The weekend arrived not with a bang, but with a whisper. An early morning workout didn't energize me as I hoped and afterwards, I just lay under the blankets in Margaret's son's bed.
Occasionally I lifted the sheets to renew the air under the blanket fort, but otherwise lacked the energy to do any of the things I had to do. Talk to the car insurance company, the bank, actually check out rooms for rent with Margaret that weren't at her place.
I just wanted to close my eyes and... not be. For a little bit. It wasn't like I wanted to die. I just wanted to stop feeling what I felt in my skin for a minute. Was that too much to ask?
The answer—spoiler alert: it was yes—presented itself through a video call from mami.
Her face appeared on screen in totally the wrong angle. I'd tried to explain to her before to hold the phone from up high, but she always kept it against her chest and showed me a whole lot of chin.
Aside from that, she had bright red lipstick on and sunglasses, which struck me as too much effort for a conversation with me.
"Bendición," I said and after she blessed me I asked her, "Dónde estás?"
"La piscina," she said, flipping the camera to show me that in fact, it wasn't just her at the pool but the whole family.
The three brats wore floaties of different colors in their arms as they paddled around in the crystal blue water. Papi hung out behind them closely, though judging by the beer in his hand I wasn't sure he could keep them out of trouble.
Mami continued panning the camera around and settled it on Cata and her husband. Gabe was sprawled on a pool chair, tanning freely since he had only his wife beside him to ogle his beauty. And damn, he was fine. The only issue was that Cata wasn't paying any attention to him, as she was engrossed in typing on her laptop something that could be anywhere between an email or a dissertation.
"Ugh, dile a Cata que se relaje por favor," I told mami.
"Dile tú, a mi no me hace caso." Next thing, mami walked over to my twin and passed her phone over to her. "Cora dice que dejes de trabajar."
"Ya casi termino," was all my sister said.
There were a few awkward seconds where mami kept the camera on Cata until it was clear she wouldn't pay attention to us. Honestly, if she wasn't in the least distracted by the gorgeous boricuan beside her, we had no hope.
"Y tú cómo estás?" mami asked me.
The million dollar question I had no pleasant answer to.
So I lied with a smile. "Muy bien, todo perfecto por aquí."
Mierda, I shouldn't have been so emphatic. Mami lowered her sunglasses to give me one of those looks that said she could smell the bullshit all the way from Florida.
There was a knock on my door and Margaret popped her head in. She'd been about to say something when she realized I was on the phone. She mumbled an apology and gave me the perfect excuse.
"Mami, me tengo que ir. La señora que me alquila el cuarto me necesita." I wasn't excited about lying to her so much, but I looked forward to telling her the truth even less.
I promised to call her back before the weekend was done and told her to kidnap Cata's laptop if she had to.
Just in case she decided to call me back, which I wouldn't put past her, I buried my cellphone under the pillow and ran out of the room like I had anywhere to be. Margaret was in the kitchen, setting out ingredients to bake something.
"Oh, I'm so sorry for interrupting. You didn't have to cut your conversation short for me."
"No, thank you." I exhaled a breath so deep it deflated me. "I didn't know what to say not to worry her, so I just needed an excuse to cut the conversation short and just... think for a bit."
"Hmm." She gave me a particular look all mothers had. "Just don't think so long you also make her worry about that."
"Fair." I sat at the kitchen table. "Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow so I have a lot less lying to do."
"Why don't you do something fun today?"
Oh.
True, that was what normal people did to feel better.
"What's fun to do around here?" I eyed her work in the kitchen and added, "Aside from the prospect of homemade baked goods."
She grinned. "Much as I personally enjoy baking, I think someone young like you should go out and enjoy what little summer heat we get. It's a great day to go to the lake, don't you think?"
I looked out the window and sure enough, the sun was so bright every color popped out like it'd been filtered by Instagram. The mountains off in the distance seemed closer now that they were crowned by a stark blue, cloudless sky. A change of scenery had potential to get me out of my head.
"Maybe you're onto something," I admitted.
That was all the incentive she needed to outfit me with everything a person might need for a picnic and a swim.
Once I was out the door, I turned back to her with narrowed eyes. "Be honest, you just wanted me out of the house, which must mean Mr. B must be on his way, huh?"
"I'll save you some cupcakes, okay?" She winked.
Chuckling, I shouldered my backpack full of goodies and headed to Lake Mary.
I didn't even have to ask where it was. It was hard to miss, being larger than the town itself.
The near shores were packed with... everybody. The whole-ass town was here. I debated whether to put myself in a position of having many eyes on me or heading back indoors.
Once upon a time, being the center of attention had been my reason for doing pretty much anything, but now was different. It meant having to come up with clever ways to field questions, which was easier to do on strangers than on my family, but also not what I wanted to do today. Or the next day. Or the next.
But I was new in a town that didn't see a lot of new things often. I couldn't expect anything less but curiosity. Especially after I showed my ass at the diner last night.
I turned back and had barely made it two steps when a shadow appeared beside mine. My heart skipped a beat when I saw who it belonged to.
"Came in for a swim?" Pace asked.
He was decked not in his turnouts but in a pair of red swimming trunks, a ridiculously tight blue tank top and aviators. I'd have loved to be wearing sunglasses too, so my eyes were freer to devour him.
Of course, I didn't say that. I couldn't say anything at all.
Pace's eyebrows shot up over the top rim of his glasses. "Because if so, you're walking in the wrong direction."
I should've ran.
I cleared my throat. "Ah, yeah. I'm not sure I wanna be around so many people."
"What if you're just around me?" he asked. To my face. Without showing a single sign of embarrassment.
Suddenly, I felt the dire need to plunge into the lake to cool down.
The fact my jaw dropped just made him laugh.
