Before Anamaría could fully appreciate the image, Lulu slid her finger across the screen. A treasure trove of pictures scrolled by until Lulu stopped on one.
“See. Lelephants. A mami and her bebé.”
Anamaría gasped softly, awed by the stunning image of a mother elephant bent protectively over her offspring, their trunks tangling together. Another elephant bathed in the distance, a blurred figure that blended with the muted colors of the muddy riverbank and a looming rock formation. The play of light and shadow created by the sun’s rays peeking over a far-off plateau and the camera angle chosen gave the image an ethereal quality. One that spoke of Alejandro’s magical artistry. His ability to find beauty in the world, capturing it with breath-taking photographs that came to life.
“Pretty, huh?” Lulu asked.
Anamaría bobbed her head. A mixture of pride and sadness clogged her throat, making it impossible for her to speak. He was good. Like, really really good. It made it impossible for her to begrudge him for following his dream. For loving it more than he had loved her. Especially when his talent allowed him to share the stunning way he viewed the world with others.
“If you like this one, I can frame a copy for your bedroom,” Alejandro offered his niece.
“Sí, p’ease.” Lulu’s toddler speak had him chuckling, their shared smile sweet, but hard to watch when it evoked unwanted what-ifs in Anamaría’s heart.
There’d been a time when her room could have served as an Alejandro Miranda photograph exhibit. One on the wall over her bed. Another on her nightstand. A third keeping watch on her desk. Each taken at their favorite spots around Key West. Astro City across from Higgs Beach, the site of their first kiss with July Fourth fireworks illuminating the night sky above them. Sunset off Snipes Point on her papi’s boat, the Salvación. One of her taken here, in his familia’s backyard, laughing at some joke they had shared, the flamboyán tree a blur of fiery red behind her. He’d captured her staring directly at the camera. Her expression brimming with love and joy for the young man who evoked those emotions in her.
Until that had no longer been the truth.
Now all those photos were in a box in the back of her closet. And she . . . she did not need to be here, derailing her hard-earned professional momentum because a ghost from her past had suddenly decided to come back and haunt her.
“That picture will look great in your room, Lulu.” Pushing off her knees, Anamaría rose from her haunches. “I should be going.”
“Hey!” Alejandro reached for her hand, their fingers lacing together.
An electric current zigzagged up her wrist, into her arm. Anamaría stared down at their joined hands, despising the conflicting emotions rioting inside her.
“Don’t let the moms stress you out,” he said. “I’ll talk to mine. Remind her that my stay here is temporary. My dad’s already made it clear I’m not wanted here. She knows that. Besides, I’ve got jobs booked later in the year and I’m waiting to hear back on one I’m really excited about.”
Of course, he was already planning his escape. Because his life was out there. Not here.
“And you”—he jiggled their joined hands—“I’ve seen your social media reach expanding. Which should translate to an uptick in clients and your business expanding. Neither one of us needs our family getting in our way, trying to stop us. They need to back the hell off.”
He was right. Even though well-intentioned, the meddling was obnoxious. Their moms’ warped way of showing how much they cared.
But he was also wrong: their moms weren’t trying to stop her, or him, from succeeding. They only wanted—
“Wait, you follow me?” Her surprised question slipped out unbidden.
Alejandro blinked, a guilty expression chasing across his handsome face. “I . . . peek at your social media feed. Once in a while.” He cleared his throat, his frown deepening. “And may have sampled a recipe, or two, from your website.”
“Oh really?” The idea that maybe he hadn’t been able to completely forget, the satisfaction his admission gave her, felt good.
Petty maybe, but definitely gratifying.
It made the years she had wasted settling for mostly happy feel not quite as one-sided.
Because until her cousin Vanessa’s beachside tequila-fueled enough-is-enough speech during a girls’ weekend in Miami two years ago, that’s exactly how Anamaría had been living. Clocking in and out of the fire station alongside her brothers and Papi. Relegating AM Fitness to a side hustle she dreamed about growing but never did. Dating a few guys, kind of.
