Chapter 3
“Abuela!!!!!”
Laura’s yell echoed through her loft condo. She’d lived with roommates—other dancers—until recently, when Carla, Jonah, and the baby had moved to a house together. Carla had called her up one day, asked a criminally low price for the condo and popped the keys in her mail.
A few days later, her grandma Lola had shown up with a suitcase and ensconced herself in the guest bedroom. Laura welcomed the time with her grandmother, who she hadn’t seen much growing up. She’d had a convenient excuse because it had been difficult until recently to travel to Cuba, which Lola had refused to leave for decades after her children and ex-husband had moved to the mainland. But even if the borders had been open, Laura wouldn’t have been able to spend school vacations in her ancestral homeland. She hadn’t had school vacations; she’d had ballet.
Sometimes, when she returned home from rehearsal, she felt suffocated by Lola’s presence. They didn’t really know each other, and Lola had a big personality, the kind that swept a person up and set them down when it was good and done with them. Lola was like the twister from The Wizard of Oz. Except less predictable.
But tonight, Laura’s condo was silent, and she was a bit a disappointed. If ever a girl needed her grandmother’s good counsel, it was when she’d accidentally gotten married to a dashing stranger at a tropical destination wedding.
And then agreed to date him.
From what Lola had told her about her past, which was way TMI, it seemed like precisely the kind of situation that Lola had gotten herself into and out of plenty of times over the years.
Laura pulled one of her pre-cooked meals out of the fridge and turned the oven on to low heat. She’d hired a service to bring her nutritionally balanced, low-calorie food every week so she didn’t have to think about it. Everything in her life was like that—suited and engineered to the life she’d chosen for herself. Looking down at her sad three ounces of salmon and par-cooked broccoli—no oil, no salt, no flavor—she wondered if it was worth it.
Seeing herself on that tape earlier, looking wild and carefree, was in stark contrast to how she’d felt later, at rehearsal. Dancing at her cousin’s wedding, she’d looked happy. Thinking back, that whole weekend—far away from the company—she’d felt free. Rehearsing a new production of Carmen, she’d been scolded multiple times regarding her face. Apparently, she’d looked too sad to be a believable destitute sex worker. Her face was telling the story of being burnt out, tired, and sore all the time. It wasn’t the kind of soreness she could shake off with a trip to the trainer, a massage, or even a frigid ice bath. It was the kind of soreness that told her she was approaching her sell-by date as a ballerina.
She was hanging on by her fingernails, and part of her wanted to loosen her grip and just let go. Maybe she could teach ballet or be a receptionist for her uncle, Hector, while going back to school. She’d need time to figure out the rest of her life. The possibilities seemed frightening and exciting at the same time.
She’d finished her meal by the time a key turned in the lock, announcing her grandmother’s return.
“Where have you been?” She didn’t intend for her question to come out as sharply as it did. Her tiny grandmother stopped in her tracks. Everything about her screamed color, from her flamingo-pink Capri pants to her azure-colored off-the-shoulder T-shirt. If Laura wasn’t mistaken, there was pink in her hair.
“Out.”
“Out where?” Laura didn’t want her grandmother to feel like she was monitoring her, but she felt some responsibility for making sure her elderly relative stayed safe in a city she was just getting to know.
“None of your business.” Lola certainly had the sullen teenager act down.
“Did you know that I got married in Bali?”
Her grandmother stopped in her tracks, literally froze in the middle of putting her purse down on the console table. The faint smile she’d had on her face while obscuring her whereabouts dropped, and her face took on an unmistakable mask of guilt.
“So you did know.” A knot formed in Laura’s belly. The idea that members of her family had been complicit in this foolishness made her want to scream. Her brothers and her grandparents had all been there. One of them certainly could have stopped her. Or told her about it before her grandfather had the chance. “Abuela, why did no one tell me that I’d gotten married?”
Lola had stepped fully into the dining area, and leaned against the back of the chair opposite to Laura’s. “How did you find out?”
“Abuela!” Laura took a deep breath, trying not to lose her shit. The last thing she needed was to give her grandmother a heart attack. “Why did he know before I did?”
“We were going to tell you, mi amor.”
“When were you going to tell me?” Laura stood up to clear her plate, not wanting to look at Lola in that moment, but her grandmother followed her over to the sink.
“When the time was right.”
Laura tried to focus on the water rushing over her hands, the slippery texture of the dish soap. Whenever she was upset about something, it helped for her to focus on what was right in front of her. She’d always been like that. As a little kid, she’d been all over the place, kind of a wild child. Ballet had given her something to focus all that energy on, and taught her to be present.
Right now, after finding out that her family had allowed her to make a colossal mistake, she felt like she was in a turn that had gone out of control. She was falling, and about to hit the ground, and focusing on the dishes was the only thing that would keep her from throwing the dish at the wall and shattering it into a million pieces.
