Chapter Fourteen
Adrián
The bang of dominoes on wood startled me out of my thoughts.
“He’s gone again,” Shakira said and bumped me with her foot as I sat beside her at the square domino table, my hand swimming in my eyes. I couldn’t make sense of the game or what to play next.
“Julín, can you sit in for me?” I stood up, and everyone groaned in annoyance. I had warned them I wasn’t good company earlier tonight when Julín came through with Shakira, practically dragging me out of the efficiency to come to Shakira’s house to hang out and play. I hadn’t wanted to leave my spot, even considering getting in the car and hitting the road to Colón to spend the weekend with my family, but Shakira wisely convinced me to stay put. The drive at night not the wisest choice with how my head was right now.
Julín walked by me, grumbling, and sat at my open spot, quickly assessing my hand and banging his chip to continue the play.
The game flowed while the guys and Shakira continued joking. I couldn’t be bothered. I had carried a void inside since Genevieve left five weeks ago. That night before, when she told me she was going to erase my phone number, then grabbed my cell phone and did the same, I almost tackled her and kissed away her sadness, begged her to stay. I didn’t have much to offer a woman like her. She wasn’t wealthy, but she was determined and had carved out a comfortable life for herself in a country full of comforts. I wouldn’t be able to offer her that same quality of life she had in Florida, and we both knew it.
So here I was, moping around, sitting on the porch of one of my oldest friends, as I suspected I’d let the woman of my life slip out of my fingers due to pure life circumstances.
“I won!” Shakira whooped, and the guys grumbled their annoyance. Julín said a few choice words and pushed back the chair to get a beer out of the cooler. Shakira came to me, with her bright smile, tanned brown skin glowing, her long braided ponytail swinging back and forth, and Tito and Fufo stayed at the table arranging the dominos.
“So, are you gonna continue to bring the room down?” Shakira offered me a cold Atlas, sat on the bench, and clicked her bottle with mine.
“So supportive.”
“This is me giving you support. You’ve been a shell of yourself for five weeks. The aunties have been asking where you have been every Sunday for the cookouts,” Shakira said, referring to her mother and aunts who sold Afro-Antillean food on Sundays. “Julín and I kidnapped you today in an attempt to cheer you up, but I can see we failed.”
“Well, I have a lot on my mind.”
“Okay, dark and mysterious. I know you like that girl you were driving around. Julín told me.”
“Julín thinks he knows all my life.”
“Listen, he told me what Claudia told him, and it seems you were pretty sweet on the lady. There is nothing wrong with accepting that. What I don’t understand is how in the era of the internet, cell phones, and cameras, you haven’t stayed in touch with her.”
Shakira had a way of worming her way into the heart of any topic, and I didn’t have the energy to spar with her tonight.
“I don’t have her phone number. And she doesn’t have mine.”
Fufo and Tito guffawed at the domino table, entangled in their own one-on-one game, while Julín hovered, watching them play and offering some commentary. On this bench, though, silence reigned.
“So, after spending more than four months driving her and then two intimate weeks together, you both forgot to exchange numbers?”
“No, we had each other’s numbers, but she asked to erase them because we both knew we had no future together.” A bullshit ask if I had any say, but I wasn’t a man to push my attentions on anyone closed to them. But maybe I should have said more, opened up about how much I would miss her, of how she made me hope...
“And...why is that?” she asked in the same tone I imagined she used with her kindergarten students when they did something incredibly outrageous.
“Mira, why are you on me right now, Shakira? I have nothing to give.” I shrugged and gulped down my beer.
“What are y’all talking about?” Julín approached, leaving our two friends embroiled in a third domino match.
“Julín, you’re looking especially dapper today with those white shorts and blue shirt. They really do make your pretty deep brown skin glow,” Shakira cooed.
“Thanks, querida,” Julín said and pulled a bench to sit across from them and clinked his bottle against hers.
“Ya’ll so queer,” I said, laughing.
“You’re so queer,” she said back, laughing. I was so glad I had my circle of friends who got me and understood me, but right now, I didn’t need them to understand me this much.
“What? Is he doing his whole ‘I don’t wanna talk’ thing?” Julín asked.
