“I know this is weird. Out of the blue,” he says.
I open my mouth, but the words don’t work.
“So, England, huh?” He must’ve been checking my Instagram too. “How, um, is it there?”
“Cold.” But there are sweaters for that—one sweater, and it’s soft and warm and gray.
“Right,” he says.
“Why?” Because my bold decides to show up now. “Why today?”
I hear his thick sigh. “I was just thinking about you. Wondering if you were okay. I know it was shitty—me. Us. Prom. Abuela. And I found out about Stefanie. That really sucks. So, I wanted to check in.”
“I’m okay. I really am.” My answer is not a lie.
“Good. I’m glad. You know, you can always call.”
My eyes fill. Haven’t I been waiting? Haven’t I been wanting this for months? But it doesn’t fall soft or even fit the same way inside me, as dependably warm and secure as the city he’s calling from. Instead, it slicks my throat with bile. “ ’Kay.”
“Can I call you again too?”
Wicked. Wretched. Weak. “Yeah.”
21
The side door closes behind him; it’s a rainy Sunday morning and Orion finds me easily. It’s my day off, but I need the kitchen after last night’s new anxiety trifecta:
Orion and our un-plan
Flora’s the vandal
Andrés and a three-minute phone call
I return his greeting, ogling a few treats from Mami’s second care package—she doesn’t know how timely it was. These small items, I need them. Yesterday before the pub, I got the brown shipping box that smelled of my West Dade house when I opened the flaps.
Orion shrugs out of a damp windbreaker and I’m all opposites. The sight of him in jeans and an untucked blue polo makes my body settle, drawing near to him like it’s homeward. But seeing him in the aftermath of Flora and Andrés ties my stomach into complicated knots. Impossibly, both are true.
“Ahh, more gifts from your mum?” Orion says and rubs my shoulder.
I show him the stack of guava paste containers and the plastic bag filled with three miniature tins of golden yellow Bijol seasoning. I dance the bag in the air. “Consider me way too excited about spices. Now I can make you arroz con pollo.”
“Well, I’ve got this one sorted: chicken and rice.” His brows drop. “That sounds rather simple, though.”
“After one bite, if you think my arroz con pollo is anything resembling simple chicken and rice, I will hang up my apron before your next mouthful.”
“Nah.” He’s a blink away. “Pointless of me to even doubt you. A lesson I should’ve learned earlier.”
A flash of smile before I feel it fade. Orion does have reasons to doubt me, though. It rumbles now, even more with him beside me.
I show him the last Cuban coffee treasure—a can of Café Bustelo. “You probably had enough caffeine over breakfast.”
“Brew away. If I’m a wired fool later I can blame you and that’s always fun.”
I move to swat him, but he’s quicker. ¡Basta! The new trifecta has me limp and slow. Orion snatches my hand and squeezes. “Speaking of brekkie, Flora joined Dad and me this morning at the café. She usually doesn’t. I’m a bit surprised by this new development too. Sacrificing her precious sleep, popping in here to help and learn a few things?” His mouth pulls sideways and his gaze hones quizzically onto mine. I can’t help but sense there’s more than curiosity behind his raised brows.
What aren’t you telling me, Lila?
I don’t want to lie to this boy. “Sorry I didn’t text. I bumped into her super late.” Tagging a wall. Begging my silence.
“She said she was on her way home from Katy’s and you were running.” He wrinkles his nose. “Alone. You know, I could’ve gone with you. Not that you need an escort.”
So much information. First, I realize what Flora’s alibi for sneaking out has been all along. Then there’s the part that makes me look directly into Orion’s face, staring at a sweet sun. Staring at a precarious black hole. Both are true. I couldn’t run with you. I was running because of you.
I need to put my hands on anything but Orion. Easing away, I jiggle the coffee can. “We, um, decided on three mornings a week.” I pull out the metal stove-top espresso pot I use for coffee-infused pastry fillings. “I thought it was a good idea. I can show her around the kitchen. That’s always cool, right? Basic skills?” I measure coffee then set the flame high.