“Who told you? It was Max, wasn’t it? I may not know you children well, but I know—” Lola pointed up at the ceiling, as though she was calling on God for corroboration. “He has the biggest mouth.”
“It wasn’t Max.” Her older brother might be the family communicator, but even he had been mum on the subject of her secret nuptials. “It was your ex-husband. I found out because he couldn’t file my taxes without my husband’s signature.”
“I’m sorry.”
Laura turned and looked at Lola, pressing her lips together to bite back the mean words that she wanted to say. Her grandmother appeared to be truly remorseful. Though she couldn’t be certain if she was sorry for keeping the secret or the way that Laura had found out. “For what?”
“For not telling you.”
“And you’re not sorry for not stopping me?”
Lola shrugged and all the guilt evaporated from her demeanor. “You were having fun. Since I came back for Alana’s wedding, I never see you have any fun. Charlie is handsome, and so I didn’t pay close attention.”
“Is that everyone’s excuse?”
Lola took her hand and pulled her towards the living room. The older woman was shockingly strong, but Laura didn’t fight it. She even sat down next to her grandmother.
“They didn’t tell you because I didn’t want them to tell you.”
Laura gasped and balled her fists in her lap. “So you’re the ringleader?”
Her grandmother then had the nerve to pat her hand. Pat. Her. Hand. “You looked so happy, and so—in love—the night of the wedding. I didn’t want anyone standing in the way.”
“How could I be in love with him?” Laura stood up, unable to stay seated in the face of such utter bullshit. “I barely know him, and I was drunk.”
“How drunk?” Lola’s brow furrowed, as though it was finally sinking in that she’d made a grave error.
“So, so, so, so drunk.”
“I didn’t know.”
“So you thought I remembered all this time and had decided to say nothing about getting married?”
“I didn’t know you really got married—legally—until you told me.”
“You thought I had just gotten mildly tipsy and decided to have a fake wedding at my cousin’s wedding with a guy I barely know?”
Lola stood up and shrugged again in a way that was growing more infuriating by the moment. “I didn’t know exactly what you were up to, but I thought it was time you had an adventure.”
“I don’t need adventure, Abuela.” She took a deep breath and turned away from her grandmother. “I need structure and discipline.”
Lola made a haughty “pfft” sound. “The last thing you need is more structure. You work yourself into the ground. Dios, there’s nothing to you but skin and bone.” She walked around the coffee table until she was facing her again. Her face was soft, care dripping from her gaze. “You look so tired, mi amor.”
“I’m fine.”
Lola grabbed her arms. Laura’s chest ached at the tenderness that she’d never really gotten from her aloof parents. They were broken people, and they didn’t care much about how people felt on the inside. Her father had been too busy growing a business in a weird competition with her mother’s cousin Hector when Laura was growing up to kiss boo-boos or even attend recitals. Her mother’s answer for most things was an afternoon of shopping or a dosage of Valium.
Lola’s tenderness, on the other hand, was palpable, and it made it difficult to stay angry at her. Even though she’d caused a major inconvenience for Laura.
She pulled away from her grandmother, unable to bear her pity. “I’ll fix it.”
“Can I help you?”
“I think you’ve helped enough.”
* * * *
Laura was hoping that Charlie wouldn’t pick a trendy restaurant for their first and last date. Her hopes were dashed when he called her and told her that he’d made reservations at Juvia, a trendy spot near the beach with a rooftop dining room.
Any hope she had of not being seen by any gossipmongers was dashed when he’d suggested it. She was sure he would have picked another place had she put her foot down, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The notion that this wasn’t a real date was dashed when she picked up the phone and heard his deep, raspy voice. He didn’t even have to be in the room for him to affect her on a primal, physical level. She’d never felt like that before from just words, and it was disconcerting.
The man she’d married tested her hard-won equilibrium over the phone, but he blew it to smithereens when she walked out of her condo building to find him standing by a sexy, black sports car, wearing a suit that looked as though it had found fabric nirvana just resting against his skin.
Her husband was seriously sexy, which made it all the more imperative that he sign the papers folded neatly inside her handbag. She couldn’t afford to let the warm feeling that overtook her whenever he was near steer her off course.
Not after all these years of sacrifice. Now that she was finally at the pinnacle of her career—or close to it—she couldn’t afford to slide back down the face of the mountain. Because who would she be without ballet?
Probably someone like her mother, who had no passions of her own. Her mother had lived through her father’s success. She hadn’t done anything with her considerable intellect, and she was miserable. Her mother’s misery filled her parents’ house, and Laura could barely stand to be there. Half the time, she thought that the will to become a professional dancer had come from the sheer desire not to be at home.
And, despite the disparaging words from his ex-wife, Charlie was the kind of man that women threw away dreams for. Against that dark thought, Laura squared her shoulders and approached him as though he wasn’t a walking live wire, ready to shock her carefully constructed life to death if she let him touch her.
