Chapter 40
Three days later, Alex still hadn’t called or visited. At this point it had been a full week of no contact and I was assuming we had broken up—not that we were ever together. I had watched Vince cut off communication before as a way of ending a relationship rather than verbalizing the breakup aloud. It seemed like an awful thing to do, because there was no official end. Technically the other person could be out in the world thinking they’re still part of a couple, forever.
Lilly, Vince and I were seated on stools in the hotel bar. The leather was sticking to the backs of my thighs. I tugged on my baggy khaki shorts. It was the first time I had ventured into the bar with my brother after dinner. Usually I just watched Spanish TV or, lately, waited for Alex. Lilly and I were the only girls there; my aunt had stayed back at the house to clean. Lilly and Vince had ordered beers while I, as usual, sipped a Coke.
“¿Otro?” asked the bartender, pointing toward my almost empty glass.
I nodded. “So,Vince, you’re a guy.What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About Alex.Why do you think he’s ditching me?”
“You don’t know he’s ditching you. Maybe he’s just busy. It’s not like he has to check in with you. You’re not his mother,” Vince said, before releasing a long beer burp.
Lilly laughed.
“But he wasn’t busy before.We saw each other all the time,” I defended as I picked at the bar’s raised, wooden splinters.
“Well, maybe that’s the problem,” Lilly snipped.
“I suffocated him? You think so?”
“I don’t know,” she conceded, as she drank her beer.
“Mariana, you’re over-thinking this. Guys aren’t that complicated. He’s probably just busy,” Vince said.
I couldn’t imagine this was true. Even if I were busy I would still make time to see him, at worst I would call him to explain. Clearly he wasn’t thinking about me as much as I was thinking about him, and the only logical explanation was that he was busy thinking about somebody else.
“Do you think he met someone?” I squeaked in a low voice, staring at my soda.
“Dude, it’s possible,” Vince muttered.
“Gee, thanks,”
“You asked.”
“Well, you didn’t have to be so quick to agree with me.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
“Forget it. Do you think he’s met someone else?” I asked Lilly, my eyes as sad as a basset hound’s.
“I honestly don’t know. It’s not like he’s some big stud—”
“So you don’t think he has,” I quickly interjected.
She looked at me, shook her head and smirked. “Fine, no. I think there is no way he could have ever met anyone to replace you, almighty Mariana. It’s impossible,” she teased.
“That’s what I was thinking,” I said, laughing at myself.
“Can we please talk about something else,” Vince moaned, rolling his eyes.
“Thank you,” Lilly added.
“Fine,” I huffed.“Can you believe Mom and Dad are coming in a week?”
“I know,” he said, his voice almost sad. “One week of quality family time and then we’re all flying home together.”
“That sucks,” Lilly mumbled.
“I don’t see why we can’t fly home ourselves,” Vince griped.
“Because our parents want to see us and Mom wants to meet everyone.”
“They could see us when we got home,” he huffed.
I rolled my eyes. “Did you know that when Dad lived here they used to call him ‘Manny?’ ”
“Really? Who told you that?”
“Uncle Miguel. He also said that Dad used to want to be a pilot when he grew up. He used to run around everyone’s yards with his arms out to the side, pretending he was a plane.” I held my arms out to mimic the gesture.
“Wow, you and Uncle Miguel talk a lot, huh?” Vince asked, kind of surprised.
“In the mornings.”
“Well, my grandfather’s a big talker,” Lilly added.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that we didn’t even know we had an Uncle Miguel before we came here?” I asked, still picking at splinters on the bar.
“We didn’t know we had any of these relatives before we came here,” Vince pointed out, nodding toward Lilly.
“Well, I didn’t know you or Vicentay existed, either,” Lilly stated.
“But that’s weird, right? Why wouldn’t Dad have come back here sooner? He grew up here.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t like it here. No offense,” Vince said, lifting his chin at Lilly.
“But this was still his home. He knew he had family here, you’d think he’d want to see them. Or you’d think Grandmom and Grandpop would have wanted to see them. I don’t remember them ever visiting,” I said, successfully pulling a small strip of wood from the bar. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but the accomplishment felt oddly satisfying.
“No, they never visited,” Lilly confirmed.
“Well, Grandmom and Grandpop were poor. They probably couldn’t afford the trip,” Vince stated plainly.
“True, but Dad’s not, at least not anymore.”
“He had us. Who would want to trek over here with little kids?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Alonzo, José and our Uncle Miguel walked into the bar at that moment.We all waved lazily and the guys sat down beside us already deep in conversation. They seemed to be having an argument about which country produced more major league baseball players, Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. At this point, both Vince and I could understand most of what people said around us and we could hold entire conversations in Spanish. Vince was even somewhat conversant in the language while drunk, which I found rather impressive.
“¿Dónde está Alex?” my uncle asked innocently, looking around.
“Ahhhh!” I yelled, grabbing my red hair in my fists.
Lilly and Vince laughed. We all hung out at the bar for another hour and no one brought up Alex again.