Her wide stare narrowed. “Someone they don’t know or a Cuban boy not of their perceived station?”
Thank God for a friend who just knew things without my having to spell them out. And who didn’t judge.
Hugging the pillow closer I quietly said, “It doesn’t matter to them that your family is as successful and well-established in their community as mine is—they’re...”
“Cuban,” she said flatly.
“I was going to say different.”
She shrugged. “Why beat around the bush?”
“Because it’s embarrassing.” My skin flushed with uncomfortable heat as I went on. “I mean, it’s one thing for the Relatives of a Certain Generation—” I intoned it like the title I’d always imagined it to be, “to be prejudiced and intractable, but my parents aren’t that old. Why should they care?”
“Because your parents grew up in a protected, elitist bubble.” She shrugged. “My family might have been every bit as bad if they hadn’t had their entire lives uprooted by Castro and had to start over, albeit under better circumstances than a lot of their contemporaries.”
Because the Abreus had already long since expanded their jewelry business to Miami and Europe by the time Castro came to power, while they lost what they had in Cuba, they still had a solid foundation from which to start over.
“Their worldviews were shaken up just enough that it left them a little more open to possibility.” A surprising grin crossed her face. “Still didn’t stop the men in the family from thinking they knew what was best for me or bartering like camel dealers in Damascus in order to engineer a relationship between me and David.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, talk about ‘be careful what you wish for.’” Since both she and David, who turned out to actually like each other, had not only started dating, but were taking off for Stanford in the fall, both to pursue academic careers light years from the roles their families had imagined for them. The likelihood they’d ever be returning to Miami on a permanent basis was stuck somewhere between “slim” and “not a chance in hell.”
We fell quiet for a few seconds, then she said, “So what’re you going to do about Eddie?”
“Well, I’m not breaking up with him if that’s what you’re asking— Ow!” I threw my arm up to protect myself from yet another unprovoked pillow attack. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to have so many pillows on my bed.
“I know that, you ninny. Jesus!”
“Sorry.” I tossed the pillow back at her and resumed clutching mine. “I guess I’m still stuck in What Mom and Dad Want Me to Do–Land.”
“Well, let’s zip on back to What Peyton Wants to Do–Land.”
“What I want is to go to Miami with you and go to prom with Eddie.”
“But you’re not going to.”
I shook my head.
She sighed and looked so sympathetic, I felt tears prick the backs of my eyes.
“I do get it,” she said softly, making the tears threaten even more powerfully. “Do you want me to beat a retreat for a while so you can call Eddie?”
Still struggling to fight back the tears, I shook my head.
Her eyes widened. “You want me to stay?”
I shook my head again, leaving her looking mildly confused.
Taking a deep breath I said, “I think this is something better said face-to-face.” I sighed. “I’ll just switch my plane ticket to this weekend and fly down to see him.”
“Do you need me to go with?” she immediately offered.
I shook my head. “It’ll be okay. I hope.”
“Eddie’ll be cool with it. I mean, he’ll be disappointed, but not because he’ll be missing prom.” The look she gave me then had another one of those hated blushes rising and her laughing—the bitch.
“I’ll call Mami and tell her to make sure your room is ready.”
“Claudia—”
She cut me off with one of those looks she’d inherited from her grandmother. Scary effective, it was. “Listen, you, even if you weren’t dating Eddie, you’d be family. Haven’t you figured that out already? God, for such a smart girl, sometimes you are such a dope. Mami and Abuelita would skin both of us alive if you went to Miami and didn’t stay there. I don’t know about you, but I’m so not willing to risk it.”
Seriously, I was going to cry. And I never cried. I’d long ago learned there was no benefit to crying and that it was only considered a sign of weakness. Of course, these days, I knew better, but old habits were hard to break.
Luckily, Claudia—as if knowing just how close to an uncomfortable edge I was hovering—chose that moment to roll to her stomach and prop her chin on her fists.
“So tell me more about this chef dude and what makes his crudités so special?”
I laughed, a little watery around the edges, but it was enough to make the hated tears back off. Reaching for my laptop, I opened it and clicked on the first link my search had returned.
“Chef Kai Belizaire—Hawaii-born and French-raised—initially burst onto the cooking scene as a young teenager.” I skimmed the bio, summing up the highlights. “Owned his own place by the time he was eighteen and became the youngest chef ever to earn two Michelin stars for his eponymous New York restaurant.”
“That’s good, I take it?” Claudia asked.
“Really good.”
She grunted, clearly not entirely convinced, and waved a hand, indicating I should go on.
“He’s only twenty-two and considered on a level somewhere between enfant terrible and rock star—one reviewer said his manner is ‘brash and abrasive enough to make Gordon Ramsay seem like the world’s kindest, gentlest kindergarten teacher by comparison.’”
“Gordon Ramsay?”
“Hell’s Kitchen guy.”
“Oh, the screamer.”
“Yeah.”
