“It’s strange,” I answered, trying to figure out a way to voice what I was thinking. “To think that my dad lived here. He’s changed so much. Like you said, not in a bad way, but in a way that’s very different from this place.”
“Does he talk about Utuado a lot?” Alex had completely stopped eating and from the level of his intensity, I sensed he was serious about traveling to the States. He wasn’t asking me for information about my father, he was asking to get a picture of what his life could be like if he followed my dad’s example.
“No, never,” I answered honestly.
“Does he speak Spanish?”
“Not since my grandparents died. But he listens to Spanish music.”
“I’m sorry about your grandparents.”
“It’s okay.”
“I didn’t know your grandparents died,” Lilly stated softly. Apparently she had been listening to our conversation.
She turned her head toward my Uncle Miguel, who from the looks of it had cleared his plate long ago. He was leaning back on the hind legs of his chair drinking a dark brown liquid from a short glass. Lilly rattled off in Spanish to her grandfather, and I could make out that she was inquiring about my “abue-los,” or grandparents. Uncle Miguel looked at me before he responded and then uttered something I didn’t understand.
“What did he say?” I asked after she finished her conversation.
“Nothing, just that he knew your grandfather had died. Your dad wrote them after the funeral.”
“After the funeral? Wait. Uncle Miguel wasn’t invited to his own brother’s funeral?” I asked, my jaw falling.Vince dropped his fork.
“No, it doesn’t sound like it,” Lilly said, shaking her head.
My parents, my mother especially, thrived on etiquette. She stressed over which name came first when addressing a married couple on the outer envelope of an invitation. She would never forget to invite my grandfather’s brother to his funeral. That had to be a mistake.
I turned to Vince, my eyebrows crumpled as if to ask, “Did you know anything about this?” Vince shook his head, “no.”
“I’m sure it was nothing,” Alex stated. “Probably just a mix-up.”
“Yeah, I guess.” I shook my head in wonderment.
“So, colleges. Where do you want to go?” Alex asked, changing the subject. “Because I hear all the good schools are in the Northeast. That’s where you’re from, verdad?”
“Sí,” I stated, my Spanish squeaking through as my mind still grappled with the previous conversation.
“The University of Pennsylvania—that’s in Philadelphia?”
“Yeah, but I doubt I’ll go there. It’s too close to home.”
“Why, Alex? You thinking of moving closer to Mariana?” Lilly butted in, her tone biting.
“No, I was just trying to get a sense of what things are like there,” he mumbled.
“Sure you are.”
“Do you want to go to school in the States?” I asked Lilly.
“Maybe. But I won’t just be following some guy,” she choked, staring at Alex.
I let the innuendo drop. I didn’t want to fight with Lilly over nothing. And for some reason, I was no longer in a very good mood.
Chapter 39
Alex went MIA after the family dinner. Not in an official call-the-police sense, but it had been four days since I’d heard from him. He hadn’t stopped by and he hadn’t called, and I had spent every minute of his absence trying to pin down exactly what I had done wrong.
“Mariana, seriously, you’re reading too much into this,” Lilly said as we strolled down Calle del Cristo in Old San Juan.
The cobblestone street reminded me of Old City in Philadelphia, only all of the buildings were either whitewashed or slathered in bright pastel paints, from pale peach to mint green, with second-story balconies reminiscent of New Orleans. I was surprised to find a Coach store and Ralph Lauren Outlet, but in true Puerto Rican style the Ralph Lauren facade was painted baby blue with white trim. It was a stark contrast from the brand’s stodgy building in Philadelphia, which I frequented so often I had the layout memorized.
“I just don’t get it,” I said, as I stared down the street to the old chapel below. “Everything was going so well. It was, wasn’t it? You thought so?”
“It’s only been a few days.Why get so wrapped up in a guy you’ll never see again? Just enjoy Puerto Rico,” Lilly said, as she flopped behind me in white platform sandals, a pink flowing skirt and a white tube top.
Back home, I never got dressed up to go shopping; at most I wore a T-shirt and jeans. But Lilly had convinced me to wear a blue skirt and tube top. (“We’re going into town. Look hot,” she’d said.) It was the first strapless top I had ever worn and I felt certain it was going to slide down my torso at any moment. I didn’t have the boobs my cousin did, but I still felt oddly sexy. I was being noticed in these clothes in a way I had never been before, but considering most of the guys leering at us were probably over forty and closet pedophiles, I guessed it wasn’t exactly the kind of attention I wanted to encourage.
“I am enjoying Puerto Rico,” I said, not wanting to sound ungrateful.
Lilly had devoted most of her summer to me and she was becoming a close friend. Since her Quinceañera, we had grown so tight that I hardly felt the need to contact Emily or Madison. I felt guilty for ignoring them, but I had a lot going on to distract me. I also had Alex. But now, given his sudden disappearance, I was itching to get in touch with my girls from home. They’d know what to do, or at least they’d offer advice pretending to know.
“I just, I like him,” I admitted as we continued walking toward the chapel.
