24. Julieta
Chapter twenty-four
Julieta
Logan’s leg is wrapped around mine when I wake up in the morning. His arm is draped across my stomach, a warm weight keeping me close. My body stirs, used to being up this early, even if I was up way too late last night. I’m in a post-orgasm stupor, some sort of bliss, when I look around the room and realize I'm still in the guest room. And then I notice he’s awake, too, and he’s smiling.
“I hate to be an asshole, but I’ve got to go.”
“Oh God, of course. I’m so sorry you got stuck here.” I try to sit up, but he pulls me in closer.
He laughs softly, raspy with sleep. “I didn’t get stuck here. I’ll be back soon, if you’ll have me.”
“Please.” It’s a quiet, embarrassing plea.
He leans over to kiss me gently, confessing, “I couldn’t stay away from you if I fucking tried.” Then he quietly slips out of bed, still dressed in last night’s clothes, and goes out the door.
I spend the rest of the early morning not wanting to get up, letting myself enjoy the calm and quiet of a Sunday morning. I almost fall into a guilt trap with it, but there’s nobody to tell me how ridiculous it is, except for maybe those voices that like to pop into my head once in a while.
I should spend the time catching up on my cases, the ones I’ve been practically neglecting. It takes too much effort, but I drag myself out of bed and get to work. Except my mind finds ways to sidestep the focus, to go back to Logan and the night before. A recurring memory, a lingering feeling, something I can’t help but smile to myself about.
And then I fall into more worry, like what will happen to our partnership now that we’ve crossed a boundary? What about the lessons?
My mind finds another distraction with the loud sound of somebody harshly opening my door.
My brother stumbles in, dressed like he’s headed out to go play soccer with his friends.
“Don’t you knock?” I call out from my dining table surrounded by paperwork.
“Have I ever?”
Anybody else would probably be concerned by this, but the open-door policy between my family and me has led to always expecting guests. But suddenly I think about what would happen if he’d stumbled into my place with Logan here.
“Do you barge into Agostina’s apartment like this?”
“Definitely not.” He reaches for a LaCroix in my fridge, then grabs a glass and opens the freezer for ice. “Ooh, Uncrustables.” He reaches into the box and grabs one. “Mom asked if somebody could bring sandwiches de miga tonight.”
“Okay, and?”
“And I’m going to play right now,” he says like it’s obvious.
“And I’m doing work.” This is also obvious. “Call Delfi. Or Cecilia.”
“They’re all busy.” He practically chugs his drink.
“You’re not playing all day. Go to the store afterwards. What’s the big deal?”
“Can I go to that other bakery near the park?” he asks.
“No, they aren’t good. Go to Mariana’s.”
“Can you?”
I don’t know what snaps—the way I’m tired of fixing everybody’s problems, or tired of finding the solutions, or frustrated with how everybody else can do what they want but I’m expected not to. How my brother was raised to have everybody wait on him instead. But it pisses me off and I’m too tired to care.
“Are you joking? I am swamped with work. Look at this table. Look at this paperwork. Pick up the fucking phone and make an order if you need to. That way all you have to do is pick it up after your beloved soccer match. I don’t care. But you are more than fucking capable of doing it, so do it .”
His eyes widen slightly. “Alright, sorry. Fine. I can do it.”
Is this what setting a boundary feels like? Like I want to throw up everywhere? I hate it. “I’m sorry, too.”
“I just thought—”
“I’m tired of doing all the work.”
His face softens, and he nods. “Okay.” Then he takes one more Uncrustable, says his goodbyes, and heads out the door.
I take one deep, shaky breath in and force myself back to work until it’s time for dinner.
I step into my parents' house again without knocking. There’s a certain irony in that, I realize, passing through the living room into the kitchen where I say hi to my mom.
“La ensalada,” she says by way of response, pointing to the fridge where I find lettuce washed and ready to go. I grab it and find a small corner of the kitchen where I can chop some tomatoes, slice an avocado, and dress everything with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice. Everything is second nature and habit. The muscle memory of doing something enough times and it becomes a core action.
