American Sweethearts

by Adriana Herrera

  I saw Irene, J’s mom, gesturing for my mom to taste the wine she was drinking while my dad was pointing at Rafa’s glass, indicating he wanted one of the same.

  “It’s like we got a reunion of the old block.” I smiled at Patrice’s deep voice. He was right, the old folks were getting on like they’d never stopped living up the block from each other.

  I turned so I was facing Easton, who was using Patrice’s gigantic chest as his airplane pillow. “Just wait until that plane lands, it’ll be utter chaos. Are you sure you’re ready for this, Mr. Archer?” I asked teasingly.

  He winked at me and then turned so he could bring Patrice’s face down for a kiss. It was short and tender, but the devotion flowed off those two in waves.

  I’d never thought I’d see Patrice like this, his feelings like an open book. It was strange seeing all our friends paired off, settled, how love had changed them. It was bittersweet to think that for Juanpa and me, love had never been the issue. It had always been there, no question. It just couldn’t fix all the other things that didn’t work.

  Easton turned again toward me, his expression content. “I know you’ll take good care of me.” He was talking to Patrice. But I nodded anyway as I saw Juan Pablo stepping out of the bathroom. He stopped to say something to his dad, who was engrossed in conversation with mine. My dad of course reached for him, a big smile on his face. My mother beamed at him too.

  “Juan, mijo. How you been? You got any gossip for next season?” My father never missed a chance to ask J about his beloved Yankees.

  They fucking loved him.

  Like his parents loved me. After all these years of ups and downs with Juan Pablo it was hard to know how to feel with him around. Especially when he wasn’t being his usual extra self and trying to act cute.

  No, he was giving me space. Like all the space.

  I knew that this was going to be weird and deep down I’d been on edge, knowing how hard it was going to be to stay off that fucker’s dick when we were going to spend an entire week on the beach drinking. But him icing me out was much worse.

  I needed air, from all of it. From my thoughts, from the friendly ease everyone seemed to have when I still felt like I didn’t even know my place. I was looking around, just for something to do, when I noticed on the other side of the wood paneling separating our cabin from the front of the plane there were two empty large leather seats, and I needed a breather.

  I got up but before I could take a step I had five pairs of eyes on me. “A donde vas m’ija?”

  “Just to sit up front for a second, Mami. I have to send out a couple of emails for work and need some quiet. Since this thing has Wi-Fi I’m going to do them on my iPad.” I gestured to the overhead where I’d stuffed my bag. “I’ll be back in a sec.” I tried my best to keep my tone peppy because there was nothing that put my mother on red alert faster than people needing “to be alone.” When I was a kid she’d threatened to take the doors off the damn hinges on more than one occasion.

  I could feel my mother’s eyes tracking my moves, probably worried that I was upset, but fuck, I was suffocating. Not because being around Juanpa was making me feel uncomfortable. No, it was because with him my heart and my head never seemed to want to retain the bad. Things would go up in flames and I’d tell myself to stay away...then after long enough had passed, I was right back in. Wanting him.

  The seats were back facing, so I had a full view of the cabin. I wondered if they were meant to be for a security detail—far enough where you weren’t too close but you had a pretty good view of the cabin. Juanpa was sitting between his mom and his dad. Legs spread and that slick grin that always, always did things to me.

  My phone buzzed with a message blessedly distracting me from those powerful thighs.

  You need some company? I’ll ditch the hot teacher and come sit with you.

  I laughed quietly and glanced up to find Easton looking at me with a knowing expression. We’d been friends long enough for him not to guess the reason for my behavior had a first and last name.

  I’m good, just contemplating from afar all the things I can’t indulge in this week.

  I heard the scoff before I looked up and saw my best friend taking a break from his text exchange with me to whisper something to Patrice. It was hard to remember that only a year ago things for them seemed virtually impossible, their lives at odds in so many ways. And here they were, engaged as of a couple of months ago, and so solid it felt like they’d always been together. He tapped another message as Patrice engulfed him in another tight embrace.

  I got your back.

  I pocketed my phone after that and took another sip of my rosé as I quietly watched Juan Pablo. His shoulders were wider than they’d been a year ago, the last time we crashed and burned. Same tight fade, but now he wore a thick beard, which made his broad lips stand out. A shiver ran down my spine as I remembered how they felt grazing the back of my neck. How I could feel the imprint of them for days after.

  Fuck, I needed to calm down. My parents were on this plane.

  I made myself shift my focus away from his mouth and noticed he was wearing his usual travel ensemble. Fitted sweats, Yankees hoodie and Jordans. Nothing different there. Except he didn’t seem like the old Juan Pablo. There was an ease to him that hadn’t been there before. Like he didn’t have anything to prove. He had his face turned to talk to my dad and I looked him up and down as he laughed at something.

  I could tell you every mole, every scar on Juan Pablo’s body better than I could my own. I knew exactly where to touch him to make him moan with pleasure, and he could do the same to me. Except beyond that nothing ever seemed to work for us since that first breakup. Since that awful night when we said too many ugly things to forgive. We broke things then, but instead of giving up we kept coming back to take more bites out of each other. Until there was nothing left.

