Grace was the first to speak. “Why wouldn’t you want them to adopt you?” she asked. “It’s not . . . You can say anything. I’m not judging, I’m just curious.”
Joaquin looked like he wanted a car to drive through the shop window and interrupt the entire conversation. “It’s just hard to explain,” he said. “It’s a lot. There’s a lot.”
Maya could see Grace starting to open her mouth again, so she gave her a tiny pinch, the same way she used to pinch Lauren when they were kids.
“Ow!” Grace yelped.
“My hand slipped,” Maya said.
“It did not. You pinched me!”
Maya shrugged. “You’re verbally assaulting Joaquin. Leave him alone already.”
“Oh,” Grace said. “Sorry.” She was still biting her lip, though, and Maya knew that she was about to say something else—something equally delightful.
“I still think we should meet our bio mom,” Grace said.
There it is, Maya thought wearily.
“Fuck. No,” she told her. “Absolutely not. Stop bringing it up—it’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous,” Grace shot back. “It’s totally reasonable.”
Maya looked at Joaquin, who seemed like he’d rather be stuck in a broken-down car on the freeway than between the two of them. “Please back me up on this,” she said.
Joaquin just looked at Grace while pointing at Maya. “What she said.”
“Thank you,” Maya sighed, sitting back in her seat and reaching for her drink.
“No,” Grace said, and now she seemed annoyed. “You tell me why you don’t want to, Joaquin. Don’t just say ‘what Maya said.’ That’s not fair. She’s your mom, too.”
“No, she’s not,” Joaquin murmured. “She stopped being my mom a long time ago.”
Maya raised an eyebrow at Grace as if to say, See?
“If you want to go for it, Grace, do it,” Joaquin told her. “I’m not holding you back. I don’t really care. I just don’t want to be involved. I don’t want to know about her. I know when I’m not wanted, you know?”
“Grace, why don’t you tell us something about your week instead?” Maya suggested. “My parents are divorcing, Joaquin’s parents want to adopt him, so you better have a good story. And don’t say, ‘I want to find my bio mom,’ or I’ll pinch you harder this time.”
Grace’s face changed from annoyed to thoughtful before she finally said, “I punched a guy at school and now I have to be homeschooled until the end of the school year.”
If Grace had said that she had been arrested for running an elephant-breeding program in her backyard, Maya would have been less surprised.
“You what?” Maya said before she could stop herself. “No, you didn’t. I don’t believe you. Joaquin doesn’t believe you, either.”
“I believe her,” Joaquin said gently, then pointed to Grace’s right hand. Her thumb was bruised, Maya suddenly noticed, and one of her fingers had a scabbed-over cut. “You didn’t tuck your thumb. Nice.”
Grace just shrugged. “It all happened pretty fast.”
“You seriously punched a guy?” Maya wished she had known this fact before pinching her just a minute ago. “What’s thumb tucking? Is Grace some secret boxer now?”
Grace laughed in a way that didn’t sound funny, then ran a hand over her eyes. “Definitely not a secret.”
“When you punch someone, you have to put your thumb over your first two knuckles. Here, like this.” Joaquin held up his hand to show Maya. “You can hit better and make more of an impact without hurting yourself.”
“There’s not going to be a next time,” Grace insisted, but next to her, Maya nodded, pleased by this new piece of information.
Maya was impressed that Joaquin knew all that. She wondered if this was what it would have been like to grow up with him, a big brother protecting her, teaching her how to protect herself, someone else to carry the burden, unearth the empty wine bottles from under the bed and inside the refrigerator. Maya had found another one in the bucket of cleaning supplies under the bathroom sink. She hadn’t told Lauren.
“Why’d you do it?” Maya asked instead. “Did he touch you?” If that was the case, Maya wasn’t sure that she could stop herself from finding the guy and punching him again on behalf of Grace. (She’d remember the thumb trick, too.)
“He just . . .” Grace looked as uncomfortable as Joaquin had earlier, squirming and biting her bottom lip. “He just said some pretty terrible things about my family, that’s all. I couldn’t let him get away with that.”
“Family’s important,” Joaquin said.
Maya nodded. She wondered how important it could be, though,