Like a strong arm wrapping around my waist, and a firm hand at my back, and the instant movement of feet. Steps to the front, ocho to the back.
Tía Cecilia puts on some soft music in the background, and I notice, almost secondhand, my feet moving in rhythm, another surprise in how my body has learned to respond . In how it responded last night.
“Arma la mesa, Julieta,” my mother tells me, breaking the spell and taking me out of the fog. My feet obey quickly, moving to the dining room with plates and silverware in tow.
I start on my usual chore of setting the table. It’s my favorite chore—the quiet, the repetition. T walks in and comes up next to me, a mild hurricane to my calm winds, grabbing some forks and helping.
“Hey, what’s up?” I say.
“You know, sometimes it’s a surprise how good of a lawyer you are cause you’re a shit liar.”
“What?” I ask, taken aback and looking at her.
“Javier came into the restaurant earlier today.”
Fuck .
“And he told me all about how he ran into you the night before at the milonga . With Logan . The tango instructor.” She sets a fork down forcefully. “ I fucking knew something else was up.”
I sigh, and Delfina steps into the dining room just then, stopping short when she sees us. “’Kay, the vibe is weird in here.”
“Javier told me that you danced two tandas with him.” T says to me.
“Wait … what?” Delfina chimes in.
“I just assumed you were just enjoying some sexcapades with him, but this confirms it.”
“Sexcapades?” I ask, shocked, probably pale as a sheet.
“Two tandas?” Delfina adds.
I roll my eyes. “This is so ridiculous. We were just dancing.” We were . Granted, right now I am lying through my teeth. Am I a shit liar? Can T tell? We are, in the end, still just partners. Yes, we were dancing at the milonga, but who knows if anybody caught our late-night activities in the parking lot afterward.
“Uh-huh. He knows the rules.”
“How do you know the rules?” I ask.
“She was my grandmother too, asshole.”
“Fucking Javier,” I mutter.
T is smiling now, as is Delfina. Two wide grins pointed right at me.
“You are dancing!” Delfina says in a hiss.
“Keep your voices down.” I look toward the kitchen where I hear my mom talking to tía Ana. “And keep your mouths shut.”
“I won’t say a word!” she says, with the same enthusiasm. “Though, honestly, I’m a little offended that I wasn’t invited.”
I don’t know if it’s the combination of feeling like I’ve upset them or excluded them. The thought that I’ve kept something for myself. Maybe it’s all the guilt finally coming to a head, consuming me. Could be the feeling of the secret finally being exposed, at least only by the two of them for now. But all of it comes to the surface, and I do something I haven’t done in front of them in a very, very long time. I start to cry.
“Shit,” T mumbles, while Delfi looks at me wide-eyed.
“Hey Julie,” Delfi says in a quiet, soothing voice as she comes over to me.
T walks over, too, wrapping her arms around me, her mouth a firm line.
“I’m sorry. This is so stupid,” I say in frustration.
“No, no. It is not stupid.” Delfi’s voice is adamant, and a little louder now. She’s shaking her head.
“I just wanted to do this thing for me. Give my life a little more excitement, a little more meaning, like you guys have done with yours.”
“Shit, Julie,” T says.
“I was only kidding about being invited. You deserve to do this for yourself. You know that, don’t you?”
“Do I deserve to do it? Or am I wasting my precious time?” I look to the kitchen again. “Please don’t tell them.”
“Fuck them. Who cares what they think?” T asks abrasively.
“I do.”
“And you shouldn’t,” she states.
“You know how my mom gets. And if she hears about what’s been going on, she’ll probably lose her shit.”
“She’s had a hard life,” Delfi nods.
“It doesn’t make her any less of a pain in the ass,” T retorts.
“Abuela gave me the shoes. I thought maybe I should just go for it, I don’t know,” I try to reason.
“Yes! Of course, you should,” Delfi agrees.
