5. Lina
FIVE
Lina
Rabbit?
Wand?
Bullet?
None of the above?
All of the above?
I’m at the ‘vibrator(s) or no vibrator’ part of packing, poring through my bedside table collection. Ya girl is horny as hell, and this self-imposed luxury yacht break isn’t helping my case.
New and Improved Real Life Lina would bring at least two, I think. So I pack the bullet and… the rabbit, for times of real penetrative desperation.
There’s more than enough room in my suitcase, because New and Improved Real Life Lina decided to only pack ‘chill summer clothes’ that one could theoretically take edibles in—tank tops, shorts, bikinis for the beach. I don’t even pack a bra. These clothes don’t take up much room, which means more room for vibrators. I throw in the wand just because there’s space.
I do one more scan of my toiletries, then zip up the suitcase and lug it to my front door. I turn off and unplug, then head downstairs to make sure my mom is all set for the week.
* * *
“You have enough groceries here for an entire week,” I tell my mother, who has been ignoring me for the last thirty minutes. “Your friends are checking in on you every day. I asked them to text me updates. I got you three new Sudoku books. I scheduled a laundry pick up and drop off for later this week, so you don’t have to worry about doing it while I’m gone. I’m going to text or call you every day.” I turn from the cabinets, where I was putting everything she might need on the bottom two shelves, and I realize I’ve been talking to an empty kitchen. “ Mai? ”
“Can you go?” Mai huffs from the other room. “Just let me die in peace.”
“I’m doing all this to make sure you won’t die,” I shriek. “Don’t say shit like that!”
“I’m not going to die because you’re gone for a week, mija . I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Are you all packed? Do you have a bathing suit? Oh,” she continues, “I got you this hair mask from the store. It has avocado and avocado oil.” She hobbles back into the kitchen and hands me a small plastic tub. “Bring it to the beach. It’ll be good for your hair.”
My phone dings, and I tuck the tub under my arm while checking my phone. “Shit, they’re here.” I take Mai’s face in my hands and kiss both of her cheeks. “Please always have your phone on you. In case you fall or something. Don’t ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’ me. Please. I love you.”
“Have fun,” she tells me firmly. “Relax. Take time for yourself. Promise me, mija .” I wave her away, and I grab my suitcase from where it stands next to her front door.
“Love you!” I yell again, and I walk out the door to where Oliver and Georgia are double parked in a tiny blue rental car. I turn back, but my mom has already forgotten about me and is nowhere to be seen. I sigh and knock on the truck of the car. Oliver pops it open, and I heave my suitcase and hair mask tub inside on top of theirs.
I get in the car.
“ Road trip ,” Georgia screams.
“Hey, friends,” I say, climbing into the minuscule back seat.
My phone dings again, this particular alert indicating a work email.
“Turn your work email off,” Oliver and Georgia say simultaneously.
I silence my phone instead, because I will be responding once we get to the house.
* * *
“No fucking way,” I breathe, once we drive up the winding, neatly paved driveway. The ‘house’ slowly comes into view, and fuck me . This is not a beach house. It’s more of a grand coastal manor, perched gracefully against the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean. The only thing that makes it skew ‘beach house’ is how perfectly it blends with its natural surroundings, the soft gray exterior and massive windows reflecting the muted tones of the sand and sea behind it.
“Holy Generational Wealth, right?” Oliver laughs, disbelievingly, even if he’s apparently been here almost every summer since his childhood.
“Is this a white people thing?” I ask the car nonsensically. “Do all white people have an old money relative? Is this normal?”
“ Hell no,” Georgia answers.
Oliver keeps driving, and the driveway becomes circular, curving gently right in front of the house. The landscape is beautifully maintained but doesn’t feel overly stuffy, like it’s meant to impress without overwhelming. The green lawn contrasts sharply with the wild dunes and rolling ocean waves visible just beyond the house.
“There are two houses?” Georgia is shrieking, gesturing out the window to our left.
“That’s the garage slash guest house.” Oliver technically answers the question, but it still somehow fails to answer the question.
To the left, a smaller house, garage slash guesthouse, I guess, is nestled in a group of trees. It looks like a three-car garage ( what?! ) with an apartment over the top. The windows and matching gray facade echo the design of the main house, making it feel like a natural extension, a part of a cohesive, carefully planned estate . The concept of estate has always been an intangible, shadowy, vague idea in my thirty-five years of life, only read about in books or the news, or something. But this… this is estate if you looked it up in the dictionary.
We pull up to the house, and the sound of waves rolls through the open windows of the car, mixing with the rustle of long grass swaying in the breeze.
Retreat is another word that pops into my head, adding itself alongside estate . Sanctuary .
“Fuck Brooklyn,” I manage. “We live here now. What are the schools like?”
Georgia’s speech is still as mangled as mine is. “We must all find jobs at the local school,” she says, nodding.
Oliver turns off the car right in front of the main house. “Let’s go inside and say hi to my parents.”