“And this guy’s worse?”
“Apparently.” I clicked on another link. “You know what makes him even worse?”
“What’s that?”
“You look at Ramsay and you can just tell the dude’s a walking time bomb. I mean, he has perpetual Aneurysm Face.”
Claudia snorted. “So I’m guessing Mr. Cranky French Chef does not suffer from Aneurysm Face?”
“Not exactly.” I turned the laptop so we could both see it.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.”
“I know.”
“That is some powerful genetic soup.”
“I know.”
“Peyton, can I give you a piece of advice?”
“Could I stop you?”
“No.”
“Well then—”
She sat up and clicked through the series of photographs in the gallery, shaking her head slowly as each one revealed in loving, full-color, high-def detail the fact that Kai Belizaire, offspring of a Hawaiian mother and French-Moroccan father, was, in a word, hot.
Maybe more appropriately, scorching. Hard-bodied, dreadlocked, tattooed and with piercing green eyes that reached through the screen with a stare that seemed to say, “I’m fucking awesome and I know it, mais oui.”
She clicked on an image that showed him wading through sparkling turquoise Hawaiian waters, looking like some bronzed warrior from a bygone era. A spear and crown of leaves on his head and the image would’ve been complete. We stared in silent appreciation for a few moments before I said, “Claudia?”
“Hmm?”
“Advice?”
“Oh, yeah...” She shook her head as if emerging from a fog. I could relate. “Don’t show these to Eddie.”
I snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Her eyebrows rose. “What, you think Eddie’s not above being jealous?”
“No, I’m saying why would he be? I mean, look at this guy.” I gestured at the screen, my fingertips inadvertently brushing against the chest with the tribal tat swirling around one pec and oh, dear God, was that a piercing?
“I can tell without even knowing a thing about him that I am so not his type.” Nor was he really mine. I mean...pretty, yes. Very, very pretty, come to think of it—but while I could admire him, he just didn’t seem like a very comfortable person to be around.
“Girl, it doesn’t matter.” Claudia clicked on the picture, enlarging it further and oh, dear God, it was a piercing.
“Cuban boys, for all their bravado, are pretty fragile creatures, ego-wise. Mr. Cranky French Chef’s not a whole lot older than we are and is crazy successful, which means there’s also a fair amount of intelligence there, as well. Add in the mondo talent in a discipline in which you share an intense interest, plus the looks, plus the many, many hours you’re likely to be spending in close proximity to him?” She shook her head. “I guarantee, it’s gonna drive Eddie crazy and then he’s gonna start driving everyone else crazy, by which I mean it’s me he’s going to be driving crazy, because it’s me he’s going to be calling 24/7 to whine at.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Be that as it may—” she drew her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees “—I also happen to be right.”
“Are you saying he doesn’t trust me?” Because seriously—I was the redheaded math wonk, Eddie was the smart, hot jock. It really should go the other way, except I did trust him.
She wrinkled her nose. “He trusts you with his life. He just wouldn’t be able to understand how the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily see you the way he sees you. He thinks you could have anyone you want—yet you want him. But he’d worry that could change and in Mr. French Chef—despite the circumstances and despite the excess of cranky—he might see the perfect storm of possibility.”
“My wanting Eddie is not going to change.” No matter how hot, tattooed and pierced Kai Belizaire was. He just couldn’t compare to Eddie. No one could.
Claudia’s expression was sympathetic. “I know. All I’m saying is just make sure Eddie knows it, too.”
Six
I was a worm.
No, worse. I was the slimy underside of a worm after it slithered through a rain puddle that had sat stagnant long enough to develop that disgusting oily green film. So gross, even seagulls, those notoriously indiscriminate scavengers, would pass me by as too low and disgusting even for them.
That’s how much of a worm I was.
I stared out at the waves as I sifted sand through my fingers, wishing I could just dig myself a hole and disappear. Since, you know, even the birds wouldn’t want me.
I’d take Eddie with me, of course—provided he didn’t utterly and completely hate me.
“You hate me.”
“I already told you—six times—I don’t hate you.”
Eddie’s hand captured mine, trapping sand between our palms in a way that made me shiver. Not that sexy times on the beach had ever figured prominently in any of my fantasies because (a) unless you had your own beach, the possibility for getting busted for public indecency was kind of high and (b) the potential for sand to creep into some seriously uncomfortable places, no matter how many towels and blankets you had spread out? Also high. Still though...feeling the grit and rasp of the sand between our palms, hearing the music of the waves as they crashed against the shore and watching the last of the sun glint like diamonds on the water, I could understand why sex on the beach remained such a highly used trope in books and films.
“Your parents, on the other hand...”
I sighed. “Yeah, them I kind of hate right now, too.” And actually articulating it out loud probably wasn’t winning me any points with the universe. I looked at Eddie—free arm draped across his upraised knees, profile etched in strong lines against the oncoming twilight and dark gaze focused on the horizon, and you know what? At this point the universe could bite me. Far as I was concerned, it owed me. Big time.
