A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow - Laura Taylor Namey Page 0,17
Pili walks the laptop to a cooling rack heaped with trays of empanadas. Angelina would be responsible for those. “She’s doing fine at being you. Better than fine.”
“Wait. Bring me closer.” I lean into my phone. “I told Angelina to take her time with the egg wash and not just throw it on like abstract art. It doesn’t even reach the edges half the time. Do you think we’ll ever get nominated for Family Style with food like this?” It was our dream to appear on the popular Food Network program showcasing family-run food establishments. But it wouldn’t happen with sloppy pastries. “Marta should have caught this.”
Pilar resets her screen just in time for me to catch her eye roll. “I had one fifteen minutes ago. Delicious,” she says.
“Pili! Tell her.” La Paloma cuisine has standards.
“Oh, no. Not my territory. I’ll have Javi take care of it or something.”
I slump onto my four-poster bed. “But really? The taste was on point and the texture, too?”
“Sí, hermana. Now, tell me you’ve been at least going out into town.”
“I’ve been… running.”
“Lila…” Pili extends my name, long and whiny—Leeeeeela. “Do you think avoiding Winchester will magically change it so you’re back in Miami sooner? Is that your game?”
Ugh. I could throttle my sister and all her rightness. My face tells her so. But then my chin crumples and my eyes well into overflow. I could just as easily slide in next to her on our sofa. Our talking spot, late at night with our shoulders pressed tight, eating snacks I’ve likely made.
Pilar covers her face with both hands. “I’d tell you to go out, make friends or whatever for me. Or if I really wanted to be a jerk, maybe even for Abuela. But you won’t. I know you have to want to for you.”
She means for me to want to go on, move on, carry on. So many ons. I glance away for a beat. “When people ask, I’m doing amazing here, okay? A dream vacation.”
She frowns. “Your fake-glossy Instagram is one thing. Shots of pasteles and views out your window. But I’m not lying for you.”
I wanted Andrés and Stefanie’s parents to see my very best. “Think of it more as creative marketing. Of which you’re the expert.”
She just shakes her head.
“Pili,” I say at length. “Angelina’s empanadas were good but, you know, not as good as mine, right?”
Pilar’s back in the office that will officially become hers soon. She curls her ruby-painted lips inward. “Nothing is ever as good as you and me.”
We’ve hung up, but my eyes are still damp when I reach for the TV remote. Muffled sound fills my room, but I’ve pressed no buttons. I hear faint voices, happy, laughing voices. It’s not coming from Gordon’s room, either. At the side window I find a small clutch of bodies hovering in the adjacent church yard.
The window makes a terrible banshee cry when I crank open the panes. Voices halt and all eyes spring onto me. Of course, Orion Maxwell cranes his neck toward the inn side of the courtyard.
“Lila from Florida,” he calls while his siblings or friends or brainwashed tea cult members watch.
I manage a small, courtly wave.
“Trade that window for a balcony and you’d pass for Juliet,” he says. The melodic lilt of his accent is warm against the cool, black sky.
But Juliet? Only if Shakespeare secretly wanted to pen Romeo’s paramour with a messy topknot, costumed in a black tee and boyfriend jeans. “Goodnight Orion and Orion’s—”
“Join us.”
I steal a fleeting glance back into my softly lit room. Oh, so much to do. Binging a few episodes of Family Style on demand, and a moisturizing face mask, and trying to channel the regular sleeping pattern I left back in West Dade. “I. Um.” My sister’s gone from my screen but I still see her face, can already feel the warm grin she’d send across oceans if I told her I not only went outside, but talked to actual teens.
“Coming down is really in your best interest.” The others have gone back to their conversations, but Orion breaks away, stepping toward the wall. “I’ve been in the Wallaces’ guest room. Your bed faces north and I can’t begin to tell you what sort of trouble that spells.”
It’s over—I’m laughing. Can’t help it. The Lila variety of laughter has been out of season since March. I’ve hardly been able to find it. But here, it sprouts up wide and leafy under a yellow moon.