Chapter 18

18

It takes me all morning to decide whether to cook for Carter's family, and by the time I decide that I can make my favorite recipe from childhood—Nadia's famous cheese enchiladas—I look at the clock and realize all I have time for is picking up fried chicken, biscuits, and all the fixings from a nearby Southern food place. This is what Carter had initially wanted me to do to start with. But I was too nervous to make up my mind until the clock made it up for me.

I didn't even give myself time to run this morning, which is probably the worst decision I've made in recent memory. Looking out the window, though, the sky doesn't reflect my nerves. It's cloudy with hints of sunshine here and there, peeking through like cosmic sunflower petals. I wonder if it's 'cause I know Carter will be here. Knowing that for all his faults, as my husband he'll have my back, just like he did with Leilani.

"I don't get what's wrong with this," Carter says, popping a piece of fried okra in his mouth. "Everyone loves soul food."

"But now they're going to judge me for not making a real effort." I hand him the white porcelain square plates from the cabinets. "Here, help me set the table instead of eating all the food."

"No one's going to judge you, Teal. They're all going to be stuffing their faces with all this deliciousness." As he transfers the biscuits from their packaging to the cute bread basket I found tucked away on top of the fridge, he samples one. As in, a whole-ass, beautiful buttered biscuit is gone in two bites.

I smack his forearm. "Stop that."

He lifts his hands in mock surrender. "I'm just getting my point across."

"You're about to eat everything before they even get here." I sigh as I roll up the cloth napkins I took from Nadia's house. Carter, living the sad, predictable bachelor life, I guess, only had wrinkled brown paper napkins that he regularly stole from Burger King down the street. Lord knows what his family would've said about that. So now we're now the proud thieves of gold-embroidered emerald green napkins that Nadia is definitely going to be pissed about when she finds out they're gone.

I turn to him, my arms crossed. "You know how your family is. The elder women worship the men and boys and criticize the shit out of all the women and girls. And that includes the girls their boys are married to." I'd seen it all firsthand when I visited the Velasquez home as a kid. Nothing Carter's sisters did was ever good enough, from the way they sliced onions to how they mopped the floors. Meanwhile, Carter and his boy cousins could track thick mud through the house, eat with their grubby, bare hands, and be so loud and obnoxious while playing video games that none of us could hear ourselves think, much less talk over…and all the mamas and tías and welas would pat their heads and smile, calling them so guapo and strong and innocent.

"Okay, okay," Carter says when I go into extreme detail reminding him of how they were. "You're right. I know it. But—I'm—" He sighs, then takes my hand and pulls me toward him. Half of me wants to run to the other side of the table. The other half wants to close the gap between us with a hug. A kiss. A quick finger-fuck right on the dining room table.

The memory of him running away the last time he had his fingers in me squelches down that thought real quick.

"Abuelo Gene wanted us to be get along and be happy. He was the peacemaker, remember?"

I nod. Gene often defended his granddaughters to his wife and his daughters. He was well aware that there was some type of intergenerational trauma with the women, and although he didn't have the resources to figure out how to heal it, nor did anyone else, he did the best he could. He'd send the girls out to play when they were expected to cook, once again, for the whole family. He'd save them dessert that would otherwise get eaten while they washed the dishes after parties and gatherings. Hell, once he found me crying after Abuela Erika—his wife—had tried her hardest to rip me a new one. He helped me up, dried my tears, and took Carter and me to see The Matrix , our first R-rated film. Carter and I spent the rest of that summer pretending we were Neo and Trinity, trying to bend backward and sideways in slow motion to dodge imaginary bad-guy bullets.

Carter runs a hand over his clean-shaven jaw. Whatever aftershave he's got on must be laced with legit pheromones because it's doing illicit things to me. He smells freaking delicious—like the woods and the sea all blended together with something sweet, like honey or cake.

"I know my family is dysfunctional. They have their issues."

"Especially Abuela Erika," I add pointedly.

