Elena looked at the ground. “What about the non-disclosure agreements?”
“I can have my lawyer drop them by. There’d be no point in you coming over.”
They stood in silence again. Marco didn’t want to see Elena right now.
“I should get back to work.”
“Wait,” Elena said. “I need to be clear about something.”
“What?”
She wasn’t looking at him. “I kissed Will.”
That shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. Marco waited for a couple customers to walk past them. “If we weren’t fake dating, that would be cheating.” He meant it as a joke, but it came out sounding too serious.
“I kissed him and didn’t feel the way I thought I would.” Elena’s hand tightened around her book. “I like you.”
“I like Cecilia.”
“I like you,” Elena said.
“You love Will,” Marco said.
“Yes, but it’s a friend sort of love. I like you. Just you.”
Marco thought about Cecilia. She was technically single now. He’d never tried bringing up the topic of their kiss last year. There was so much he hadn’t explored in regards to her. And Elena still loved Will, even if she said it was friendly love. She’d loved him for years; feelings like that didn’t go away in a month.
“I’m sorry,” Marco said. “I like Cecilia.”
“Does she like you back?”
“She does,” Marco said, not knowing why he was annoyed now. “Even if she didn’t, that doesn’t mean I’d like you.”
“You kissed me at the exhibition. You said you wanted to.”
“I told you, I bought into the fake relationship,” Marco said. “You remember the headlines right? They called you Cinderella, like I was coming to swoop you off your feet. People notice. We’ve grown up in entirely different worlds. It’s not a bad thing, but at some point, it might become one. The person I’ve been while you’re been with me, it’s not who I am normally. This is me under punishment, without money or access to the stuff I like. I travel a lot, I spend money on stuff you’d probably think was ridiculous, and there are all these social events. We’ve been dating in this bubble that’s not my life. You don’t like me. You like this person you think I am. ”
Marco thought about the first times he’d met Elena, when he’d gone into her bookstore. “The guy in the bookstore, the one you hated, that’s the normal me.”
Elena shook her head. “It’s not. You’re different than I thought, and even if we grew up in different environments that doesn’t mean we can’t try. It’s not like we’re in some social hierarchy and we can’t date outside of our class. Sure, yes, I’m probably not used to the way you spend money or what you like to do, but we don’t have to spend every second together. It sounds more like you want an excuse not to try.”
“I’m not looking for excuses, Elena. The point is, I don’t like you like that.” Marco paused. He thought about his mom coming back into town, his dad’s chemo, Abby and her unrelenting attempts at trying to get him to like her again. Elena wouldn’t understand any of that. “You’re beautiful, smart, and a great person, but I don’t like you.”
Why did he have to keep repeating it?
Elena took a step back. “Okay
Marco could see her eyes shining. Please don’t cry out here.
He got ready for her to argue, to tell him that she liked him and wanted to try for the three months. He thought about it, maybe he could handle it. She hadn’t even met his family yet; Abby didn’t count. If Elena asked him, maybe-
“Okay,” Elena said. “I get it. We leave this at one month. And then we go back to the way things were before.”
Marco heard the words, and he realized he shouldn’t have said what he’d said before. He didn’t know why he’d said it, why he wanted to see how much Elena wanted to be with him. It was cruel. He was being cruel with her again.
“One month,” Marco repeated. “And then we can call it even.” He paused. “You should date Will.” Again, he wanted her to say she wouldn’t try things with Will, because she liked Marco.
“And you can try things out with Cecilia,” Elena said. Then she adjusted the hood of her coat. “I have to go.” She nodded to herself. “Maybe this is better than complicating things. Kill any feelings before we start to have them. Well, maybe before I have them, because I don’t think you liked me to begin with.”
“Elena-”
She turned and walked in the opposite direction before Marco had a chance to say her name again.
He watched her walk away, knowing it was better if he didn’t stop her. But he also knew she wasn’t the only one who’d developed feelings. It would be better though, to stop them now. He and Elena would never have worked together.
Maybe, in the end, it was like some clock struck midnight. Then they each had to go back to their lives, to their own versions of reality.
Chapter 26
Elena didn’t let herself cry.
She walked into Bee’s Books and set her coat down on the counter. Her dad watched her approach, silent, as he seemed to be most days.
“You’re back early,” he finally said. She’d told him she had a date with Marco. She’d gone into Melo’s with the plan of having a date with Marco, not telling him about Will.
“Dad,” Elena said. “I need you to hug me and not ask why I’m crying, okay?”
Then she walked behind the counter and wrapped her arms around her dad, holding onto him like she was a little girl again, the way she’d wanted to hug him after her mom had died. He hadn’t been around to hug then, he’d been in his room, locked away, bearing his own sadness until he gave into it and stopped being himself.
He stiffened under her hug, caught off guard, but then his posture softened and he pulled Elena closer. She did let herself cry then. It wasn’t just about Marco either. It was about losing Bee’s, her home, and, in a way, part of her friendship with Will. Everything had changed while she’d tried so hard for it not to. She’d been holding onto a sinking ship and now she felt like she was drowning in her own foolishness.
