“Hola, Camilo.” Tom’s voice was like a caress in my ear, and I had to squeeze my eyes to focus and not do something ludicrous like sigh, or whimper.
This was a professional call. Tom was not my lover.
“Hi. So, I hate to do this so last minute, but could we move our meeting tomorrow to 4:00 p.m.? I have something I can’t get out of and need time to get back to Harlem.”
He made a rumbling sound, and it was like thunder crackling through my nerves. It’d been a week since our first meeting, and I really wanted to see him again.
“Sure, no problem.” His voice was lower when he spoke again. “I thought you were going to have to cancel. Like I said before, my schedule is fairly flexible. Do you need more time? I can meet later than that.”
The way Tom spoke to me, like he cared about my needs, or like making things easier for me was a priority to him, was intoxicating. It was most likely because he was a decent person and didn’t act like a diva because he had money, but deep down in a little corner of my heart where no one else was invited, I imagined this was only for me.
“No, 4:00 p.m. should work, I just need to drop my mom off—”
I stopped talking, horrified that I’d shared information about a personal appointment with Tom. My lack of professional boundaries were going to get me in a serious bind before this renovation even got off the ground.
I sighed internally and tried again. “I need to get back to Harlem from the Bronx. I shouldn’t need more than an hour.”
The silence on Tom’s end was making me squirm. I felt exposed and weirded out by the possibility that he’d ask what I was doing.
“Camilo.” The way he said my name, in that perfect inflection, like it was supposed to sound, got me every time. “If you need to take care of your mom, we can reschedule. Your family is the priority.”
I hesitated before I spoke, but soon I was saying more than I probably should. “It’s fine. I’m just going with her to an appointment.” To do an intake for a domestic violence support group, which she’s finally agreed to do after years of trying to convince her and I don’t want to miss the chance to get her there. “The place is right by Fordham Plaza. We should be done by three. I can take the Metro-North from there, it won’t even take thirty minutes. I just want to give myself enough time, so you don’t have to end up waiting for me if I get delayed.”
Again his response took some time and when he spoke, he was the hesitant one. “Why don’t I meet you up there?” I actually had to suppress a gasp at the question. “We can have our meeting at the botanical garden.” His voice suddenly rose with excitement. “I’ve been wanting to see the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit, and it’s supposed to be beautiful out tomorrow.”
There went my pulse again, threatening to jump out of my chest. This was not a good idea. This was the opposite of sensible. The botanical garden was not a place for business meetings, it was a place for dates. I could not date Thomas Hughes.
I opened my mouth to put a brake on this course of action, but when I spoke I heard my stupid mouth say, “I’ve been wanting to see that too.”
This time there was no pause and I got a firsthand glimpse of the tenacious businessman Tom was rumored to be. “Excellent. I’ll meet you at the conservatory. I’ll leave a ticket for you at the front.”
“Tom, you don’t have to do that,” I protested, feeling already like this was getting closer and closer to a date by the second.
“Of course I do, I keep changing meeting locations and it’s the least I could do given how easygoing you’ve been.” I wasn’t even sure what he was talking about. I was the one who’d changed the time of the appointment and he had come up with the gardens because I was going to be in the Bronx. Somehow Tom had made me feel like I was making his day easier by changing our entire plan for the meeting.
I wanted to be contrary, to tell him that he was changing the rules and making it harder for me to keep myself at bay, but I also wanted to see him. I wanted to see the exhibit with him. I wanted.
Tom.
I heard the sound of his throat clearing and I wondered if he was as fucked up about the pull between us as I was, but when I spoke I could do nothing to mask the anticipation in my voice. “All right. I’ll see you then.”
“Until tomorrow, Camilo.”
I ended the call and sat there wondering if there was any chance I could realistically stick to my “stay off Tom’s dick” plan for much longer, until Ayako’s voice mercifully yanked me out of my fretting.
“Yoooooo... Is all that frowning about Mr. BDE?”
Ayako thought she was fucking hilarious.
“I’m not frowning and calling a major donor ‘Mr. Big Dick Energy’ is super unprofessional,” I said primly.
