Gabriella, just put on something normal people would wear,” says Juan Carlos.
Juan Carlos is twenty-four. He’s her uncle Julián’s son; the only son of her only uncle on her mom’s side. Gabriella knows he loves her, because he has to—he’s three years older and responsible for her while she’s down here. He’s taken her under his wing even when he hasn’t wanted to, like the year he dated Marisol Vázquez, who hated her and still hates her now.
He also thinks she’s weird, because she studies piano, which in his mind is useless. And that’s cool, he always points out, since she’s well off and should be able to do whatever the hell she wants with herself. Except that she practices eight hours a day, and he figures if anyone is going to put that much effort into anything, shouldn’t it be something a little more practical?
“Tennis,” he says. “Tennis, I get. If you played eight hours of tennis a day, you’d be the best player in the world, and you’d make tons of money. But all this practicing to have one hundred people go hear you? I mean, play guitar in a band or something.”
“Really, Juanca, you are so incredibly superficial sometimes, I have to wonder if we’re even related,” she snorts, although lately she’s been wondering herself if all this piano playing is worth the grief.
“Gabriella is my crazy cousin,” Juan Carlos often tells people, and compared with his other cousins, who are all MBAs, she knows she is. And she loves it. She does things just to provoke him, like the time she visited him at the New York firm where he was working as a summer intern, wearing a dress with oval cutouts along the sides.
“Gabriella,” he muttered under his breath as they rode down in the elevator. “Could you try not to look like an artist for just one day?”
One night, in a moment of weakness, she tried to explain the psyche of the musician. “We dress like musicians to hide our insecurities, Juanca,” she explained earnestly after smoking half a joint. “All musicians are nerds, and all classical musicians are bigger nerds. We need to make it up, somehow.”
Ever pragmatic, he really looked at her as if she were high. “Insecure people don’t get onstage,” he said quite logically.
“They do. They have to,” she countered. “That’s the only time they can show off.”
“But you don’t even like getting onstage, Gabriella,” he said smugly. “I’m the one who likes it!”
Gabriella always waves him away dismissively when he says things like this, but she knows he’s right. She is like her father, more comfortable behind the scenes than on the spot. And yet, everyone expects her to be in the forefront: her grandmother, who considers her perfect, her father, who tells her anything she wants to do is fine with him, and yet, she can almost touch the voids he wants to fill with her actions. He may not say it, but he wants her—no, he needs her—to shine.
When she’s down here, she can physically feel the pressure of perfection easing from her chest. She is almost someone else; a glamorous stranger whose depths are rarely plumbed, who is never here long enough to make an impact, who can glide effortlessly in the shadow of an older cousin with just the right connections.
Juan Carlos has the golden eyes and pixie, youthful looks of her mother’s family. He looks so young sometimes he’ll go without shaving for days at a time, like tonight. He really, really thinks this makes him look tougher, more manly. She’s always thought it makes him look like an overgrown schoolboy, and that’s why girls cling to him. They want to take care of him. She has never told him this, because he would genuinely be offended; more so because he is her designated protector. A traditional kind of guy who will still open the car door for her.
Gabriella likes it.
She thinks it’s the Nini in her. Maybe her outfits are crazy, but she likes guys who dress like prep schoolers and introduce her to their parents.
So she lets Juan Carlos be a little dictator about her outfit tonight. It’s his party, not hers. And he’s playing it safe, with an untucked, dark blue polo shirt over his jeans, loafers, and a handwoven bracelet that all the preppie guys are wearing, the kind they think makes them look cool.
Gabriella wanted to go all out and wear this very, very little, very, very red dress, partly because she’s really stepped up on her running and her legs, with all due respect, she thinks, look fabulous.
But Juan Carlos thinks she’ll stick out like an athletic gringa in a red dress, plus she’ll be taller than him with her high heels. She likes to provoke him, but not make him look bad.
“Jeans?” she asks.
“Jeans is cool,” he says, looking at his watch.
“Relax,” she tells him. “I won’t embarrass you in front of the new girlfriend.”
“Oh, please,” he says scornfully. “She is not the new girlfriend, and I could give a damn what she thinks. All I ask is normal. Normal. Is that too much? Hooker dresses aren’t normal for a party.”
“Hey, I’m wearing the jeans,” she informs him good-naturedly from the walk-in closet. “And it’s not a hooker dress,” she adds huffily, considering it. I mean really, as if he were some fashion plate. “It’s Juicy Couture.”
But she puts on her jeans, tight, very expensive jeans, and a white T-shirt and a studded black leather belt. A dozen necklaces and her Celtic silver cross. She looks as normal as she can possibly look.
Juan Carlos stares at her hair, but she anticipates it.
“Don’t even mention it,” she warns.
He shrugs. “You look like a lioness,” he snorts.
“Well, roar!”
Gabriella loves her hair. It’s very curly and long and thick, and she likes streaking it in multiple shades of silver and blonde and brown. Drying it straight, she finds, is a pain in the butt. Plus she thinks it makes her look like a Cali Stepford wife, which she simply will not contemplate, no matter how much she identifies with Cali.
It’s also the single physical trait she’s inherited from her mother.
Gabriella likes to think that people who knew her mother will look at her hair and be reminded of her. No one has ever told her that. But still, she likes the thought.