Back To Us (5 page)

I pictured what Justin’s apartment looked like and my curiosity piqued. “I already told my brother and his girlfriend that I was going over to her family’s house.” And the truth was I didn’t see myself fitting in with the rooftop deck crowd.

“So you’re spending the day with your brother’s girlfriend’s family? What about your parents? They don’t celebrate the Fourth?”

I laughed. My father’s opinion of American patriotism wasn’t particularly good. “Uhh, no. They don’t celebrate July Fourth in Croatia.”

“Wait a minute. Is that where your parents are now?”

“It’s where they’ve been for the past five years,” I replied, casually.

“Wait a minute.” I could see Justin doing the math in his head. “You were fourteen when they left for Croatia? Who took care of you?”

“Long. . .”

“I already know what you’re gonna say. Long story. Fine. I get it. But one day you’re gonna tell me all your deepest and darkest secrets.”

“Yeah, sure,” I teased. “As long as you go first.”

“So, if your parents aren’t around does that mean you live alone?”

I shook my head. “No. My brother and I share a place.”

“And what does he do?” I could hear the curiosity in Justin’s voice and realized I’d said too much.

“He works for a company that does clinical trials during the day, and he takes night classes at Hunter.” It was how my brother met Melanie, in a class they took together. “He’s a Community Health major.”

“That’s cool,” Justin said. He stared down at his shoes for a moment before looking at me again. “You’re sure I can’t convince you to come over? You see your brother all the time, anyway.”

I laughed. “Truth is, I probably see more of you than him. But. . .I already told Mel I was going to her family’s house, which means that she probably told her mother I’d be there. I’d feel bad not showing up.”

“All right.” Justin took a piece of paper from his pocket and jotted something down on it before handing it to me. “This is my address, in case you change your mind.”

Wednesday morning started out a beautiful day, but by lunchtime heavy ominous clouds hung in the sky, and by the time I left work for the day it was pouring outside. I hadn’t bothered to check the weather before I left for work in the morning which meant my umbrella was home where it was totally useless to me. A few raindrops didn’t bother me, but the rain was coming down in sheets, so I decided to wait under the awning of the community center until it stopped.

Twenty minutes later the downpour had only gotten worse and I was half-tempted to just make a dash for the train station. The cool raindrops would probably feel good. Justin, who was just leaving work, noticed me waiting.

“Who would’ve thought it was going to rain like this today?”

Unlike me, he had an umbrella with him. “You must’ve.”

“No.” He winked at me. “I just keep a spare one in my office.”

“And you’re about to tell me this is my lucky day and you have an extra umbrella for me,” I said, half-joking.

“No extra umbrellas.” Justin shook his head. “Why don’t we just share a cab instead?”

“Sure, okay.” The words came out of my mouth before I thought about what I was saying. A taxi all the way to Brooklyn would be expensive. I was getting regular paychecks, but a cab from Justin’s neighborhood to Brooklyn was not in my budget. Before I could think of a way to back out Justin had already hailed a taxi. I reluctantly followed him inside.

“You all right?” he asked. I was terrible at hiding my feelings and, at that moment, I was mentally trying to calculate if I had enough cash on me to cover the ride into Brooklyn. Maybe I could ask the driver to drop me off a few blocks from Justin’s and then I could take the train home from there. Pleased with the solution I’d come up with, I relaxed.

“I’m fine.” I stared out of the window at the rain coming down. “Just hoping this rain clears up by tomorrow.”

“There will be a lot of July Fourth plans that get messed up if it doesn’t.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. The AC in the cab was either off or not working, and it was really hot and muggy, the worst combination. I reached into my bag for a hair tie and pulled my hair back into a messy ponytail. In the summer when it was really hot my long hair felt like a thick blanket on my neck and shoulders. As a kid, my hair was always short thanks to my dad’s awful haircuts. In the group home I’d got my hair cut a total of one time in four years. It wasn’t until after I left that I found out that the other girls and I were supposed to get money every three months for haircuts. Turns out one of the workers at the group home pocketed our money instead. Now I just didn’t have enough extra money to spend on getting my hair done, so I just wore it long.

I looked at Justin out of the corner of my eye. He was wearing a t-shirt and his usual track pants. He always wore pants, even on the hottest days. I didn’t know how he could stand it.

“Can I ask you something?” Justin’s question interrupted my thoughts.

“Yeah, sure?”

“I know the two of us are pretending to be dating, but I was kind of wondering, do you have a real boyfriend?”

“No, no real boyfriend, just you, my fake one,” I replied with a wry smile. “What about you? Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Nah. I’m not exactly what anyone would call prime dating material.”

“What makes you say that?” His assessment of himself surprised me. We’d known each for about a month and I had yet to discover any flaws. Not only was he strikingly handsome, he was funny and kind.

“Uhh. . .guy who still lives with his parents.” He held his hand up like he was introducing himself at a group meeting. “Remember?”

“Yeah, but you’re cute enough to pull that off. . .I think.”

“You think I’m cute?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

“Oh come on now,” I said. “I can’t be the first girl who’s ever told you that.”

Justin had no time to answer. The taxi pulled up to his building and he got out. Earlier in the week when Justin told me about his parent’s rooftop deck I figured they had money, I just didn’t realize how much. I didn’t spend too much time in fancy New York buildings, but I recognized one when I saw one. Justin finished paying the driver and waved to me as he walked inside his building.

“Your address?” the cab driver asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“Umm. . .can you just drop me off by the nearest train station?”

“Man told me take you to Brooklyn, he pay me for ride all the way to Brooklyn,” the taxi driver said in a broken Indian accent.

“He paid my fare?”

“Yes, and big tip, too.” For a moment I was too flabbergasted to say anything. “Your address, ma’am?”