She laughed at my very weak attempt at outrage and planted her ass on my desk. “I have sources who can confirm that the dick is indeed big.” She widened her eyes and put a finger over her lips, then aimed it at me.
The smile threatening to break out of my face was very hard to hold back. “I’m sorry. I can’t confirm or deny any knowledge concerning Mr. Hughes’s dick, or any other body parts.”
She twisted her bright red lips to the side as she rolled her eyes. “Uh huh, so what’s the deal, why are you sitting here looking spooked? Did he cancel on you?”
I sighed as I tried to extract what was appropriate to say about everything I was feeling at the moment. “No, I just called to let him know that I needed to push back the meeting an hour.”
A spark of cautious optimism warmed my chest as I thought of the reason for the time change. “I finally convinced my mom to do the intake for that support group for Spanish speakers the DV center from the Bronx is doing.” Ayako’s face lit up at that. She was well aware how much I’d struggled to get my mom to do anything related to her trauma history.
“I’m so happy to hear that. It’ll be so good for her to talk to other women.” She sounded genuinely excited. Ayako knew how long I’d been trying to cajole my mom to do a group.
I nodded, still not wanting to call this development with my mom a victory. “I’m a little bit worried that she seemed to say yes too easily. Maybe she’s doing worse than she’s letting on.”
Ayako leaned and smiled in that way she did when I was getting “too pessimistic.”
“Maybe she’s just ready. We talk about meeting people where they’re at until our tongues fall out around here. If it’s good enough for our clients, it should be good enough for us.”
I exhaled, conceding her point. “You’re right. I just worry.”
“Take this as a win, friend. This a good step toward Dinorah starting to believe that what happened to her isn’t who she is. I’ve heard really great things about that program, they use a good model.”
I dipped my head in agreement. “I will take it as a win, and yes, I’ve only heard positive things.” I glanced at my office door, as if checking for eavesdroppers. “I ended up blabbing to Tom about it and by the time we were done talking, we’d arranged to meet at the botanical garden tomorrow.” Ayako widened her eyes at this development. “These meetings sound more and more like dates, and I’m pretty sure I do not have the self-control it takes to resist Tom Hughes if he even hints at a repeat from the night at the gala.”
I stared up at Ayako, hoping she would give me the talking to I needed. Instead she got up and walked over to the door, shut it and walked back to my desk.
“I’m not going to tell you to have a torrid affair with a donor, because that would be terrible advice.”
Awesome I was about to get another “just go with the flow” pep talk. I needed a fucking reckoning, before I ruined my career and this project, not one more person telling me this was not a terrible idea.
“Don’t think I don’t know you’re internally rolling your eyes at me.” She leaned over to smack my shoulder playfully. “Camilo, I know that despite your insistence that you have terrible judgment and can’t be trusted to be sensible when you have feelings for someone.” She leaned in close, so she was looking straight at me. “You are an excellent judge of character—” she held up her finger and waved it in the air “—and you have very good self-preservation instincts. I also know that your mother has always been sacred ground for you. If your gut is telling you this guy is trustworthy, then fucking go with it, babe. I’ve seen shit go down in flames between you and some of the clueless assholes you’ve dated.”
She hooked her thumb over her shoulder as she talked. “But that was on them, not you.”
After a moment of me just staring at her, she threw her arms up as if recalling a particularly compelling piece of evidence. “Fuck, I don’t think you ever even told that dickbag Paul Dinorah’s name, and you dated for almost two years. Yet from one meeting Tom already knows how she came to the States. It took you three years to tell me, motherfucker!”
I broke as soon as dickbag came out of her mouth. “Fine,” I said, too amused by her to keep arguing. “But if I end up getting fired for this shit, I’m moving in with you.”
She laughed and got up from the spot on my desk where she’d perched. “I would not mind splitting Astoria rent prices, but I don’t think you’re going anywhere. Just chill out and go on your meeting/date with the Dominican billionaire with the BDE.”
“Stop,” I pleaded as she back walked out of my office with a huge grin on her face.
Why did I think I could go to Ayako for sensible advice?
I was completely sure that doing this with Tom was the road to perdition, but it seemed like I’d at least have some friends with me when I got there.
I sensed him before I saw him coming up the path to the conservatory.