“Err, right. But I think there’s an ulterior motive behind her shadowing you.”
I suck in an anxious breath, whipping around to face him. “What? I mean, how did she bring it up?” How did she spin it?
“Like you said. She’s off for holiday and you make such delicious things for us. She figured it’s time she learned a couple useful tricks. While you’re… here.”
Barely voiced, the word sounds miles away.
He adds, “I suspect there’s more to it, like she’s trying to find ways to prove herself. All her sneaking around with Will. And remember the other night when Gordon brought her home past curfew? I think she’s trying to show she’s taking initiative. Gaining focus and trustworthiness.”
Blessedly, it’s not much longer before the coffee’s ready. I rummage for two demitasse cups and a small glass pitcher. Like Orion’s tea preparation, I demo the steps for perfect café Cubano. “We make an espuma, or crema, by whisking a bit of the coffee with sugar.”
He grins. “Always the sugar with you.”
“But never too much,” I muse to the work between my hands. I pour the rest of the brewed coffee over the crema and dollop a little bit of the foam into both our cups. Finally, I pour coffee into the cups, careful to not disturb the foam.
We move stools to the island. “You already had brunch, but you know me.”
“If I said I’d lied about brunch and I’m on an empty stomach, would that get me closer to whatever you’re offering?”
I drag over a fresh loaf of pan Cubano and cut two thick slices. Irish butter clouds on top. I slide his plate across wood.
He licks his lips before he drinks.
My eyes go there, then up. “You don’t lie.” But I do now. Please let it matter. And then there’s the matter of Andrés. The other night I spoke so freely about him to Orion; I should be able to spill about the surprise call. I can’t, even though my silence feels wrong. I need some time alone with it—time to tell myself what Andrés’s reappearance means before I can tell a boy I can tell anything to.
Almost anything.
“I knew I’d find you in here,” Cate says, the push door swinging behind her. “And you, Orion, are never far from her baked goods. Is that Café Bustelo?”
“I’m getting an initiation. It packs a worthy punch,” Orion offers.
“I can make you one?” I tell Cate.
She sniffs over my cup. “Mmm, next time. I spoke with tu mamá last night and now this. Oh Miami, te extraño tanto.” She smacks one hand over her heart, missing her childhood city. “Anyway, I was just chatting with one of our guests. I told her all about La Paloma. She was so taken with your baking and wanted to meet you before checkout.”
“Sure, of course.”
Within minutes, Cate has ushered a petite redhead, likely in her twenties, into the Owl and Crow kitchen. She introduces herself as Lauren, and we introduce ourselves as Lila, who made her breakfast, and Orion, who sells the English breakfast tea she drank with it.
“The tea was superb,” Lauren says. “I’ll have to pop into Maxwell’s on the way to the train.” Then to me, “But, Lila is it?” On my nod, she says, “I was here for a wedding all weekend and got to sample many of your offerings. I must say, the flavor balance and texture were noteworthy. Those flaky pastries and adding cinnamon to those fig rolls—clever.” She points to the cooling oven. “And your breads were extraordinary.”
“She is that,” Orion says.
I pout-smile at him then tell Lauren, “
Thank you. It’s always nice to hear my cooking made someone happy.”
“I agree,” Lauren says. “I’m in culinary arts school, myself. Le Cordon Bleu in London.”
I’ve heard of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Any cook worth her kitchen clogs knows about the most prestigious school of French cuisine in the world. But… “There’s a London campus?”
“Yes, it’s fantastic. I’m part of the Diplôme de Cuisine program but there are a few courses of study. We have the Diplôme de Pâtisserie coursework too. Pastry and baking. Have you had any formal training?”
“Just my grandmother.”
“She taught you well. But check out the school, if it fancies you. Goodness, you’re so close to London.”
She says this like I’m from here. Like I belong in this little medieval town that happens to be so close to London. I don’t correct Lauren before Cate leads her to check out.
