by S. Ann Cole
“Yup.”
“Well, can we go to a drive-thru or something? I’ll need something to munch on for this long ass drive.”
“Usually, when I take a woman to a drive-thru, we fuck afterward.”
I fall my head back against the headrest and close my eyes, feeling depleted. “How angelic of you.”
His deep chuckle rumbles over me.
Chapter EIGHT
“So, you are with this one now?”
Lexi
After gorging myself on French fries, hot wings, and watered-down pineapple soda—courtesy of Trent’s wallet—I fall asleep about halfway into the four-hour drive.
I’m being pulled from the darkness of unconsciousness by the drip, drip, drip of something cold on my forehead that then descends down my face in tickling rivulets. I jerk awake, my eyes snapping open to find Trent leaned over me with a melting ice cube above my forehead.
“For Pete’s sake,” I snap at him, wiping the liquid from my face. “Has anything about you changed?”
He pops the ice into his mouth. “We’re here.”
“You couldn’t have woken me up like a normal person to tell me that?”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
I pull on the lever below to readjust the car seat upright and stare out the windshield at the neighborhood I grew up in. I haven’t visited in over a year now. Mama is my all, we have a tight mother-daughter bond, so we video call each other often. But I’ve avoided visiting the rest of the family out of sheer embarrassment of how flat I’ve fallen, no matter how much she begs me to come home.
Powering down the window, I gaze out at the Victorian cottage-style, single-story home I grew up in. Aside from a fresh coat of paint—which helped drain the last of my savings—the house looks the same. Nothing much has changed. But that’s Redlands—its “same-old” charm is what makes it so special. Rich with character, color, and history.
The character-rich pink and green house is a mere three bedroom with one bath, but it exceeds its capacity of occupants. On the drive, I called Mama and she told me I’d have to sleep in her room because Uncle Franco moved his kids into my old room.
It’s always been this way. Mama allows them to run over her instead of booting all their asses so they’ll be forced to grow the hell up.
Although it’s almost midnight, my family is out on the veranda playing games. The usual. On a weekday, they’ll go until around eleven. On weekends, they’ll go until three, four in the morning. My family is known in the neighborhood for their late-night veranda games.
“Mom’s already asleep,” Trent says. “But I’ll bring your stuff over.”
After overhearing my conversation with Mama about the sleeping arrangements, he’d called Monica—his mother—and asked her if I could stay in the guest bedroom. To which she bellowed over the speaker, “What kinda foolish question is that? Lexi is always welcome. Doesn’t she have a key? Tell her to just come in.”
Yep, I did have a key, but I’m pretty sure it got charred along with all of Torin’s shit that I burned on their lawn after our breakup.
“How long do I have to stay here again?” I ask.
“I’ll be back for you in two days.”
On the drive, while I stuffed my face, he’d thrown in a stipulation to the deal—yeah, after the fact—that I come home to Redlands and spend some time with my family first.
The last thing I want to do right now is spend time with my family, but I think he knows that, and that’s why he’s making me do it. He’s that kind of jerk. But the moment I agreed to become indebted to him in Vegas, I lost all say. He’s in charge now. As much as I hate it, as much as the rebellious part of me wants to lash out, the fact of the matter is, until the debt is paid, he owns me. Whatever he says goes.
So, biting my tongue, I open the car door and step out. As usual, the Mendez house is the only noisy residence in a generally quiet neighborhood. As I grudgingly trudge up the red-painted pathway, I make out Uncle Franco, along with his common-law wife Marie, Aunt Rosa, Uncle Lenny, and my all-grown-up cousin, Alicia.
They are so deep in their game of dominoes, hollering at each other in Spanglish, that they don’t notice me until I’m ascending the steps to the veranda.
“¡Mira mira!” Uncle Franco exclaims. “¡Vuelve el hijo pródigo!”
I roll my eyes. Prodigal child my ass. “Do you all realize how loud you’re being?”
