Colin glanced at his phone. “Yeah, that’s my ride.” He got up from the bench. “Well…thanks for talking to me. I’ll message you once I have a first draft.”
“Okay. I’d say, ‘have a good night,’ but, well… I think I’ll settle for ‘have a good tomorrow.’”
“Nowhere to go but up.”
He made his way over to the car, climbing into the backseat. Before the car could pull away, he rolled his window down.
“There’s a coffee shop in my apartment complex,” he called.
“I know,” she called back.
“Care to join me at that one? My treat.”
Charlene paused. Okay, this is a guy who was interested in your best friend until literally five minutes ago, and he’s sort of an idiot—probably the smartest idiot you’ve ever met, but still.
Noticing her hesitation, he quickly began to backpedal.
“I mean—only if you want, if you don’t want to, that’s fine—”
But he does seem to want to be better. And there’s no rule saying I’m not allowed to be friends with him. It’s not weird. Is it?
Nah.
“Move over, I’m coming,” she said, hopping up from the bench.
Colin opened the backdoor for her, and she hurried over, not wanting to keep the driver waiting any longer than they already had.
Why she’d agreed, she had no idea. He was absolutely ridiculous, even if he was harmless, and most of his awkwardness was weirdly endearing.
What am I doing? It wasn’t that she felt sorry for him. He had been a jerk in so many ways.
But when he wasn’t droning on about things, he was nice.
What was the harm in going for a cup of coffee with him?
Still, she had no idea why she’d accepted his invite.
Nope. Not weird at all.
Chapter Eleven
In Which Parental Support Is… Lacking
“Elisa Jane Benitez, I order you to call Colin right now and tell him you’re sorry.”
“I’m not apologizing. I have nothing to apologize for.”
Elisa and her mother had been having this argument ever since Charlene left. She was still sitting on her bed, refusing to dignify the argument by standing up. Her mother, meanwhile, hadn’t stopped pacing since she came in.
“Colin Burger could be very good for you, Elisa,” Mom said, trying to force her daughter to see reason. Or, more accurately, her version of reason.
“I don’t like him, Mom,” she said, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “He’s a jerk.”
Mom stopped pacing long enough to give her a stony stare. “A jerk with a huge bank account and a very good family.”
“You can’t stand his family. You threw a tray of brownies at his mom at a PTA meeting when I was twelve.”
“I am willing to put all that unpleasant business behind me,” she said.
“If you like Colin, you can have him. I won’t touch him with a ten-foot pole.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t like him,” she said through clenched teeth. “What part of that don’t you get?”
“Don’t you take that tone with me, Elisa Jane.”
“Sorry,” she snapped in a tone that indicated that she wasn’t.
“Elisa, I order you to apologize and agree to give him a chance.”
She crossed her arms. “You can’t force me to go out with him,” she said.
“If—if you don’t—” Her mother was sputtering, trying to find something she could say to sway her. “If you don’t apologize and give him at least one date, God as my witness, I’ll never speak to you again.”
“Promise?”
She glared at her but didn’t say anything. Elisa rolled her eyes. Her mother was bluffing, and they both knew it. She’d threatened to never speak to her again when she got suspended for calling her old sociology teacher a “sexist, racist, backward-thinking, limp-dicked idiot,” too. After twelve hours or so, she’d cracked and admitted that Elisa hadn’t been entirely wrong, though she still felt that bringing his dick into it was a bit uncalled for. This would be no different, she was sure. She just had to wait it out.
Elisa got to her feet and stormed out of her bedroom, not bothering to see if Mom was following. “Well, as long as you’re giving me the silent treatment,” she said, grabbing her jacket, “I’m going to Papa’s for a couple of hours. See you later.”
“Elisa, you get—” She cut herself off.
“Bye.”
She left the apartment, slamming the door behind her.
Her father lived in a small house with two roommates, a married couple named Stella and Yvonne, but they never seemed to mind when she came over unannounced. Luckily, it was only a twenty-minute walk. The cold autumn air nipping at her heels, Elisa hurried over to her father’s house, thinking of all the ways her mother would probably make her life difficult for the next couple of weeks.
When she arrived, Stella answered the door. She was a short woman, even shorter than Elisa, and had dyed her hair a violent shade of purple.
“Is Papa here?” Elisa asked, shivering a bit from the wind.
“Yeah,” she said. She stepped aside to let Elisa in, yelling up the stairs. “Miguel, Daughter Number Two is here to see you.”
“Coming,” he yelled back.
The small house’s living room was stacked, wall-to-wall, with books. About 90 percent of them belonged to Elisa’s father. Back when he still lived in Longbourn, most of the living room’s floor space had been dedicated to his extensive library. Now that he’d moved out, it had grown exponentially. She swore it gained at least ten new books every time she came over.
Miguel Benitez dashed down the stairs, smiling once he saw his daughter. In spite of the awful day she’d been having, she smiled, too.
“Hey, Lisa,” he said, wrapping his arms around her as soon as he reached her. As usual, his clothes smelled like the newspaper factory in which he worked. He pulled back to look at her face. His dark eyes, which he’d passed on to Elisa, glinted with thought as he looked her over. “Let’s see…” he said, half to himself. “It’s after dinnertime, you didn’t call before coming over, you didn’t bring a bag, meaning you left quickly… Your mom pissed you off.”