Orion’s buttering another slice of pan Cubano when I shuffle back to my stool, phone out. After a few moments he asks, “You’re looking it up, aren’t you? Le Cordon Bleu?”
“Just curious.” I shift my phone so we both can see the grand website, fit for a grand institution. We scroll through, finding the details of the extensive program and full-color food photos. “Look! The desserts and cakes. I can make good pastries, but these are on another level.” Intricate details and delicate shapes, almost too beautiful to eat. Works of art.
“Have you even thought about culinary school before?” Orion asks.
I shake my head. “Abuela taught me everything I need for La Paloma.” I scroll through and find the three successive levels of classes. Nine months of study in exquisite French pastry, learning new techniques that I could apply to my own baking, setting it apart even more. London. Another city elbows in: Miami and all it’s ever been and still is. “This is, I mean, it’s kind of impossible.”
“But you keep looking at it.” Orion sips his coffee. “Let me see the school’s address.” I show him then he dashes his hand. “It’s in Bloomsbury. Right in the heart of London, near Covent Garden. One of my favorite areas.” He looks horrified at my blank expression. “As I’m saying all this, I realize I’m a shit tour guide for not taking you to London in all these weeks.”
“I’ve been caught up here, but I would love to go. And the school, it wouldn’t hurt to just pop by. See where it is and all that.”
“Sure. Dad and I are off to visit Mum later, so today’s out. Besides, we should take a full day.” He frowns. “Next weekend it’s my turn to manage the shop.”
“Two weeks, then. I mean, it will fly,” I say, gesturing with my lifted cup. Overgesturing, apparently, since coffee sloshes over the butcher block island.
Orion clucks his tongue, eyes twinkling with mischief. “Oh, this is interesting. Now you’ve done it.”
I towel up the mess. “I sense a superstition coming my way.”
“Maybe a lot more is coming your way,” he tells me. “Traditionally, if you spill coffee, it means a lover is thinking of you.”
* * *
All it really means, I don’t find out until after supper. So ironic, I think the state of Florida itself is playing sick jokes on me.
Only hours after Orion equates my spilled coffee with thoughts from a lover, Andrés’s name flashes on my phone screen. Instant emotional rewind to last night. Even so, Andrés Millan is no longer mi amado.
The FaceTime notification pings, on and on. I am interested in the way I reach out to click the familiar green answer icon. I am interested in how the sight of him goes down like my first sip of hard liquor, how my entire body ingests it.
“Lila.” His face and voice, the tilt of his jaw, even his long, dark eyelashes that I’d deemed grossly unfair—they all look the same. Not even three months have passed, I remind myself.
“You found me,” I say. I lost you.
“I know I called only yesterday but…” He scrubs his face. “God, you look good. You look really good.”
I can’t help a few stray tears. My head shakes.
“Lila, please don’t cry. I didn’t call to make you cry again.”
What does he expect? Don’t feel? Don’t remember? Doesn’t he realize he’s a huge part of the reason I’m even here? “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m…” At length he says, “Trying to figure that out as I go.”
And he could easily figure out he was right the first time, leaving me last spring. So easily. My head throbs; I swipe hair off my face. “You’ve been keeping busy, no?”
“This and that, yeah.”
“I’m sure you’ve been at the beach a lot. Your favorite.” My laugh carries a tinge of hysteria. “I miss South Beach. Even more since I saw it on your Instagram. You still never go alone, right?”
His face wilts, and this little hint of confirmation strikes me back. Now he knows I know about Alexa Gijon. Pilar’s Center for Cuban Sleuthing wins again. “Lila.”
“How long?”
He inhales sharply. “It meant nothing. A mistake.”
Tears flow freely now, hearing him say it for real. I breathe the knowledge in, hold it there. The burn.
“It was like two weeks, Lila. It’s done.”
“Two weeks is more than a mistake.” He moves to speak, but I say, “I only want to know one thing.” He tips his chin. “Spare me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ shit. What. Did. I. Do?”
“We had almost three years,” he says. “That’s like three forevers in high school dating years.”
Silence.
