A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow - Laura Taylor Namey Page 0,64
hand. “It’s in Bloomsbury. Right in the heart of London, near Covent Garden. One of my favorite areas.” He looks horrified at my blank expression. “As I’m saying all this, I realize I’m a shit tour guide for not taking you to London in all these weeks.”
“I’ve been caught up here, but I would love to go. And the school, it wouldn’t hurt to just pop by. See where it is and all that.”
“Sure. Dad and I are off to visit Mum later, so today’s out. Besides, we should take a full day.” He frowns. “Next weekend it’s my turn to manage the shop.”
“Two weeks, then. I mean, it will fly,” I say, gesturing with my lifted cup. Overgesturing, apparently, since coffee sloshes over the butcher block island.
Orion clucks his tongue, eyes twinkling with mischief. “Oh, this is interesting. Now you’ve done it.”
I towel up the mess. “I sense a superstition coming my way.”
“Maybe a lot more is coming your way,” he tells me. “Traditionally, if you spill coffee, it means a lover is thinking of you.”
* * *
All it really means, I don’t find out until after supper. So ironic, I think the state of Florida itself is playing sick jokes on me.
Only hours after Orion equates my spilled coffee with thoughts from a lover, Andrés’s name flashes on my phone screen. Instant emotional rewind to last night. Even so, Andrés Millan is no longer mi amado.
The FaceTime notification pings, on and on. I am interested in the way I reach out to click the familiar green answer icon. I am interested in how the sight of him goes down like my first sip of hard liquor, how my entire body ingests it.
“Lila.” His face and voice, the tilt of his jaw, even his long, dark eyelashes that I’d deemed grossly unfair—they all look the same. Not even three months have passed, I remind myself.
“You found me,” I say. I lost you.
“I know I called only yesterday but…” He scrubs his face. “God, you look good. You look really good.”
I can’t help a few stray tears. My head shakes.
“Lila, please don’t cry. I didn’t call to make you cry again.”
What does he expect? Don’t feel? Don’t remember? Doesn’t he realize he’s a huge part of the reason I’m even here? “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m…” At length he says, “Trying to figure that out as I go.”
And he could easily figure out he was right the first time, leaving me last spring. So easily. My head throbs; I swipe hair off my face. “You’ve been keeping busy, no?”
“This and that, yeah.”
“I’m sure you’ve been at the beach a lot. Your favorite.” My laugh carries a tinge of hysteria. “I miss South Beach. Even more since I saw it on your Instagram. You still never go alone, right?”
His face wilts, and this little hint of confirmation strikes me back. Now he knows I know about Alexa Gijon. Pilar’s Center for Cuban Sleuthing wins again. “Lila.”
“How long?”
He inhales sharply. “It meant nothing. A mistake.”
Tears flow freely now, hearing him say it for real. I breathe the knowledge in, hold it there. The burn.
“It was like two weeks, Lila. It’s done.”
“Two weeks is more than a mistake.” He moves to speak, but I say, “I only want to know one thing.” He tips his chin. “Spare me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ shit. What. Did. I. Do?”
“We had almost three years,” he says. “That’s like three forevers in high school dating years.”
Silence.
He shrugs. “We grew up together. You’ve always been bright and intense and powerful. I fell in love with that. But toward the end…” My expression presses him; he tucks his lips inward. “I was losing myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“You always moved us at full force, planning everything so far out. Pushing me—what classes I should take or telling me to stay in Miami for school. You were directing me like you order around the junior bakers at La Paloma. I just needed space, and to move myself for a while. Think for myself.”
The burned-out star, just like Abuela said. I’d brushed off her warnings then, dismissing them under our thinnest pastry dough. But here they are; he shines them back in my face. He shines them on Stefanie.
I should’ve listened to her when we ran every week.
“Why do we do this again?” Stefanie had said last winter, panting the words as we passed the next mile marker along the Key Biscayne Bridge.