He had his hair in a bun again, but this time he was wearing dark red slacks and a gray sweater under a leather bomber jacket. A messenger bag slung across his chest. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the outfit, but to me he looked perfect.
He glanced up as he started walking towards the steps where I was standing. As soon as he saw me, his face broke into an easy smile, and he lifted a hand in greeting. Before I knew what I was doing I started walking to meet him halfway.
“Hi,” I said holding myself back. The need to kiss him felt like a gravitational force, every part of my body wanted to get closer, to touch him.
Camilo looked up at me, and I could see just a slight tremor go through him. I wondered if he was having the same reaction. After a moment he blinked and pointed to the glass doors of the conservatory.
“Shall we?”
I realized that we were standing in the middle of the steps and people were having to walk around us. I felt a little embarrassed but nodded and turned toward the glass doors.
Once inside, Camilo stopped to look around. “I haven’t been here in ages,” he said, inspecting the glass-encased building. “My mom used to love to come see the orchid show in the spring.” His smile faded a bit then. “We haven’t come in a while.”
I stepped closer to him, looking up at the glass dome above us. “It’s quite a building. I didn’t come here until I’d been in New York for a few years and was pretty blown away by it when I did.”
We looked at the tropical plants as we talked. “And a little homesick.”
Camilo lifted and eyebrow at that. “Homesick?”
I gestured towards the doors that led to another greenhouse. “They have a lot of trees that are indigenous to the DR here.”
He perked up at that, nodding at all the plants I was pointing to. “That makes sense, my mom loved tearing off pieces of the Bay Rum leaves whenever we came here. She said it reminded her of her mom.”
I smiled at that, because that smell also brought up memories for me. “My grandma always had a bottle of rubbing alcohol with Bay Rum leaves in it. Anytime any of us fell down, she would soak a cloth with it and make us press it to the bruise.”
Camilo sighed wistfully at my memory. He curled into himself a little bit as if he was getting chilled, and the impulse to put my arm around him had me almost vibrating. We walked a bit more, looking around the trees and plants of my childhood, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to be here with him.
“How did it go with your mom?” I asked while he inspected a cacao tree.
His shoulders tensed at the question, but after a moment he answered in a low voice. “It was fine. It wasn’t anything major, she just didn’t want to go alone.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” I didn’t want to pry or ask for more details, since it was clear to me this was not an easy topic for him. I was going to leave it there, when Camilo spoke again.
“My mom has depression and anxiety. She knows she needs help with it, but the stigma around mental illness she grew up with is still an issue. She feels embarrassed to seek out help.” His face was a study in frustration, his lush full lips flattened as we started walking again. “I mean if it were me, she’d be begging me to do whatever it took to feel okay, but since it’s for her, she finds every reason not to do it.”
I nodded in understanding. “My dad struggled with depression a lot.”
“From the war?” Camilo’s voice was gentle and so understanding. In the last ten years my life had changed so much that I rarely met anyone new who I didn’t approach with caution. The men that came into my life were usually the ones doing the pursuing and I rarely ever took them up on it. And yet here I was with this man who I barely knew, but could feel already getting into my blood.
I wanted to tell Camilo all my secrets.
When I spoke he turned from what he’d been looking at and focused completely on me. “Yeah. My mom talked my dad into seeing someone and taking what he needed in order to feel better. He has his ups and downs, but he’s been able to cope. Going to a therapist isn’t exactly considered ‘normal’ in the DR, but my mom has always been a bit counterculture.”
“She sounds awesome.” A warmth spread to my chest when he said that and I remembered my mom’s words from the other night. Was this feeling the certainty she told me about?
“She is.” I stopped then, noticing a tree I hadn’t seen before.
Camilo stood next to me and bent over to look at it more closely. “What is it?”
I lifted a shoulder as I pointed to a cluster of green fruits that looked like tiny pickles hanging from the trunks.
“I’m not sure what they’re called in other countries, but in the DR they’re called vinagrillos. We had one in our backyard growing up. They’re really sour, thus the vinegar-related name,” I said, my lips almost puckering from the memory of biting into one. “We used to do contests to see who could eat the most without puking.” I grinned at his horrified look. “I haven’t eaten one in at least fifteen years, but I can totally remember the taste.”