"C'mon," he said, motioning at me to follow him. "No one wants to be around the lifeguard anyway, we're the party poopers. They'll all ignore you."
Since he'd robbed me of air, the lack of oxygen affected the capacity I had to filter my thoughts, and I said, "How is it that you're always coming to my rescue?"
"That's how I roll." He put his hands in the pockets of his trunks. "I like to help out. Which is also why I'm volunteering to be the party pooper on my day off and I'm bored out of my mind."
"Oh," I said with a grin, finding some easier footing with that info. "So your invitation is all due to desperation."
"Yes," he admitted, which stung a little. "I'm desperate because Hunter and his family are the only people who want to give me the time of the day and I really need someone cool around to balance things out. You should rescue me this time."
"You think I'm cool?"
"Fuck yeah," he said right away.
My feet stopped and it drew him to a halt as well. I blamed my blinking on the sun and not on tears, no sir.
"Even after what happened last night?" I asked him, heart thumping as if it wanted to run away from the answer.
"Especially," Pace started, voice just a tad hoarse. "After last night. You're a strong woman, Cora. What's not cool about that?"
On impulse, I took his sunglasses away. I needed to get rid of the barrier between me and the truth. Far from being freaked out, Pace's eyes were unflinching on mine. As if he had nothing to hide.
"Shit," I muttered. "You're serious."
"Like a third degree burn." He jerked his head toward the shore. "Now, let's go. I need to get back on the tower to make sure no one's about to kill themselves."
We sorted our way between people sitting or lying on blankets and towels. A throng of kids cut off our path and I eyed them to see if Luke was among them.
Instead, I found him on the shore picking pebbles with his dad. Lena Lee sat on a blanket reading a book. She gasped as she saw me approach with Pace.
"Finally, someone interesting!" she exclaimed, which caught the attention of a bunch of the people around them.
Beside me, Pace chuckled. "Told you."
After I reached Lena Lee, Pace kept going and climbed the watch tower. Which was how I realized I still had his sunglasses in my hand.
Using my hand as the bill of a hat, I looked up at him and said, "Don't you need these?"
Pace glanced down with a grin. "Keep 'em safe for me."
I couldn't even react when Lena Lee was already saying, "Oh, he's bold."
"What is going on?" I asked her, collapsing on her blanket because my bones had turned into jelly.
"I could be wrong, which doesn't happen often, but I think our Pace has his eye on you."
I stared at my reflection on his sunglasses, my head shaking because there was no way. I wasn't pretty anymore by any definition of the word.
It wasn't just the buzzcut, the tats or the guns I maintained at the gym, it was my eyes. They were what I struggled to recognize as mine.
Losing Carlos had made me crazier. I'd wanted to compensate for his loss by filling up all the space he'd left empty in our lives. Where he'd made papi grow white hairs for being against the revolution, I'd been even more into the movement than before he died. Where Carlos had sneaked out several times to join protests, I did so boldly, wearing the colors of the party right in front of our parents.
If Carlos had been willing to give his life for what he believed in, I couldn't disappoint him by becoming a watered down version of myself.
So I told Rodrigo I wanted more. I wanted to join the student party and help organize the movement. And I wanted to spend more time with him, do more things with him.
What a rush it was, at first.
I felt part of something bigger than me, surrounded by people with plans for shaping society beyond just my hometown.
Rodrigo was their leader and everyone looked up to him. Standing beside him sometimes felt like we were the royalty of our local socialist movement. He'd been so proud when the picture of me throwing tear gas cans with my bare hands appeared in the newspapers. It had been the hottest thing he'd seen in his life and he showed just how much with a whole night of crazy, amazing sex.
It did occur to me that not once had he asked about my bandaged hands. I also noticed after that, he kept egging me on to do bigger and bolder things. But he hadn't been the one who suffered through recovering burns without the proper medication.
As he urged me to join meetings and rallies where people had guns and plans on using them, I started to get afraid.
Never had I seen Carlos wield a gun on his side of the political fence. It wasn't like all supporters of the opposition were as innocent as him, but I knew my brother and he hadn't been a thug.
That was how a lot of Rodrigo's friends started to seem—but surely my boyfriend wasn't like them.
I also knew Rodrigo. We'd been sweethearts since high school. I knew what he was made of: the same hopes and dreams for the country I had.
Those days he seemed to like me even more, he could barely keep his hands off of me. While his friends were kinda scary, he'd never hurt me.
Either that changed or I'd been wrong, I still didn't know. But one day, I'd been hanging out with him and some of the others at the headquarters of the student party. They got a call saying some of the opposition guys were planning something, and I watched Rodrigo arm himself to his teeth to go meet them. I tried to stop him.
Not only I didn't, but it resulted in the first bruises.
That instance opened my eyes to who he had become. He was no longer just an intense guy with unyielding convictions and passionate kisses. He had become someone capable of hurting me so much I had to wear turtle neck shirts for weeks in 40C weather.
It was how it started and I couldn't say it was over, yet, when I kept seeing his face in the shadows.
I put on Pace's sunglasses so no one could see I'd been about to start crying again.
Returning my attention to Lena Lee, I said, "Well, he shouldn't."
"Why not?" She set her book aside and scooted over, facing me. "Do you swing the other way?"
"No, I very much swing his way." I sighed at the way she smiled. "He's just going to waste his time on me."
Lena Lee tilted her head. Her dark hair was loose and fell over her face, carried by the wind. She tossed it away as she said, "Why don't you let him decide that for himself?"
Because that would hurt me. Because I could easily see myself falling for him. The descent had started the moment the world had been upside down and he'd appeared in a ray of sunshine to right it.
I couldn't let this go on. For his sake and mine, I had to nip the little bloom in my chest in the bud. And I would do so tonight.