When We Left Cuba(2)
My diamond smile reappears, honed at my mother’s knee and so very useful in situations like these, the edges sharp and brittle, warning the recipient of the perils of coming too close.
I bite, too.
“Something like that,” I lie.
Now that one of their own is back on his feet, no longer prostrate in front of the interloper they’ve been forced to tolerate this social season, the crowd turns their attention from us with a sniff, a sigh, and a flurry of bespoke gowns. We possess just enough money and influence—sugar is nearly as lucrative in America as it is in Cuba—that they can’t afford to cut us directly, but not nearly enough to prevent them from devouring us like a sleek pack of wolves scenting red meat. Fidel Castro has made beggars of all of us, and for that alone, I’d thrust a knife through his heart.
And suddenly, the walls are too close together, the lights in the ballroom too bright, my bodice too tight.
It’s been nearly a year since we left Cuba for what was supposed to be a few months away until the world realized what Fidel Castro had done to our island, and America has welcomed us into her loving embrace—almost.
I am surrounded by people who don’t want me here even if their contempt hides behind a polite smile and feigned sympathy. They look down their patrician noses at me because my family hasn’t been in America since the country’s founding, or sailed on a boat from England, or some nonsense like that. My features are a hint too dark, my accent too foreign, my religion too Catholic, my last name too Cuban.
In a flash, an elderly woman who shares Anderson’s coloring and features approaches us, sparing me a cutting look designed to knock me down a peg or two. In a flurry of Givenchy, he’s swept away, and I’m alone once more.
If I had my way, we wouldn’t attend these parties, save this one, wouldn’t attempt to ingratiate ourselves to Palm Beach society. It isn’t about what I want, though. It’s about my mother, and my sisters, and my father’s need to extend his business empire through these social connections so no one ever has the power to destroy us again.
And of course, as always, it’s about Alejandro.
I head for one of the balconies off the ballroom, the hem of my gown gathered in hand, careful to keep from tearing the delicate fabric.
I slip through the open doors, stepping onto the stone terrace, the breeze blowing the skirt of my dress. There’s a slight chill in the air, the sky clear, the stars shining down, the moon full. The ocean is a dull, distant roar. It’s the sound of my childhood, my adulthood, calling to me like a siren song. I close my eyes, a sting there, and pretend I’m standing on another balcony, in another country, in another time. What would happen if I headed for the water now, if I left the party behind, removing the pinching shoes and curling my toes in the sand, the ocean pooling around my ankles?
A tear trickles down my cheek. I never imagined it was possible to miss a place this much.
I rub my damp skin with the back of my hand, my gaze shifting to the balcony’s edge, to the palms swaying in the distance.
A man leans against the balustrade, one side of him shrouded in darkness, the rest illuminated by a shaft of moonlight.
He’s tall. Blond hair—nearly reddish, really. His arms brace against the railing, his shoulders straining his tailored tuxedo.
I step back, and he moves—
I freeze.
Oh.
Oh.
The thing about people telling you you’re beautiful your whole life is that the more you hear it, the more meaningless it becomes. What does “beautiful” even mean anyway? That your features are arranged in a shape someone, somewhere, arbitrarily decided is pleasing? “Beautiful” never quite matches up to the other things you could be: smart, interesting, brave. And yet—
He’s beautiful. Shockingly so.
He appears as though he’s been painted in broad strokes, his visage immortalized by exuberant sweeps and swirls of the artist’s brush, a god come down to meddle in the affairs of mere mortals.
Irritatingly beautiful.
He looks like the sort of man who has never had to wonder if he’ll have a roof over his head, or fear his father dying in a cage with eight other men, or flee the only life he has ever known. No, he looks like the sort of man who is told he is perfection from the moment he wakes in the morning to the moment his head hits the pillow at night.
He’s noticed me, too.
Golden Boy leans against the railing, his broad arms crossed in front of his chest. His gaze begins at the top of my head where Isabel and I fussed with my coiffure for an hour, cursing the absence of a maid to help us. From my dark hair, he traverses the length of my face, down to the décolletage exposed by the gown’s low bodice, the gaudy fake jewels that suddenly make me feel unmistakably cheap—as though he can see I am an impostor—to my waist, hips.
I take another step back.
“Am I to call you cousin?”
His words stop my movement, holding me in place as surely as a hand coming to rest on my waist, as though he is the sort of man accustomed to bending others to his will with little to no effort at all.
I loathe such men.
His voice sounds like what I have learned passes for money in this country: smooth, crisp, devoid of even a hint of foreignness—the wrong kind, at least. A tone of voice secure in the knowledge that every word will be savored.
I arch my brow. “Excuse me?”