Coming Home to Texas--A Clean Romance

by Kit Hawthorne

  “Dalia! Hey, Dalia!”

  The voice calling her name brought her back to the present, and her heart gave a painful lurch because it sounded like Tony. But it was only Alex, crossing the street toward her, and waving.

  She put on a smile, waved back and took a deep breath. Steady on, Dalia. You’ve got this.

  Alex gave her a hug. He had on a dark blue coverall with his name embroidered over the pocket.

  “What’s this you’re wearing?” she asked.

  He looked down at himself. “It’s for my second job. I work for Manny at his garage. Auto and tractor repair.”

  “What, construction doesn’t keep you busy enough?”

  “I just like to earn as much as I can.”

  He said it cheerfully, but it made Dalia wonder. Was it possible Tony was stinting his brother’s pay?

  “We live in town together, me and Tony,” he said, pointing. “Got a little place right over the gym. Very convenient for working out.”

  “Looks pretty handy to Tito’s Bar, too.”

  “Ha ha! Yeah, we do spend a fair amount of time there, too. They have trivia on Thursday nights. Me and Tony are a team, and we do pretty well. Tony knows sports, I know history. We just need someone who knows tech.”

  Dalia knew tech. For a moment Alex’s face lit up, as if he’d just realized that. He got as far as “Hey, you should—” before coming to his senses and finishing lamely with “—check the place out sometime.”

  “I don’t care for bars,” she said.

  “Oh, it’s not just a bar anymore. They serve food now at their expansion next door. Fancy stuff. Artisanal pizzas and wraps and things. Lots of goat cheese and roasted brussels sprouts and stuff like that. The lawyer who used to have an office there retired, and Tito got the space. It’s all redone inside, with the old brick walls exposed and the hardwood floors refinished. Really beautiful, if I do say so myself. Me and Tony did the work.”

  “How nice for Tito,” Dalia said, in a voice that clearly communicated there was no way on God’s green earth she was setting foot inside a bar Tony frequented, or the adjoining restaurant, no matter how artisanal the pizza.

  After an awkward pause, Alex said, “So what’re you doing in town?”

  She held up her mom’s list. “Getting stuff for the firefighter fundraiser.”

  It hadn’t been easy persuading her mother to stay home and let Dalia do the legwork. Her mom was clearly getting cabin fever. Dalia sympathized, but she did errands a lot faster on her own. Her mom always wanted to drive by the church, and the house where she’d grown up, and the house where she and Dalia’s dad had lived when they first got married.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Alex. “The fundraiser is coming right up, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is. Honestly, I’ll be glad when it’s all over and the rebuild is all we have to focus on.”

  “I’ll bet. It can’t be any fun living with a giant hole in the side of your house and no kitchen. But we’ll get it done. Tony’s at the lumberyard right now getting the order in.”

  Is he, now? Well, well, well.

  So far, Dalia’s plans to monitor the rebuild hadn’t borne much fruit, though not for lack of trying on her part.

  “I want to see the bid,” she’d told her mom. “The minute he sends it, forward a copy to me. Okay?” And her mom had said, “Sure!”

  It came later that same day, while Dalia was in the living room answering some work emails. She experienced a jolt at seeing the ReyesBoysConstruction email address, but she forced herself to finish what she was doing, and not rush through it, before opening the forwarded email from Tony.

  Satisfied that she’d shown adequate unconcern, she clicked the message. It was formatted nicely, with the same house graphic from the truck decal as a letterhead image.

  She opened the attachments. Floor plan, elevation drawings. They looked...good. Very good. Not ostentatious but tasteful, comfortable. Now that she actually saw the reconfiguration of master bath, master closet and laundry room, she had to admit it made a lot of sense. The old layout was awkward, with the washer and dryer accessible only from the side porch. The new floor plan had an enclosed laundry room adjoining the kitchen. And the proposed bath and closet shared a single entry from the master bedroom, which would look a lot better than the two weirdly spaced doors in there now.