“Bingo,” she said.
“What happened?”
As they spoke, he began leading her up the stairs. The staircase, which creaked with every move they made, was also a storage space for more books. Stacks of dog-eared paperbacks rested at the bottom of the steps. If she hadn’t already known they were there, she might have tripped over them. The house was just big enough for three people, but they had to make the best of the relatively small space they had been granted.
“Colin Burger asked me out,” she said.
Her dad did a double take.
“That obnoxious kid you used to be in book club with?” he asked. His lip instinctively curled in disgust, earning a small grin from his daughter.
“The same,” she said.
“What’d you say?”
She rolled her eyes. “What do you think I said?”
“Did he cry?”
“Not while I was there. I kind of let him have it,” she admitted.
“How bad was it?” he asked. They reached the door to his room, which probably could’ve come off its hinges if someone breathed on it too hard. He pushed it open carefully, stepping aside to let her in.
Elisa tossed her bag onto his desk chair. “Um…the phrases ‘obnoxious, self-centered creep’ and ‘I’ll beat your ass’ may have been thrown around.”
“So, a pretty standard Benitez family dinner?”
“Papa.”
“Sorry. Colin Burger’s rich, isn’t he?”
“Seriously rich,” she confirmed. “He’s related to the Fitzgeralds.”
“Damn. I take it your mother wasn’t too thrilled you let a rich, single man slip through your fingers,” he said. He sat down on his bed, which was really too small for a man of h
is height. The tiny room functioned as a combination bedroom/office, and the furniture setup was much closer to a game of Tetris than a page out of Better Homes and Gardens.
“More like ‘forcefully threw a rich, single man directly into the trash can where he belongs.’” She sighed, leaning against the wall. “Mom said she won’t speak to me ever again if I don’t go out with him.”
“God as her witness?”
“God as her witness.”
Miguel rolled his eyes. “That sounds about right,” he said. “I give her six hours before she caves. She can’t force you to like him, and I think she knows that. And if you ever feel the temptation to give in, just remember: Alex may never speak to you again if you don’t go out with him, but I’ll never speak to you again if you do.”
She laughed. “Woe is me,” she said. “No matter what I do, I’ll lose one of you.”
He smiled. “Don’t worry too much about this whole thing,” he said. “There are plenty of Colins out there, but there’s only one you. Your mom will get over it soon enough. Especially since Jules is dating that Robert person. Are they still together?”
Elisa nodded. “Yeah, it seems to be going pretty well. Mom’s been so psyched about their relationship status that she’s forgotten to hassle me about mine. You know, until Colin ruined that for me.”
“Maybe you could bribe Julieta into having a fight with her friend. That should keep your mother distracted.”
She snorted. “Unlikely. Jules likes him too much. And I’m not sure Bobby is capable of being disagreeable.”
“Oh yeah, isn’t he the one that let you stay in his house for half a month?”
She nodded, having a seat next to her father on the bed. “Yep.”
He let out a laugh. “Maybe you should’ve started squatting there.”
“Now, you sound like Mom.”
She glanced at his bedside table and the framed picture there of herself and her sisters at Julieta’s community college graduation, all standing arm-in-arm in front of the stage. They were all laughing, giddy, Julieta in a cap and gown, everyone else in sundresses for the occasion. It was one of the only pictures Elisa had seen in the past few years where Maria was smiling.
That had been a pretty good night. Their parents had spent the entire ceremony and the party back at the apartment in proximity of each other, and nothing exploded. Camila and Lucia had been kind enough to put their usual antics to rest, meaning Elisa hadn’t run herself ragged looking after them. Even Alejandra’s parents and Miguel’s parents, who normally couldn’t be in the same city without someone getting slapped or yelled at, had managed to put their feud aside for the sake of Julieta’s graduation.
That was one advantage, Elisa supposed, to being the family darling—no one wanted to be the one that ruined her special day. She could only hope that this would still be true when she got married. As the presumptive maid of honor, she was pretty sure it was her job to murder any troublemakers, and it would make things super awkward if the troublemakers turned out to be her own grandparents.
“You seen Cam and Lulu lately?” she asked, finger running over the wooden frame of the picture. Miguel saw her and Julieta fairly frequently, and Maria often came over to his house to study when the apartment was too loud. Back when they were younger, he’d spend time with all of them nearly every week. But as the girls got older, he acquired two roommates to help with the rent, and he took on more responsibilities at work, the arrangement had changed from “Papa comes and gets us and we stay with him on the weekends” to “we all have a key and are free to come over whenever we like.” Now that all the sisters were old enough to walk over to his house on their own, this was okay in theory, but in practice, it just led to Camila and Lucia falling through the cracks.
Personally, Elisa thought the reasons her father had given for changing the arrangement were pretty lame. But she wasn’t sure how to breach the topic without starting a massive argument.
He shifted awkwardly where he sat. “I IM’d Lucia last night,” he offered.
