Holiday Home Run - Priscilla Oliveras Page 0,37
ways again.
A tiny pang of regret seared a hot trail through Anamaría’s chest.
Stubbornly she stomped down the painful sparks like the dying embers of a careless fire. Shoulders back, head high, she pushed through the wooden door, ready to face the man who had shattered her once tender heart.
* * *
Sitting on the worn floral-print sofa in his familia’s living room, Alejandro Miranda cursed the bad luck that had dragged his ass back to Key West. The island home he’d left behind over a decade ago, by choice and by force.
His mami sat on one side of him, his abuela on the other, their dark eyes pools of concern. Across from him, his sister-in-law, Cece, and two-year-old niece, Lulu, perched on the matching loveseat pushed against the opposite wall, their gazes trained on him expectantly. His brother Ernesto leaned against the armrest, hovering at his wife’s side, his brow furrowed with uncertainty.
Trapped by their intent stares, Alejandro jabbed his fingers through his hair in frustration and thought about that old copy of Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home he’d found at a secondhand bookstore in London several years ago. The title had grabbed him, but the words on the pages inside had really resonated.
According to Wolfe, you could never return to your old life, your old ways, even your old hometown, and find things the same. Ha! The guy obviously hadn’t tried going back to a Cuban familia rooted in tradition.
Sure, some things had changed. Cece and Ernesto had been about to start high school, barely making heart eyes at each other, when Alejandro had flown the restrictive coop his papi ruled. Curly-haired, pudgy-cheeked Lulu hadn’t even been a thought in her parents’ pre-pubescent minds. He’d missed many of their important life moments, and more.
But the old portrait of his papi, mami, Ernesto, and him, snapped at the Sears studio twenty plus years ago, still hung in its clunky frame on the pale blue wall above the love seat. A throwback you wouldn’t find in any gallery that displayed Alejandro’s prized photographs today.
Worse, the expectation on his mami, abuela, and Ernesto’s faces weighed as heavily on his shoulders now as it had back then.
Twelve years away and still he felt their palpable hope that he’d fall in line. Quit shirking his responsibilities and agree to work alongside his papi, learning the business to take over the restaurant someday. A life sentence that would shackle Alejandro’s dream of traveling and photographing the world.
It was the reason why he had stayed away for so long. One of several.
“Your papi is sorry he couldn’t be here to welcome you home,” his mom said. She slid to the edge of the sofa, leaning forward to plump the leaf green throw pillows cushioning his injured left leg resting on top of the rattan coffee table.
“Por favor,” he muttered. “Let’s not pretend. If I hadn’t been stupid enough to fall off that rock ledge in El Yunque and wind up in this damn—”
“¡Oye! Language!” Ernesto interrupted. He jerked a thumb at his daughter, busy murmuring something to the baby doll cradled in her tiny arms.
¡Carajo!
The second damn nearly slipped out before Alejandro stopped it. He wasn’t used to having a kid around. Unless they were the subject of his photograph, and then his camera helped him maintain his distance.
He dipped his head in apology at his brother and Cece.
“If I hadn’t wound up in this position,” Alejandro continued, “I’d be on my way to Belize for my next shoot. Not…”
Not here, surrounded by the people he had let down. Girding himself for when his father came home from Miranda’s, their familia restaurant that was his father’s pride and joy. The legacy Alejandro had spit on by walking away.
“Gracias a Dios que estas bien,” his abuela said softly.
Yeah, thank God he was okay. If “okay” meant slipping down a fucking waterfall and busting the shit out of his leg, then being forced to return to the home he could no longer claim to face the people he was destined to disappoint.
He squelched the sarcastic retort knowing it would hurt his familia and sagged back against the worn sofa cushions. His leg ached, signaling the time neared for him to swallow another over-the-counter pain pill. He’d given a hard pass to the opioid and acetaminophen with codeine the doc had tried prescribing post-surgery in Puerto Rico. No way would he risk developing any sort of dependency or addiction. There’d been a time after his divorce when he’d come