Twenty Four
León tired of walking all day. The sights were starting to blur together, not offering the distraction he needed. It was harder to stay numb. It took a lifetime of practice he just didn’t have.
Sitting stagnant in his parents’ home wasn’t better.
His mother sat in the living room, alone. León drifted from his room to lean against the wall in the hallway, watching her resting on their couch, listening to one of her old Tito Rodriguez albums. The scene was so homey and familiar that he wanted to cry. He didn’t dare.
Instead, he solemnly joined her and let her put an arm around his shoulders. They sat and listened wordlessly, letting the old songs drift and sway behind them.
“It’s good to have you home, Leónito,” she said quietly.
He rested his head on her shoulder.
She gave him a gentle squeeze. “What’s her name, this girl who broke your heart?”
León wasn’t even surprised. He’d have come to the same conclusion if he saw himself moping around. “Celia.”
“A pretty name.”
“Yes.”
She waited, but he didn’t volunteer more. “What’s she like?”
Tender. Luminous. Sad. “Quiet.”
“A quiet girl for you? She’d be the first one.”
“She’s not for me,” he mumbled. “She doesn’t understand me. She thinks I’m crazy.”
“Well, and so you are sometimes, lolo.”
The heartsick lyrics of Qué Te Importa mourned behind them.
“I was painting her,” he finally offered.
“Ah, so she’s pretty, a model.”
“Yeah.”
“These are the paintings you said were your best ones?”
“Yeah.”
He dropped his chin to his chest, playing with the hem of his shirt. He couldn’t go on this way, too beaten to speak but too hurt to keep it inside any longer. How could he tell his mother any of this story?
“I wanted her to…agree to something,” he said, his voice halting and tight. “Something I felt strongly about, but she didn’t. I wouldn’t leave it alone, and she told me to go.”
“You must have felt very strongly. But so must she, I think, if she made you leave over it. You must be fair.”
“Fair?” he croaked, turning to her. “I just wanted to be closer! Why wouldn’t she agree to that?”
“Maybe she’s not the one for you.”
Oh, she was the one. She never left his mind, the soft warmth of her presence his constant companion. Her skin, bathed in the morning’s gold, haunted him. Her silhouette against the light, curves and lines he longed to trace with brush and fingers alike…he just wanted her near again.
The rejection, the need, the injustice of it came welling up, and the story tumbled out frantically on its own.
“She’s my muse. I could paint her for the next fifty years! She agreed, she was helping. She gave me a place to stay. She cooked for me. She’s so good at cooking, Mama. But she didn’t get how much I needed her! I couldn’t explain it right. And then she started her own work, and I saw her slipping away to it.”
His mother smoothed his hair, but it couldn’t calm the desperation writhing under his skin.
“She was too busy to help then?” she asked.
León’s cheeks burned with shame. “No. She helped all the time, every day. But I pushed her. I wanted more. I wanted her to be mine, more than a girlfriend, more than a wife. I wanted her to say she belonged to me.”
“She said no?”
“She wouldn’t even listen.”
His mother waited. The music flowed behind them as he stared at his hands in his lap.
“I finally realized I am hers,” he said, “not the other way around. Then she kicked me out.”
“This is what you wouldn’t let go? When she said no, you didn’t listen?” He grunted assent. “Well, then, you have some work to do.”
He saw Celia’s glacial eyes pushing him backward, felt his hoodie hitting his chest. “I don’t think she’ll talk to me again.” He stifled a catch in his throat. “I can’t paint without her. I lost her and my art on the same day.”
Sadly, his mother shook her head. “You gave them up, I think.” She gave his shoulders another squeeze as he grew still and sullen beside her. “You had her and your art, but you demanded more until you have neither. It’s not better this way, is it?”
“It was important, Mama,” he growled. “To me, at least.”
She stroked his head, trying to soothe. “We always encouraged you to be honest and fight for what you want, but you can’t win everything.” When he couldn’t disguise a sniffle, she patted his shoulder. “Why not accept what she will give you?”