He shrugs. “We grew up together. You’ve always been bright and intense and powerful. I fell in love with that. But toward the end…” My expression presses him; he tucks his lips inward. “I was losing myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“You always moved us at full force, planning everything so far out. Pushing me—what classes I should take or telling me to stay in Miami for school. You were directing me like you order around the junior bakers at La Paloma. I just needed space, and to move myself for a while. Think for myself.”
The burned-out star, just like Abuela said. I’d brushed off her warnings then, dismissing them under our thinnest pastry dough. But here they are; he shines them back in my face. He shines them on Stefanie.
I should’ve listened to her when we ran every week.
“Why do we do this again?” Stefanie had said last winter, panting the words as we passed the next mile marker along the Key Biscayne Bridge.
I dragged my gaze from the turquoise bay. “It’s Saturday.”
“No, I mean. Why do we. Torture ourselves. Running?” Her blond ponytail bounced in time with her feet.
“More room for pastelitos? Besides, you love it.”
Stefanie said, “You love it.”
But she had never loved it. And I had never really heard her. I can’t apologize to her now, but I can to Andrés.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “For all the planning.” Inhale, exhale.
His mouth snaps wide, then small again. “The thing is, I think I moved myself too far away. From you.”
Oh.
Two months and even two weeks ago, I would’ve been my burning star self and run back across countries and the entire Atlantic, just for this.
Now, I’m the one not moving. I’m still. I tell him to give me some time and not call for a while. After the session goes black, I stretch out along the quiet of my antique bed in this old, old inn. I stop and stargaze, but my telescope is backward. I turn my search inward.
Maybe Orion’s earlier superstition was spot-on. Maybe he nailed it. But as the sky dips into dusk, the lover who is thinking of me after I spill my coffee is an unexpected one.
Myself.
22
My kitchen. Not Flora’s kitchen. My sanity. “More dishtowels in the next drawer,” I tell my reluctant protégé, who’s been relegated to clean-up duty. This, she can do unsupervised. Maybe.
“We only made three things. How can th
ree bloody items require so much equipment?” Flora grumbles, suds foaming up to her elbows.
I unmold strawberry tea cakes for later, ready for a six-hour nap and a new head to replace the one that wants to pound free of my skull right now. Brilliant, Lila. What have I done? Maybe I’ll just have Flora work in here for one week. It would make a statement. It would keep me from going Full-Force Reyes on a fifteen-year-old.
I’m baking sweets, but I’m all salt, thanks to a night of tossing and flip-flopping over a gut-rip FaceTime session.
The back door whines. I turn and catch Orion’s smile before he finds his sister.
“Look at you, Pink.” He approaches the sink. “How was your first go?”
My heart clenches—his encouraging smile, the note of curiosity, bright in his eyes—masked by the deceit I can’t all-the-way shake.
“I did fine.” She shrugs, and I swear I detect the exact moment Flora Maxwell remembers to sell herself. She shoots her brother a lopsided smile. “I made the simple syrup for a cake. And we mixed bread dough, weighing and measuring and all that. We also did a fruit platter with a vanilla cream dipping sauce.”
I purposely kept today’s offerings simple. No labor-intensive cinnamon rolls or temperamental French or Cuban bread. “Your pre-running snack.” I point to the plate we set aside for him.
Sparkles flash from his eyes as he dips sliced melon into vanilla cream. “Delicious,” he tells Flora. “I’m really chuffed you’re doing this. Dad is too.”
An ounce of Flora’s smile might be real.
I exhale over the last of my work. “Flora, you can bail. I’ll finish up the dishes.”
She towels off her hands. Loosening ties, she hands me her apron. Our eyes meet over two truths. She does not want to be here. I possess information she’s decided is worth her being here anyway. I keep my third truth inside but hope there’s enough mixed with the weariness on my face. I won’t give up on you.
“You did really well,” I say. “I’ll see you Wednesday?”
Her shoulder springs up. “Wednesday.”
“And I’ll see you later at the shop,” Orion says.
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