Camilo was focused on what I was saying, his eyes wide, listening to my story.
“I like hearing your DR stories.”
“I like sharing them with you.” I sounded winded. So many feelings that I thought no longer applied to me.
We were quiet for a second looking around before starting for the next part of the exhibit. After a few steps I noticed that Camilo had stayed behind. When I turned around I saw him hurrying toward me with something in his hand. When he got to me he gestured behind an enormous palm tree, extending his hand once we were hidden.
“Here.”
When he opened it I saw a green vinagrillo in his palm, and my face broke into another grin.
“I didn’t steal it. This one fell to the ground,” he said in a tight voice.
I tried to lighten the mood and teased him a bit. “Those looked pretty green,” I said, lifting an eyebrow in question.
“Okay, maybe I gave it a little nudge.” He looked so flustered, like he had no idea why he’d done it.
I put my palm over his, touching him for the first time in what felt like forever. Our hands brushed as I took the fruit and we both shivered from the contact. Here, hidden from view, the moment felt wildly intimate.
“Thank you.”
He shrugged again, but I could see the tension in his shoulders. This mattered. “Try it.”
I brought it up to my mouth and bit into it, it was too sour, and familiar. I closed my eyes as I chewed.
I laughed when I was done. “Wow that is so sour, and delicious.” I extended the bitten fruit to him in offer. He immediately leaned in, and for a second it seemed like he would take a bite from the fruit in my hands. But at the last second he reconsidered and plucked it out of my hand.
Looking more than a little harried, he brought it to his mouth, and took a big bite.
Immediately his eyes widened and he turned his head to spit it out.
“Oh my god. That’s crazy sour.”
I did not dare laugh as he gulped water from a bottle he grabbed from his bag. When he was done he took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes at me.
“Were you fucking with me?”
I held up my hands, still holding in a laugh. “No, I really did love those. We almost never took more than one bite out of them though, and never one so big.” I smiled ruefully. “It was a pretty lame contest.”
He cut his eyes at me as we stepped around the palm tree back to the exhibition. “You could’ve told me.” His grumbling was adorable, and I would’ve given almost anything to be able to grab him and kiss that grumpiness out of him.
I dipped my head and tried to sound contrite. “Sorry. Next time we are revisiting my childhood in the Dominican Republic, I will provide disclaimers.”
“You’re not cute.” He scoffed as we walked and again I felt like being here with him was exactly where I was supposed to be.
All of a sudden he piped up. “Can I ask you something?”
He looked so serious I was almost afraid to say yes, but I nodded.
“Do you see yourself as Dominican?” He gestured at my face, as if presenting me with the evidence. “I mean, you look...white. Your name is Thomas Hughes. But it sounds like so much of who you are is tied to your DR roots. How do you negotiate those parts of yourself?”
Damn. He didn’t beat around the bush. Sanjay and Henock waited years before they’d asked me that.
Not Camilo.
“That’s a pretty loaded question, Camilo. Are you sure you want to get to know me this well?”
He dipped his head, those gray eyes certain and locked with mine. “Yes I do.”
“All right,” I said, once again surprised at how eager I was to open myself up to Camilo. “Well the short answer is yes. I don’t just see myself as Dominican, I am Dominican. That’s where I was born and lived my entire childhood. I came to the U.S. as an adult. Well a legal adult anyway. I’m American too, of course, but I consider myself an immigrant in this country in a lot of ways. When I came to New York for college—I won a scholarship for Columbia.”
He nodded, impressed, and mouthed “fancy.”
“Thank you.” His reactions were always so genuine, I felt like I was always just on the cusp of smiling whenever I was around Camilo.
“It was an amazing opportunity, but at first I was lost. I’d only been to the States for visits a few times, and always with my parents. It was so intimidating to come here on my own. Just me and my two suitcases. It was daunting and so lonely. I didn’t know where I fit. In the DR I’d been Dominican like everyone else. Here I looked white and with my name the Latinx students weren’t sure what to make of me. The white students just assumed I was some kid from the suburbs.” I held up my hand then, because I wasn’t trying to imply I didn’t have all kinds of advantages. “Don’t get me wrong. I was very privileged. I’d gone to the international school where my dad taught in the DR, so I was fully bilingual and had a scholarship to one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and through my dad was a U.S. citizen. I was living the Dominican boy dream, but it was still a hard adjustment. College was tough.”