“Hey,” her dad whispered. “It’s okay. Come here, it’s okay.”
His voice got raspy too. “It’s because of me, too?” He hugged her tighter. “Oh god… I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you to go to Will’s. I wanted to save this building, to save your mom’s legacy. I really did. I do.”
“Can we not talk about that?” Elena asked. “For right now, please?”
He nodded, and held her tighter.
They stood like that for a while, neither saying anything, but both crying, each for their own reasons, with their own unsolved dilemmas.
__________
Elena woke up the next morning with puffy eyes and a sore throat.
She took one look in the mirror and decided she didn’t have the energy to make herself care today. She took a cold shower, hoping that might bring down the puffiness. Then she changed into jeans and a white sweater. Will wouldn’t be dropping by to take her to school. She’d asked him not to, since Monday. Elena hadn’t told her dad that. She’d been walking as far as she could, until the cold got unbearable and she could find a pooled ride. There was a busy intersection toward the end of the historical district that had a lot of passing rides and the cheapest ones too.
She pulled out her thickest coat from her closet and found a scarf to go with it. When she got to the living room, she spotted her dad sitting by the breakfast bar, laying out empanadas from a box.
“You went to Dulce Street?”
He held an empanada up. “I thought you could use a good breakfast before you went to school.”
“I think I might have to take it to go,” Elena said. She wondered if he’d run into Mia. Elena was still trying to figure out what she wanted to do with the Mia situation, not that she had much of a say in whether Mia wanted to talk to her or not.
“Why don’t you sit for a minute? I can drive you to scho
ol after.”
Elena’s dad hadn’t driven her anywhere since Will had gotten his license. She sat and accepted the empanada, nibbling bites of it as he watched her eat.
“What is it, Dad?”
Andres sighed, playing with the empty box of empanadas. “I rehired Mr. Morris, our accountant. He’s been helping go through the health of our financials. I’ve also been trying to convince Mr. Shaw to give us more time to stay, maybe get a new lease, but everything I’m doing keeps hitting a dead end.” He paused. “I don’t know what to do.”
Elena paused. “We find somewhere new, we start again. This doesn’t have to be an end.” Her voice shook.
“I feel like I did when your mom died,” he said. “Like if we let them take Bee’s she’d be gone all over again. Elena, I can’t do this.”
“Dad-“
Her mind flashed to when her mom died. The night at the hospital, he’d left her in the waiting room.
Elena, I can’t do this. I’m sorry. He’d left her there until Ms. Ortega had come to pick her up.
Elena swallowed air. “You’re not alone, Dad. You can talk to me about these things. Maybe not just me either. Besides, this place isn’t Mom. Sometimes I feel like it is too, but Bee’s isn’t her legacy. The good memories we have of her are. Every time she made us smile, or laugh, every life she touched- ” Elena didn’t finish, before she started to sob. She breathed in again. “Please, don’t push me away. You were doing so much better.”
“I thought I was too,” Andres said. “But I think you’re right. I know I have you, but I want to talk to Dr. Patel again, to schedule new sessions. If you want, you can join me. But you don’t have to.”
Elena held her dad’s hands. “I think family therapy would be a good start.”
“But it’s just that, a start,” he said. “I guess I didn’t realize how much I’d hurt you back then, worried you to the point where we are now. It won’t be easy for me, but I’m going to do this for you, for our family.”
Elena nodded. “So Bee’s is closing?”
Her dad gave a soft nod.
“For now, we should start packing up inventory. I have a few people who want to buy some of our more expensive books, mostly our first editions. We might be able to put a few into storage, the rest we can sell off at lower prices or donate-”
Elena’s heart sank.
“We can’t relocate?
“I don’t think it’s feasible, Elena. I went over the numbers with the accountant, who charged quite a bit to tell me we’re in the red, and not just in the red, but at a point where closing the store would save us money. Every month is a loss. Even if we found a smaller store, we’d still lose money. We’d have to go a year without paying rent to even break even.”
Her heart didn’t ease at the thought, but Elena realized her dad was finally telling her their reality, not saying things would be fine.
“Then we’ll close Bee’s,” she said. “And we’ll figure things out as we go along.”
Andres wrapped her in a hug. “Okay. We’ll figure things out, together.”
And for the first time in many years Elena thought maybe, just maybe, things would be okay.
__________
“So let me understand this, you and Elena are over?”
Lucas stopped typing. He closed his laptop. Marco hadn’t even thought his brother was listening. He’d come over because he’d left some stuff in the apartment from his short stay at the beginning of his punishment.
“Yeah,” Marco said. “We won’t make anything public, not that the public seems to care anymore, until a little after Christmas. We figured it’d be good to round it off at a month.”
Lucas shook his head. “I thought you liked her.”
“I did,” Marco said, not knowing why it didn’t feel like a lie anymore. “I do. She’s a great person, but we’re different.”
Lucas shook his head again. “You’re different, but that’s why I thought the two of you would work out. If you wanted similar you would’ve dated Cecilia ages ago.”
Marco had been packing up the clothes he’d left behind. He wasn’t about to admit to his brother that he had feelings for Cecilia, or that he was never actually dating Elena, aside from a few days. Which at this point, he wasn’t even counting.