“Oh yeah,” I said before telling him how to get to my place.

On the drive home I dialed Justin’s number. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Do what,” he asked, innocently.

“We were supposed to be sharing a cab,” I said. “I didn’t expect you to pay for my fare all the way home.”

“Yeah, but it was my idea, it wouldn’t be right to stick you with the fare.”

“I guess I owe you again.”

“Again?”

“Once for lunch, then for rescuing me from Don, and now this.”

“You don’t owe me a thing, Jesse.”

“Yes, I do, and I always repay my debts.” I wasn’t exactly sure how I would with Justin, but I didn’t like charity, and I didn’t like feeling like I owed someone. If Justin was just about any other guy I knew I would’ve sworn he was just being nice because he wanted something, but Justin was generous with everyone. He regularly showed up with coffee and doughnuts for everyone at work. Sometimes he’d get pizza delivered to the community center at lunch and he never let anyone chip in. It was just his way, and it was starting to cast a spell over me despite my best efforts to talk myself out of it.

I was surprised to find my brother in the kitchen when I got inside our apartment. He sat at the table with a container of take-out in front of him. His hair and clothes were soaked and his fingers were coated with rib sauce.

“You should’ve just asked them to deliver,” I said.

“Picked this up on my way back from the train station.” Mike looked me up and down. “How’d you stay so dry?”

“I took a cab. Shared one with this guy I work with.”

“You mean Justin?” I’d mentioned him to my brother a few times. I just hadn’t realized he’d actually been paying attention to me at the time.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“I’m a guy, J. I know the way we think.”

I frowned, not sure what my brother was getting at. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The guy likes you. I can’t believe you haven’t figured that out already.”

“You just say that ’cause you don’t know him. He’s nice to everyone, that’s just how he is.”

“Ok, whatever. But after he asks you out I expect you to tell me I was right.”

My brother firmly believed that females and males couldn’t be just friends. If a guy was being nice, it meant he wanted something, but hadn’t worked up the courage to ask for it. I wasn’t ready to admit that he was right, even though when it came to Justin I found myself sort of hoping he was.

“So what’s Mel’s mom going to do if it’s still raining tomorrow?”

“You know Mel’s family. They’ll just bring the party inside.”

Melanie came from a huge family. Her mom and dad weren’t together anymore, but when they had been they’d made five children together who all still lived in Brooklyn. Parties at Mel’s mom’s house were always crowded affairs with loud music, usually a mix between hip-hop and merengue since they were Dominican, and lots of food. If it rained tomorrow someone would still be grilling, and the party would still be on one way or another.

Luckily, by morning the clouds and rain had cleared. Mel came over early and my brother helped her in the kitchen to clean and season some chicken that would get grilled later. By noon the three of us headed for the train station. I could smell grilled meat almost as soon as we got out of the train station. The music was already blaring by the time we got to Mel’s mom’s place. Mel and I brought the chicken she and my brother had seasoned earlier to the backyard before going back inside.

I found Mel’s mom in the kitchen, half cooking, half dancing.

“Hi, Mrs. Vergara,” I said.

She turned around and hugged me. “Go get some food, mija.”

The dining room table was covered with a mixture of Dominican and American dishes. There was rice and beans, plantains and empanadas alongside hot dogs and potato salad. I helped myself to a plate of food and sat outside in the backyard watching Mel’s brother and cousins playing dominoes. With all the beer at the party, it didn’t take long for more than a few people to get kind of drunk. After yet another one of Mel’s cousins suggested we’d make pretty babies together, I decided to go hunt for my brother.

I found Mel in the living room on the couch with her hands folded across her chest, she looked pissed. “Where’s Mike?” I asked.

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

That meant the two of them must have got into an argument. “What happened?”

“What happened is your brother is an asshole.” Mel knew she could talk to me like that because half the time I agreed with her. My brother was a good guy, he never lied, and if you counted on him for something he always came through, but he could push a person’s buttons sometimes. I understood him and I understood why, but that didn’t always make dealing with it easier.

I sat beside her. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just mad.”

“And you don’t want to tell me why?”

“Mike saw me talking to some guy and got jealous. We got into an argument about it so he went up to my brother’s room with a few other guys to get high. He knows I don’t care if he smokes, but at my mom’s house. . .” She shook her head. “That’s just not cool.”

I couldn’t argue with her. Truthfully, I didn’t really care that much that my brother liked pot. He had a job and went to school, so it wasn’t like it interfered in his life, but I couldn’t stand the smell of it. And smoking at your girlfriend’s mother’s house, Mel was right, that wasn’t cool. It seemed like Mike and Mel got into the same old argument at every family party. My brother had a jealous streak because, even though he never admitted as much, he was scared to death of losing Mel. She and her family had become his family, his anchor, and a part of him was afraid he wasn’t good enough and that he didn’t deserve her. A lifetime of hearing that from your parents tended to have that effect on a person.

I wasn’t able to find my brother anywhere, and he didn’t answer any of my texts so I said my goodbyes. I felt kind of bad leaving Mel when she was so upset, but she had her family—tons of cousins, her mom, her brothers, and Mike and I only had each other.

“If I see Mike do you want me to tell him to call you?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. He’ll call.” She sounded totally unworried, which wasn’t surprising, Mel knew my brother was head over heels with her.

Going home to look for Mike was going to be a waste of time, I knew my brother well enough to know if he was pissed he wouldn’t have gone home. He would have gone to one of his friend’s to either drink or smoke some more. By three in the morning, I couldn’t stay awake any longer. Mike hadn’t shown up and he hadn’t answered any of my calls or texts. The only thing I could do was pray that whatever my brother was up to he wasn’t getting into the type of trouble he couldn’t get out of.