She sighed. She loved her father, but she’d never been a fan of his “hands-off” approach when it came to her two youngest sisters. Julieta, Elisa, and Maria were usually okay with minimal interference from their father, but the other two needed all the help they could get.
“They know my door is always open to them,” he said, sensing his daughter’s exasperation.
“It feels like they’re getting wilder all the time,” she said, because she didn’t dare question his parenting style directly. Indirectly, however…
“That’s not surprising. I always feel the average level of silliness go up whenever they’re around.”
Elisa shot him a look, the kind that she’d learned from her mother.
“I mean that with love,” he added quickly. “You know I don’t always mesh well with those two, but I do love all my girls.”
“I know,” she said.
“And Cam and Lucia know it, too.”
“Yeah,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure that was always true.
Miguel hastily changed the subject. “Do you want to crash on the couch tonight, or are you going to go home and brave Hurricane Alex?”
She sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. “I should probably just go and face it. Once she decides she’s speaking to me again, she’ll probably want to yell.”
“You sure you don’t want to hide out here for a little while longer?” he asked.
“Maybe just an hour or two.”
“I have some reruns of Law and Order on the DVR.”
“Sold.”
…
Her mother had gone to bed by the time Elisa came home, for which she thanked her lucky stars. When she tiptoed in, closing the door as quietly as she could, she was surprised to see her youngest sister lounging on the couch, texting. Lucia looked up as the door shut.
“Hey, sis,” she said, sitting up slightly.
“Lucia, it’s getting late,” she whispered, moving to sit on the couch with her. “Don’t you have plans tomorrow morning?”
“It’s fine, I can chug a Red Bull on the way there,” she said with a shrug. “I just wanted to make sure you got home.”
Elisa wrapped an arm around her shoulders, giving her a quick squeeze. “You didn’t need to wait up for me.”
“I know. But if it got to be two and you hadn’t texted or anything, I was gonna wake up Mom.”
“Well, thank you for restraining yourself long enough for me to get here,” she chuckled. “She still mad?”
“A little bit,” she said.
“Great.”
“How was Papa?”
“The same as ever,” she said. “You talk to him lately?” She wasn’t sure why she was asking when she already knew the answer. Maybe just to gauge her reaction.
Lucia tugged on a lock of her hair, one of the strands that had been dyed. Everyone had been expecting their mom to hit the roof the day she came home with bright pink streaks in her black hair, but Mom had taken it remarkably well. She’d told Elisa privately that she thought it looked ridiculous, but, “It’s hair—it’ll grow out. Besides, my hair looked much stupider in the eighties.”
“We messaged for a bit last night,” she said, not meeting her eyes.
“You miss him, don’t you?”
Lucia attempted a laugh. “Don’t be dumb. He doesn’t live even half an hour away.”
“I miss Charlene even when she’s only a few apartments over. I know you can miss Papa.”
“He doesn’t get me. Not the way Mom and Cam do.”
“Yeah, but you still love him, and he still loves you,” she said gently. If she couldn’t push Miguel into reaching out, maybe she could push Lucia. “If you want to spend more time with him, invite him to do something.”
“He’s my dad,” she said. “Isn’t he supposed to do the inviting?”
“It can be a two-way street,” she said, though she’d privately thought something similar.
“Yeah.” She didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t say anything else on the subject. Instead, she got to her feet. “Well, now that I know that you didn’t get stabbed on your way home, I’m headed to bed.”
“Okay.” Elisa got up as well. “Good night.”
Lucia disappeared behind the room divider, and Elisa headed to her bedroom, moving quietly so she wouldn’t wake Julieta. She slipped under the covers, absentmindedly reaching for her phone. The events of the day still had her wired—maybe some social media stalking would help dull the mind and senses.
She’d spent an embarrassing amount of time scouring all of Wick’s social media pages. Scrolling through his Instagram, taking great care to not accidentally like something from years ago, had become routine, and tonight was no different.
She’d been looking over his profile for about ten minutes when she saw something she’d never noticed before. A picture from four years ago, with the caption:
#tbt to when we were kids!! love ya, @missfitzgerald
The picture was of a young Wick, maybe twelve years old or so, grinning, braces on his teeth. And he was standing arm in arm with what was definitely, undoubtedly, a young Darcy Fitzgerald.
Chapter Twelve
In Which Wick Makes Elisa Hate Darcy Even More (Yes, That’s Possible)
Three days later, as promised, Elisa showed up at the Hangover at seven p.m. Wick was late. Okay, not by much, but just enough that she was checking her messages or glancing at the clock every ten seconds. Still, once he did arrive, his smile was more than enough for her to let it slide.
“Sorry I’m late, Elisa,” he said. “Traffic.”
“It’s cool,” she said. She gave him a quick hug that left her feeling a bit fuzzy inside before they headed into the bar.
They filled the first half hour or so with polite small talk, chatting about her classes and his job, then Wick finally said, “You want to hear about Darcy.”
She cringed slightly. “Has it been that obvious?”
He chuckled. “I get it. I have been sort of teasing you, haven’t I?”
“Well, can you blame me for wanting to know?” Elisa asked. “I mean, it must be serious if you two used to be friends.”
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