Chapter 27
Vanessa
“?Vete de aquí! ?Demonio!”
Mami and I are removing items from the shelves in preparation for Jason and his crew’s work later this evening. Well, I’m removing items; Mami and the cat are battling for dominion over the store.
“Do you think the cat speaks Spanish?” I ask her.
I’m trying to hide my sour mood so my mother doesn’t pry. It appears to be working.
My mother nods as if my question makes perfect sense. “Yes, of course.” She narrows her eyes on the ball of chaos hiding behind a stack of Gatorade bottles. “You hear that purr? She’s rolling her r’s. Now, dogs? They speak English. Bark, bark, bark. ?Qué feo!”
“I like your theory,” I say, forcing a smile.
She sets aside the boxes and places a hand on her hip. “What’s wrong, mija?”
Never mind my attempt to mask my true mood. A mother’s intuition never fails.
“What makes you think something’s wrong?”
“You’re asking silly questions. Until today, I didn’t even think you realized we had a cat.”
“Technically, we don’t have a cat. That cat has us.”
She stares at me, her expression blank.
“I just had a bad night,” I say softly.
Yes, it was actually a bad morning, but my mother’s sharp, and I’d like to skip over the details of my and Jason’s sextravaganza.
“At the wedding?”
“After.”
“Want to talk about it?”
I stick my head between a bunch of Betty Crocker cake mixes to avoid her scrutiny. “Not really.”
“Fine.”
Do I detect a hint of annoyance in her voice? If so, that’s unlike her. My mother’s the most chill person I know. “I’m still thinking through what happened. I’m not being cagey or anything.”
She shrugs. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
I appreciate that she still has confidence in me, that she thinks we have the kind of relationship where I share my secrets.
Sadly, I don’t have that with anyone. Sure, people have bits and pieces of me, but the unfiltered version of me who doesn’t worry about how I’ll be perceived?
Or the one who doesn’t spin out every negative scenario that could come from opening up to someone?
Yeah, nobody’s seen that person in a long time.
Jason came close, though, and we all know how that ended.
“Buenos días, mi familia,” Lisa singsongs, waltzing into the store as if she’s being carried on a parade float.
Well, at least someone’s happy today.
“Good morning to you too,” I say, giving her a smug smile. “Pleasant evening?”
“An excellent evening,” she replies with a wink.
How can this be? Why isn’t she in turmoil? Her desperate desire to be Jason’s one true love got me into this mess, and she’s acting as though life’s just hunky-dory. Ugh, if I were wearing stilettos, I’d step on her big toe.
No, Vanessa. You must be a better person, remember? Wishing your sister pain is not allowed.
“Can we chat outside for a minute?” I ask her.
“I had a feeling you’d want to.” She sidles up to me, then links our arms. “Let’s.”
Behind the counter, my father looks up from the scratch-off game cards he plays for fun. “Is anyone working around here?”
“You’re one to talk,” my mother counters. “Have you won three dollars yet?”
He looks at her with triumph. “I won five.”
Lisa and I shake our heads, and then we walk out the door.
It’s early on a Sunday in El Barrio, which means most of the activity is happening on the city streets: Cars jockey for position as they race down Second Avenue, a sweeper truck maneuvers around a vehicle in the no-parking zone, a woman across the street tends to the plants on her section of the fire escape.
“You didn’t answer any of my texts,” she says.
“I received them too late.”
“You were with him?”
“Yeah.” I peer at her, trying to gauge her reaction. “Do you hate me?”
“Hate you?” she asks, her eyebrows squishing together. “Why would I?”
“You had a crush on him. We went through all this trouble to try to line him up for you.”
“One, it wasn’t that much trouble on my end. I was mostly along for the ride. Two, I’ve had time to make peace with it. I knew when we were at the spa in Hudson Valley that he would never date me.”
“How?”
“Because he couldn’t keep his eyes off you. In fact, I knew you were a goner then too.”
“How?” I say, unable to keep the skepticism out of my voice.
“Because you could keep your eyes off him. Tried your damnedest to. It was like you didn’t want to look at him because I’d see right through your act. Am I warm?”
“So fucking hot it’s ridiculous.”
“Ha, I’m not at all surprised. But don’t be too hard on yourself, V.
The truth is, I went about this all wrong.
I had this idea in my head, and I just wanted to make it happen: Cami would leave, but I’d still be connected to her family.
