I will build.
Yo puedo—I can.
I can keep the recipes she taught me and make them here.
I can go to school in England and learn to combine French artistry with my cooking.
I can stay at La Paloma and work side-by-side with my sister.
I can move under the same sky as a British boy.
I can be fully Cubana in Miami.
I can be fully Cubana in England, or Africa, or France, or anywhere.
I was brought up for this place, but I can change my life recipe too.
I can. And I will.
Pilar’s feet pad behind me. She touches my arm and I turn. Miami tears rain from two clouds. “You’re going, aren’t you?”
“I’m going,” I say for the first time. “Pero, hermana. You and me. Las Reyes…”
“Will always be who we are. No matter where we are.” When my sigh comes troubled and heavy, she adds, “Go, Lila. This place will always be here. And come home for Christmas?”
I hold her tight. “And in the summer.”
She holds me tighter. “And I’ll go there and you can show me your England. I’ll bunk at Catalina’s with you, and Orion can find my favorite tea.”
“You hate flying.”
“I can be different too.”
* * *
The box of new aprons shipped a few days late, but in plenty of time for the staff to wear for the Family Style TV shoot. Forty-eight hours now. In the La Paloma kitchen, I’m studying the new design of smart white and blue ticking striped cotton.
“It was Señora Cabral,” Pili says on her way back from the shop floor, laughing. “Two weeks we’ve had the closure warning posted, but you knew she’d ignore it.”
Which is why I froze a few things for her before we closed. I tip my head at Pili. “No TV show is going to keep that woman from her pan Cubano.”
“I didn’t even charge her. Why fire up the system for one loaf?” Pilar pulls the apron box toward her and gazes inside, lifting the striped fabric. “Qué bueno,” she says before heading back to the office.
Two days now. I’ve barely been able to FaceTime Orion, but he gets it. All my hours have gone to food and menu prep, plus new haircuts for Pilar and Mami and me, plus manicures and brow waxing and family meetings and supervising the bakery facelift. I’ve even been too busy to think about how nervous I should be.
Again, knocking sounds from the front. What, did Señora Cabral come back for the pastelitos I froze too? “I’ll get it!” I call to no one.
When I reach the shop floor, it’s empty. Just as I’m turning back, I catch the glint of silver foil from the empty bread rack.
I wind around from the service area and before I can process the strange reality of the Maxwell’s foil bag marked, Vanilla Black, I hear from behind, “It’s terrible luck for the person who takes the last slice of bread to not kiss the baker.”
Dios mío.
My heart in my throat, I turn extra slowly because this can’t be happening. There is no way Orion is standing in my doorway, in my business, in my city. But he is and I’m already running.
Orion barely has time to get his arms up to catch me, hiding any greetings or explanations inside frantic kisses. He’s warm—too warm—like we’re kissing in the middle of a sauna. He’s salt and sweat and steam, and I wouldn’t trade him for the world.
Finally we part, just enough for me to take in the misted eyes of him—more blue and vibrant than I remember—then the damp, mussed-up hair and wrinkled black tee and soft, faded jeans of him. “How? What are—” I get these sounds out, but shock steals the rest.
He pecks my forehead and smiles at me, dimple deep. Then his face shades with gravity. “You left something in Winchester.”
I launch into him again, burrowing my head into his chest. Soon, I’m giggling. “You look like…”
“Like a British guy’s lost his first bout with a Miami summer?” His chest rumbles with mirth.
“Well… Did you jog here or something?”
He keeps me close but turns into my gaze. “I got off one bus stop too soon and thought I’d walk the remainder of the way. The app said I was only fifteen minutes away, but five minutes in, I realized my grave error. God, it’s bloody volcanic out there.”
“Bienvenido a Miami, Orion,” I say over a laugh that fades into a little sigh of disbelief. “You’re really here.”
“About that,” he says, brushing back my hair.