This was so monumentally unfair. A thought I’d expressed approximately seventeen thousand four hundred thirty-two times in the five days since my parents had handed down their Proclamation of Doom. Dean Winchester even made a point of pulling me aside Friday before I left for the airport and saying she’d tried—again—to get my parents to see how unreasonable they were being, but they wouldn’t budge. To their way of thinking, I was wasting not only countless opportunities, but my intellect. I was willfully throwing away my future and they would be remiss in their duties as parents if they didn’t do their best to get me to see the error of my ways.
They picked a hell of a time to take an interest in my life and start acting like actual parents.
Never mind that a huge chunk of my interest was intellectual—not even so much the math and chemistry of cooking, as I might have imagined, but rather, the humanity of it. I mean, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a large part of what had drawn me to Cuban cooking was not only the ermahgerd amazingness of it—and yes, “ermahgerd” was a technical term—but its societal significance. How it served as a common tie within the community and brought together multiple generations. It was a common thread I discovered as I learned more about regional cuisines beyond Cuban—a thread I found lacking within my own background. Of course I was aware New England had a long culinary tradition, what with Pilgrims and all, but it wasn’t one that had served in any way to draw my family together, so the personal connection just wasn’t there.
Needless to say, the academic in me was fascinated by these threads. It was a course of study I was actually considering investigating further—something I felt would be an exciting corollary to my culinary education.
Needless to say, my parents were so not impressed.
I believe the phrase “and the point of learning the history of cooking peasant food for the masses?” had been uttered, at which point I waved the white flag.
The sad part was, under different circumstances, I’d be jumping at the opportunity they were providing even if they didn’t realize I’d see it as such. Because seriously? Getting a chance to learn from a master like Kai Belizaire at such an early stage in my education? It could only be a good thing.
If only it hadn’t been provided with the express intent to have me fail.
“It’s just one night, Peyton.”
“But it was supposed to be a special night. Our night. I gave my parents every opportunity to administer their so-called test at any other time, but they were all ‘My way or the highway.’” I stared out over the water until spots began dancing in front of my eyes. “It’s so hypocritical, Eddie. They say they’re doing this for my best interests when my best interests—what’s important to me, whether it’s with respect to my career or my relationship with you—are clearly at the bottom of whatever their agenda is.”
“Their agenda’s pretty simple, baby.” Eddie released my hand and wrapped his arm around my waist, urging me close enough to drop my head to his shoulder. “They have these rigid, fixed ideas of what your life should be like, based on standards set by generations before them. Trust me, I have a lot of experience with those sorts of expectations.”
The last was uttered so softly, they were nearly lost within the waves rushing ever closer as the tide came in.
I lifted my head. “What’s up?”
It wasn’t the first time this weekend he’d alluded to something going on—oblique as it was, this statement was the closest he’d come to actually admitting something was going on.
“And don’t go all boylike and say ‘nothing.’ To quote your esteemed cousin, ‘That shit don’t fly.’”
His mouth snapped shut as a light blush stained his tanned
cheeks. Once again, I found myself looking at him and wondering how?
Okay, yeah, I dissed my redheadedness and my braniac tendencies, both of which had earned me my fair share of teasing over the years, but at the same time, I’d had enough guys express interest in me—couple of girls, too—to know I wasn’t without my own appeal. Maybe not universal, but there was at least something reasonably attractive there. However, the Eddies of the world so hadn’t been the type to ever express interest before—nor, if I was being completely fair, were the Eddies of the world the type in which I would have expressed interest. Tall, dark and cocky had never really been my cup of tea—but I guess tall, with a goofy sense of humor, seal-dark hair that was equal parts brown and black, and a smile that started at dark, deep-set eyes and seem to suffuse his entire being?
That I was a complete sucker for, apparently.
“Peyton?”
“Yeah?”
He wrinkled the nose that would’ve been too perfect if not for the bump he confided David had put there with an errant swing of a baseball bat when they were seven.
“Don’t quote Claudia.”
“Why not?”
“Because it just sounds wrong. Sort of like me trying to say, ‘Did you pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd?’”
I blinked. “Eddie, not even Boston natives say that.”
He shrugged, clearly unconcerned. “Just trying to make a point.”
“Which is?”
“I like the way you sound. The things you say. The way you say them.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” A smile turned up just the edges of his full mouth—his cat’s expression, I called it, since for some inexplicable reason, he reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of big, dark jungle cats. But before he could lean in completely and kiss me to distraction—something at which he excelled—I put my hand on his cheek.
“What’s going on?”
His mouth opened and I could almost see the “nothing” forming, but at my look, he caught himself. “Okay, yeah, there is something and I did want to talk to you about it. Nothing bad,” he added in a hurry as he clearly felt my hand tremble against his cheek. “Just wondering what my odds are on getting the deposit back on the orange tux.”
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