“Hide how I truly feel just so she’ll take me back? No.”
“Not hide, but change. Don’t demand she feel as you want, be happy she gives you everything she can.” He snorted, dubious. “Do you demand money from a poor man? Or can you feel blessed he gave you a humble thing he can afford?”
León sat up. “That’s not the same!”
“It is the same,” she said gently. “She gave, and you said it was not enough. I would tell you to leave too. Instead of telling her, ‘I want everything,’ you say, ‘I want everything you will give freely.’ That shows respect, lolo.”
“She knows I respect her.”
“Does she? You rejected her gift.”
“She rejected mine!” León felt the wildness inside start to crest. He wouldn’t be able to control it if it got much closer to the surface.
His mother sighed. “Ah, mi lolo, you always demand the moon. Maybe we should have talked less of fighting and shown you how to sacrifice. You need both.” She smoothed his hair again to remove the sting of her words. “Can you apologize?”
“No.” She’d had it with his apologies. She’d finally called him on it. If she didn’t agree that they belonged together, what could he do?
His mother clucked her tongue. “León, mijo, te amo. I wish I could give you something to make you happy.”
León’s shoulders trembled as he leaned into her again. “She loves me too,” he said haltingly. “I know it.”
“Yes, she was very giving to you. That’s a way to show love.” She turned to him. “You could go now and be giving to her, give her patience and respect and maybe a little more silence.” She chucked him under the chin, and he ducked his head.
“I doubt she’d even see me.”
“You’ll have to ask,” she said. “Some girls will give you twice what you give them. Give her something. See what she’ll do.”
“She’s not a girl. She’s a woman. Older than me. Not much,” he quickly said as his mother’s eyebrows lifted. “She has her own life, she doesn’t need anything from me. I don’t know what to give her.”
“Give her your time, then. Help her with what she wants because she is important to you. Find joy in her joy. Why not try? This is no way to live, Leónito.”
She smiled. He had to smile weakly back. He leaned in for a hug, which she gave him, stroking his back as she had when he was a child. The music quieted, the album coming to an end.
In the hallway behind them, the front door sounded. León’s father had returned.
Muffled against her shoulder, León spoke softly. “She does love me, Mama.”
“Of course, she loves you, lolo. Who wouldn’t?”
He got up off the couch, averting reddened eyes as he passed his father. He headed for the kitchen, a little hungry for a change. His parents’ hushed words in the living room came through the doorway.
“So, what’s the girl like, mi vida?”
“Sensible. And she cooks.”
···
Kelsey texted Celia without warning. “I’m pulling up. Got some news.”
Celia gritted her teeth. First Andrew, and now Kelsey? She was busy! She heard knocking at the door before she’d even set her phone down.
Fine.
She opened the door to Kelsey, fresh and breezy in an indigo silk jumpsuit. The outfit flaunted her baby bump. She was so much bigger! How long since she’d seen Kelsey in person?
“Celia,” she said, her dauntless smile wide. “You’re not going to believe this.”
Celia didn’t feel like believing anything. She’d been scheduling delivery of the furniture for her apartment on the third floor. Construction should be done there in three days, with only some final painting—
“Hello? I’ve got news!”
They were all determined to drag her head out of her project. It wouldn’t work. It was safe in there.
Kelsey traipsed down the hallway, kicking her taupe flats off toward the nearest couch as usual. “You haven’t been reading the group chat, have you? We need your help. Someone wants to buy a painting of León’s.”
Celia stopped dead at her bedroom door. Kelsey turned to continue talking despite the distance.
“A woman at that exhibition asked me about León. I gave her a card because she seemed interested. Well, she went back to the gallery to buy a painting, but it was closed. Because you own it now.” Kelsey grinned. “But she kept my card, so she tried me. Andrew’s texting León, but we need to get the painting from you.”
Celia’s heart lodged in her tight throat. She didn’t want to be involved in this. She didn’t want to know it was happening.