“I’m gonna need more details than that,” T says.
I eye her, sighing in defeat. “Logan happened to be the instructor when I signed up for the classes. I met him before,” I admit.
“Logan? Like Gavin’s brother?” Delfi asks, looking between us and trying to catch up.
“Yes. That one.” I sigh.
“Damn, how did I miss that?” she tells T.
“Anyway, it was getting tricky with work, but I didn’t want to quit. So, I decided to do private lessons.”
Delfi gasps, and T just laughs. “You tango slut , I love it!”
“Shut up,” I say, wanting to be exasperated, but almost laughing it off instead.
“Okay, so now what?” T asks, egging me on.
“There’s another milonga coming up in a couple of weeks. It’s the end of the session and his partner is leaving.”
“Are you taking over?” They look at me expectantly.
“No, no. Nothing like that. He wants to quit anyway, I think.” At least he mentioned that last night. Where that takes us, I don’t really know.
“Where is it?” T asks.
I roll my eyes.
“Where!” Delfina pushes.
“Can I …” I search for the words. “Can I just have this?”
They both soften at that. “Of course you can.” Delfi nods. But their disappointment is visible, palpable. Or maybe that’s my guilt I’m feeling. It’s been such a companion in my life, of course I should know what it feels like by now.
“Midnight Ballroom on Tenth. At seven,” I concede. They would have found out anyway. T would have hounded Javier or probably even Gavin; Delfi would have scoured social media posts for any information.
“Oh. I think I’ve got work that night,” T says.
“Oh, yeah,” Delfi adds. “I think I’ve got another thing going on that night.”
They’re lying to give me this one thing. I want to thank them; I want to change my mind.
I take a deep breath in gratitude and pick up the knives to keep setting the table. But I should know better than to think they’re going to let this go. Because that’s what happens—once news gets out in this group, it doesn’t float away. It ferments, it keeps growing, it takes on a life of its own.
“There’s more,” T says. She’s watching me with a curious look, and I know better than to put anything past her.
“Dammit. Why are you so astute?”
“Don’t deflect with fancy words.”
I look to the kitchen again, making sure nobody can hear. “I signed up to do a competition in San Diego.”
They both meet me with shock, dumbstruck until T just says, “ Ho-ly shit .”
“It’s not a big deal.” I wave it off, trying to calm my own nerves.
“The San Diego Tango Festival?” T presses. “I saw Abuela there.”
“God, of course you did.”
“ Julieta! This is amazing,” Delfi squeals, squeezing my arm, while T just unfurls a smile like this is the best thing she’s heard all week.
I open my mouth to say more—whether it’s to shrug it off or tell them to keep their mouths shut again—but tía Silvia makes her way in with a platter of food, and we quickly fall silent, getting back to our role of setting the table.
“Hola chicas,” she says.
This time are some crispy milanesas, sprinkled with a squeeze of lemon juice, and potato salad Ana made. There’s a platter of the sandwiches de miga that Dario was miraculously able to pick up. And there's the salad I quickly put together before setting the table.
The men walk in, making their way to their seats.
“Hola pa,” I call out, kissing him on the cheek.
We take our usual seats, and I wait for most to fill their plates before I reach over and dig in.
“Bueno,” my mother says, like this phrase is the equivalent of a green light, “a comer.”
***
“Y cómo va todo?” Cecilia asks me. She’s trying to sound casual, but she’s curious. I wouldn’t be surprised if she ran into Javier, too. The night is winding down, and I’m sitting with her at the end of the table. She’s nursing her glass of wine; my mother went to the kitchen to grab mate.
I shrug in response, but that answer probably isn’t doing me any favors. “Bien,” I reply half-heartedly. But, I realize, if there were one person to talk to in the middle of my own dilemmas, it would be her.
“How do you do it?” I ask her instead.
“Do it?”
“Do any of it. How did you create this perfect life? How did you break away from what everybody else wanted for you?”