  She went back to the body of the email and realized for the first time that rather than simply forwarding the message, her mother had added her as a recipient to her reply of Looks great! Can’t wait to get started! The reply was time-stamped two minutes after the arrival of the original message. Her mom would have barely had time to open the attachments, much less study them.

  “Mom! You already accepted the bid?”

  “You bet I did! Don’t those plans look amazing?”

  “But—but we didn’t go over it together yet.”

  “Oh, I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “I’m right here in the same room with you! And I have an MBA in finance!”

  Her mom waved a hand dismissively. “I don’t want to get all bogged down in the details. I want to get a move on.”

  “But you love details! I thought we’d be deliberating over this for days!”

  “I’m bold and decisive now. It’s my new thing.”

  “Well, don’t you want to make sure you aren’t getting ripped off?”

  “Ripped off? The Reyes boys would never rip me off! And people wouldn’t recommend them if they were dishonest. City life has made you cynical, honey.”

  Dalia silently opened the next two attachments, for scope of work and payment schedule. The materials list looked reasonably detailed; she saw no obvious red flags. But she knew fraud was rampant in the construction business. With so many moving parts, so many project participants at different levels, overcharges were easy to hide.

  And who would suspect someone as charming as Tony? Someone who brought out the entire volunteer fire department to clear away debris for free? A magnanimous gesture like that was a classic misdirect.

  If he could put one over on hard-nosed, suspicious Dalia when he was just a callow teenager, how much more capable was he now, as a mature man, of bamboozling her sunny, optimistic, people-loving mother?

  All right, then. She’d just have to keep close watch on the process. Demand copies of receipts, compare them with the bill of materials actually used, and make sure Tony wasn’t billing her mom for expensive materials while using substandard ones and pocketing the difference.

  She forced a smile now. “It was great seeing you, Alex, but I’d better be on my way.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you later.”

  The lumberyard was at the end of the block. Dalia wouldn’t get a better opportunity to check on Tony.

  Fool me once, shame on you. Fool my mother? Not on my watch.

  CHAPTER SIX

  TONY BREATHED DEEP of the sweet, bright scent of lumber. He felt all right, in spite of a late night at Tito’s and slightly more beer than was good for him. He’d spent a second day at La Escarpa, with memories flooding his brain and Dalia looking at him like he was a hornworm on a tomato plant, and another day drawing up the plans for the rebuild. Then yesterday, Mrs. Ramirez had accepted the bid and sealed his fate. After all that, he’d needed consolation.

  At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.

  He hadn’t gone over his limit by much, and what he now considered his limit would have been just warming up back in the day. His tolerances had changed for sure. That first year back home was a haze in his memory now. But even then, no matter how sloshed he’d gotten the night before, he’d get up in the morning, down his hangover remedy and head to Bart’s Gym. Alex used to say it was a good thing Tony was so vain, because it kept him from completely letting himself go. It wasn’t only vanity, though. He cared how he looked, sure, b
ut he also just plain liked physical exertion and performance. He partied hard and worked out hard. The trade-off worked well enough, for a while.

  But then it started to wear on him. He didn’t bounce back as fast as he used to. And one morning at the gym, Bart himself shook his head at Tony and said, “Son, you have got to start taking better care of yourself. You won’t be able to cruise along on youth and a good genetic package forever.”

  And he realized Bart was right.

  So that was the end of that. Overnight, he’d put hard drinking behind him and hadn’t looked back. He’d quit altogether for several months, gone cold turkey, and then cautiously started having an occasional beer or two. He’d been relieved to discover that drinking in moderation was something he could do, and he’d never drunk to excess again, not once.

  He didn’t want to go down that road again. He wouldn’t.

  He’d walked to the lumberyard straight from Bart’s after his morning workout. It was handy living within easy walking distance of the grocery store, the gym and Tito’s, and within sprinting distance of the firehouse. He was almost always the first to reach the firehouse after a call, with a personal best of thirty-four seconds.