“It’s that blue one.”
Ears ringing, Celia finally came into the room, feeling blindly for the couch rather than looking before she sat. She wasn’t hearing Kelsey. She was impassive, made of stone.
“Celia, honey…” Kelsey sat next to her, solicitous but giving her space.
Would he sell? Would he come back for that? Would she have to talk with him? See him?
“Hey. Celia.” Kelsey touched her shoulder, her brow furrowed. “Listen to me.”
Celia’s dazed eyes lifted, trying to focus. “What?”
“You’re better than this.”
Stiffening, Celia sat up straight. “You don’t—”
“You took a risk with León, and it didn’t work out,” Kelsey said. “Why did you take that risk?”
“I…” Thinking about León was dangerous. Her whole body was thrumming.
“You wanted to learn. What did you learn from him?”
León.
He rose up in Celia’s memory as though he were standing before her. Those intense dark eyes focused on hers. The smell of paint as he threaded his fingers into her hair. His rough cheek brushing hers as he murmured, “Mi cielo, my good girl.”
The vision was so clear that her heart pounded and her breaths came faster.
Kelsey still waited for an answer.
“He made me feel things,” Celia finally said. The stabbing grief in her chest threatened to crumple her.
“You wanted that, Celia. And you wanted to share what you felt. You and I, we were getting closer. We confided things, we could support each other. Right?” Kelsey leaned in, intent and resolute.
Celia nodded, her head throbbing.
“Good things came out of that risk. Don’t go back to how you were before. You have to keep feeling and sharing, or it was all for nothing.”
Kelsey laid a gentle hand on Celia’s arm. It felt nice, soothing. She hadn’t touched another human in weeks now.
Kelsey was right.
It hurt like hell but hurting was feeling. She was better than this.
Celia reached out slowly and returned the touch.
“I took a risk,” she said slowly.
Kelsey squeezed her arm. “Aren’t you proud of yourself, Celia?”
It was close to something her mother would have asked. But, somehow, she wasn’t hearing that voice now.
Could she feel proud? “Not yet,” she admitted.
Kelsey smiled. “We’ll get you there.” She tilted her head, eyes shining. “Come lean on Andrew and Trevor and me. Let us help with your warehouse. No more hiding out here.”
···
It took León a few more days of thought before he started to understand what his mother had told him.
It was hard to admit, but she was right about one thing. Celia had told him no, and he’d refused to allow it. No wonder she’d sent him away. He hadn’t given her a choice—he’d demanded she agree with him, all-or-nothing. But she did have a choice despite his best efforts, and she’d chosen nothing.
Could he change the way he thought?
He began walking again, but not as frantically. Sometimes he even rode the subway, staying on the move and not punishing his feet.
He knew that he would go talk with her. The possibility of getting her back was a heady thought, far better than facing a future with no art, no Celia. It surprised him how easily he slid from avoiding the topic to furiously debating different ways he could fix things.
How could he convince her if she was tired of being convinced?
He had to be a different person, somehow. Less pushy. Maybe, he might avoid painting her. At first. If he could just get her back, he could work on the rest.
He’d deleted the group chat after he left LA, but Andrew had texted a few times since. A new message popped up as he left the subway at 181st. Someone wanted to buy the blue painting. The amount being offered was more than he’d ever made.
Absolutely not. Never.
Then Andrew said Celia had agreed to hang it in her building and to help with the sale if he wouldn’t come. The opportunity was too sweet to pass up.
“Do you think she’d be there if I did come?” he ventured over text.
“I don’t know. There’s not a zero chance.”
León paused, wondering how exactly to word his next question. He typed it a few times, pausing and deleting.
“She’s fine, man.”
Ah.
“Think she’ll talk to me?”
“Don’t know. She’s super busy now.”
“Maybe she’s not as mad. Maybe I’m not as crazy.”
“Good luck proving that.”
“I’ll get a flight tomorrow.”
So. He was going back.