“It’s good to know your eyes still work. No new glasses for you yet.”
Mina hummed and moved on to a large metal bowl resting off to the side. Momma Cora had obviously stopped slicing and dicing long enough to give the chicken a stir in the simmering sauce. She’d been midway through chopping up onions, and the tomatoes were plump and ready to be diced. In the bowl sat long strings of green, slimy cactus. Mina furrowed her brow.
“Mole is Val’s favorite dinner,” she recalled. Momma Cora often got sad when they had mole, missing and worrying about her eldest son. “Does that mean he’s actually coming downstairs for dinner tonight?”
“That’s the word on the street.” Momma Cora’s tone came with an air of lightness that seemed forced to Mina.
Mina looked back at the bowl of cactus. “He doesn’t like nopales.”
“He won’t be the only one at the dinner table.”
“Carlito’ll be sad he missed out on nopales. He loves them.”
Momma Cora moved to the cutting board and started chopping onions. “No need to worry, then. He’ll be here to enjoy them.”
Mina’s eyebrows shot up. “Does Val know Carlito’s going to be here?”
“They talked this morning.”
“And the house is still standing?”
Momma Cora shot her a dirty look. “They can be civil around each other.” She sighed. “They’re brothers. They just got off to a bad start. That’s all.”
“That’s an understatement. One spends three years in jail for trying to kill the other. The other gets to learn to walk again as a little kid.”
At that, Momma Cora turned to look at her, hand on her hip. “Don’t make this harder on your brothers. Just let them get used to each other again.” She shook her head and went back to chopping. “I shouldn’t have kept them apart after Val got out. Carlito was still a child. He could’ve forgiven him then.”
Mina didn’t say anything. She was six when Val got out of jail. She and Val came to live with the family a year apart. Maybe that was why she’d always gotten along so well with him. She hadn’t really understood until later why Carlito and Dante didn’t seem to like Val very much.
Carlito had become the epitome of a bossy older brother to her. She saw him that way—as her brother. Val… Val had never been her brother. She’d never corrected Momma Cora when she referred to him as such. It made sense, after all. She knew Cora loved her like her own daughter, and it was natural to think of her children as siblings. But Val wasn’t her brother. He was just… her Val.
She was distracted from her thoughts when she spotted a stack of buñuelos—deep-fried, sweetened, and flattened dough—cooling on the other side of the counter. She groaned and darted to the side, yanking one off the top before Momma Cora could protest. She danced away from Momma Cora’s grasp, waggling her eyebrows. “I’ll come down and help you set the table in a minute.”
Tonight was going to be nothing if not interesting.
~0~
It was okay at first. Awkward, of course, but that was going to happen, Mina supposed.
As always, it was disconcerting to watch Dante with Val. He was the only father she’d ever had, and he was a great dad. He was good with Carlito too.
It was like he said: most people didn’t have to play nice with the guy who’d tried to murder their son. But while Val was a lot of things, he plainly wasn’t a murderer. He’d been a messed-up kid when he’d done what he’d done, but no one thought he was going to up and murder Carlito now. The idea was tempting, even if he was so annoying sometimes.
Luckily for all of them, Junior was oblivious to the tension between the adults. He chattered away, filling his uncle in on all the things in his five-year-old world. The kid cracked her up. “Uncle, you must love cats.”
Val screwed up his face, trying for the millionth time not to laugh. “Must I?”
Junior nodded solemnly. “It’s a must. Cats are sooo much better than dogs. So much. Once, Momma’s friend came over. He said cats are jerks. Yannow what I said?”
“What’d you say?”
“I said, ‘You and the door should meet!’” He smacked his hands together loudly.
Val and Mina both clapped their hands over their mouth, trying to stifle their laughter. “Oh, that’s awesome,” Val said.
“Not so awesome.” Carlito frowned at his brother. He looked to his son. “That was rude.”
“But, Daddy, Sir Fluffalot is family. Momma’s friend was rude first.”
“He has a point,” Carlito’s wife, Ava, said with a smile. “And don’t blame him. He’s only repeating what he’s heard me say.”
“This is Sir Fluffalot’s house. He was here first, and we like him better.” Junior nodded sharply to indicate that was that.
Carlito shook his head. “I swear you two like cats more than people.”
Ava smiled sweetly. “Not as much as we like you.” She kissed the tip of his nose.
Mina glanced at Val, catching his eye. Gag me, she mouthed, and he snickered.
The sound drew Carlito’s attention away from his wife. Val schooled his face pretty quickly, but not before Carlito frowned. He cleared his throat. “So, Val, how’s job hunting going?”
His tone automatically put Mina on edge. It was the same fatherly tone he’d put on any time he talked to her about her studies and her own job search. Just that day, he’d lectured her about the fact she didn’t have a job already lined up before she’d graduated, as though she should’ve just picked one up at the job store.
A flicker of annoyance crossed Val’s face, but he sat up straighter. “It’s been a challenge. It’s a tough market, but—”
“It’s a well-known fact most people don’t know how to work the job market. You think it’s about submitting your resume over and over again. I hear about people who’ve submitted literally hundreds of resumes and haven’t gotten so much as a nibble.”