“You know it,” Shakira said, shaking her head.
“Damn. Can I go home now?” I said, annoyed and feeling loved all the way.
“No. Let’s figure out how to contact her. Didn’t she introduce you to the GM at the Tropics?” Shakira asked.
“She did.”
“Okay then, let’s see if we can go there on Monday and ask her if she is down to help contact her. I mean, it’s been five weeks, and you just work, work out, and eat. Hopefully, you shower...” Shakira said in a wishful tone, and I refused to engage.
“Are y’all trying to contact that woman?” Julín asked.
“Yes,” Shakira said.
“No,” I said.
“Yes, you are. You’re miserable,” Shakira insisted.
“Well...” Julín dragged that well a little too suspiciously. My senses heightened at his lack of eye contact.
“Oh shit,” Shakira mumbled.
“What did you do, Julín?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“Well, we got this email...” Julín said.
“When?” both Shakira and I asked at the same time.
“Two weeks ago.”
“Oh shit,” Shakira murmured. My stomach plummeted at the thought of letting two weeks pass on a potential reach out from Gen.
“Yeah, two weeks ago, we got an email from Genevieve asking for your contact information for personal reasons.”
“Did you respond?”
“I...might have.”
Thanks for reaching out to LasDell. Currently, we are not able to provide Adrián Nicolas’s information. I will make sure to share this email at some moment with him.
Kindly,
Julín Ridell
“Share this email at some moment? When is that moment?” I asked Julín, breathing hard as I imagined Genevieve waiting for my response, realizing it wouldn’t come. Fuck. A sense of possibility rose around me at the mere thought of Gen reaching out. Was she as miserable as I was?
“Julín...why would you do that?” Shakira asked.
“You were distraught when she left. You told us there is no future. I was trying to spare you.” Julín shrugged, then gave me a contrite look.
“That wasn’t for you to decide,” I told him, wanting to punch something, anything. If this had cost me...
“Just write back to her, explain you didn’t see the email.” Shakira jolted me out of my defeatist thoughts.
“You right, but fuck, what do I say?”
“What were you planning to say before Julín told us about this email?”
I miss you, Gen. Every morning without you is lonelier than the one before.
“I was just going to ask her how things were going.” Both Shakira and Julín gave me a skeptical stare, then Julín offered to get us all more beers. He knew he’d fucked up big-time.
“I know you say he’s not into you, but he acts like he is,” Shakira said the instant Julín walked away.
“No, he doesn’t. It’s not that,” I replied, tired of needing to have this conversation with my loved ones.
“Then what is it?”
“Can we focus on the email?” I redirected her attention, and just as expected, she clapped, ready to brainstorm.
“Yes! Let’s do it.”
She grabbed my phone and popped in Gen’s address.
“You know, you could have written to her social media...”
“Nah, you know I don’t have social media. That’s some stalkerish stuff.”
“So, you didn’t look her up?” Her eyebrow rose, impressed.
“I might have used Chichi’s accounts,” I confessed.
Most of her pictures had been of her and her friend Gino in different happy hours, sometimes outdoors. She was an occasional poster, months with no updates until she had a new picture. I couldn’t see her stories because then she’d have known I was sleuthing, but she was more consistent there. I wonder if it was snippets of her life, or inspirational quotes about achievement. Knowing Gen, the latter.
“So just slightly stalkerish?” She busted out laughing.
“You know what, I’ll email her on my own.”
“Nooo, don’t leave!” she said between giggles.
Shakira negotiated and pleaded as I said goodbye to Fufo, Tito, then found Julín hiding in the kitchen and said bye to him too. Shakira finally accepted I was leaving with a heavy sigh and a hug for encouragement.
Once I got back into my efficiency, I closed the door behind me and plopped on the bed, a spark of hope flickering inside.
I pulled out my phone again and stared at the screen, Gen’s email flashing on the top. What would I accomplish by emailing her? Honestly, all the things I shared with her while still here were present in the back of my mind. My family, Villa Bonita, LasDell Transportation, my people. But the yearning for Genevieve became like an open gap in my heart that didn’t allow me to concentrate.
For once, after two years, I would do something solely for me.
I typed the email and went to bed.
I slept like a rock.