Through him. It would be perfect. Exactly how Cami and I had planned it.
Best friends and sisters-in-law. But it was make-believe. ”
“That’s not out of the question, you know.”
She cocks her head. “With Denise? Yeah, let’s not talk in absurdities. And anyway, once you saw me having oral sex with her—”
“Oh my God, that’s not what I saw. You didn’t have to spell the whole thing out.”
“Whatever. We’re big girls now. By the way, I finally understand why she calls me Lollipop.”
“Get to the point, Lili.”
“What I was going to say is that I wouldn’t even consider pursuing Jason after being intimate with Denise, not that it was even remotely a possibility, considering that he’s infatuated with you.”
“Was.”
“He can’t move past it?”
“He can’t move past the fact that I didn’t confess to it on my own.”
“Did he give you the opportunity to?”
I think about her question for a long moment. Finally, I say, “Yeah, he did. But I ran from each opportunity because I was certain I wouldn’t be happy with the outcome. I wanted a chance to be with him. To give him enough reasons to overlook what I’d done first. I was scared.”
“Did you explain any of this to him?”
“No.”
“So he’s operating under the assumption that you’re just a lying bitch who was perfectly happy manipulating and fucking him and nothing else.”
“Jesus, Lili, that’s not how it is.”
“But I bet that’s the impression you tried to give him. God forbid you should ever make yourself vulnerable and tell the people who care about you what’s going on in that head of yours.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, Vanessa, it is fair. You don’t talk to us.
Not me, not Mami, not Papi. Not unless we badger you into submission.
So what do we know about you? Only what we see.
Only the little that you tell us. Someday, you’re going to have to figure out that you are more than your worst decisions.
But in the meantime, if you don’t share all of you, your worst is all anyone will ever know.
Some people will handle what you tell them with care.
But they’ll never be able to prove that to you unless you give them a chance to. ”
“Are you sure you’re my baby sister? How are you this mature?”
She rolls her eyes. “We’re only three years apart. And I have an advantage over you.”
“What?” I say, my brow furrowing.
“I didn’t go to Wharton.”
“Hey, watch it now.”
She snorts, a smile dancing on her lips, and then she pulls me in for a hug. “Jason will be showing up soon. Maybe you can try to open up to him. Give him a glimpse of the real you.”
“Not likely. He asked me not to come around when he’s here.”
She draws back and rests her hands on my shoulders. “Since when have you ever done anything a man told you to do?”
La Flor closes at five p.m. on Sundays, a store-hours policy my parents have followed since I was a kid. My mother claims it was instituted to make sure we could have family time; my father says he agreed to the policy because he didn’t want to miss Sunday Night Football.
Tonight, Lisa and I are supposed to eat dinner with my parents in their apartment above the store. But dinner won’t begin until Jason and his crew clock out for the night. Knowing Jason’s finishing up his work, Lisa snags the keys to La Flor’s backdoor entrance from my father and tosses them to me.
“Make good use of them,” she says, gesturing for me to go.
Standing by the window, I watch for the other two members of Jason’s crew to leave, and when they do, I sneak downstairs.
Jason hears me enter the main floor and slowly straightens to his full height. His eyes light up at first, but they dim just as quickly, probably when he remembers what’s transpired between us.
“I’m almost done,” he says, avoiding my gaze as he packs his tool bag. “I’ll be out of here in a minute.”
“If I could have a moment of your time, I’d appreciate it,” I say, my hands fisted at my sides. “I need a chance to explain.”
He looks up at me, his eyes dull and lifeless. “You had that chance this morning.”
“Right. And I didn’t take it.”
“So you’ve had an epiphany since then?”
Jason isn’t like this. Not usually. But I suppose he’s taking a page from my playbook and protecting his heart. I can’t say that I blame him.
“No epiphany. But I am prepared to speak to you from my heart, which is what I should have done in the first place.”
“I’m listening,” he says curtly, closing his tool bag with a loud yank of the zipper.
Jason’s detached demeanor doesn’t offend me.
He’d be wise to keep us at arm’s length.
Still, I want to earn his trust, and I can’t do that unless I show him the real me.
So I’ll tell him everything—the good, the bad, and the embarrassing.
And although the prospect of opening up to him is terrifying, I’ll suffer through it anyway.
Because I’d hate for Jason to think I never cared about him.
Especially since nothing could be further from the truth.