“Mierda,” she says, lifting her eyebrows in surprise. She takes a minute to answer, giving whatever she’s about to say some thought. “You have to chip away at it slowly,” she answers. “You have to learn to love the cracks, see the beauty in them. We learn something new every day. You should embrace it. It’s so easy to fall into shame when it’s that primal feeling you felt as a child. When too much was put on your shoulders,” she touches my shoulder gently. “When too much was expected of you and all you learned was to be good.”
I swallow.
“Your mistakes don’t define you, Julieta. Neither does your perfection. You are good.” She points to my heart, driving her words home. “But still. It’s a process to learn to do things for yourself. And it’s a learning curve, a balance.”
A balance. My whole life has felt like balance, never trying to fall too far in one direction, never wanting to tip the scales. “And how do I start then?”
“Well,” she takes a breath. “You ask yourself what you want. That’s a broad question, so you start small. What do I want right now?” She looks around the table. “What do I want to eat?”
“What do I want to eat? That’s the life changing question?”
She laughs. “You come to this house every single Sunday, and you sit in that same chair, and you pick up that same plate, and your mother places serving upon serving of food on it, encouraging you to eat everything, and then sends you home with a ton of leftovers you may or may not want. What if you made your own plate without the imposition of others, what would you want to eat?”
I sit back, silent, unable to answer this one small question that, unlike my sassy remark, may very well be life-changing for me.
“And then you ask yourself, what do I want today? And what do I want this week? And what do I want in the next six months? And then, what do I want in this life? But answering the question is one thing. Acting on it is another. Setting the boundary, teaching yourself not to care about what others think—that’s the hard part.” She lifts an eyebrow, eyeballing me like she knows the difficulty of it.
“You chip away at it,” she repeats. “Little by little. You learn to slowly live life for yourself. And eventually, you build a life you love so much, that makes you so happy, that nothing else matters.”
She finishes the last sip of her wine, and I sit a bit dazed.
Cecilia gets up to go into the kitchen and tells everybody she’s got to go. “Me voy. Bye.” She kisses everybody goodnight, gives me a wink, and then she’s out the door.
There’s a rustle next to me and I turn to see T sitting down beside me, eating a slice of cake.
“Where did that come from?”
“There’s some in the kitchen. I dunno, I think she got it from Publix.” She shrugs, taking a bite. “It’s fine.”
I snort in response as I pull out my phone to check messages and emails, something out of habit. But I realize as I do it, I don’t care. I don’t want to know what Barbara needs. I don’t care about what tomorrow morning will look like. I can figure it out then. I click the phone off and put it back in my pocket.
“This is good,” T nods, watching me closely. “I like it.”
“What?”
“Your new hobby,” she says around a mouthful of cake.
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.” She smiles like she’s got a juicy secret, and I choose not to think too much of it. Instead, I lean on this newfound feeling of excitement and enjoyment. I lean on the relief of finally telling somebody else what’s been going on.
“Keep going, Julie.”
This feels like tumbling toward something in the best way, falling right into it and rolling downhill. That’s how everything felt last night, like something unstoppable. Like when I caught sight of him at the Alley Cat that one night and wondered what destruction I could be barreling into. Except I misread it.
It’s not destruction. It’s pleasure in all its forms.
And I want it all.
“I think I’m going to go,” I tell T.
“Me too.”
“You going out tonight?”
“Nah.” She finishes up the last bite of cake. “Tinder is trash.”
“Love you, Agostina.” I wrap my arm around her in a side hug, squeezing as I do.
“Yeah, yeah.”
As I get to my car, my phone vibrates with an incoming call. I almost let it go to voicemail, but I look down and find Logan’s name across the screen.
“Hi,” I answer immediately. “This is a nice surprise.”
“I was thinking … maybe we should try and squeeze in an extra lesson this week?” I can’t see his face, but I’m sure there’s a smug grin attached to it.
“Sounds like a great idea,” I agree. And then I think about chipping away at it. And asking myself what I want. And then I ask him. “How about tonight?”