Empty margarita glass high in the air like a tipsy bikini-clad Lady Liberty on the shores of South Beach, Vanessa had laid out her ultimatums for Anamaría’s new start in life.
Time to stop spinning her wheels and set up her website, post her videos, grow her damn business instead of simply paying it lip service.
Stop dating the wrong men. Like Henry, the sailor, destined to ship out after his tour of duty at the naval base. And Edgardo, the firefighter from Miami, biding his time in Key West until he landed a job with a station closer to his home, which he eventually did. Both were men who would inevitably leave her, as she cursed them for doing.
Alejandro released her fingers and rubbed at his now-smooth jaw. “To be honest, my mom mentioned that you were showing her how to use Instagram a while back, and I started checking out your feed. Then I hopped onto your YouTube channel. You’ve got something good going, AM. Smart play off your nickname for your business. I’m happy for you.”
Not happy enough to send her a simple DM to say congrats. Although, who’s to say she would have responded to a direct message from him. But she might have . . . what?
She didn’t need praise from him. Now she buoyed herself. Or relied on her familia, who would never walk away from her.
Even when Luis and Enrique had been at odds with each other for years after everything with Luis’s ex, her brothers had never cut ties completely. Not that their mother would have allowed it.
Yeah, familia she could count on.
Love and men? Not so much.
“Tengo hambre,” Lulu announced, setting the iPad on her lap and rubbing a hand over her tummy.
“You know what, chiquita? Me too. Why don’t we raid the kitchen and see how we can fill your belly, huh?” Alejandro tickled her round stomach and Lulu squealed with glee. He barked with laughter, the deep timbre a foil for the little girl’s high-pitched giggle.
Anamaría tore her gaze from the heartwarming play. Joining their fun, letting her guard down with Alejandro, would be like snipping off a piece of the fuchsia bougainvillea vines trailing along the backyard privacy wall. Beautiful, but if she tried to hold on to it, she’d wind up pricking her fingers on the sharp thorns.
“Do you, uh, you wanna eat with us?”
Anamaría’s eyes fluttered closed at Alejandro’s hesitant invitation. She knew she’d enjoy their company, but... “I need to be go—”
The sliding glass door rumbled open and she broke off.
“Lunch is on the table for everyone,” Señora Miranda announced, all smiles and sunshine. No sign of guilt for her sneaky maneuver. “Come, let’s eat together.”
“Yay! I hung’y, ’Buela!” Lulu tucked the iPad back along Alejandro’s hip, then wiggled to slide off his lap. She hop-skipped over to her abuela, who held out a hand for her precious granddaughter. Together the pair disappeared inside, leaving Anamaría and Alejandro alone.
“You don’t have to stay,” Alejandro said. “We can’t let our mothers ride roughshod over us. At least, I don’t intend to let that happen. And I definitely don’t intend on letting mine disrupt either of our lives with her meddlesome plotting.”
Anamaría stepped closer and dropped her voice, not putting it past Señora Miranda to eavesdrop. “Complaining about it hasn’t seemed to work. You got any other ideas?”
“Like?” His baffled frown told her he remained clueless.
Great. She heaved a frust
rated sigh and strode to the patio edge farthest from the sliding glass door and potentially prying eyes. “I haven’t quite figured it out yet. But I do know, I am not up for surprises and forced meet-ups like this.”
She didn’t have the time or energy . . . or the heart, not that she’d admit that last one . . . to worry about thinking one step ahead of their moms. If she even could.
“I don’t know how you put up with this all the time,” he muttered, rolling his chair closer and stopping at her side.
“They mean well.” Something her father reminded her of often.
“Doesn’t feel like it. The nosiness and butting into your business. Always thinking they know what’s best, the—”
“Caring about you?” Her annoyance swung like a heavy pendulum from their meddling moms to him and his rudeness. “Que ingrato.”