“You and Heather lasted because you two grew up in the same circles, had the same hobbies, went to similar schools.”
Lucas laughed at that. “Yeah, then she found a guy who was the exact opposite of me and we broke up. Being similar doesn’t guarantee anything, Marco. That’s just an excuse.”
“An excuse? If I liked Elena I’d still be with her. She’s probably better off dating Will.”
“Except Will was dating Cecilia, until a few days ago.”
Marco tilted his head. “How’d you know they broke up?”
“Because Will brought back the tux I’d lent Cecilia for him. He told me a few things.”
“Where did you two even meet?” For some reason the mention of Will now made Marco want to leave.
“We trained together at Melo’s one summer. We’re not really close, but since Cecilia didn’t want to talk to him and apparently Elena doesn’t want to either, I heard him out.”
“Elena’s not talking to Will?”
“Apparently not,” Lucas said. “I didn’t ask much. I just listened until he had to leave for his shift.”
Well, that was news. Why wouldn’t Elena be talking to Will, especially right after he’d told her he loved her too? Marco shoved the thought away. He wanted, no, he needed, to change the subject.
“Do you know anything more about Mom coming into town?”
Lucas shrugged. “I know she’s probably here to make trouble.”
“Why do you say it like that, like she’s the reason she and Dad got a divorce?”
Lucas sighed. “Let’s not talk about this, okay? Just go home and maybe eat dinner with Dad instead of pretending like he isn’t sick. Or try to be nicer to Abby. She loves you, a lot-”
“Stop telling me what to do, like you have everything figured out. Dad cheated on Mom with our nanny. Then he forced Mom to sign a divorce agreement where she could only see us a few times a year, if she came into the country. I have to be eighteen before I can move in with her. Who did that? Dad. Who broke up our family? Abby and Dad. Not Mom.”
Lucas sighed. He didn’t look angry, maybe tired. “Sit,” he told Marco. “If you want to know the truth, sit. If you don’t, now’s your chance to go.”
Marco sat. Lucas got up from the couch, tossing his laptop to one side.
“Mom cheated on Dad first, she had been for years. I found out when I was ten, I think. She introduced me to him, as her friend over lunch one day. We were in Paris and he gave us a tour of a museum. I saw it in the way she looked at him. But I told myself I was wrong, that she loved our dad.”
Lucas looked at the ceiling and then he took a seat on the couch again. “It happened again when I was thirteen, but this time, I told Dad. I was old enough to figure it out. He confronted her and she promised not to see that man again. Then one day, I guess you would’ve been, what, twelve, a year or so before our parents finally divorced, Mom told Dad that she wanted to go and be with the only man who she’d ever really loved. She had all these demands, moneywise. She was obviously entitled to some of those things, but not all. They started the process that year, but Dad told me not tell you anything.”
Marco looked at the floor. His brother was obviously lying. This was a fabricated story, so that he’d get on their dad’s side now that he was sick and their mom was coming back to the city. But he wanted Lucas to finish.
“Dad leaned on Abby that year. And yes, they fell in love. Mom and Dad had stopped loving each other long before that. Mom found out, though, about him and Abby and she spread it to the media, had a photographer follow the two of them on some date. It was a mess. He was going to tell you, but Abby stopped him. She knew you idolized Mom, and that you’d hate her if you
found out the truth. So, she agreed to go along with the affair story, if Mom went far away, left us alone and moved on with her life.”
“Don’t make Abby the martyr in this. Either way, even if there is a grain of truth to your story, Dad kept Mom from us.”
“For a while,” Lucas said. “But then he changed his mind. After you got into your accident, the first one, he said she could take you when you got better. He knew that’s what you wanted. But she said didn’t want to. Vovô personally called her, asking her to come, that he’d fly her out, but she said this was her old life. We were her old life, and that she didn’t want to be part of that.”
Lucas looked angry now. “While you were lying in a hospital bed, unconscious for two days, Marco, our mom didn’t have the decency come and see you. Vovô begged her, when Dad stopped trying. Abby tried too. I tried. You might not remember, but when you were unconscious, we all thought that you weren’t going to make it. We prayed and kept watch over you the whole time, and she wasn’t there for a second of it.”
Marco stayed silent. His brother had gone too far. Who made up a lie like that? His accident hadn’t been that bad. He’d hit his head, and pissed their dad off, but their mom would’ve been there if she could have been. She had her job to worry about. They couldn’t expect to drop everything and fly over like that.
“It’s not true,” Marco said. He stood up and grabbed his things. “You shouldn’t make stuff like that up. Mom loves us. Dad and Abby filled your head with crap about her. And now you’re trying to do the same to me, so that when she does visit I won’t try to contact her.”
Lucas shook his head. “Think whatever you need to, Marco. But why don’t you ask the one person you trust more in this world than anyone? Vovô flies back Friday to start helping plan the Christmas banquet. Why don’t you ask him?”
Then he opened his laptop and got back to work, not looking up as Marco left the suffocating apartment.
Call It One-Sided Page 18