asks, then adds, “Your birthday. I meant to ask earlier then forgot, and now I’m bloody shocked I can remember my own after your food.”
I tip my head at the compliment. “August tenth. The big eighteen.”
“You’ll still be here.”
“Now you know how serious my parents were about sending me away. How… I guess the word is desperate. How desperate they were, knowing they’d miss my birthday, and buying a ticket anyway.”
Our eyes meet over bread. “I imagine it will be hard for your sister. Wanting to celebrate with you.”
“The truth?” His eyes widen and I rise and grab a handful of sliced rolls for Orion’s family and friends and slather them with the mustard spread. “I was supposed to go to Disney World for my eighteenth with Andrés. We had it planned for months.” I stack sliced meat and cheese on eight slabs of bread. “Pilar jumped in and said we’d go instead with Stefanie and one of her friends. Girls’ trip.”
I set my finished sandwiches on a tray for heating. “Then Stef bailed and I didn’t want to think about it. So I didn’t leave any epic plans behind, if that’s your next question.”
“That wasn’t my next question.” He plunks one elbow on the butcher block. “Which is something I won’t ask because I’m meddling and wretched.”
“I’ll answer that question and any others you have.” Santo cielo, the words just fall out. I pull square parchment sheets to wrap the Cubanos for takeout. The last ten seconds replay and I realize Orion Maxwell is a wretched genius and a better interrogator than any one of my relatives. I know their ways. But Orion—challenging me? Making the hairs rise on my arms, curious and dared? It’s a tantalizing food I can’t resist. “Go on.”
Blue eyes like smooth marbles. “Andrés. Do you still love him?”
My lungs deflate. Heat fills me, a hundred degrees above the smoke and sear rolling off the flat-top grill. I loved Andrés for years. And I tried to keep my feelings the same, binding them against me until he came back, just like Stefanie. But in all my missing and wanting him, I never thought to check in with my heart to see if all my trying was really working. Tonight, hidden inside my cooking and the peaceful quiet of his town, Orion asks me. Any girl trapped in a love holding pattern should say yes, sure and quick. Yes! I still love Andrés. Shouldn’t these words just fall out too?
But they don’t. “Andrés is still there. The feelings are there but different, like they’ve changed shape.” This comes quicker than a blink. “I know what it feels like to fall in love. But I’m not sure what falling out of love feels like.” Abuela never taught me this part. And she left my world before I could have asked.
The way his mouth curls, he’s biting the inside of his cheek. He takes one of the sandwich parchment squares. Starts to fold and crease. “I told a girl I loved her, but that’s long done. And when it ended—her idea,” he nods into the words, “it was rubbish. But I noticed I was eventually able to think and do things without my mind always running into her first. She was there, like you said, for a while. Then not as much and now, next to never.”
After one last crease, he produces an Origami tulip bud made from kitchen paper. “So when your mind stops running into Andrés so much, you’ll know.” He places it into my hands.
I sit and ponder the little craft. “Maybe I will, and this is adorable, and where did you learn paper folding?”
Orion takes a second wrapper. “You aren’t the only one who picked up a few tricks from an amazing woman.”
I search him for sadness too, head to toe, but I can’t find it. He works with childlike animation, shaping and turning and making me another tulip.
“Did your mother show you that so you’d have something to do with dinner napkins to, let’s say, impress a date one day?” I ask because I am also desgraciada. Wretched.
He doesn’t even look at me. “Did your abuela teach you to make incredible sandwiches so you could make a guy’s stomach do backflips?”
“No,” I say through a laugh. “Not necessarily for that. But if my food inspires spontaneous tumbling, I’ll take it.”
“There’s your answer, then.” He places a second tulip into my hands and my smile blooms like a pink bouquet.
* * *
I’m tuned differently