Val narrowed his eyes at being interrupted, but he didn’t call Carlito on it. “I suppose you know how to work the job market?”
“Of course. That’s what I do.”
Momma Cora reached over and patted Val’s arm. “I told you before when you started having trouble. Carlito’s company does a lot of training for its employees.”
Carlito nodded. “They want us all to do well. It’s a huge company. There’s a lot of room for growth in a wide range of capacities.”
“Fantastic,” Val said.
The word came out with a sarcastic edge, and Dante narrowed his eyes. “That’s an admirable thing. To find a job in a company you can grow with should be what everyone wants out of their career.”
Val looked down at his plate. Mina thought she saw his knuckles get whiter as he gripped his fork. “That’s a pretty rare thing these days, to remain with a company for your entire career. It’s great you hit the jackpot right out of the gate, but not everyone’s going to be that lucky.”
“No shit,” Mina muttered under her breath. She’d started looking five months before she graduated, and there was still no such luck finding anything in her field.
Momma Cora glanced at her with a frown, but Carlito ignored her.
“It’s not luck,” he said to his brother. “Not even remotely.”
“I’m sure the degree helped,” Val said.
“It helped get me into the field I wanted, sure, but that’s not why I got a job right off the bat. See, I had training too. I took a seminar about how to get a job before I graduated. All the basics—how to dress, how to interview well. All that good stuff. But that’s only half the battle. Maybe not even that. Getting a job really is a matter of who you know. Networking. Getting out there and figuring out if you know a guy who knows a guy, you know?”
Mina smirked. Val shook his head. “That’s great. Here’s the thing. I don’t know a guy. All my friends are in Texas.”
Carlito swept a hand out wide. “You know me.”
Mina’s
gut churned. Oh, this wasn’t going to go well at all if they were headed in the direction she suspected.
Val quirked an eyebrow. “What’s your point?”
“I have some clout at my company. I can get you in the door. Ground level. Maybe one step above. You have call center experience, don’t you?”
A tense second passed as Val stared at his brother. “I do, but no. Thank you, but no.”
Cora, Dante, and Carlito all started talking at once. Dante lifted his hand for silence. “It’s a generous offer, and one you don’t deserve. What is it? You like living off your mother and me?”
“No, that’s not it.” Val took a deep breath, obviously trying to control his temper. “It’s very generous.” His words came out with a hint of acid to them. “But unnecessary. I found a job this morning.”
Momma Cora brightened, her eyebrows unknitting. “Oh, that’s wonderful. Where?”
Val looked down at the table again, moving his food around. “The gas station about a mile from here.”
Momma Cora and Dante both frowned. Carlito started laughing, which Mina thought was rude as hell. “There’s nothing wrong with working at a gas station,” she said.
“No, there’s nothing wrong with it.” Carlito’s tone indicated he didn’t mean the words even as he said them. “But where are you going to go from there? There’s no mobility.”
“It’s a job. It’s money in the bank, and it’s flexible so I can figure out what else I’m doing.”
“You’ve been singing the same tune for fifteen years.” Dante’s tone dripped with derision. “You’re not a bum. I’ll give you that much. Well, not until recently, anyway. But you never think ahead, Valentin. You never plan.” He gestured to Carlito. “This is a good plan.”
“And more than I deserve, remember?” Val flexed his hand into a fist by his side where only Mina could see. “It’s not my plan. That’s the point.”
“There’s no shame in accepting help,” Momma Cora replied gently. “Wouldn’t you like to stop running? Stop jumping from one job to the next? Stop starting all over?”
“I have a job. Let’s see where that takes me.”
“To another dead end. That’s where.” Carlito shot daggers across the table at him. “Don’t you—?”
Val slammed his hand down on the table, and Junior, who’d been watching the adults with concern in his eyes, jumped. Val glanced at him, his expression apologetic, but then looked at his brother. “You want to be the one who rescues me, huh? Saves me from myself or whatever you got going in your head? You want to hear me say you’re better than I am? A better man? A better father? You want me to be another one of your accomplishments? Yeah, you got your good-for-nothing brother off the streets. That’s the story you want to tell at one of your dinner parties?” He stood up. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
He stormed up the stairs, ignoring Dante’s shouted admonitions. Mina winced when she heard the door slam.
On one hand, she thought Val was an idiot. He desperately needed a leg up. And while there was nothing wrong with working at a gas station, the others were also right. It wasn’t going to get anywhere fast. Carlito was also right that his company was huge and there were a lot of places Val could go, moving upward without the necessity of a college degree if he got the right amount of experience in.
On the other hand, even she wouldn’t want to owe Carlito a favor. She’d borrowed $2,000 from him once, not wanting to tell their parents the stupid thing she’d done, and she still hadn’t heard the end of it.
There was something to swallowing your pride, but not if it left you with nothing.
Chapter 7
Val groaned, blinking blearily as he pulled up to the curb. He shivered in the early dawn light. It’d be a hot day, he knew, but this time of night was always cold. He went a little quicker up the walk.