“You leave the nest and suddenly forget you’re a Mendez,” Aunt Rosa pipes up. “We are loud. Everyone knows this, si?”
Actually, I’m more of a Flores than a Mendez, but… “Whatever.”
Alicia jumps up and rushes over to hug me. Then, one by one, so do the rest of them. They tell me how tall I’ve gotten. How skinny I’ve gotten. That I’m starting to look like a chica blanca.
“Come sit, join us,” says Uncle Lenny. “You used to be good at dominoes, are you still?”
“I can still drag your asses in the mud, if that’s what you’re asking,” I tell him. “Where’s Mama?”
“She goes to bed early now,” answers Aunt Rosa. “She is up before dawn in the mornings to go down to the restaurant.”
“And you’re all out here making so much noise?”
Franco waves me off. “She takes pills. They make her sleep like the dead. Come play.”
Marie orders, “Alicia, go get your cousin a beer and some of the food from tonight.”
“I’m not hungry,” I say. “But I’ll take the beer.”
“Oh, you are very hungry. Very hungry,” Uncle Lenny says. “You need some meat on your bones. You are disappearing.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. I’m one hundred and forty pounds! That’s five pounds over what I should be for my height. But in this family, you’re either curvy or you’re starving; no in between.
Deciding not to waste my breath arguing about this, I take a seat at the domino table. “Just a game or two. I’m a little jet-lagged.”
Trent walks up to the veranda just then. His slight smirk and raised brow tells me he overheard my lie about being jet-lagged. Hell. I hope he doesn’t use it to force me to do something else, like stay here longer with them.
“Night,” he addresses everyone, which gets a chorus of “Hey, Trent”, “Hola, Trent”, “Buenas Noches” in return.
He comes up to me, all confident and commanding, and presses a key into my palm. “Will call you in a few days.”
And then he’s gone again.
“Wait, it is the other one who is your boyfriend, no?” Aunt Rosa asks with a frown. “The serious one. The soldier.”
“That was years ago, Aunty. He’s not my boyfriend anymore.”
Her frown deepens. “So, you are with this one now? The bad one?”
“Oh, for the love of God, I’m not with any of them. Trent is just helping me out with something.”
She makes a sound like she doesn’t believe me as she pulls on a cigarette. “Be careful when asking men for help, niña. Hombres, they do not do women favors for free. They always want something.”
Uncle Franco points his beer bottle in the direction Trent just went. “Especially that one. I watched him enlist his gemelo and the little one to face-off with the older one for ‘stealing his girl’. The older one whooped their little culos.”
“Ah, si, si, I remember that night!” Uncle Lenny chips in. “It was me and you out here, Franco. We had a good laugh that night.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” I ask, confused as all get out. “What fight? When?”
My stupid uncles just smile at me as if they know something I don’t.
“I think what your uncles are saying,” Marie pitches, “is to watch out with that one.”
Alicia returns just then with a loaded plate of food and two beers.
These freaking people.
I eat the food and drink the beer and play a couple rounds of dominoes with my family, because I know it’s going to be a while before I come see them again. I�
��ve spent almost my entire life love-hating them for being complete mooches, unhelpful, and tight-fisted with their own earnings while Mama had to bend her back to cover the bills. But no matter how far I go, or how long I’ve been gone for, whenever I return, it always feels like I never left. They drink, they eat, they laugh, they live, and they love. Even if it’s at the cost of someone else. Maybe that’s the reason Mama keeps them around; so she never has to be alone.
In a way, begrudgingly, I’m sort of glad they’re here. To be able to support Mama monetarily means I’m never around, so I’m somewhat grateful that they’re here to keep her laughing and living. So she’ll never die inside.
Like I have.
When my head starts to feel a bit fuzzy from the beers, I play my last game and stumble into the house. It looks different, but the same. Cluttered, floral, homey, with the same plastic-covered couch set.
I wander down the hall and stop to peek into my old room. All semblance of me is gone. There are two bunk beds on either side of the room with kids fast asleep in them, and an air mattress in the middle. Packed room.
