Chapter 30
I was the only one who didn’t struggle waking up the next morning. Uncle Miguel was in the kitchen by sunrise, as usual. Our crack-of-dawn breakfasts had become a ritual, and I could now hold entire conversations with him in Spanish. It’s not like we talked politics or anything, but my linguistic skills had finally expanded beyond standard greetings and weather reports.
I sank into a chair at the table. The kitchen was overflowing with dirty dishes, the floor was stained with muddy footprints and the air was thick with the stench of alcohol. I couldn’t imagine what the scene looked like outside. There was no cleanup crew coming to erase the mess and I was praying I wouldn’t be recruited for the task.
“Hola, Mariana,” my uncle said as he sifted through the filthy dishes.
He handed me a cup of coffee and asked for my reaction to the party. We spent the next half hour discussing the Quinceañera and my attempts to salsa dance, which he found rather funny. I told him how impressed I was that the family had arranged everything themselves and how welcomed I felt by my relatives. Truthfully, I had never felt that comfortable with my relatives from home. Most of my aunts and uncles lived only a couple hours away and still we rarely saw them. Family get-togethers just weren’t important, and for the first time I felt like I was missing out on something.
Uncle Miguel patted my hand sympathetically and softly asked me to tell him about my grandparents. His eyes turned sad, but I didn’t question him despite how odd it felt sharing stories about his brother like they were strangers.
I told him about going pumpkin picking with my grandparents every year the week before Halloween. How we’d trek out to a pumpkin patch in Jersey and my grandfather would insist we walk down every row before we made our selections. Vince always picked the largest orange heap he could find, and I always picked the one that was most symmetrical. Afterward we hauled them home and carved ghostly faces with my grandfather’s pocketknives. He was always so proud of our creations, no matter how simplistic.
In return, my Uncle Miguel told me about my father. How he used to call him “Manny” when he lived here, short for his middle name, “Manuel,” which I found bizarre. I had never heard anyone refer to him as anything other than Lorenzo, not even my grandparents. He also said my dad used to run around the house screaming and jumping until my grandmother lost her patience and chased him with a broom. The most physical activity I ever saw my dad engaged in was hoisting his laptop bag to his shoulder.
Finally, after my uncle and I had eaten and he was about to leave for work, Lilly and Vince staggered out of bed.
“Dude, Mariana, you’re up.” Vince trudged into the kitchen and straight to the refrigerator.
“Have fun last night?”
“Totally,” he grumbled.
“Really? ’Cause you seemed kinda busy whispering in that blonde’s ear,” I joked.
“We did a lot more than whisper.”
“Ew, gross!”
“You talking about Antonia?” Lilly asked as she tottered into the kitchen.
“Is that her name?” Vince grinned with a wink.
“Vince!” I shrieked, tossing a crumpled napkin at him.
“I’m just kidding. I know her name . . . and her cup size.”
“Seriously, please shut up.” I groaned, plugging my ears with my index fingers.
“All right, all right.” He laughed. “So, where were you?”
I looked down at my tiny coffee cup. “I was dancing.”
“With Alex,” Lilly mocked.
“No way! Who’s Alex?”
“No one,” I muttered, shooting Lilly a look.
“Oh, be careful. I’ll tell him you said that,” she teased.
I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face.
“You like a boy!” Vince shouted, choking on his orange juice.
“Shut up!” I said, the grin still plastered on my face.
“Oh, my God! You do! I swear, the world is gonna end. Someone check the news.”
“Stop it! Why do you have to make such a big deal out of it? We just danced.”
“Sure you did,” Lilly said with a smirk.
“We did!”
“Uh-huh,” she added.
“First of all, Mariana, you don’t dance with guys unless they’re assigned to you by some ballet teacher. And second of all, in the fifteen years that I’ve known you, you haven’t shown interest in a single guy. Ever.”
“That’s not true,” I said, kind of lying.
I did get crushes on guys, but they were usually seniors, or football jocks, or artist types, who I thought were way out of my league and not worth mentioning to anyone. Besides, none of them ever liked me back, at least not that I knew of. Unlike other girls, I was incapable of altering my personality for guys I found attractive. I couldn’t bat my lashes on cue, or soften my voice, or laugh at unfunny jokes. I was myself, whether I was speaking to my brother, my best friend, my lab partner or a stranger. And to date, guys didn’t seem to find my down-to-earth realism nearly as attractive as girls who pouted their lips and twirled their hair.
“Mariana, it’s true and you know it. This is a big deal. And I think I need to meet this young man,” Vince stated in his most responsible tone.
“Uh, you already did, loser. He’s one of Lilly’s friends.”
“He was my escort, on the court,” Lilly explained.
“Oh, I remember that guy,” Vince said. “I didn’t really talk to him much, but he seemed cool.”
“He is,” I added, rising from my kitchen chair in the hopes of ending the conversation. “Besides, we just danced. It was nothing major. I’ll probably never see him again.”
“I doubt that,” Lilly muttered. “We’re all meeting him and his friends at the beach later today.”
“What?” I screamed.
Lilly immediately ducked out of the kitchen and dashed down the hall to avoid my reaction. I chased after her, almost slipping in my bare feet. She darted into her bedroom and tried to slam the door shut. I threw myself at it just in time.
“It’s nothing,” she explained. “Just after you went to bed last night, I kinda made plans with his friends to get together today.”
“Well, how do you know Alex is gonna be there?” I asked.
The fact that I was being set up was horrifying, but not nearly as much as Alex seeing me in a bathing suit.
“Of course he’ll be there.” She sighed as she pulled out a beach bag and a red string bikini. “Considering you guys were all flirty last night I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“I was not flirty!”
Even I couldn’t keep a straight face as I said it; my mouth spread from ear to ear.
“Look at you! You know you were!” she shouted. “Plus, I wanted to thank you for everything you did for my party. I mean, you didn’t even like me half the time, and you still helped my mom.”
“I like you!”
“Yeah, now you do. But, whatever, you know what I mean. If it weren’t for you I probably would have been walking down the aisle wearing a pink fairy costume and eighties hair.”
I laughed. “You don’t know how close you came to that exact ensemble.”
“I believe it.” She laughed. “Anyway, the beach is gonna be fun. And it’s not a date. It’s a group thing. I’ll be there,Vince’ll be there, Alex’s friends will be there. So don’t freak out.”
I paused and considered the situation. I wanted to see him again. I hadn’t stopped thinking about him since last night. But what if we saw each other in daylight and the magic was gone? What if he saw my pasty skin in a bathing suit and was totally repulsed?
My mind was spinning.
“How many bathing suits did you bring?” Lilly asked, as if reading my thoughts.
“Three.”
“Are any of them bikinis?”
“One. It’s black.”
“Okay, you’re bringing that one.”
I suddenly regretted drinking so much coffee. My hands were jittery and my stomach was swishing. I blamed it on the caffeine.