Just as he got to the front door, it came open. He jumped back, startled. It was a good thing too, because Mina stepped right into the space he’d been occupying a split second before. As it was, they were mere inches apart, like he’d just walked her to the door after a first date and was going in for a kiss.
Val took an over-large step back and ended up on the lip of the walk. “Whoa.” He windmilled his arms, trying to gain his balance. Mina grabbed him, and that was a mistake, because all that happened was they fell together.
“Oof.” Val’s breath whooshed out of him as he took most of Mina’s weight on his chest. He stared up at the sky, momentarily stunned, as Mina squeaked in shock.
“Shit. It’s cold.” There was a scramble of feet as she untangled herself from him and sat up.
It was cold. Val’s backside was wet from the dew-damp grass. His chest was warm, though. It was warm, because despite complaining about the cold, Mina hadn’t made any effort to stand. Instead, she’d rested her hand against his chest, using him to balance herself as she twisted her leg. She was muttering something about her stained stockings and “I need a pair of dress slacks. I swear to Christ.”
She’d had her hair up in a very un-Mina-like bun, and it had come undone in the fall. She looked disheveled and irritated, but Val couldn’t help himself. He started to chuckle. It was soundless at first, just a shake of his chest, but when she looked down at her hand, wondering why the hell it was moving, he started to howl with laugher.
“You think it’s funny, Valentin?” she demanded, but he could see the smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “You think it’s funny I have to change and probably be late for work? Huh?”
Val couldn’t answer. He was too busy laughing his fool head off. Scowling at him, Mina straddled his hips and started beating on his chest lightly, playing as she had when she was younger. “And there’s a run in my stockings too! And because of what? Because you were standing outside the door like a stalking creeper.”
“I live here.” Val caught her wrists in his hands. He held her fast as she tried to pull out of his grip.
After a moment, they both stilled, eyes locked. There was something familiar about this, but it was also far away. It took Val a second to realize it had been years since they’d been this easy together—too many years. This was who they’d been to each other when she was a teenager… before he’d done whatever it was he’d done to make her so angry at him.
At the same time, it was different—very different. She wasn’t just warm on top of him. Her body was small and hot and centered right over his—
Mina rolled off him and stood in one smooth motion. Val rolled the opposite way, facing the driveway while he tried to remind himself just how cold it was.
“You just getting in?” Mina asked after a few too many beats of awkward silence.
Val cleared his throat. “Yeah. Stayed an extra hour, and now I want to sleep for at least a week.” Calmer now, he turned toward her so they could both head back into the house. “What about you? I thought you started work at 8:00.”
“That’s the thing about being a temp. I have a different job every other week. This one’s a five-week project, which is awesome but the dress code sucks.” She gestured down at her stockings with a glare that would’ve put the fear of God into anyone.
“Could be worse.” Val stretched as he started up the stairs one step behind her. “You could be lifting heavy boxes for a living.”
“Come off it, old man. You dispense scratch-off lottery tickets for a living.”
“To drunks. And after they finally stumble off home, I get to lift boxes and restock the store.”
“Cry me a river.” They’d reached the top of the stairs. Mina paused, smirking at him as she reached back to undo the tie to her bun. Her hair fell down around her face, wild and beautiful.
Val rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. “Anyway… I’m going to sleep. Have a good day at work, kiddo.”
~0~
After the long, labor-intensive week he’d had, Val slept solidly. It was past 2:00 p.m. before he opened his eyes again. H
e rolled out of bed, still groggy. After a few minutes, he convinced himself to get to his feet.
He expected the house to be empty. Instead, as he came downstairs dressed only in a pair of sweatpants, he ran smack into his stepfather. It wasn’t nearly as pleasant as running into Mina. Both men stumbled backward and away from each other.
Dante scowled. “What the hell are you doing wandering around here half-dressed?”
Val bristled. “I was going to get breakfast.”
“It’s almost 3:00 p.m. Children have put in a full day of school and you’re barely out of bed?”
“Children were fast asleep when I was working my ass off last night.”
“You know better than to take that tone of voice with me. Your brother tried to help you out of that situation. You don’t get to whine about it when it’s your own damn fault for being so stubborn and irrational.”
“Whine? I didn’t—” Val rolled his eyes. Rather than get into it with his stepfather, he turned and headed back up the stairs.
“Don’t turn your back on me.”
Val turned back to face Dante. “I don’t know what you want from me. You didn’t want me to sit around like a bum. Fine. I got a job. It’s not a good enough job for you. I heard you the first time. What do you want to tell me now, huh? Let me guess. You want to tell me I’m a worthless deadbeat because it’s 2:30 in the afternoon and I’m just waking up? Never mind the fact it was almost 7:00 this morning before I even got into bed. I’m not so great at math, but I think that’s about seven hours of sleep. Maybe you think it’s more sleep than I deserve. I’ll set an alarm next time. Maybe that’s what you want to tell me.”
Dante waved a hand and made that distinctively Mexican noise of dismissal. “You’re too old to be such a dramatic child.”
“Christ,” Val muttered under his breath. “Look, I’m not trying to get in your way. All I wanted was something to eat.”
Dante scoffed. “And you brought your own groceries for once, I’m sure.”
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