I close the door quietly and amble to Mama’s room—the last one at the end of the hall with a crucifix affixed to the door and rosary beads dangling from the knob. It’s been like that since I was a child.
I test the doorknob. It’s unlocked. Quietly, I open it and peek inside. She’s asleep on her side, the duvet pulled up to her neck. My heart swells with love and warmth. I love that woman so much. Would do anything for her.
Entering the room, I close the door quietly behind me. I remove my shoes and set them aside, then shuffle to the bed and climb in.
I wrap my arm around her.
She stirs. Stiffens. Then relaxes. “Mija?”
“Sí mamá.”
“God protected your journey home, si? Thank him.”
“Gracias, Dios, por protegerme.”
Thank you, God, for protecting me.
“Amén.”
“Te quiero, mamá.”
“Yo también te amo, hija mía.”
I love you too, my daughter.
Chapter NINE
“It was always gonna be him, wasn’t it?”
Lexi
I wake up to a noisy house.
Shrieking kids, slamming doors, clanging of pots and pans. Ah, Saturday mornings at the Mendez house. Oh, how I misseth thee—not.
Rolling over in Mama’s bed, I stretch, twist, and yawn. I have a foggy memory of her kissing my forehead and telling me she was heading out and that I should come to the restaurant for breakfast when I’m up.
With another lazy yawn, I get out of bed and promptly begin making it, folding the duvet just beneath the pillows, the way she prefers it. Mama never leaves her bed unmade.
Donning my shoes, I exit the room and am almost bowled over in the hallway by one of the kids.
“Sorry!”
Another crashes into the other. “It’s Aunty Lexi! It’s Aunty Lexi!”
I’m not their aunt, but as far as they’re concerned, every adult in the family who isn’t their “Mama” or “Papa,” is “Aunty” or “Uncle.”
“Hi, Aunty Lexi!”
And then I’m swarmed. Hugged, crowded, and bombarded with questions. I have nothing to give them, and it makes me sad. I’m the “Aunty” who always shows up with cool gifts.
Before I’m able to extricate myself from them, I dig out the last bit of loose cash I have in my back pocket—two hundred and seventy-five dollars—and tell them to split it up among themselves.
And then I was out of there.
I cross the street to the two-story craftsman-style home I spent a lot my formative teenage years in, with four hellion boys and their spoiled, screaming baby sister. It’s one of the nicest houses on this street, towering over our single-story Victorian cottage.
I’m about to use the brass lion head knocker when I remember that Trent gave me a key last night. It’s still early, and I don’t want to wake Monica if she’s still asleep, so I pat myself down for the key and find it tucked into the front pocket of my jeans.
Letting myself in, I inhale with a sigh. The Garza home still smells the same. Like green leaves and rain. As I walk around, touching surfaces, I notice that while the smell is the same, a lot of interior remodeling has been done and adapted to more modern styles. It’s nice, aesthetic and tasteful, but the homey feeling I remember is gone. It feels somewhat cold now, empty. Which I suppose it is, in a way.
I don’t get to mourn the loss, though, because Monica saunters into the open-plan kitchen just then.
“Lexi! You’re here.”
Warm, welcoming, and graceful are three words that come to mind whenever I think about Monica Garza. Tough when she needs to be, but kind and nurturing always. Jamaican born, she stands tall at about six feet, with a rich, deep-amber complexion and soft brown eyes.
I slap my palm over my mouth. “Can I go freshen up and come right back? I’ve got morning breath and I stink.”
“Of course. Go, go. I’m just about to make breakfast.”
I scurry off to the guest bedroom where my suitcases are deposited at the foot of the bed. I fetch out my toiletry pack and head straight for the bathroom.
Showered and dressed in a fresh change of clothes, I feel more awake and people-ready as I amble out into the house. Monica is in the kitchen preparing breakfast.
“Okay, I’m clean and huggable now,” I say.