  Still, I wanted him as badly as I ever had, because no matter how much it hurt with Juan Pablo the pain always seemed almost worth it. I needed to watch myself and remember how that last breakup almost undid me. Juan Pablo couldn’t deal with my job, and I swore to myself I would never change course because of anyone. So that was where we were. Stuck.

  Chapter Two

  Juan Pablo

  Three hours into this flight, and it was sort of a scene. I mean, you got a plane packed with Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and Haitians, an open bar and free food...it’s a fucking party. But something was missing. I spotted Pris sitting by herself on one of the seats furthest from the cabin. She copped that spot from the beginning of the flight and even though she’d come and chatted with the rest of us I could see she was keeping herself at a distance.

  Of course I assumed it all had to do with me.

  We didn’t need to be like this. I wasn’t going to push for more again. I swore to myself I’d keep my ass in check on this trip. No drunken begging Pris to take pity on me or greasy behavior. That wasn’t what I wanted, I just missed her.

  I looked around again and saw that people had finally settled down a little bit. Figured, just when we’re about ready to land. I almost went over to P and tried to kill time talking with him and Easton. But they were sitting so contentedly. P’s big ass arm like an oak branch draped on his man.

  It was a fucking trip, really, to see my friend who never let himself show too much looking like the very picture of contentment. I wasn’t going to say he was glowing, but he looked really fucking happy. I must’ve been pulling a face, because P’s eyes went right to Priscilla, who looked like she was trying and failing to fake sleep.

  I didn’t have the energy to have an eyeball conversation with P, so instead I did what I’d wanted to do since Priscilla stepped onto the plane. I didn’t even know what I was going to say once I got there but I had to make sure she and I were cool. Just the thought of an entire week around all our friends and family while Priscilla and I t
ried our best to ignore each other made me feel a deep, bone-level exhaustion.

  “Hey,” I said, and she opened one brown eye.

  “Hey yourself. You kill that $200 bottle of Henny yet? We only have like another forty minutes in the air.”

  My mouth twitched at that. Of course she was going to give me shit for freeloading on the booze. I smacked my lips and took another sip, knowing it would piss her off.

  “I’m working on it. I see you haven’t availed yourself of much of the free food and beverages. You sick or something?”

  She snorted but didn’t answer, finally training both of those chocolate brown eyes in my direction. “I’m trying to pace myself since we’re about to go on a five day binge in the DR, but thanks for asking.” This was us, always, giving each other shit from the moment we opened our mouths.

  Fighting or fucking, that was me and Priscilla.

  But that wasn’t true either, we were—we’d always been—a lot more than that. I looked up at her again and my stomach flipped thinking it would be like this for us now. That we’d have to find fake shit to talk about, because we didn’t know enough about each other’s lives to know what to ask.

  I saw her reach for her phone and raised an eyebrow. “Tying up work stuff?” I spoke before giving it too much thought. Her job and how much it interfered with her personal life was definitely in the red zone for us. I cringed when I saw her put her back up, her mouth twisting to the side. I braced for the tongue-lashing I knew was coming, but at the last second, she deflated.

  “Nah. It’s all under control. This new team requires a lot less from me.” She lifted a shoulder and pushed out her lips, feigning an indifference I knew was not really there. Not for her job. Never for her job. “I’m not really sure how I feel about it, but at least for this week I’m off duty. Fully at the disposal of Camilo and his man.”

  That smile was real and I was sure a twin to the one on my lips. “He’ll want us at his beck and call as soon as we get there.”

  “That’s Camilo. Although Tom has gotten him to chill out a bit.”

  “Not enough that he won’t be a fucking monster this week. You know how he gets.”

  She laughed at that and grabbed my glass. It was one of those things that we’d done with each other forever, but the stakes felt high. The moment she slipped the glass out of my hand and moved to take a sip she widened her eyes and thrust it back into my hand.

  “Sorry.”

  I tried to give it back to her. “Come on, Pris, you can take a sip of my drink. Just because—”

  I almost said “we didn’t work out,” but I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth. One thing was to know that’s how it was. Another was to say it.

  “Take a sip, woman. That’s XO and you don’t want it to go to waste.” That last part made her smile and she did take the glass from my hand for a small sip.

  When she handed it back she smiled ruefully at me. “God forbid we leave any of the food and alcohol intact on this flight.” I fake shuddered and she laughed, cracking something open inside that I didn’t realize had been cutting off my breathing from the moment she’d walked onto this jet. Pris and I could still be us. Maybe that could be what I did this trip, remind her of that.

  I was mulling on that when the flight attendant started moving around the cabin asking everyone to get ready for landing. The energy immediately shifted in the plane, everyone buzzing with anticipation. I leaned over so I could look out at the same deep turquoise water I’d seen on yearly childhood trips to Puerto Rico, and later when I’d come with Pris or Nesto and the guys for spring breaks in the DR. Like everything else with us, Pris’s and my own roots were inexorably tangled. The islands our people came from only divided by a small stretch of sea.

  We both sat back after a minute, our eyes still half focused on the view when Pris spoke. “How’s the Uptown Center?”

