Getting to Forever

Chapter 2

As if she could sense him looking at her, she looked over from her conversation with his mother, meeting his gaze. She immediately looked away and called out to Ana, patting at the empty seat next to her to sit there. Ana scurried over excitedly and began talking to her with very animated movements.

“About time you joined us, son. Even I beat you down here!” His dad boomed.

Daniel cleared his throat and apologized to everyone for taking so long. He walked over to their guests and shook her parents’ hands.

“Good to see you, been a while, hasn’t it?” her dad said to him. There was something to his tone that Daniel couldn’t quite decipher.

“Yes sir, it has,” he responded, not really knowing what else to say.

“Good evening, Daniel,” her mother smiled at him while squeezing his hand.

A thought hit him. He considered what she could have possibly decided to tell her parents about the whole break up thing.

When Daniel broke up with her, a lot of people had been shocked, but their families took it the hardest. He had tried to keep the details of the break up from his parents more than anyone else but one night under the supervision of his parents, he got slightly tipsy-maybe a little bit more than that honestly. They could be surprisingly chill about him drinking but only around them.

In that state, all the details came out before he could stop himself. He had needed that release and had hoped his parents would forget or ignore him but his mother was not that easy to throw off. 

He immediately tried to push that sudden thought out of his head. Yet another instance of the thinking he had been trying to avoid for months now.

Daniel went over and sat next to Ana, grateful to be saved the awkwardness of sitting right next to her at least. He knew his mother would call him out for being rude if he didn’t, so he turned to his right side to greet her.

“Good evening, Catalina.”

The name he hadn’t uttered for many months finally left his lips.

She looked up slightly startled and met his eyes for the second time. A polite smile, not her usual bright one, appeared on her lips; almost instantly she responded, “Hi Daniel,” and then looked back down to continue her conversation with Ana.

He sighed softly, not sure if it was a sigh of relief or slight frustration. Here was yet another person Ana broke her shy exterior for.

The same way Alex had grown up before his eyes and Daniel had accepted him as a brother, Catalina had taken with Ana. Ana seemed to admire her so much, looking up to her like the sister she never had.

His mother had gotten up and had begun to set down plates filled with food in front of each person. Catalina’s mother offered to help but his mother declined, claiming she did not want to bother her as she was a guest.

Daniel looked at his plate and saw his mother had prepared her famously delicious homemade tamales and enchiladas, with a side of her refried beans and Mexican rice.

He absolutely loved his mother’s enchiladas and despite his initial nerves he was going to enjoy this delicious dinner. His stomach should grateful to him for sticking through it to enjoy this.

As he was about to dig in, Catalina’s voice momentarily distracted him, “Oh Marianna, how I’ve missed your cooking!” she exclaimed as she began cutting another part of her tamale. “Of course, I missed my mother’s cooking,” she quickly said before her mother could get upset, “but yours became like a second home, so this is something I missed just as much.”