Chapter 4 Alessia
“Hi, Grandma! It’s just Aly!” I call as I walk through the front door of her home where I’ve been staying.
I hate it here. Okay, that’s probably a little extreme.
I’m grateful for the place to live, I love my grandma, but I miss having my own space.
And the place smells like incense, mothballs, and the bad decisions of my youth from that one summer I lived here.
But most of all, it reminds me of all the things I thought I’d have by now, but don’t.
Of all the decisions I made that feel wrong now.
When I was fourteen, my mom decided she couldn’t handle me anymore. I don’t blame her. She was a single mom, and I was a handful. So, she sent me to spend a summer in Brookhaven with my grandma thinking that’d knock some sense into me.
I spent those three months in this house, sleeping in the attic to “teach me a lesson about gratefulness and the sacrifices that the women in my family have made for my future.”
All I learned was that I hate incense, and the attic is totally haunted.
Thankfully, it’s a nice ghost that became my best friend that summer, but still, it’s a ghost—and I’d rather not be back here and instead be standing on my own, living on my own.
Yet here I am… one month into my new roommate situation with grandma and barely holding on to my sanity most days.
“In here, Mija!” she calls back to me from what sounds like the dining room.
I wander into the kitchen first, grab an apple, and bite into it before rounding the corner and then my world goes into full-on choke mode, coughing, spitting, eyes watering, all of it when I see there’s a man sitting next to her.
“Alessia, dear, what are you doing?” my grandma asks annoyance threaded through her tone.
I can’t stop coughing now. A piece of apple peel feels stuck somewhere it shouldn’t be just out of reach for my tongue to get rid of. I pound my chest and stomach, hoping that helps but it does nothing.
Why do people say whole apples are safer for toddlers to consume?
Shouldn’t they be cut into thin slices or something?
That feels much less dangerous. Whatever the proper cutting standard is, I should’ve gone with that, because right now, I’m choking and panicking, and the panicking is making the choking worse which means I’m hardly breathing now.
The man sitting next to my grandma stands quickly, his large legs move until he’s behind me, hands moving to my stomach, and then suddenly he’s giving me the Heimlich.
I’m full blown crying now, and the situation gets even worse when a piece of apple finally shoots out of my throat so violently, it smacks into my grandma’s favorite dish cabinet. It’s the one she swears she brought with her from Cuba and one of her most prized possessions.
Finally, I can breathe again.
The man pats me gently on the shoulder, “Dios te bendiga,” he murmurs softly, before returning to my grandma’s side. She looks at me, less than impressed with my near-death experience as I rub at my sore neck and chest.
“That was a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” she finally says.
“Dramatic?” I gasp, still trying to catch my breath. “Grandma, I almost died. Do you realize if I died in your dining room from choking on an apple, you’d then have two ghosts haunting this place?”
She sighs heavily, and I swear if my grandma were an eye-roller, hers would be permanently lodged in the back of her head now that I live with her.
“Take a seat, mija, now that you are done with the theatrics.”
I slump into an empty chair, swiping at my ruined mascara and trying to pull myself back together from that close call. Theatrics, sheesh!
Seeing her sitting there with a stranger is what had me choking in the first place. I’ve never seen my grandma with a man before. In fact, I don’t even know who my grandfather is because he left her shortly after my mother was born.
The man sitting next to her whispers something in her ear softly that has her smiling. And that’s when I realize she’s not just smiling at him, she’s giggling. The last time I saw her this giddy was after she’d had a few too many rums during Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance.
“What’s going on Abuelita?” I ask cautiously.
Her expression shifts in an instant—from scowling at me to a smile so warm it could light up the room. That Latina charm is all over her right now and I know it’s where I got my personality from too.
“Alessia, my granddaughter, this is Eduardo, my new partner.”
“Your… your partner?” I taste the words on my tongue, trying them out like I’m learning how to speak for the first time. “So, you’re starting a business?”
“No, dear, he’s my partner.”
“Partner in crime?”
She rolls her eyes this time, and I swear a vein pops out of my forehead watching it. I’ve never, ever, ever seen my grandma use sarcasm or let her smile falter in the face of someone she’s trying to impress.
“Alessia,” she says, emphasizing my full name like only she does, since everyone else mostly calls me Aly, “Eduardo es mi novio.” (My boyfriend)
I freeze. Yeah, my grandma, Yamila Martinez, is a beautiful woman. In my opinion, one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen. I got her large, round, brown eyes and thick, dark, curly hair.
She had my mom when she was just eighteen years old, and my mom had me when she was also eighteen. It’s like a twisted rite of passage in our family for generations now: get pregnant at eighteen by some guy who promises love and forever, then get dumped to raise the baby alone.
Thankfully, I’d managed to dodge that bullet now at my ripe age of twenty-eight.
No pregnancy in sight, though not from a lack of trying with my ex.
What I didn’t escape was the whole “marrying pieces of shit” part of our family curse.
That one seems bent on teaching every woman in our family a hard lesson.
But Grandma’s sixty-four years old now. Does she really want to tie herself to another guy at this age? Right when she’s finally retired? I mean, why would you want to spend the last good decades of your life with a man?