“Pfff, ingrate?” he scoffed. “What? Because I don’t like being manipulated?”
“No, because you’re being a jerk about it.”
“Look, you deal with your mom your way. I’ll take care of mine.” Palming the large tires, he spun his chair around, then pushed himself away.
Nuh-uh. He was not going to run away like he’d done before. Lunging forward, she latched on to one of the handgrips, dragging him to a halt.
“What the hell?” He twisted in his seat and swatted at her hand.
Anamaría held on tighter. “Don’t be an ass and go hurting your mom’s feelings. As bothersome as their hovering might be, it’s their way of saying they want us to be happy.”
“No, they want what they think will make us happy! But even if they can’t or won’t face the truth, you and I have.” He eyed her with resentment, then muttered a curse and twisted around to plop back in his chair. “You made your choice clear years ago.”
Outrage at his unfair accusation exploded inside her like an emergency flare shot in the air and she saw red.
“Are you seriously putting this all on me?” she ground out.
Pulse pounding in a bongo beat that freed the anger and disillusion she had long harbored, Anamaría circled his chair to stand in front of him, hands fisted on her hips.
Their breakup had been excruiating and drawn out. Months in the making. Precipitated by decisions he had made on his own.
She had spent those months praying he’d change his mind about never coming back. That he’d make amends with his father.
Alejandro had expected that she would drop her classes, leave her familia, and simply follow him. Without a real plan for herself.
Eventually, they had started allowing the silences between them to grow longer. The number of days between calls stretched. And then, like the quiet closing of a book that had come to an end, they finished with a vapid We can’t keep doing this from her and a trite It’s not working anymore from him.
She’d been forced to throw in the towel first because he hadn’t been man enough to admit he was distancing himself from her. From everyone. Hell, he’d even stopped calling Enrique, and they’d been as close as brothers.
“You may not comprehend this,” she ground out. “The hovering, the annoying over-protective behavior. I’d take all of that from my parents and brothers any day of the week over not having them in my life at all. You didn’t get that back then. And it’s apparent you’re still clueless now.”
Alejandro’s lips pressed into a hard line. He stared at her, his chest rising, then falling with a deep breath before he finally spoke in a gravel-rough voice. “I didn’t expect you to give them up. But I didn’t expect you to give up on me, either.”
She heaved a resigned sigh, dropping her head back to glare at the wispy clouds in the pale blue sky. Irritated at the universe in general and her ex in particular over this rehash of their last few arguments.
“Ale, you applied for and accepted a full-time, six-month internship without talking to me about it.” She held her hands out as if laying their cards on the table, wanting him to finally give her a good reason for playing his so close to his chest and keeping everything a secret. His original flimsy excuse of thinking his news would be a welcome surprise didn’t suffice. “Our summer trip turned into something indefinite and you expected me to be okay with that.”
“You said you wanted adventure.”
“Yes, along with a home. Here. Those two didn’t . . . don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”
“They do for me. My father made that clear. Then, and now.” The finality in his voice stifled her rebuttal.
His gaze slid past her to the sliding glass door, then down at his injured leg. She recognized the anguish of a son rejected by his father. Something Ale’s ego would never allow him to admit.
Frustrated by the futility of their circular argument and the reality that more than ten years had passed without a damn thing changing, Anamaría turned away from him with a muttered curse.
A moped horn beeped somewhere nearby, startling a little yellow bird that squawked and flew out from between the flaming red petals of the flamboyán tree. A male voice called out, “Adiós!” and the moped’s engine sputtered, then gained intensity as the driver accelerated away. Unknowingly fleeing the tense silence in their neighbor’s backyard.
“AM, I don’t want to fight with you anymore.”
Alejandro’s softly spoken confession whispered over her like a light breeze blowing in off the ocean. Refreshing, though momentary before the heavy humidity, much like their problems, descended again.
She peeked at him from the corner of her eye. Skeptical.