Laughing, she turns away from the stove and pulls me into a hug. “It’s really great to have you here again, Lexi.”
“I’m happy to be here.” We break apart. “I was supposed to come over last night, but they got a hold of me. I drank one too many beers and crashed in Mama’s bed.”
She chuckles and shifts back to the stove to flip her fritters. “Well, if there’s one thing the Mendez family knows how to do, it’s live.”
I help myself to a cup of coffee. “Yeah…but sometimes I wish they would do more.”
“There’s nothing better than a content man, Lexi,” she tells me. “People who can be content and joyful even while having little or nothing at all are to be envied. Real contentment is not an easy thing to come by, no matter how much wealth or ‘things’ one has.”
I shrug and take a sip of coffee. “Is Tillie still asleep?”
“She should be up, but she takes forever to come out of her room in the mornings. She spends twenty minutes just to ‘do’ her eyebrows alone. And then there’s the fake eyelashes.” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “You girls these days.”
This makes me cackle. “How old is she now again. Fourteen?”
Monica snorts. “I wish. She turns seventeen in three months.”
“Damn.”
“Yup.”
Monica is the biological mother to only two of the Garza siblings—Tripp, the youngest son, and Tillie, the only daughter and last child.
Word on the street is that Flavio Garza was a big-time playboy who had an obsession with black women, so all of his children are half-black, half-Italian. There are rumors that he has a son in France as well as another set of twins in England.
Trenton and Trueman’s mother was a successful burlesque dancer in Vegas who saw them as an “accident” since she and Flavio were merely friends with benefits. She wasn’t keen on being a mother and spent the first couple years of their lives resenting them. When Flavio married Monica, and the twins started spending the weekends with her, they would bawl their eyes out when it was time for them to go back to Vegas. Eventually, Monica proposed to adopt them, which their mother happily agreed to. Tripp was born soon after, then Tillie. Years later, after his mother died, Torin came to live with them.
Flavio told me and my sister all of this one afternoon while he was dropping us off in town. It was maybe two months before he died. I remember him being emotional about Monica, telling us how grateful he was for her, how strong she was and how she “saved” him. I’d only half-listened to his ramblings that day whi
le I played games on my phone, but after he died and I saw how Monica had juggled it all on her own, without complaints, while being exceptionally graceful and never cracking at the seams. All I could remember was Flavio singing her praises. She is one hell of a woman and my admiration for her knows no bounds.
“Trenton tells me you’re helping him out with something?” she says as she adds a fresh batch of fritters to the skillet.
I am? “Uh, sort of.” I rest my hip against the counter, loving the aroma of her saltfish fritters. I’ve always enjoyed watching her in the kitchen. Her style of cooking is so different from ours. Two different cultures. “I got myself in a pickle and he helped me out. So now I kind of owe him.”
“Were you always in contact with him? Because he always made it seem like you weren’t.”
“Oh, no, we weren’t,” I say quickly. “We ran into each other in Vegas.”
“Hmm,” she muses. “It was always gonna be him, wasn’t it?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, nothing.” She tucks away a secretive smile, as if she knows something I don’t. “I was just thinking that Torin will be happy to hear you’re back.”
Pfft. That sorry ass, emotionless prick who showed not even an ounce of remorse after I confronted him? Who couldn’t have cared less that he hurt me? Oh, please. “I doubt that.”
I remember how pissed Monica was when she found out Torin and I were dating in secret. Not only had he been too old for me, but she didn’t support teenagers dating. She said where she was from, teenage girls ‘dating’ was a big no-no. Even if they were at the age of consent, mothers would still whoop their daughters’ asses if they found out they were talking to a boy let alone having sex. So suffice it to say, Monica did not support our relationship.
“I don’t know, but I believe there’s more to that breakup than you think, Lexi.”
This pulls a frown from me. “What do you mean?”
“It’s—”
“Mom, have you seen my—Oh, my God. Lexi?”