"Especially her," he agrees. "So yeah, I am expecting some growing pains or whatever, but that'll be over soon enough. But once that's done with, they'll love you." He swallows. "Mom and Gabi already love you. They remember you coming over and outeating me and all the cousins in guava slices every weekend in the summers."

"You guys always had the best fucking guava," I groan, my stomach grumbling at the memory of it. Carter's mom, Gloria, always squeezed lime over the slices when she served us the fresh fruit. And if she made pastelitos de guayaba, forget about it. We always spoiled our dinners.

"They'll love you, Teal," he repeats, his gaze boring down on me as though I held in my very hands the answers to all the mysteries in the universe. "You're easy to love."

I blink away from our cosmic staring contest. Easy to love, my ass. "Plus we need to put on a good show for Erika so she'll get you your money, right?"

Now Carter's turning away from me, grabbing glasses from the counter. "Right. The money."

"As soon as she gets it to you, I need to get my cut, Carter. I've emptied my bank account on a down payment for that PI."

"Got it," he responds. "I'll get you the money ASAP."

I don't have any time to try and decipher why his tone's gotten so weird and dry, because that's when the doorbell rings.

Carter's family is massive. Even when his mami lived in the three-story Victorian down the street from Nadia's, it felt like there was never enough room. Not everyone could come today, but even with a third of his people elsewhere, his house instantly feels like it was made for Polly Pocket and not actual-sized humans.

Gloria is the first through the door, with a stream of people following behind. "Teal," she says, running to me, wearing a cute, red rose–patterned white sundress. "Oh, I have another daughter!" She then turns to Carter, who opens his arms wide, presumably for a hug. But she instead pulls her shiny black Coach bucket bag off her shoulder and smacks him on the side of the head with it.

"Hey!" Carter yelps as he covers his face. She gets his shoulder next. "Why are you attacking me, Mom?" He looks so aghast, I can't hide my smile. This must be the first time he's been reprimanded by his mom—or any elder woman in his family—in his entire life.

"This is for you not telling us you were getting married—" She smacks his stomach. "And for not inviting us to the wedding." Next is his hip. "And for me to find out from my neighbor? That my own son is now a husband? Do you know how humiliated I felt?"

"Okay, Mom. I think he gets your point," Gabi says, grabbing Gloria's purse-wielding arm to stop her next strike.

Gloria halts and shrugs off Gabi's hand. Next thing I know, she's cupping Carter's face. "My baby boy is married! He has a wife!" And then she kisses both his cheeks and hugs him to her chest, even though he's a good foot and a half taller than her. I'm almost unable to stop myself from rolling my eyes. This is just how it is with the Velasquez family. The mistakes of men are forgettable, to the point where, just a few weeks from now, Gloria, if pressed, would act like she didn't remember any of it—how he'd hidden his wedding, his wife. How she had to hear about it from a neighbor.

And if it had been Gabi, or any of Carter's other sisters? The incident would be brought up at every single gathering, every conversation, even, for the next lifetime or two.

Gabi sees my face and gestures toward her mom and brother with a sarcastic smile. "The baby boy can do no wrong," she says in a low voice as she hugs me and kisses my cheek. "How are you doing, Teal? Or should I say, hermana?" She steps back with a huge smile. "It's been too long."

"Oh, yes, it has. Where's Cristina and Paloma?" I ask, referring to Carter's other sisters.

"Oh, you know. Traveling for this, for that. Work trips, school stuff." She adds under her breath, "Trying to stay away from the madness."

Some of Carter's cousins, aunts, and uncles greet me next. I'm chatting with his tío Rodrigo about my looking for a job when I can feel a shift in the vibes. How the room goes from neutral small talk and lots of familial affection to an awkward accommodation of a thick, underlying tension. People's smiles turn strained. Their eyes widen as they glance to me, then back again.

I glance toward the door, and shit . It looks like Abuela Erika has finally joined the party.