“I only plan on being here for a couple months. I don’t want to spend that time upset with my mom, or my abuela. Or you, for that matter.” He dipped his head and gestured toward her, palm up, sincerity in his dark eyes and broody expression.
Her breath caught with surprise at what sounded almost like a peace offering.
Could she do more than pretend she had moved on? Forgive and forget like her mami had advised?
Maybe. If he didn’t start acting like a selfish ass again. And if she kept her heart completely out of the equation.
“Fine,” she muttered. “I accept your apology.”
“I didn—”
“Look, Sara and I are heading to New York this weekend. She’s speaking at a conference. I’m meeting with her agent about representation and a potential sponsorship opportunity,” Anamaría elaborated when Alejandro arched a brow in question. “If you and I are lucky, Enrique will pull some idiotic stunt while I’m gone and my mami will have her hands full with that. Leaving us . . . me . . . alone.”
She hitched a shoulder and tilted her head with a half shrug. “That’s our best option right now.”
Ale nodded. “When E comes by tomorrow, I’ll see if I can convince him to be the fall guy this time.”
“My baby brother owes me. Remind him of that.”
The faint smile on Alejandro’s lips at her fisted salute to her brother was at odds with the thoughtful frown furrowing his brows as he absently rubbed his left quad and knee.
“You okay?” she asked, chalking her concern up to a hazard of her job.
“I’m fine. Supposed to take another pill with lunch. Actually, I was, uh, thinking about our strange role reversal.”
Anamaría shook her head, unsure what he meant.
“Here you are, flying off to the big city. And here I am”—he tapped the padded armrest with a palm—“the one stuck here on the Rock.”
“Only I’ve never felt ‘stuck’ here. I’ll be happy to return on Sunday, with my familia excited to hear all about my trip.”
Alejandro’s mouth opened, then closed without him saying anything. His expression shuttered, and belatedly, she realized the unintended gut punch in her words. Evidence proving his point as to why he couldn’t stay. Because unlike her, not all of his familia welcomed his return.
“I shouldn’t have—”
“Forget about it.” He waved her off. “It is what it is. You should go. Don’t keep your client waiting.”
>
He was right. There was nothing left for them to say to each other anyway.
“You talk to Enrique tomorrow. I’ll give him a nudge, too.” Her heart heavy, she moved toward the sliding glass door.
The cool AC air from inside kissed her heated skin as his husky voice stopped her.
“For what it’s worth, good luck in New York. Whoever you’re meeting with, they’re crazy if they don’t wanna work with you.”
Crazy. Exactly how he made her feel.
Crazy with longing. Crazy with frustration. Crazy with what-ifs that could never be.
His words of encouragement brought a painful tightness in her chest.
He used to be her best friend. Her confidant. The one she shared all her exciting news with first.
She missed those innocent years. Missed him.
But they remained at the same fork in the road. And their decisions about which path to take hadn’t changed.
“Gracias,” she whispered, unable to look at him. Afraid he’d see the regret she was determined to hide. “Cuídate.”
Not that he’d listen and actually take care of himself. Hardheaded man that he was.
Without waiting for him to respond, she hurried inside to say her good-byes. Time to focus on her trip and the opportunities that awaited.
Her future was out there. Not here.
Chapter 7
“For a guy who had the bright idea of cliff-diving onto a pile of waterfall rocks instead of the glistening pool of water a few feet to his left, you don’t look half-bad.”
Alejandro gave Enrique the finger as Anamaría’s younger brother grinned and stepped back to the dresser.
“Douchebag,” Alejandro grumbled. Planting his palms on either side of his hips, he pushed up, raising his butt to reposition himself more comfortably on his bedroom mattress.
“Seriously, you got lucky, bro.” Enrique deftly removed his light blue latex gloves with a snap of the rubbery material.
Alejandro leaned against the pillow sandwiched between his back and the headboard, answering his friend with a lazy shrug. Luck was a fickle shit. Coming and going at its whimsy.
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