Player(85)

I found everyone in the kitchen, where they always were. They saw me the second I entered the room and rose to meet me. Each of them wore masks of normalcy, tightened at the edges of their eyes with worry.

They greeted me as they always did—with smiles and hugs, a few jokes, and a noogie from Franco.

No one asked about Sam. No one brought him up at all.

His presence in the room was heavy nonetheless.

I moved around the room, never staying in one place long. Once I made the rounds, Mama took pity on me and enlisted my help in the kitchen. I was cutting potatoes for patatas bravas, silently listening to my brothers one-upping each other, when Abuela sidled up next to me. In her weathered hands, she held the corners of her apron, and in the folds of fabric rested a handful of onions.

“Ayúdame, cari?o.”

“Sí, Abuela.” I reached into the pocket of fabric to begin unloading them.

“I am sorry about your príncipe, Valentina.”

I sighed. “Who told you?”

“Dante. He told the whole familia, you know how he is. Fósforo said he hit pobre Sam. Is he all right?”

I blinked. “He…he didn’t tell me Dante hit him.” I glanced over my shoulder at my brother and inexplicably wanted to punch him myself and curl into his chest and cry.

“Sí, he hit your príncipe. After Sam hit the other desgraciado. Twice.”

I shook my head, turning back to my potatoes, so I’d have something to do with my hands. “What else did Dante say?”

“That Sam had a…” She paused, searching for the word. “No entiendo, se dice apuesta.”

“A bet. Yes,” I said softly.

She clucked her tongue, shaking her head. “Lo siento, cari?o.”

“Gracias, Abuelita. I should have known he didn’t want me.”

“?Por que? Valentina, you are the prize, not the príncipe.”

A humorless huff of a laugh escaped me. “He said the same thing.”

She waved a gnarled hand. “Everyone knows this. No one storms the castle for the príncipe. They come for la princesa. But, alma mía, I am surprised. I know love when I see it on a man’s face, and that man loves you.”

Shock shot up my spine at the word. “No, Abuelita. Not love. It was too soon for love.”

But she smiled slyly. “Is that what you think? I knew the moment I saw your abuelo that I loved him. It only takes a moment. You breathe his air, and you know he is yours. What comes after is just a matter of making sure he feels the same. And Sam feels the same. You are his air, cari?o. He needs you to breathe.”

A sheet of tears blurred my hands. I set down the knife, rested my palms on the cold countertop. “But he lied. He lied, and I don’t know how to unthread what’s the truth.”

“Sí. He lied. He hurt you. But I don’t think he meant to. Do you?”

I shook my head, swiping at my cheeks. “I don’t. I’m just…I’m so humiliated. To know I was only a joke to him is just…I can’t…” I pressed a hand to my aching chest, but there was no relief. “And I don’t know how to trust him. He hurt me. He hurt me so bad.”

She stepped into me, wrapped me in her arms, arms that had comforted me my whole life. Every skinned knee, every scrape, a few broken bones, and now, a broken heart.

For a minute, I just cried. That was all. I cried on her thin shoulder as she swayed back and forth, whispering to me in Spanish that it would be all right, to let it out, to let it go. But there was no letting Sam go. I think we both knew it.

When the tears ebbed and my breath steadied, I exhaled the last of it and stood. Her hands were still on my upper arms, her eyes dark and deep.

“It hurts. But if you love him like I think you do, you have to find a way to listen. You have to give him a chance to earn his way back from his mistakes.”

“What if he hurts me again?”

“Then you know,” she said with a shrug, wise and dismissive. “But, if you don’t try, you will always wish you had.”

Bawdy male laughter erupted from the table, nothing to do with us or me.

Abuelita let me go with a squeeze and shuffled over to the stove, leaving me to my potatoes. Her words circled my thoughts.

What I’d been so ardently avoiding was how badly I missed him. I’d asked him to leave me alone, and he had. He’d granted my wish, and I hated it. I needed it, but I hated it.

And I still wasn’t past it. The shock. The pain. The betrayal and shame.

I didn’t know how to get past it.

Because his intentions didn’t change the truth of what he’d done or how that made me feel. Nothing could erase that. Nothing could undo it. And I didn’t know if there was a way to put it behind me.

So I would choose myself over his intentions and hope that maybe, someday, I’d find a way to move on.





Dinner was uneventful. The conversation covered everything from relatives in Madrid to Franco’s laundromat harem—there were apparently a dozen women frequenting his laundromat who were not only goddesses, by his description, but wanted to sleep with him. Several laundry sabotages had taken place, including a rogue red sock in a load of whites, a nefarious bleach spill, and a fair number of G-strings missing. I didn’t catch whether or not that was the girls’ infighting or Franco being a perv.