We all get out, and it even smells like estate and retreat and sanctuary . It smells nothing like the Rockaways. This here smells like rich beach. This beach has probably never met a Dominican woman in its life. You’re welcome , I tell it.
We walk through the door.
“Hello?” Oliver calls. It’s so expansive in here that I think I hear an echo.
We stand in the foyer, and Georgia and I remain frozen as if we are scared. I am, a little, of shattering a precious heirloom or spilling a dark, sticky liquid, even if there’s nothing wobbly around and I have nothing in my hands.
The first thing I notice is the warmth. The rich, deep, honeyed hue of the wood panelling and accents. The matching hardwood floors are gleaming and polished, almost blindingly so, reflecting the natural light that filters in from the room ahead. My eyes move down the hallway, past the intricate staircase to my right, towards what looks like a living room that is made entirely of window.
“Go,” I whisper behind Georgia, shoving her forward a little bit.
“No, you,” she says, trying to wrench my body around hers.
Oliver rolls his eyes. “This isn’t the Louvre. Shoes off,” he instructs, pointing to a mat by the door. “Come on.”
We toe our flip-flops off and walk down the hallway, and I want to die. It’s a view that takes my damn breath away—a perfect frame of the shoreline and endless blue water stretching out toward the horizon. There’s a… porch? Deck? Patio? that holds lounge chairs, the expensive-looking cushioned ones that are decidedly not from Ikea, along with a long-ass dining table with chairs.
We walk further in and the space opens up, and the full height of the ceilings becomes apparent. Light floods in through the large windows, illuminating the textures of the furniture and draped curtains and shit, but really, it’s the view of the beach just beyond the glass that commands all the attention.
“Are you… crying?” I hear Oliver asking Georgia.
“ Hoy! Anaks! ” Gloria bumbles barefoot into the living room. Gloria entering the room only adds to the warmth, and this makes me take a closer look at the details. Everything is expensive, clearly, but it’s well-worn, well-loved. I realize the furniture and the wood and the fabrics scream good quality and sturdy and usable, instead of cold and modern and glass and fragile. It makes me a feel a lot better, and Georgia seems to relax, too.
I bend in half to give Gloria a huge hug and a kiss. “Hi, Mama Flores,” I grin down at her.
“What a surprise, Lina! I’m so happy to see you! I didn’t know you were coming! Good thing I bought extra food, hah ?” She sidesteps me to squeeze her son and his girlfriend.
“You didn’t tell Mama Flores I was coming?” I rage at Oliver.
He shrugs after kissing his mom on the head. She moves over to Georgia to give her a hug that lifts her off her feet. “I forgot,” he says. “But there are more than enough bedrooms.”
Gloria looks up diagonally, and I see a flash of Dominic in her face, and I remember they’re real relatives, not fake ones. I wonder what sexy Filipino gang-related business Dominic’s been up to lately, whether he got that five hundred grand his ‘client’ owed him. I don’t think about how he could say “unacceptable” to me in that same tone from the phone call… if he found out I was wearing panties under my skirt, or if I couldn’t fit him down my throat, or something. I definitely did not imagine any of this while grinding on my rabbit.
Gloria starts silently counting, pointing towards different areas of the ceiling. A wry smile takes over her face.
“Upstairs there’s a big den,” Oliver continues (while I add den to my list of newly tangible words), “a big office, a playroom, two big bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, and then a kids’ bedroom with bunk beds. I assume Mom and Dad are taking one room, so you and I could take the other,” he says to Georgia, who still looks a bit shell-shocked. He turns to me. “You could sleep in one of the bunk beds, but I figure you could just take one of the rooms in the guesthouse. There are two bedrooms with attached bathrooms and an office in there, along with a full kitchen and living room. It’s really its own house. Just kind of small. At least relative to this one.”
I’m not proud of the moan that leaves my mouth. “I get… my own house… on this estate… on the beach?!” I really am never leaving here. They’re going to have to pry my cold, dead body—I suddenly remember my manners. “Honestly, whatever works best for all of you,” I tell the Flores family. “Wherever is easiest. I’m happy to sleep on the floor of the playroom, even. I’m sure the carpeting in there is softer than my bed at home.”
Gloria laughs. “The guesthouse makes the most sense. Especially because?—”
“Where’s Dad?” Oliver asks.
“He went down to the docks to pick up some fresh oysters. But I should let you know?—”
We hear a car driving up the gravel driveway through the open windows of the house.
“Let’s go help your dad bring the oysters in,” Georgia says, but Oliver is frowning.
Gloria is grinning.
“That’s not my dad’s car,” Oliver says.
The car doors open and shut, and the front door of the house opens.
A glitter bullet flies towards Gloria.
Ohhh, shit , my brain thinks. Ohhh, SHIT , my vagina squeals.
Gang DILF Dom locks eyes with me across a room for the third time in a week.
Like Pavlov… or was it his dog? Whoever was salivating after being brought a snack. Or whoever was salivating after seeing the person bringing the snack. I’m like him. Or it. I’m salivating at being brought this snack. My salivary glands and my nipples have associated Dominic with a tasty treat.