  He had a hard copy of Alex’s meticulous materials list in his back pocket. He could’ve made the order online, but he liked doing it in person. That way he could make sure it was perfectly clear exactly what was being ordered, and where it was to be delivered, and when. Plus, it was nicer this way. He got to shoot the breeze with Arturo and Wanda at the pro desk, and have a cup of the San Antonio Blend coffee that always seemed to be brewing there.

  That was how they divided the labor on the business side of things. Alex had always had a better head for figures, so he handled that part. Tony was the visionary and front man. They made a good team.

  A porch swing hung on display near the front of the store. Five hundred bucks, and plastic, no less. Sheesh. Outrageous. It looked so cheap and flimsy compared with the one from La Escarpa. And that freestanding A-frame supporting it? Please. A porch swing belonged on a porch, hanging from the rafters.

  “Running up a tab?”

  The voice sounded really close, like barely a foot away. Tony jumped and let out a yell.

  He’d always startled easily and showily, to the delight of everyone who knew him. It was a running joke with his college teammates to prank him by sneaking up on him, or jumping out at him, or even just making sudden loud noises. Eventually someone had started filming the results. There was a YouTube compilation video made of scene after scene of Tony being startled. Last he’d checked, it had over three hundred thousand views.

  He didn’t mind—at least, he hadn’t back then. It was hilarious; he could see that as well as anyone. He’d laughed at that compilation video every time he’d watched it, laughed hard. But these days it didn’t take as much to startle him, and it really wasn’t funny anymore.

  Especially when the other person was standing there staring at you without a hint of a smile.

  “Dalia!” He held a hand to his chest and tried to laugh. It was hard to look cool when you’d just shot straight into the air like a scalded cat. “You scared me.”

  “Mmm-hmm, I see that. What are you doing?”

  “Oh, just tryna get my heart rate back to normal. How ’bout you?”

  “I came to town to run some errands for my mom. I saw Alex a few minutes ago, and he said you were about to place the order for the construction at La Escarpa. So I came over to have a look.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I handle materials purchase at my end, with my contractor discount. Then the stuff gets delivered in stages. I’ll notify your mom when the first delivery is scheduled.”

  It was a pretty standard, and intuitive, way of doing things. Was it possible that she’d actually come here because she wanted an excuse to spend time with him? Her facial expression made that seem unlikely, but with Dalia you never could tell.

  “If you have nothing to hide, you won’t mind if I double-check.”

  “Nothing to hide? Why would I... What are you saying?”

  “You know what I’m saying.”

  And suddenly he did know, and it made him sick.

  “I’m just here to make sure things get done right and my mom gets what she’s paying for,” she went on. “It’s nothing personal.”

  “You’re accusing me of trying to rip off a customer,” Tony said. “It’s personal.”

  “Don’t be such a baby, Tony. Let’s get this over with.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “What about Alex? You don’t trust him, either? You think he’d be part of some underhanded deal?”

  “I don’t know what Alex might or might not do, or be tricked into doing. It doesn’t matter. La Escarpa is my home, my responsibility. Not his.”

  Tony made a scoffing sound and shook his head. “You always were a control freak, Dalia, but this is taking it to a whole ’nother level.”

  “Calling me names? Wow. Very mature.”

  “Yeah, well, you started it.”

  The words sounded stupid and childish, even though it was true. She had started it. She’d called him a baby and accused him with no cause. And yet somehow she made it seem like she was in the right. She radiated righteousness, standing there looking at him just like her father used to when Tony would pick her up for a date.

  He couldn’t win with her. He never could.

  “I can’t believe this,” he said. “I can’t believe you actually think I would try to cheat your mother.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time you cheated.”

  “What? How can you say that? I never threw a game, and I never juiced.”