  The Uptown Center was my father’s post-retirement labor of love, which, like everything he did, had taken a life of its own. I smiled, thinking about the bustling operation my dad now ran. A social services agency that served retired cops and other first responders from the Bronx. The idea had come from his own struggle finding services when he was recovering from the gunshot wound that shattered his leg. “It’s good, he just got another full-time social worker, so they’re doing some support groups now too. A friend of Camilo’s from grad school. He’s good, Papi likes him.”

  She nodded and smiled. Pris has a special bond with my retired cop father. He’d been her mentor and friend completely separate from anything she and I ever had. I loved that they were close like that.

  “You still helping out in the off-season?”

  I nodded, feeling the jet starting to lower itself in the air.

  “Yeah, I’m there three afternoons a week, unless I have to go down to Miami to work with the players that go south.”

  She peeked over to where our family was having the best time ever and then turned to me. She looked...unsure, which was so unusual for Priscilla.

  “What’s up?” I asked, genuinely worried. It was so rare to see her hesitant. Hell, that had been part of our problem. We’d gotten together in high school, both obsessed with joining NYPD, with making a difference. Me to follow in my dad’s footsteps, and Pris to in some ways fulfill her own dad’s dream. He’d yearned to be a cop, but by the time he was able to get his papers, felt like he was too old to try.

  But after my dad got shot senior year of high school I couldn’t do it. Priscilla of course would not be deviated from her plan. Instead of being supportive of each other, we turned those choices into personal affronts and before too long, things got rocky. From then on we’d been on and off. I ended up dating a classmate from my master’s program for a couple of years. She never got serious with anyone, but in the end we’d come back and try again. Until the last time, when we said we just needed to quit trying.

  Pris’s laugh brought me out of the swirl of regretful memories running in my head, and when I looked up, her smile was almost as maudlin as my thoughts.

  “So you ask me to tell you what’s up and then you go all into your head?” Her tone was a lot softer than her words and I wondered if she guessed what I’d been thinking about.

  “Sorry.” I tried for a wink and a smile, but gave up. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  She ran a fingertip over the rim of the glass, her usual strident confidence still not there. “I’ve been thinking of putting together these workshops through Come as You Are.”

  “Oh?” I tried to keep my tone neutral, because Come as You Are was her online sex positive toy shop and I was still trying to figure out how that had anything to do with my dad’s retired cop center.

  This time Pris did laugh. “Oh my God, Juan Pablo, your face right now.” She pointed at me, grinning. “Your eyebrows are almost flush with your lineup.”

  Well, I could at least still make her laugh at my expense.

  “You’re imagining me showing up at Uptown Center with mad strap-ons and dildos right now, aren’t you?”

  It was really hard keeping a straight face, but I managed. “No.”

  Another cackle. “Liar!” She waved her hands dismissively, telling me I had the wrong idea. “It will involve a few toys, eventually. I was just thinking that it might be fun to offer a class for spouses of cops. Something about sex positivity for people living with chronic pain or injuries. I’ve been taking all these online courses and certifications for sex-ed.”

  She looked so adorably unsure about this. I’d never seen Priscilla this earnest. Her side-hustle always brought a different, playful side of Pris. Being a cop suited her, no doubt she was a badass and she did her job well.

  But the sex positive stuff just made her glow. The more I thought about it, the more I thought I’d pay good money to see her in a room full of cops and their spouses with all her prostate
massagers and fancy lubes. “Do say more,” I said encouragingly.

  “It’s this new thing I’m working on. I was going to tell Rafa I could volunteer to do it at El Espacio. I also have the M&M class.”

  I knew about that one. It was a meditation and masturbation class for women she’d been doing for a while.

  I lifted a shoulder and looked at my dad. These days he was getting more and more irreverent. I was pretty sure he’d be up for it. “I think he’d go for it. He’s all about mindfulness these days, and self-love. Taking care of all parts of life. Since you put him onto yoga he’s pretty much obsessed.”

  She nodded and smiled, but it didn’t exactly reach her eyes. “Good. I need to be better about my own yoga. I haven’t been as consistent as I should be.”

  That was surprising.

  “Oh, been working a lot?”

  Another shrug and her tone was decidedly less friendly when she spoke. “Something like that.”

  “I’ll tell Papi about it. You know he can’t say no to you.”

  And neither can I.

  Priscilla

  The smiles and whoops of joy were already resounding through the plane and we hadn’t even touched down yet. I looked at my mom and dad, who were sitting side by side, clutching hands, excited as they always were to come home. They’d left the DR only weeks after getting married at nineteen and twenty-one. No English, no promised jobs.

  Nothing.

  They made it work though, for us, for me, and I never forgot that. There wasn’t enough that I could do to repay what my parents had lived through. Working multiple jobs, tireless, so they could hand me the American Dream they came here for. No, they weren’t perfect, but I’d never seen anything in my house but work and love.

  I felt a soft pat on my arm and turned to look at where Juanpa was pointing. “You’d think it would get old for them,” he said with a smile, looking at his Puerto Rican father’s beatific smile as he looked down at the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea.