Crush

by Jen Doyle

  Alejandro was laughing—that was obvious—but she forgave him because he turned on the engine and then nodded at her to get on the bike. Sending up a prayer, she did all the things he’d told her, knowing the only way she’d get through this was to concentrate on the way it felt to have her arms wrapped around him.

  Out in the daylight.

  Live and in color on Facebook, apparently.

  He revved the engine and they took off.

  8

  He loved that little frown of hers. He loved the way she held up her head and threw her shoulders back, not backing down from anything even if she wasn’t happy about it one bit, whether it was the granny contingent or the motorcycle itself. But more than anything, he loved that it barely even took her a full minute to rest her head against his back and begin to relax her hold. By the time he’d turned off Main Street and headed up into the mountains, she’d fully given in and was fighting what he was sure was every natural instinct she had in order to just follow his lead.

  It was as if they’d been doing this forever. As if he’d actually given her the helmet and jacket when he’d bought them for her about ten years back, right around the time he’d realized he was a lovesick fool.

  They’d been sleeping together for a few years by that point, and he’d decided it was only a matter of logistics they weren’t seeing each other more often. It was the afternoon of what would be their last night together of the visit, and he’d been finishing up a grocery run when he’d come around the corner of the aisle to see Maggie and Drew. She’d seen Alejandro standing there and had stopped short, but rather than acknowledge him—even as he and Drew talked baseball scores—she’d mumbled something about needing shampoo and had turned herself completely around and walked away. And just like that, he’d been transported back to high school. When he’d been the scholarship kid and she’d been completely unattainable.

  Yes, it now appeared he’d been reading the situation entirely wrong for fourteen years. Back then it had hit him hard. That was when he’d told himself that, no, it wasn’t about logistics. It was her keeping him at arm’s length. The way it would always be.

  It was the first time he’d considered ending this…arrangement, for lack of a better word.

  He’d gone to her room at the Buena Vista that night to tell her he was done.

  Then he’d opened up her door and she’d looked up at him with those beautiful eyes—first with surprise and then with raw hunger. The flash of vulnerability had done something to him of which he wasn’t proud. The softness underneath that hard shell of hers had turned him on beyond words.

  Never in a million years would it have occurred to him they’d still have any connection all these years later, no matter how nebulous it was.

  Today it was a lot less nebulous than it had been the day before, though, wasn’t it? And now he was about to do something he’d never dreamed he’d be doing. Not after that day in the grocery store, at least, even though he’d never quite been able to keep himself from going back to her for reasons he’d never been able to name.

  He was taking her home.

  After an hour on the bike, he decided it was time, so he headed back down the mountain, and took the turn towards the country club. The way she shifted behind him was an indication she recognized they were reaching a destination rather than just another round of the bend. Trying not to think too hard about that, Alejandro drove in through the gates, up past the fourteenth hole, and then down the driveway with his house at the end. She sat up straight as he rolled to a stop and then put down the kickstand. He knew he was nervous when he barely registered her body against his as she eased her way off the bike.

  Straddling the bike, he sat back as she took off her helmet, looked from the house to him, and then walked forward to take it all in.

  He tried to tell himself this wasn’t a make or break moment…except it kind of was.

  He loved his house. He loved everything about it. The lot sat at the edge of the club’s golf course, but was just over a ridge so all you could see was a stretch of green—no flags, no sand traps, just green—and then the valley below. The house itself was small compared to all the others up here, only three bedrooms. The first floor was basically one big open space, each separate area terracing down a level, with the living room looking out over the valley below.

  Even with its small size, not in a hundred years should Alejandro have had this house. It was only because he went way back with Brock Russel—former actor, local celebrity, and major property developer and builder—that he’d had a shot. Alejandro knew Russel could have managed to make a profit off the land if nothing else, even though the lot was apparently too small and had too many restrictions for there to be the kind of house that matched the rest of the development. He also knew he never would have been able to build the house on his own. But he’d worked with Brock for a couple of summers doing construction back before Russel made it big, and Alejandro had helped out on a few projects over the years when Russel was building up his business—as a fellow laborer in the beginning, and then as he was getting into mosaics as a side business of his own. And one day Russel’s cousin had shown up at Alejandro’s office and said she was looking to get into designing private homes—would he be willing to be a guinea pig and tell her his ideas?

  Next thing he knew, the foundation was poured, the house was framed, and the roof was on. Apparently one of his designs had gone over better than any of them could have hoped, landing Russel and his client in a bunch of magazines. Alejandro had bought the land, but the foundation, framing, and roof were the thank you he had never expected.

  And here he was.

  Everything else Alejandro had done on his own, one room at a time. He was still finishing it up, in fact, doing a far-too-complicated mosaic on the patio. Being in a one-sided relationship with a woman who lived on the other side of the country and only visited one weekend per year created a lot of extra time and energy in a guy’s life, as it turned out.

