on the best beans. “The pink ones are the only real ones. Everything else is fake.”
Jenna grins. “I’ll trust your expert opinion.
” She takes the pork, the rice, the beans—she doesn’t leave a single thing untouched—and settles in like she’s not standing trial at a table crowded with almost everyone I’ve known since the day I was born.
My chest does a weird, elastic thing where it gets too tight and too loose at the same time.
I’m so absurdly proud of her I want to pick her up and carry her around the block on my shoulders.
Halfway into the first plate, Abuela Carmen lifts a hand at the far end. She’s got the air of a judge deliberating. “Jenna. What part of Puerto Rico is your family from?”
Jenna finishes chewing before she answers. “Queens,” she says, with the deadpan delivery of the century.