I shiver at the thought.
“You said that last part out loud,” my grandmother snaps.
I clamp my mouth shut. “Oops.”
She sighs heavily. “I’m sixty-four, not one hundred. And I’m not anywhere close to my deathbed. I have so much life ahead of me still. Dreams of traveling and… love. And even if I was one hundred years old, I’d still be here, living in this home, dating Eduardo, and haunting you.”
“You finally admit there’s a ghost who lives here!
” I snap my fingers as she shakes her head like I’m exhausting her.
That’s okay, lately I’ve been exhausting myself too.
Sometimes my inner-monologue sounds like a sad, romantic comedy where the woman gets left and doesn’t know how to move forward with her life, so she uses dark humor to mask her pain.
“Okay, so let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.” She moves on, ignoring my comment. “Eduardo’s moving in…” she says with a pleased smile and a gentle pat of her new ‘partners’ hand.
“Okay…?”
“And you’re moving out.”
“Uh, what?”
She smiles wider and tightens her grip on Eduardo’s hand. That bastard has the nerve to smile right back at her like she hung the fucking moon. The man’s in love, love.
Traitor. He saved my life just to ruin it in the same evening.
I shoot a glare at my grandma. I have nowhere else to go. How the hell am I supposed to find a place to live with my practically non-existent budget and mountain of divorce lawyer debt that I’m trying to pay off?
I bartend at the local bar in town Brookhaven Brews occasionally, but most days are spent at my new job that I literally just started as a kindergarten teacher at the elementary school.
Oh, and there’s my PI side gigs that help a bit, but still, I can’t afford to live on my own and keep up with the monthly checks I’m sending to my lawyer for likely the next ten freaking years until I’ve paid him off.
Damn you, Brian with your stupid promises. I shake my fist at the sky as if he can hear me.
“Mija, don’t shake your fist at God,” my grandma says.
“It was directed at Brian.”
She sighs heavily. “Brian’s not up there. If anything, he’d be below us.”
That makes me laugh. She never liked him either.
I only moved in here because my mom said grandma was sick and needed help and that we could help each other while I tried to repair my life.
The woman sitting in front of me now, clutching her lover’s hand, looking like she’s seconds away from dragging him to her bedroom is not sick or injured. Not one bit at all.
I nervously tug at my skirt, trying to pull it lower.
Yeah, I know five seconds ago I was complaining about living here with the ghost, incense and mothballs, but free is free.
And right now, in my late twenties, hot-mess-of-a-life, still-figuring-it-out and freshly divorced phase, free or dirt cheap is exactly what I need. It’s my only choice.
“But grandma, I thought you needed my help?”
She waves me off. “That was a scheme that your mother and I came up with to get you out of that sinful city. You were so unhappy when your roommate kicked you out, and you needed a change of scenery that didn’t remind you of your ex-husband.
We figured coming out to Brookhaven would give you a fresh start. ”
My mother and her have always hated New York City.
“Can I have some time to find somewhere else to live?” I ask, voice a little shaky.
She smiles, nodding. “I’m not kicking you out today.
I just want you to start looking. I love having you here in Brookhaven.
Don’t take this as an excuse not to visit.
I’d love for you to come by every day and for us to have lunch together.
I’ve grown quite found of our dinners, too.
And maybe you can bring your boyfriend over… ”
I scoff because my grandma knows damn well that I don’t have a boyfriend.
“I don’t think I’ll have time for our lunches and dinners since I’ll need to pick up extra shifts to afford my rent and bills now.”
She waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t take this personally. It’s time for you to get out there, meet new people. Spread your wings. Your divorce is finalized. Find someone new to love or just have fun with. Staying here with me is enabling you.”
I open and close my mouth in shock. That’s the first time she’s ever said anything like that to me. My divorce was only finalized a year ago. I’d hardly consider that enough time to pack it up and move on with someone new.
But maybe she’s right. Maybe this is the push I need to figure my shit out and move forward. I love my grandma, I know she wants what’s best for me but maybe living here—not in the attic with the ghost, but in the free guest room—is still holding me back from healing.
I’ve been struggling since my divorce. Financially, mentally, emotionally. Maybe it’s time to take the leap, find a new place to live, maybe even a new friend. Hell, living with a stranger might be a wild option. Maybe they’ll have some skeletons of their own, or if I’m lucky, just some ghosts.
“Okay. I’ll start looking for a new place,” I say, my voice full of resolve now. If she wants me to leave, I will.
“Great!” she squeezes Eduardo’s hand again as he smiles at her.
“It was nice to meet you, Eduardo” I give him a polite nod. “Thanks for saving my life.”
He smiles back.
Despite my happiness to see her taking another chance on love, all I can think about is the past men in our lives—my grandma’s, my mom’s, my aunts, and mine—who’ve let us down.
The ones who’ve cheated, disappointed, or just not lived up to their word.
The ones who’ve broken trust and left us skeptical and hurting.
I hope Eduardo doesn’t repeat the pattern that seems to follow us into every new relationship that we start.
I shake my head and stand, heading up the stairs to my bedroom to start looking for places to rent in town.