  But now she was here, and she was looking at the manifestation of his heart and soul, and he gave far too much of a damn about whether she liked it or not. He knew she had money, both her family’s and her own. She was a Santa Christa girl, even if she hadn’t lived here in years, so every detail of her life in New York was widely known. From the townhouse in Park Slope to the corner office on the 50th floor to the millions she’d made over the last few years.

  Alejandro would have liked to say none of that mattered…but he would have been lying, a hundred per cent.

  Other than an arched eyebrow, however, she gave nothing away—not even so much as a smile as she walked forward. He gave her a few minutes to go around back, then he got off the bike and followed her there.

  He found her standing on the patio, staring down at the intricate tiles. “Tessellations,” she murmured, because of course she was about the math. “It’s beautiful.” After a few more seconds of peering down at it, she looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Yours?”

  He’d had no idea what he would have wanted her reaction to be, but if he was going by the lump in his throat, he’d guess that would be it. Unable to speak without letting on how much it meant to him, he just nodded. It was a few more moments before she looked away, and he felt it as she broke the gaze almost as though it had been a physical hold. He wanted desperately to go to her. Put his arms around her and bury himself in her as all that silky, smooth hair fell over him. But to his complete and utter surprise, he wanted even more for this to be something beyond what they’d been so far.

  So he watched as she went over to the low wall at the edge of the patio, looking out over the view with her arms crossed over her chest and the frown on her face that meant she was thinking hard about something. She didn’t turn as he came up behind her, but instead asked, “Why did you decide to come back here and teach at the JC?”

  He stopped in his tracks.

  Until the moment he’d seen her in the parking lot outside his office he’
d had no idea if she even knew what he did much less that he worked at the JC—the Junior College, as it was still thought of around town. Apparently the Santa Christa gossip mill worked on all levels. There was no judgment in her voice, though, not even disbelief that he’d pass up every other offer he’d had in order to come back home and teach at the local community college. Just curiosity through and through.

  So he gave her the truth he’d never voiced to anyone from her side of the fields, even those he considered true friends. “I wanted to make sure kids like me had a chance at owning the land rather than just working it.”

  “Kids like you,” she repeated after a slight pause, not mentioning the football scholarship that got him into St. Catherine’s, or the ease with which he got straight A’s once he was there. Because yes, he’d had those things going for him, but not everyone else did.

  “Was it hard?” she asked, her voice breaking a little even as she steadily held his gaze.

  He looked out over the valley and memories crashed over him. The bone-tired look of his grandfather and uncles when they’d come in from the fields. The worry etched on his aunts’ and grandmother’s faces when their children would laugh too hard or, as they grew older, take offense at something someone said. God forbid there was a scene. Never wanting to stand out, they’d pull everyone back into the shadows, clucking at Alejandro and his cousins when they’d refuse to be hidden away.

  Ironic he was having this conversation now, here with her. “I fell in with the Romanos,” he said of the guys who had become like brothers to him despite their being part of one of the town’s founding families; as opposed to his own bloodlines, which to some of the people around here were no better than the dirt in which they grew their vines.

  Actually, he was being facetious. They cared quite a bit about their dirt.

  Reid’s family, though, had always been different. “Reid’s parents were some of the best people I’ve ever known.” Before he’d even really known them their support of him and his scholarship to St. Catherine’s put him on the path to where he was today. Plus, “They didn’t seem bothered by the opinions I offered up.”

  And, yes, he’d gotten into a few heated discussions with Mr. Romano even though Reid’s dad had already been one of the most progressive growers in the valley. But there were always improvements to be made, as far as Alejandro was concerned, and he’d been happy to share his thoughts. That Mr. and Mrs. Romano had gone on to implement some of his suggestions was something that to this day hit him in a way very few things did.

  “I always admired them,” Maggie murmured. “It was such a huge loss when they passed away.” She reached out and squeezed his hand quickly before letting go. “Is that why you went into Political Science?” Not even noticing she’d shocked him again, she added, “‘Opinions’?”

  She turned her head away, looking back out over the valley as if she hadn’t just taken his world and shifted the axel it revolved around. No one understood this part of his life. No one. Never before had anyone even asked.

  It stunned him so much he forgot the rest of what he’d been working his way up to ask her—the not inconsequential questions as to whether she knew some of his family members had worked in her mother’s fields. Or that his own mother cleaned Maggie’s mother’s house. Instead, he just stood there staring at the woman in front of him, trying to make sense of what was happening to him somewhere deep inside.

  Then she turned her gaze back to him and smiled. “And it doesn’t matter to you that no one here knows what, say, the Eulau Award is, much less that you won it.”

  Yeah, he was floored.

  He’d never had a conversation about this with anyone outside of school and now to be having one with her… It didn’t seem possible.

  The Heinz I. Eulau Award was given for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, an accomplishment in itself, much less for someone still in grad school. And, yes, he cared. He cared a lot when he had to sit through a mierda game some of his colleagues played because he had two degrees from Harvard and yet they still got to tell him what to do. He cared a lot when someone saw him in his truck or heard his name and told him to go back to his own country because he was taking someone’s job—or scholarship to Harvard, for that matter. Never mind that no one else wanted the jobs his father and uncles had done as he was growing up, or that he’d never been to Mexico because his parents had worked so hard to get out they’d never wanted to go back.