“You look gorgeous.” Such a cheap line that worked when it came from Charlie, with his pretty eyes and roguish smirk.
“I know.” He gave her a full-on smile at that.
“Of course, you do.” He opened the car door, and his hand went to her lower back.
She startled, but he didn’t move his hand away. And she swore she could hear a sizzling burn from the touch of his hand through her filmy sun dress. It was God-awful hot this time of year, but the humid air wasn’t the only reason she was sweating a half hour after getting out of the shower.
She took her seat, half to get away from his touch, half because she didn’t want him to stop touching her. He must have just arrived because the interior of the car was still cool from air conditioning. Still, she wanted to fan herself to get the flush to leave her skin. One little caress and he had her heart beating as though she’d just rehearsed a solo piece for an hour. He got in and started the car again.
He looked over at her for a second when she reached toward the air vents to capture some of the cool air. Even that had a tinge of heat. She’d underestimated his appeal from the start, thinking he would be good for a fun night on the beach. A wedding fling. She hadn’t realized that he was dangerous to her peace of mind.
“Are you hot?” He didn’t keep the amusement out of his voice.
The problem with a guy like Charlie was that he snuck up on sexy. He was like a chili pepper that didn’t hit the taste buds right away, but turned into a five-alarm emergency after thirty seconds of slurping up whatever it was in.
“It’s 95 degrees and a hundred percent humidity.” She glared at him, angry that he could see how disheveled she felt around him. He made her feel as though someone had ransacked her insides. “What do you think?”
“Aren’t you used to that, growing up here?”
“I never spent much time outside as a kid.”
“That’s a shame.”
She shrugged. “I was busy dancing.”
“You sound sad when you say that.” Irritation had her digging her fingernails into her palm, a habit she’d picked up to deal with jerky dance partners to prevent herself from yelling at them and risking one dropping her on her ass at the first opportunity.
“I’m not sad. It’s the truth.”
He moved his right hand to the top of the wheel, sort of creating a shield between him and her. She should like the fact that she’d put him on the defensive, but it disappointed her. Part of her wanted him to probe and find out more about her. She wanted to know more about him. Sure, they were getting an annulment as soon as possible, but she should know something about the man she’d married other than the fact that she was going to regret not consummating the marriage.
“Where did you grow up?”
“Just outside of Chicago.” His body loosened, encouraging her to ask for more.
“Not quite as hot there.” She looked down at her hands, not sure what she should say next. She didn’t really know anything about this man, and she was curious as to why she’d done something so terribly impulsive with him. “What’s your family like?”
He shifted his hands on the steering wheel again, and his body was more open to her. “Really normal.”
She snorted. “What’s that like?”
“Your family seems pretty normal to me.”
“You haven’t met my parents then?”
“No, just Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez.”
“The Delgados are nothing like the Hernandezes.”
“Really, how so?”
She paused, not quite ready to open up. “I asked you about your family. Tell me about normal.”
“When I was growing up, my dad ran a newspaper, which is now a media conglomerate. All my brothers work for him.”
“But not you?” Charlie’s brow furrowed, and Laura wanted to run her finger across his forehead, smoothing the creases. She wanted to soothe him, but didn’t know how. It wasn’t often that she didn’t know how to fix something.
“I didn’t exactly meet my father’s expectations.”
“They were demanding?”
“Yes.” He sighed and moved his hand as though he was about to touch her, but stopped and put his hand back on the wheel. They were close to the restaurant now; traffic had been mostly quiet. Laura had this feeling of time slipping away, as though she was about to lose an opportunity to really get to know this man.
“My parents didn’t expect much.” She said it, hoping maybe that if she showed him a bit of herself, that he would do the same. It didn’t make any sense—this prying—but she had to know more about this man who filled her with delicious feelings, even though any involvement with him would be deeply inconvenient.
“But look at what you’ve achieved.”
“It’s not really important.”
“More important than what I do.”
“Maybe.”
They both went silent, but she felt bad about him thinking that his work wasn’t important. As a dancer, she often felt like something pretty and frivolous. A luxury, not a necessity. With previous boyfriends—few and far between as they had been—she’d felt like a trophy. Guys liked to say they were banging a ballerina, but they didn’t so much like the long evenings alone. Every relationship she’d ever tried to start had stalled when the guys realized that ballet was her true love.
And she didn’t dare date other dancers. The competition and vanity didn’t make for anything healthy.
Sitting in the car with Charlie, talking about their families, felt kind of nice. Normal. She’d never even thought she’d get married and have kids when she was done dancing professionally. But the thought of it often made her feel as though she was facing down a prison sentence.
Normal for Laura felt like a punishment. From the few words Charlie had said on the subject of his normal childhood, they didn’t see things so differently.