“Oh,” he says to me, somehow conveying both disbelief and resignation.
I blink in response. Am I magic? Did this happen because I willed it so?
“Dom! Hey, man,” Oliver strides over to his cousin and claps him into a bear hug. “I had no idea you were coming.”
Frankie is now climbing Georgia, who is laughing and squeezing her to death.
“Hold on,” Oliver says, following Dom’s line of sight and turning to look at me. “Do you guys know each other? You guys must know each other.”
I wave like an idiot. “Hey Dom,” I say. “Hey—oof,” I’m cut off and knocked over by Frankie colliding with my middle.
“Frankie,” Dom reprimands, gently, in that voice like the ocean outside. “Too much.”
“It’s okay,” I laugh down at her and give her a squeeze. “How’s it going, little lady? Long time no see.”
She peers up at me. “I just saw you yesterday,” she says very seriously.
“It was a little joke,” I whisper. “I’m very happy to see you, though.”
“Is this weird?” Georgia is saying. “This has the potential to be very weird.”
I shrug, donning Work Lina. “What do you mean?”
Dom is looking at his daughter, who is still wrapped around my hips and unconsciously rubbing her cheek on the exposed skin of my belly. “We’re not coworkers or anything,” he says.
“Two separate entities,” I add on.
“We met very briefly yesterday to go over some back to school stuff?—”
“But he’s completely outside the boundaries of the DOE chain of command.”
“So it’s totally not weird.”
“It’s great, actually.”
“Wonderful.”
“One more CPR certified person in the house.”
I look at him. He looks mildly apologetic for that last addition.
Gloria is now grinning ear to ear and bouncing on her toes like the Filipino fairy godmother in my magical tale. “Great! Why doesn’t everyone go unpack, and we can all head down to the beach?”
Dom blows out a breath. “Let’s go unpack, Frankie.”
Frankie runs back out to the car.
“Where are we staying, Tita?”
Gloria’s smile inexplicably grows wider. “Francine is staying in the kids’ room upstairs. But it’s only kids’ beds in there.”
“Okay,” Dom says. “I don’t mind sharing a room with Frankie.”
“You’re way too tall for the beds. You’ll have to stay in the guest house.”
“Okay, now it’s getting weird,” Georgia mutters to Oliver.
I’m currently grappling with the fact that I may actually have magic, and my abilities have remained latent until this very moment.
“I’m not sleeping in an entirely separate building than Frankie,” Dom is saying, his face a perfect storm of alarm and outright panic. “We haven’t slept apart… ever.”
“It’s fine to leave her here, Domy,” Oliver contributes. “It’s not like you’re sending her to a sleep-away camp run by a Filipino gang way across the country.”
My eyebrows furrow at this. “Please say more.”
He ignores me and continues. “She’s staying what, two hundred feet away from you? In a house full of… four elementary school educators. All of whom are CPR certified. Also, the playroom is here, the toys are here?—”
“Four?” Dom cuts in.
“Huh?”
“I count five elementary school educators staying here, Ollie.”
“Oh. Well, Lina is staying in the guest house, too.”
My newly acquired magic seems to include the ability to freeze time, because Dominic becomes motionless as he looks at me at with a look of abject horror. I search his eyes, surprised when I also see a touch of interest hidden under there on his perfectly symmetrical face. That could just be me projecting, though.
“Very weird,” Georgia mutters.
Frankie zooms back into the room carrying a backpack and a tiny suitcase, both lavender glitter.
Gloria steps in now. “Frankie, bring your stuff upstairs. Your room is the one with all the bunk beds.”
She disappears in a poof of glitter.
“Domy, remember what we talked about,” Gloria continues. “You’re here to relax . You haven’t been on vacation since Frankie was born. We are all going to take care of her. Give yourself some space from her before either of you snaps.”
“Relaxing doesn’t mean taking my daughter away from me,” Dom growls, in an unexpected show of papa bear anger, the first break from gentle tranquility I’ve seen from him, and it goes straight to my nipples.
But then Gloria seems to grow at least five times her size. Or at least Dominic and Oliver, who are both well over six feet tall, seem to shrink under the force of her rage. “No one is taking your daughter away from you, hah ?” she hisses, very quickly becoming the scary witch in my magical storyline. “You will leave her in this house with us, with your family, two hundred feet away from you, and you will relax in that guesthouse with this beautiful woman.”
I blink. Getting pimped out by an angry seventy-five-year-old Filipino woman was not on my bingo card for this week, but now doesn’t seem like the time to bring it up. Especially if I’m kind of up for it.
Disregard that last comment.
Everyone in the room is appropriately chastened, even if Dominic is technically the one getting yelled at.
“Everyone go unpack and put on your bathing suits,” Gloria commands in her Teacher Voice. She points at Dominic. “Bring Lina’s luggage up to the house.”
The true magic in this story is that seeing a Gang DILF be humbled by a woman half his size and double his age has somehow made him even sexier.