I smiled thinking about Heni and Sanjay, and how meeting them was like finally finding my people.
“I didn’t really come into my own until grad school. There I met my two best friends who ended up becoming my business partners and my U.S. family in many ways. Sanjay’s family emigrated from India when he was a boy, he grew up in the Midwest where his dad was a physics professor. And Heni came here for grad school from Ethiopia.”
Camilo was still intent on me, he’d made affirmative sounds as I spoke, but he hadn’t said a word yet.
“The guys and I had very different backgrounds, but we hit it off from day one and became each other’s support system. Well and Priya too. I don’t know what I would have done without them. As for how I negotiate those sides, I’m still figuring it out. I think in many ways I chose the path of least resistance. I just let people assume what they want.”
He seemed to be struggling with the last part or whatever he wanted to say in response. Then he looked up and took a sip from his water.
“Thanks for sharing that.”
I knew he was holding something back, but I didn’t want to push. I had a feeling whatever was floating around in his head was not going to be something I wanted to hear.
“You seem like you have something on your mind?”
I felt like Camilo could see into those parts no one else noticed. I’d always been cautious about who I let in. Depending on the people I was with or the situation, I could be Tom Hughes, successful American businessman or Thomas Caonabo Hughes Gomez, son of Esperanza and grandson of Libertad. Those two people were very different and they almost always stamped each other out.
He shook his head and smiled. “I was just thinking. My mom’s really light skinned, and in many ways she could pass. But her name is Dinorah Santiago and she didn’t speak a word of English when she came here. So there was always a line there for her. Even for me. I was born here, but I’m brown and it puts me in the ‘other’ category.”
He paused then and his eyes were trained on something in the distance, like he was making sure he got whatever he was going to say right. That was something I was beginning to learn about Camilo, he didn’t shy away from talking about the uncomfortable things, but he was careful with his words. It wasn’t oversharing or flippant prying; Camilo asked about the hard stuff because he wasn’t afraid to grapple with the answers.
When he was ready to say more he turned those gray eyes back on me. “It must be challenging to have what gives you an advantage also erase you. That the Tom people see doesn’t fit with who you actually are.”
I dipped my head in agreement. Camilo saw too much.
“It’s something I think about all the time. I always wonder, would I have been able to have the success I had with my business if I would’ve looked more like my mom or if my name was Juan Perez? I wonder if I would’ve been able to get into the rooms I did. Or if I did, would I have been taken seriously?”
After a moment, I spoke again. Wanting to share with Camilo these things I rarely ever spoke about out loud. “When we started our company Henock and Sanjay asked that I be the face of the business during our initial talks with investors.” I fiddled with a little branch on the tree in front on us, recalling the discomfort of that conversation.
“They thought it would give us a better chance of securing the funds we needed for the startup. It hurt so much to hear it, and I debated with the decision of going along with it. Not just because I knew they were right and it made the world so fucked up, but by how matter of fact they’d been about it.” I shook my head remembering how awful I felt for them, for us.
“I try not to take things for granted, but I forget sometimes.” I sighed feeling like I’d said too much. “I overshared.”
He was looking at me with such kindness, like he really was trying to understand.
“Don’t apologize. Thank you for telling me a bit more about your story and being so honest. Sounds like you don’t take any of this lightly.” The smile he gave me was the one I got when something I said had caught him off guard. “You keep surprising me, Tom.”
I turned so that I could look at him when I spoke. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
He lifted his eyes to the ceiling as if he was searching for an answer.
“I’m not sure yet.” His eyes looked unsure when he focused them back on me. “But the more I know about you, the harder it is to remember it’s not a good idea to get involved with you.” After that he walked off too fast for me to respond. As I went after him, I realized I probably wasn’t supposed to. But I hadn’t made it as far as I had in business by missing opportunities, and this was one opening I was not going to miss.