Landon & Shay: Part Two (L&S Duet #2)(35)

I sat there in the silence of my New York penthouse, staring into the darkness as every single memory of Shay Gable came rushing back to me. I played them on a loop because every memory was worth reliving.





13





Shay





My grandmother always joked that good men existed, it just so happened they all lived on the movie screen.

Normally I loved our Sunday dinners, but lately they felt like love’s battlefield, and Mima was shooting out bombs trying to dissect my current relationship.

Mom was late for dinner—again—and that left the conversation wide open for Mima to be her nosy self, asking about my love life—or lack thereof. Sam and I had been dating for the past nine months, and I was in a comfortable state of contentment with our situation, yet that didn’t seem enough to please Mima.

Her crown roast sizzled as she sat it down on the dining room table. After that, she brought out the mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. Leave it to Mima to cook a whole feast for a simple Sunday dinner for three.

Steam rose from the meal, and the aromas of perfectly cooked foods filled the space as my stomach rumbled in anticipation.

“I don’t understand why we haven’t met him if you two have been dating for so long,” she argued, setting down a tossed salad. “You haven’t even given us a name.”

“I told you, Mima—I don’t want to bring him around if it’s not serious. Plus, it’s only been nine months.”

“That’s long enough to know if you’re into someone. People have children in nine months’ time. If they are able to bake up a whole human, you should be able to make up your mind about a man. If it is not serious by now, it’s not going to be serious. Besides…” She scooped up a big spoonful of her mashed potatoes—too much for me, but I’d definitely eat it all—and plopped it down on my plate. “I don’t think he’s the one for you.”

I laughed. “How would you even know? I hardly talk about him.”

“Exactly. If someone’s the one for you, you can’t help but feel ecstatic about it. You want to talk about them all the time. It spills out of you like lava, warming you from the tips of your toes to the crown of your head—which makes me believe, this isn’t the one. There’s no passion behind it.”

“There doesn’t have to be passion. This isn’t a movie. It’s real life.”

“Real life should be better than the movies.”

It was weird how Mima believed in love so much when love hadn’t been the greatest for herself. Even after all the heartache she’d been through with my grandfather, she still believed in happily ever afters.

I, on the other hand, struggled with the concept daily. I’d only been in that soul-crushing love once in my life, and it had done exactly that—crushed my soul. I was completely okay with hovering in the realm of liking someone instead of giving myself completely to them.

Not every romance had to be The Notebook.

Some could be a made-for-television kind of story. For example, those Hallmark movies where two people fall in love in three days and no souls are crushed in the making of their connection. Those stories had some appeal to them. They were easier. Fluffy and comfortable. Plus, if the couple broke up after the end credits, it wasn’t as if anyone was shattered. The girl would probably go back to working in New York City again, and the hero would start selling more trees on his father’s Christmas tree lot until another big city girl crossed his path the next year.

“Maybe that stuff is just for the fairytales, Mima. Maybe all that heart skipping and flowery stuff is just for the storybooks.”

“Oh, honey. You can’t believe that. You are, after all, the one who is going to break this family’s love curse.”

Here we go again.

The Martinez family curse.

My grandmother was a firm believer that fairytales still existed in real life, even though she’d never lived to see a truly healthy relationship within our family. Mima believed in knights in shining armor, princesses, funny sidekicks, villains, and magical curses. My gosh, did she believe in those curses. She was convinced our family had many generational curses that shadowed us all and kept us all from achieving our greatest love story.

There is no amount of pressure like the pressure from a grandmother who is convinced you’re the one brought into this world to break the generational family curse set upon your family decades before. Mima was completely sure I was the one to end the Martinez love drought.

I didn’t want to believe in her crazy speeches, but I swore, they sometimes held a bit of truth. We Martinez women had experienced a bit of bad luck in the romance department for ages.

I could hear my mother in my ear at all times. Every time I got let down by the opposite sex, I heard her whisperings. “Never has there been good men in our family history, mi amor. We women are cursed to love sons of bitches. My grandfather was a son of a bitch. Your grandfather was a son of a bitch, your father was a son of a bitch. We’re better off alone.”

Then, I’d hear Mima and her hopefulness slipping in. “I pray to God each day that you are the one to end this curse set upon us Martínez women. You are our savior.”

Again—no pressure.

Over the years, the three of us ladies had grown closer than before. We held each other up whenever life tried to knock us down—which it had done over and over again. But, with the love of my mother and grandmother, I knew we’d always make it through the darkest of days.