Chapter 29
“I kissed Simón.” The words burst out of me the second Blanca opens the door to her house.
Crickets chirp somewhere in Blanca’s front garden as she gapes at me. Behind her, Gustavo leaps to his feet from the couch. I didn’t even realize he was there.
“I’ll make popcorn,” he says before disappearing down the hall I know leads to the kitchen.
I fidget with my hands, fog coming out of my parted lips as I breathe. Blanca steps to the side, ushering me in. “I—What—When?”
I check my watch, stepping inside. “About ten minutes ago?”
“DON’T START WITHOUT ME,” Gustavo yells from the kitchen, and Blanca’s devilish little poodle starts barking somewhere in the house.
“What happened?” She shuts the door. “From the beginning.”
I summarize the day as calmly as I can—getting the Ethos email while I was at work, Simón helping me, then staying with me, the cake, the pool, everything.
“And then you kissed Simón,” Blanca finishes.
I nod. And then I kissed Simón. My body hits the couch unceremoniously. Blanca watches me almost in anguish, her face contorted in a painful wince.
“Am I awful?” I ask.
Blanca sits on the couch next to me and grabs both of my hands, clutching them tightly.
“You are not awful.” She squeezes my hands, as if to emphasize.
“You’re thoughtful, and caring, and you always think of others before you think of yourself.
So you were selfish once. I’d say it’s about damn time! It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
The smell of popcorn fills the living room as Gustavo returns, balancing three bowls in his arms.
“Bebé, tell Marianto she’s not awful,” Blanca commands.
He frowns at me, placing the bowls on the coffee table in front of us. “You are not awful. Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know.” I grab one of the bowls and hug it to my chest. “Because Ale and I broke up like three days ago? I should be sad. I shouldn’t be kissing my boss.”
“Did you like kissing your boss though?” he says, ignoring the first half of what I said.
I raise both eyebrows at the question. We’re close, but are we this close? I don’t think so.
Blanca seems to share the same thought because she says, “Bebé, I think you should leave.”
Gustavo looks between us, all wounded puppy eyes, before he puts one bowl of popcorn under one arm and sets his attention on Blanca. “Tell me everything?”
She winks at him, beaming when he leans in for a goodbye kiss. The picture of true love. I hate them.
“Please bring that back.” She points at the bowl.
“Yeah, I know,” he says, walking toward the door. “I really like Simón, by the way. He’s so much more fun than Alejandro.”
Of course he’d think that. He’s met Simón once and that day he got onstage and sang Selena. Alejandro wouldn’t even do that while drunk. His idea of fun was criticizing shows like Grey’s Anatomy and eating at fancy restaurants. He likes a quiet life. I liked a quiet life too.
But Blanca hums her agreement despite knowing all this.
Her disapproval was never a secret. Honestly, their encouragement warms my heart.
Anyone I date is someone they’ll be stuck double-dating, after all.
Not that I’m planning to date Simón. I’m not.
It’s just nice to know that, if we lived in a different world, they wouldn’t object to spending more time with him.
Blanca whirls in my direction as soon as Gustavo leaves. “But seriously, did you like it? How was it? Was it like you would do it again or was it meh?”
“Dude, the amount of stars I saw, it was like being in outer space,” I tell her.
Almost literally. “He was so gentle but still confident, like you know he knows what he’s doing?
And he seemed so…sure. Like it wasn’t an accident.
Like he meant it.” Blanca grins at that.
Not so fast, little speedster. “And I ruined it.”
Her grin falls. “What do you mean?”
“I ran.”
“You ran?” she repeats.
“Someone saw us and interrupted us, thank God. And then I apologized and ran away.” I groan and hide my face between my hands.
“Oh, sweet summer child…”
“What else was I supposed to do?” I say. “He’s Simón. From Caballo de Troya.”
Blanca tilts her head to the right, watching me with smug eyes. “Like you would have a make-out session with Simón just because he’s in Caballo de Troya. Give yourself some credit, Maria Antonieta. You didn’t even go on a date with Alejandro until you were sure you liked him.”
I also didn’t kiss him until we were exclusive. But I was twenty-three.
“So you kissed him. Big deal,” she continues.
“You’re a single twenty-seven-year-old woman.
He’s a single man. You’ve been spending every waking moment together for the past however many weeks.
You like each other. It’s not the end of the world.
” She offers me popcorn. I refuse. If I eat anything right now, I’ll throw up all over the couch.
Blanca shrugs and grabs a handful for herself.
“You needed to get Alejandro out of your system anyway. I say go for it. Talk to him, see where he stands. Chances are he wants to kiss you again. Do you want to kiss him again?”
Warmth spreads through my body at the thought of being that close to Simón again. I can’t stop replaying the moment in my head—the way his lips felt against mine, soft yet insistent, the expression on his face as I left. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. What’s worse, I’m not sure I want to.