  But right now none of that mattered. He could feel the walls that had kept him sane through all those years of having to be better and more humble than everyone else begin to slip away. Even his parents, who had sacrificed so much, didn’t really get what he’d accomplished professionally, much less what he’d left behind; they had no understanding of what he’d achieved. That Maggie cared enough to know—that she’d been thinking of him for all these years the same way he’d been thinking of her—meant more to him then he could say.

  Maldición. He wasn’t ready to fall in love. He liked her; he wanted to explore something more with her. But he wasn’t ready for this.

  His hands were on her hips before he even realized he’d closed the distance between them. His lips were just brushing hers when there was a sudden clatter of dishes from inside, and

  he groaned as his forehead came to a rest against hers.

  Not now.

  Please not now.

  More amused than concerned, it seemed, Maggie looked up at him, her cheeks flushed and eyes wide and he wanted to fucking devour her. “Please tell me that’s not some angry girlfriend you neglected to mention.”

  “No,” he said. It was even worse. There were only two other people who had the key to his house, and Russel wouldn’t have started out in the kitchen. “That’s my grandmother.”

  9

  The evening clearly wasn’t going as Alejandro had planned. Given the candles and the table set for two, he seemed to have put those hours between Santa Rosa and their motorcycle ride to good use. Not caring one bit about that apparently, his grandmother had pushed the candles to the side and added another place setting right in between the two. Muttering in Spanish the entire time, Alejandro had nevertheless gotten a chair from over by the couch, brought it to the table, and held it for his grandmother to sit in before holding out a second for Maggie.

  It was kind of adorable.

  It was also Maggie’s wake-up call as to what it would mean if she and Alejandro were actually together. This wasn’t exactly the kind of family dynamic she was used to. Dinner conversations at her house were much quieter. Restrained. Cold. Alejandro and his grandmother spent a fair amount of the evening arguing—or, rather, his grandmother scolded, muttered and glared, while Alejandro rolled his eyes. Yet there was no denying the deep connection between the two. It made Maggie miss her uncle even more while at the same time think about what it would be like to have a life like this. To live this kind of a life here in Santa Christa with Alejandro. Not until this morning had she begun to contemplate it was even remotely possible; now she ached for it with every ounce of her soul.

  Suddenly feeling emotional, she looked down at her plate, wishing she hadn’t inhaled everything on it. Despite being heated up rather than freshly made—because, really, the man had a range of talents, but dinner from scratch while riding on a motorcycle simply wasn’t possible no matter how disapproving of the concept his grandmother clearly was—the enchiladas were possibly the best thing Maggie had ever tasted in her life.

  When she was confident she wouldn’t be bursting into tears, Maggie looked up, only to find both Alejandro and his grandmother watching her. Or, rather, Alejandro sitting back in his chair and watching her as his grandmother took it all in.

  “Sorry,” Maggie mumbled, trying hard not to lose any not-going-to-cry ground. “It’s been a, um…” Crazy. Emotional. “…Kind of long day.”

  Though his grandmother seemed about to say something, Alejandro leaned forward and started to g
ather up plates. “Why don’t you go outside? I’ll pull dessert together and be out in a few minutes.”

  Right. And let his grandmother believe she was one of those women who wanted everything done for her? Hell, no.

  But when Maggie stood up and began to help, the older woman got up and took Maggie by the arm, gently pulling her to the doors leading outside. “Sit. Be comfortable.”

  Maggie didn’t think it was a good thing when she heard the two arguing—again—through the open kitchen windows. Having been more comfortable as a child hanging out with the men and women who worked the fields than with her actual family, Maggie had picked up a fair amount of Spanish growing up. Plus she’d taken Spanish all through high school and college. But you didn’t need to speak a word of it to know that what his grandmother was furiously saying was: That girl is not the one for you.

  Then a sudden thought occurred to Maggie. Did Alejandro’s grandmother know her family? Did the older woman know Maggie’s father? Did Alejandro? Maggie hoped desperately that wasn’t the case. Her father had been harsh to her and she was his own flesh and blood. She’d stayed as far away from him and the vineyard as she possibly could, so she had no idea if he and Alejandro had ever crossed paths. But if they had, she couldn’t imagine it would have been good; Dad was no Romano, that was for sure. The idea of Alejandro’s grandmother having had any interaction with him and knowing he was Maggie’s father was, well, as cold and terrifying of a thought as her father herself had been.

  Santa Christa was a small town, however. The odds, unfortunately, weren’t in her favor.

  To her surprise, though, Maggie didn’t sense even a bit of disapproval when they came outside to join her, Alejandro carrying a tray of fresh fruit while his grandmother had a stack of plates and napkins. As he set it down, Maggie’s eyebrows went up when she saw the melted chocolate and whipped cream. His dinner plans, it seemed, had included an interactive dessert.