Lilly had promised that the plaza alongside the chapel was a must-see. It was filled with hundreds of pigeons and their “pigeon tamer.” I didn’t want to disappoint her by pointing out that I’d seen plenty of pigeons before: pooping on cars, begging for soft pretzels, filling park benches. So I smiled and followed my tour guide.
“Look, Alex is a cool guy. But I wouldn’t obsess over him,” Lilly said.
I wasn’t obsessed, but I thought about him a lot. I thought about the way he made me feel when we kissed, the way my stomach trembled when he touched me; I wanted to feel that way all the time. It’s not like we had these long make-out sessions; mostly we just kissed in front of his beat-up car before he left my aunt and uncle’s house for the night. But I loved the anticipation of knowing that we would kiss, that before I went to bed that night I would be kissed by a boy who liked me. And when he pulled me close, I wanted to melt right into him to fully consume the moment.
“I’m not obsessed.”
“Then why do you keep talking about him?”
“I didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to talk about him. If I’m getting on your nerves, I’ll stop.”
I’d never brought up Lilly’s snippy attitude toward me the night of the family dinner. When we woke up the next morning and the house was empty once more, things returned to normal. We went to work and goofed off until it was time to skip out and catch a movie. I didn’t want to ruin things by bringing up a tone of voice that I might have been reading too much into.
Part of me realized that I was probably avoiding the inevitable, and that I should trust my instincts. Whenever I got mad at Madison or Emily, even when I tried to brush it off and let it go, it always found a way of resurfacing. It would lurk within me, bubbling quietly, until one day we’d be sitting at a lunch table wolfing down French fries and Madison would ask me to pass the ketchup. “No! I will not pass the ketchup! God, what’s wrong with you? Would it kill you to say ‘please’?” Ultimately it would lead to a long conversation about what was actually upsetting me.
Given the amount of time Lilly and I were spending together, there was a lot of potential for irritation. It was hard enough to live with the family you grew up with, look at how often Vince and I fought, let alone add strangers into your daily routine. We were suddenly in each other’s faces every
minute of every day: sharing a bathroom, eating the same meal, working in the same place. I didn’t know how I would react to having a foreigner latch on to my life to this degree back home. I really couldn’t blame her if she was fed up.
Lilly took a deep breath.
“You’re not getting on my nerves.” She sighed. “I’m just sick of talking about Alex.”
“Okay, that’s fair. Let’s talk about something else.”
We walked down the street in silence and by the time we reached the chapel the moment had passed. Gray cooing birds covered the historic street, bursting into flight as an old man in a cap threw bread crumbs in the air. I didn’t bring up Alex again that day—at least not aloud.
Chapter 40
Three days later, Alex still hadn’t called or visited. At this point it had been a full week of no contact and I was assuming we had broken up—not that we were ever together. I had watched Vince cut off communication before as a way of ending a relationship rather than verbalizing the breakup aloud. It seemed like an awful thing to do, because there was no official end. Technically the other person could be out in the world thinking they’re still part of a couple, forever.
Lilly, Vince and I were seated on stools in the hotel bar. The leather was sticking to the backs of my thighs. I tugged on my baggy khaki shorts. It was the first time I had ventured into the bar with my brother after dinner. Usually I just watched Spanish TV or, lately, waited for Alex. Lilly and I were the only girls there; my aunt had stayed back at the house to clean. Lilly and Vince had ordered beers while I, as usual, sipped a Coke.
“¿Otro?” asked the bartender, pointing toward my almost empty glass.
I nodded. “So,Vince, you’re a guy.What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About Alex.Why do you think he’s ditching me?”
“You don’t know he’s ditching you. Maybe he’s just busy. It’s not like he has to check in with you. You’re not his mother,” Vince said, before releasing a long beer burp.
Lilly laughed.
“But he wasn’t busy before.We saw each other all the time,” I defended as I picked at the bar’s raised, wooden splinters.
“Well, maybe that’s the problem,” Lilly snipped.
“I suffocated him? You think so?”
“I don’t know,” she conceded, as she drank her beer.
“Mariana, you’re over-thinking this. Guys aren’t that complicated. He’s probably just busy,” Vince said.
I couldn’t imagine this was true. Even if I were busy I would still make time to see him, at worst I would call him to explain. Clearly he wasn’t thinking about me as much as I was thinking about him, and the only logical explanation was that he was busy thinking about somebody else.
“Do you think he met someone?” I squeaked in a low voice, staring at my soda.
“Dude, it’s possible,” Vince muttered.
“Gee, thanks,”
“You asked.”
“Well, you didn’t have to be so quick to agree with me.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
“Forget it. Do you think he’s met someone else?” I asked Lilly, my eyes as sad as a basset hound’s.
“I honestly don’t know. It’s not like he’s some big stud—”
“So you don’t think he has,” I quickly interjected.
She looked at me, shook her head and smirked. “Fine, no. I think there is no way he could have ever met anyone to replace you, almighty Mariana. It’s impossible,” she teased.
“That’s what I was thinking,” I said, laughing at myself.