  “I’m not talking about football.” She spat the word out like something foul. “I’m talking about spring break.”

  He should have taken a deep breath, counted to ten, whatever it was people did to keep their tempers in check and not do things they’d regret. But he was mad at being made out to be some sort of miscreant, mad at having his nice morning ruined, and he said the first thing that came into his head.

  “I never cheated on you. Never. And it’s not like I didn’t have lots of chances.”

  The words hung there in the air, big and plain and with no way to take them back. Time seemed to stop. Dalia stood there staring at him with this wide-eyed blank look on her face and her mouth fallen open a little like she had no idea what to say. And then Tony knew he had to get out of there before that changed.

  He turned and walked off...and collided with some sort of display. He heard it crashing down behind him, but he didn’t look back. He kept walking, fast, out of the lumberyard and into the harsh Texas sunlight.

  What was wrong with him? For once in his life, why couldn’t he think before he spoke? He should have kept his mouth shut and left well enough alone, even if well enough was still pretty bad. But he didn’t, because he was mad. And he didn’t have any right to be mad or hurt here. He was the one who’d burned the bridge. He’d pushed her into breaking up with him, and he’d meant to do it, meant to make her think he was a selfish screwup and she shouldn’t waste any more time on him. He was okay with that, sort of. But for her to think he cheated on her—well, apparently he wasn’t okay with that.

  His anger was gone. All he could think now was how he would have felt if he’d thought she cheated on him. That was the feeling he’d given her, for over six years.

  Tell her the truth, Alex had said, over and over, right from the start. But Tony hadn’t, because he thought things would get better and she’d never need to know. And by the time he realized that was never going to happen, it was too late, he’d gone too far and was in too deep, and it didn’t matter anyway because at that point, truth or not, the two of them were through.

  And now—now it was too big a tangle to so
rt out.

  He wasn’t walking anywhere in particular. He just wanted to get somewhere safe and private where no one could look at him or talk to him. He turned into the alley behind Navarro Street where he and Alex had a rented garage, more or less downstairs from their apartment.

  He unlocked the door and slid it up. Their two trucks were parked there, his Dodge and Alex’s Chevy, both with their Reyes Boys Construction decals. The stepside’s bed was still piled high with stuff from the firefighters’ cleanup day at La Escarpa—old weathered siding and beadboard and such. The remains of the porch swing were in there, too. Mrs. Ramirez had told him to burn it, but painted wood wasn’t really safe to burn because it gave off toxic fumes, so he’d put it in here instead. It was all jumbled together with siding and painted porch boards.

  He started pulling it out. He didn’t want the porch swing going to strangers.

  Things break. Sometimes they can be fixed, and sometimes they can’t.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “HE LIED,” DALIA SAID. “Just straight up lied to my face. Can you believe the nerve of him? After all these years, after everything he put me through, he has the gall to look me in the eye and act like the whole thing never happened.”

  “Hmm,” said Lauren.

  She was gazing off camera and frowning thoughtfully. A quiver of irritation ran down Dalia’s spine. Lauren wasn’t supposed to be thoughtful right now. She was supposed to be outraged on Dalia’s behalf. Furious. Livid.

  “What do you mean, ‘hmm’? You remember. You were there.”

  “I remember your side of things, what you said at the time.”

  “My side of things? Are you saying I made it all up?”

  “No, no, of course not. It’s just...well, Dalia, in fairness, neither one of us was there. You don’t have any actual proof. Forensic evidence. Photos. Witness testimony.”

  “Forensic evidence? Witness testimony? What are you, CSI? Where is all this even coming from?”

  “Well, I read this article recently about memory and how unreliable it is. I don’t remember exactly what it said—ha ha, that’s funny, isn’t it?—but it was something about how there are all these gaps in what we truly know about a situation, and how we fill in those gaps with whatever fits our preconceived notions. And over time those made-up bits become part of our memory of the event, and we think they really happened, but they didn’t.”