How Much I Feel - Marie Force Page 0,34
guarapo. It’s pure sugar, so some people call it diabetes in a cup.”
Jason laughs. “I’ll pass on that.”
“It’s so good. They roll cigars over there. Best cigars you’ll ever find.”
“I’ll pass on them, too. I know too much about what smoking does to the body.”
“Keep that to yourself around here if you value your life. We’re very serious about our cigars.”
“Will do,” he says, chuckling.
I direct him to take a few turns that lead to a two-story pink stucco house. Out front are colorful flowers in the window boxes and an ornate white security gate with gold accents.
“Home sweet home.” I note that my father’s Ford pickup truck and my mother’s Mercedes coupe are in the driveway. Any minute, however, they’ll be heading to the restaurant for the rest of the day and night. A trickle of sensation works its way down my spine as I imagine them catching me here with Jason and his Porsche.
“This is where you grew up?”
“Uh-huh.” I’m relieved when he slows the car but keeps inching forward past the house. “We moved here when I was two. Tony’s family lives three blocks that way.”
“What are the trees in the yard?”
“Coconut palms and mangoes. You see them everywhere in South Florida.”
He starts to speed up.
“Wait. Stop.” I point to the chickens and rooster starting across the street, oblivious to the possibility of certain death. “You have to watch out for them around here. They’re all over the place.”
“Good to know.”
“You’ll see chicken art and statues everywhere in Little Havana.”
I show him the Shenandoah Elementary School I attended as well as the dance studio that was like a second home to me through high school, and the Presidente Supermarket. “I briefly stocked shelves there when I was so fed up with my parents that I didn’t want to work at the restaurant anymore.”
“That must’ve gone over well.”
“Yeah, not so much. They were more hurt about me quitting the restaurant than they were about me not speaking to them.”
“What’d they do to deserve the silent treatment?”
“They refused to let me officially date Tony until I was sixteen.”
“Oh right, the waiting period.”
“It was torture! We were in love!” I laugh at my own foolishness. “The drama was exceptionally high during those years.”
“I can only imagine,” he says with a low chuckle.
“My parents have old-fashioned values that didn’t sync with my teenage mentality. We butted heads a lot, but I always did what they told me to do. As much as I wanted to rebel, I couldn’t bring myself to actually do it.”
“Such a good girl,” he says, smiling. “Was it just you? No siblings?”
“Just me. My mother had nine miscarriages before I arrived.”
“Oh my goodness!”
“I know. From what I’ve been told by others, it was dreadful for them. They don’t talk about it at all, though. That’s probably why I didn’t go totally wild and defy them when I really, really wanted to. So there I was, their miracle baby who became a less-than-miraculous teenager. I look back at it now and cringe at how awful I was to them.”
“We’re all awful teenagers.”
“You were, too?”
“Oh God, yes. I was horrible. If my parents had any inkling of the crap I used to do . . .”
I’m immediately intrigued. “Like what?”
“I smoked all the pot, drank all the beer, slept with all the girls. And I was a total jerk to my parents.”
Hearing he slept with all the girls, I want to claw their eyes out. That’s a totally normal reaction, right? Yeah, I know. Ridiculous. “You were a typical bad boy.”
“In every way except for one—I got straight As without really trying.”
“Ugh, you were that guy? I hated that guy! He ruined it for the rest of us.”
“That was me,” he says, laughing. “A total fuckup in the rest of my life, but because my grades were perfect, my parents couldn’t do much about the rest.”
“That’s a good position to be in.”
“I quite enjoyed it.”
“Where’d you go to college?”
“Full ride to Cornell undergrad and Duke medical school.”
“Wow, that’s impressive, but I suppose you don’t get to be a brain surgeon without having a pretty good brain of your own.”
His lips quiver with amusement. “It does tend to help. School was always easy for me, until I got to med school and discovered my lack of study skills was going to be a major problem. It was like hitting a brick wall going ninety miles an hour.”
“It makes me feel better to know you got your comeuppance.”
He laughs. “I totally