“Can we please talk about something else,” Vince moaned, rolling his eyes.
“Thank you,” Lilly added.
“Fine,” I huffed.“Can you believe Mom and Dad are coming in a week?”
“I know,” he said, his voice almost sad. “One week of quality family time and then we’re all flying home together.”
“That sucks,” Lilly mumbled.
“I don’t see why we can’t fly home ourselves,” Vince griped.
“Because our parents want to see us and Mom wants to meet everyone.”
“They could see us when we got home,” he huffed.
I rolled my eyes. “Did you know that when Dad lived here they used to call him ‘Manny?’ ”
“Really? Who told you that?”
“Uncle Miguel. He also said that Dad used to want to be a pilot when he grew up. He used to run around everyone’s yards with his arms out to the side, pretending he was a plane.” I held my arms out to mimic the gesture.
“Wow, you and Uncle Miguel talk a lot, huh?” Vince asked, kind of surprised.
“In the mornings.”
“Well, my grandfather’s a big talker,” Lilly added.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that we didn’t even know we had an Uncle Miguel before we came here?” I asked, still picking at splinters on the bar.
“We didn’t know we had any of these relatives before we came here,” Vince pointed out, nodding toward Lilly.
“Well, I didn’t know you or Vicentay existed, either,” Lilly stated.
“But that’s weird, right? Why wouldn’t Dad have come back here sooner? He grew up here.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t like it here. No offense,” Vince said, lifting his chin at Lilly.
“But this was still his home. He knew he had family here, you’d think he’d want to see them. Or you’d think Grandmom and Grandpop would have wanted to see them. I don’t remember them ever visiting,” I said, successfully pulling a small strip of wood from the bar. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but the accomplishment felt oddly satisfying.
“No, they never visited,” Lilly confirmed.
“Well, Grandmom and Grandpop were poor. They probably couldn’t afford the trip,” Vince stated plainly.
“True, but Dad’s not, at least not anymore.”
“He had us. Who would want to trek over here with little kids?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Alonzo, José and our Uncle Miguel walked into the bar at that moment.We all waved lazily and the guys sat down beside us already deep in conversation. They seemed to be having an argument about which country produced more major league baseball players, Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. At this point, both Vince and I could understand most of what people said around us and we could hold entire conversations in Spanish. Vince was even somewhat conversant in the language while drunk, which I found rather impressive.
“¿Dónde está Alex?” my uncle asked innocently, looking around.
“Ahhhh!” I yelled, grabbing my red hair in my fists.
Lilly and Vince laughed. We all hung out at the bar for another hour and no one brought up Alex again.
Chapter 41
The next day, Lilly trudged up the stairs with her empty laundry basket in hand and a suspicious grin on her face.Vince was sitting on his usual stool watching Spanish soap operas and I was dusting the hotel’s front desk, for the fifth time that morning.
“Hey, Mariana, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Lilly said, as she opened a closet door and tossed her basket inside. “You know my friend Javier? Well, he’s starting at UPR in a couple weeks and he doesn’t know much about computers. He’s all freaked out that he’s gonna look like an idiot. I was wondering if you could show him some stuff.”
“Why me?” I asked, my nose crinkled.
“Well, you have your own laptop and you’re pretty good with the Internet . . .”
“Well, what does he need to know? I’m pretty good with computers,” Vince offered from across the room.
“He just wants to learn some Internet and e-mail stuff. Pretty basic, that’s why I thought Mariana could help him.”
“I guess. When?”
“Today, at lunch,” Lilly said quickly.
“Where, here?”
“No, I told him you’d meet him at the Internet café around one.”
“Gee, thanks for asking me first,” I mumbled.
“Well, it’s not like I thought you’d say no.”
“Is it because I’m that predictable? Or because I’m a loser with nothing else to do because the one guy who liked me dropped off the face of the earth?”
Vince groaned. “Not him again! How could you possibly have more to say on this topic?”
“Really, this Alex thing has gotten worse than your back in Spring Mills stories from the beginning of the summer,” Lilly mocked.
“I know, sorry. I just thought he liked me.” I tossed my hands in the air.
“I’m sure he did. But you’re still having fun without him, right?”
“Oh, yeah. Definitely.” I nodded.
But the truth was, it was kind of hard to have fun when I was spending every second thinking about what he could possibly be doing at that exact moment. Maybe he had gotten in some horrible accident and was unconscious in a hospital somewhere, unable to contact me. Or maybe he went on a sudden trip with his family and didn’t have time to tell me before he left. Or maybe he was kissing some other tourist he met at a different Quinceañera.
“But don’t you think it’s weird he hasn’t called you?” I suggested, peering at Lilly. “It’s one thing for him to avoid me, but you’re his friend. Wouldn’t he still want to see you?”
“Alex and I never saw each other every day.We only hung out that much because of you guys,” she said.
I sighed. I knew I had to accept that there would probably be no explanation for his sudden lack of interest and that I would probably leave for the States having no idea why he stopped wanting to see me. But knowing that didn’t make it any easier.
Amor and Summer Secrets Page 18