Page 39 of Boss Me

The first few homes we saw were small, no bigger than my modest room at the resort, but sturdy-looking and painted in sherbet colors. Early as it was, a few people puttered in their gardens, collecting ripe, red tomatoes and golden squash.

A little boy streaked out of a turquoise-painted house and barreled into Cooper’s legs. His skinny arms wrapped around Cooper’s waist, and he buried his face in Cooper’s hip. A pregnant woman slowly descended from the porch, ambled down the path, and planted a kiss on Cooper’s cheek. There was nothing slow about the Spanish she fired at Cooper. All I caught were the words for build and school.

Cooper mumbled an answer in Spanish.

The woman cocked her hip and scanned me, then asked Cooper a question. He didn’t answer but reached down to gently disentangle the child from his legs. Then he tipped his chin in the direction we’d been going and said something about the garden we planned to visit.

After Cooper patted the kid’s head and kissed the woman’s right cheek, she looked me up and down once more. They returned to the turquoise house without so much as a glance at Coco. Cooper resumed his long-legged stride.

“Who was that?” I asked when I caught up.

“Just someone I know.”

“You know her?” I turned around to reassess the turquoise house. “How? Does she work at the resort?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” he grumbled.

“That wasn’t an answer.” I stepped into his path so he had to stop and crossed my arms.

He let out a frustrated sigh. “Fine. She’s a family friend. They wanted to thank me for some work I did in the community last time I was here.”

“Work? Like, a software program?”

“No.” He tipped his chin at something behind me. “That.”

I turned and saw a small stucco building painted a cheery sunflower yellow. “What’s that?”

“A school. For the village kids.”

“You donated money for it?”

“Yes.” He resumed his march toward town. “And I helped them build it.”

I scrunched my nose. “Like, with a hammer?” Before I’d found him on the island, I couldn’t have imagined Cooper in anything but starched business casual, his phone pressed to his ear. I struggled to imagine him doing manual labor.

“I have skills, you know. I wasn’t always a COO. I had summer jobs once.” His jaw clamped shut, and I knew not to ask him about those summer jobs.

We continued down the road, passing the school, a grocery store, a drugstore. A few men hung out in front of the tobacco store talking, their clouds of smoke drifting into the clear, blue sky.

Alleys branched off from the main road, leading to more houses. Cooper turned onto one bordered by a white-painted picket fence. Vines crawled over it, their violet buds just unfurling in the morning sunshine. In other places, tall flowers leaned over the fence, blooms bobbing in the light breeze as if to tell us good morning. Sunflowers curved toward the street, their heads too heavy with seeds to lift.

On the other side of the fence, a small woman wearing a hat as big as a bicycle wheel used a dangerously sharp pair of shears to snip off a sunflower head and dropped it into her basket. She startled at the scuff of my sneaker on the pavement. “Lito?”

I looked up at Cooper, who was…grinning. “Tía Camelia.”

Pulling Cooper down to kiss his cheek, the woman spoke so quickly my high-school Spanish couldn’t keep up. Cooper didn’t try to interrupt her. I caught the words for visit and too long and hungry. My stomach growled.

“¿Y él, quién es?” she asked.

“Tía Camelia, this is Ben, my assistant.”

She shot off another string of Spanish that made Cooper’s cheeks redden.

“También es un amigo.”

Amigo. I understood that one. He was calling me his friend? My cheeks warmed, too.

Finally, she spoke in English. “Come inside. For breakfast.” Without waiting for a response, she lifted her basket, turned, and walked inside.

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