Page 29 of Every Move You Make

It’s been an incredible transformation, but I wish we could have seen this version of him a lot sooner.

I’m not like my older sister, who is so free with her emotions. It makes her a great children’s therapist and friend. While her inclination is to coax feelings from people, mine is to hide them. Growing up the way we did, all I wanted was for my mom to still be alive and for my dad to be proud of me. As an adult, I realized what I was trying to do was be the man of the house—as outdated as that thought process is—since my dad wasn’t mentally there for us. I never sawmy dad show emotion outside of Mom’s death bed and funeral. He always hid away, and that’s what I thought I had to do with my emotions, too.

Thanks to Angie’s relentless need to see what’s going on in everyone’s brain, it’s a little easier for me to open up now, but not much. I know that makes me come off surly a lot of the time, but at this point, being reserved is my comfort zone.

We didn’t know until recently that our mom wrote journals for each one of us kids which encompassed her pregnancy through our first year of life. I’m a little ashamed to say I haven’t opened it yet. Dad gave them to us about a year ago, but I’ve been too afraid to read what’s inside.

I’ll get there someday.

Now that we’re all out of the house, Dad’s been calling us a lot more to come over for the smallest things. His loneliness is the reason we’re all here, and why my sisters have established a mandatory family dinner every Sunday night.

And, okay, I guess it’s nice to see everyone or whatever.

“Fuck yeah, enchiladas!” Jonah hollers as we step in through the back door to the unmistakable aroma of our childhood.

“Language, Jonah,” Dad chides, holding his granddaughter to his chest. Zofia is unfazed as she takes a handful of Dad’s salt-and-pepper mustache.

“She’s six months old,” Jonah drawls, helping Dad remove her death grip from his facial hair and taking her.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dad replies. “You should start watching what you say from now on. They’re sponges.”

“Who made dinner tonight?” I ask, bracing myself for the answer.

“I did,” Rafael smiles, coming into the kitchen from the living room. He’s in a dark floral summer button-up, and as always, his smooth terracotta skin and styled hair areflawless.

My whole body relaxes knowing we’re eating well tonight. “Gracias,” I say, giving him a tight hug.

Rafael and his younger brother Joaquín have been in our lives since we were young. Their moms, Ana and Christina, were the adult mother figures in our lives, auxiliary to Angie. They live just a few neighborhoods over, and our families have been intermingled for decades. And now, with Raf and Ang getting married soon, they’ll be even tighter.

“Hey, bro,” Dane says, coming up next to me, holding our nephew Dominico. I take a step back for a moment to study my brother.

Dane usually wears dark clothes when he’s not in his veterinarian scrubs or rugby kit. But tonight, he’s opted for a band tee and ripped black jeans, complete with classic black Converse. Odd—he hasn’t gone full punk since high school. He keeps a few lingering stylistic choices, like the small black gauges in his ears, but this is like he stepped back in time.

“Are you wearing eyeliner?”

“So?”

“Nothing. You just haven't worn it in a long time.”

“It’s coming back,” he mutters.

“I don’t think it is.”

“What do you know about makeup?”

“Not much. It just looks like you’re ready to getAgony Nectarback together.” He bristles at the name of our family band we formed as teenagers, and I chuckle. “Are we going on tour?”

“Shut up.”

“Just say the word, and I’ll take my bass out of storage.”

With the hand not holding our nephew, Dane tries to gently rub his eyeliner away. At the same moment, my eye catches Joaquín coming through the door.

“Hey, I didn’t know Joaquín was going to be here today,” Isay. “Maybe he wants to get the band back together, too.” I wave to him. “Joaquín!”

“Jesus,” Dane mutters.

“Hey, guys,” Joaquín beams, setting a plastic-wrapped bowl of salsa down and pushing back his long, shiny black curls.

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