Chapter 5
Triana~
It was Friday night, and after that huge argument with my parents, I needed to drink, dance, and just forget how ridiculous my life was right now.
After leaving their house yesterday, my brother had stopped by my place afterwards to check on me, and while that’d been very sweet of him, it hadn’t done anything to lessen my anger and frustration with my parents.
Their need to force their views on me was not okay, and that’s what was wrong with this country and its people.
Unlike my parents who’d had a choice, I’d been born without a voice into this new America, and there were no allowances for that.
When we turned eighteen, we weren’t given the option of living elsewhere.
We were expected to continue the new traditions of RNA, and the only people that had any real options were the people of Blooming Heights.
Yeah, Morning Peaks also had a bit of wiggle room, but not like Blooming Heights.
In Blooming Heights, you could be whoever you wanted to be.
You could be friends with whoever you wanted to, and you could also date whoever you wanted to.
Blooming Heights’ government didn’t have their thumb on your choices, making sure that they fell in line with their overall agenda.
The governing body of Blooming Heights just wanted its citizens to be happy, and that’s all.
Now, while it might sound like I hated my own race or culture, I did not. I was proud of my people and all that they’d accomplished, but that didn’t mean that I wanted my life choices to be limited to living the exact same life as everyone else.
I wanted something more.
“So, you still haven’t spoken to your parents?”
“I worked from home today,” I admitted. “I know that the mature thing would have been to go into the office and face them, but I’m still so damn mad.”
Sonia took a sip from her glass, and while I hadn’t bothered dressing up for tonight, she’d gone out of her way to look her best. At five-foot-five, she had caramel-brown hair, blue eyes, and she claimed that working at the café was what kept her slim and in shape.
Sonia was a barista, and being on her feet all day gave her all the exercise that she needed to avoid succumbing to diabetes.
Unfortunately for the Hispanic community, diabetes was a very common hereditary disease that did no one any favors.
As for me, I was only five-foot-five, and unlike Sonia, I had inherited the same boring ass brown hair and brown eyes that most Hispanics had.
There was absolutely nothing special about my appearance, and my body could benefit from a salad or two.
Now, while I wasn’t overweight, I wasn’t slim or toned in the way that Sonia was.
I had what my grandmother used to call ‘childbirth hips’, and what in the hell was that anyway?
As far as I was concerned, it was just a polite way of calling me wide without calling me fat.
At any rate, Sonia had left her long hair draped down her back in a wavy curtain, her makeup was flawless, those blue eyes of her popping out underneath her dark lashes, and she had chosen a saucy pink dress to wear tonight, ensuring that she would stand out among the crowd.
“C’mon, Triana,” she said, nudging my knee with hers as we sat next to each other at the bar. “It’s not unreasonable for them to want to see you and Tomasco married with children.”
“No, it’s not,” I agreed. “But it is unreasonable for them to choose my groom like I’m not a grown ass twenty-four-year-old woman with a degree, a job, and a home of her own.”
“All that’s been made possible by them,” she pointed out, and that just frustrated me more.
“Look, I get that everything after the age of eighteen is a favor,” I told her. “But that doesn’t mean that I owe them the rest of my life, Sonia. That doesn’t mean that I have to live their version of what my life should be.”
“I get that,” she said. “I really do, but...but you don’t even date, Triana. Maybe that’s why they’re pushing Romelio on you.”
“Who is there to date?” I countered as I gestured around the club. “They’re all the same, Sonia. They’re all the same damn man, and I’m not attracted to any of them.”
Her blue eyes narrowed a bit as she said, “That’s not true, and you know it.”
“How do you figure that they’re not?” I challenged. “They’re the same man, we’re the same women, and everyone’s home life is the damn same.”
Being my best friend, I knew her well, so when she took another sip of her vodka, I knew that she was buying some time to figure out how to say what she wanted to say without upsetting me more. Sonia was usually very direct, but when it mattered, she tried.
Setting her glass down, she asked, “Have you met someone?”
My head reared back in surprise. “What?”
“Have you been chatting with someone on the internet or something, and that’s why you’re digging your heels in about this?”
I waved that idea away. “You know that I hate the internet.”
“Then what is it?” she asked. “Why are you letting your parents upset you this much? I mean, yeah, they overstepped, but it’s not like you’re being forced to marry anyone, Triana. They were merely recommending Romelio as a potential husband.”
I eyed her, envying how she so easily rolled in whichever direction life led her. “Haven’t you ever wondered what it’d be like to date an Asian man? An Italian? Anyone that wasn’t Hispanic?”
She immediately scowled. “No. I mean, why would I?” She shrugged as she added, “Seems like a waste since it can’t happen.”
I let out a tired sigh. “I just think that it’d be a great thing to give us an option at eighteen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like...when we reach eighteen, then we’re given the choice to move to Blooming Heights if we want to,” I explained. “I mean, why can’t they do that?”
“Because if enough people feel the way that you do, then Blooming Heights would become overcrowded, straining their resources since they’re landlocked,” she answered reasonably, and I hated that the logic was that simple.
“Well, what if we apologized to Mexico and Canada?” I suggested. “Maybe if we apologized to them, then they’d begin taking us as residents again.”
“Good luck with that,” Sonia snorted. “Canada is second behind China in being one of the most powerful countries in the world. They don’t need our apologies or even want them.
As for Mexico...girl...” She shot me a look.
“If there’s one country that has too much pride, it’s Mexico, and they’ll never forgive America for what it did twenty-five years ago.
Why do you think they shoot us on sight whenever one of us is caught crossing the border?
Those sonsofbitches are still pissed off. ”
Despite the conversation and my mood, I laughed at that. “Yeah, I might know a little bit about pride and stubbornness.”
“It’s in our blood, muchacha,” she teased.
After taking a sip of my own drink, I asked, “Why aren’t your parents bugging you about marriage and kids yet?”
Sonia grinned, her right dimple popping out. “Because then they’ll have to hire and pay someone to do all the things that I do at the café.”
“Stop it,” I chuckled. “They pay you.”
“Not what they’re supposed to,” she pointed out.
“That’s because they gave you your Aunt Margarita’s house when she passed, so you don’t have to pay rent or make mortgage payments,” I countered.
“Which works out well for everyone involved,” she grinned.
Deciding not to ruin our night with my misgivings about life, I asked, “Are you going home alone tonight?’
“That’s the plan,” she replied, still grinning. “However, you never know what’ll happen after a few drinks and some dancing.”
Again, I was doing my best not to envy my best friend, but it was hard not to.
Sonia wasn’t one to take anything too seriously, and I really wished that I could be more like her.
I was stressing over something that I couldn’t control or change.
Though a lot of Americans had fled the country altogether years ago, I didn’t have that option.
No matter which country you chose, their immigration policies regarding Americans were just too damn strict and took years, and I wanted to be happy now.
I shook my head before taking another drink of my margarita. Maybe I was the one trapping myself inside an imagined nightmare. Maybe I was wrong, and everyone else was right, and I was just caught up in a pity party that I was hosting alone.
However, as I glanced around the club and continued to see the same person in every man here, I wasn’t so sure that it was just me. I saw my dad and brother in every male here, and that didn’t interest me at all.
“Are you ready to dance?” Sonia asked as she signaled the bartender for another round.
“Absolutely,” I semi-lied as I downed the rest of my margarita in one swallow.