Page 59 of Forget Me

17

MATEO

“¡No toques la escena del pesebre!”My tía shouted at me across her lawn.

“I wouldn’t dream of touching el pesebre,” I called, carefully skirting the nativity scene as I lugged the giant snowman toward the shed. “Not before Candlemas. Go back into the house, tía. Please.”

“You’ll put everything in the shed?”

“Yes. Organized alphabetically. Now go into the house and lock the door. Or Miguelito will kill me.”

“You know I wouldn’t let him harm a hair on your head. Be careful with Frosty. I got so many compliments on him.”

“I’m sure you did.” I glanced at her neighbor’s house just as their landscape lights flicked on and washed the mansion in antiseptic not-too-yellow, not-too-blue light. Their Christmas lights and their giant fake wreath had come down on January 2. No way in hell had any compliments come from them, especially not in the latter half of January. I waited until she closed the front door, then I trudged around the back of the house to the shed, where I wedged the snowman next to Santa’s sleigh.

When I returned to the front of the house for the reindeer, tía opened the door again. I rolled my eyes to the cloudy sky and begged Santa María to keep my cousin away from his mother’s house.

“Hijo, come inside. I made chocolate con churros.”

My aunt’s hot chocolate and churros were worth any trouble from Miguelito.

When I sat across from her at her kitchen table, dipping a greasy, almost-too-hot-to-touch churro into a warm mug of dark cocoa, she lifted her mug to her lips but didn’t drink. “How are things going with Miriam?”

It was the moment I’d looked forward to—and dreaded—all afternoon. Warmth flooded my face, including my lips, where I still felt the imprint of hers, like a brand.

When I bit into the churro, cinnamon and chocolate burst onto my taste buds. I savored the sugary morsel in my mouth. I hadn’t often indulged in them on my tropical island home, but in frigid San Francisco, the sweet treat was a comfort. Swallowing it down, I chased it with a sip of thick chocolate.

“It’s going well,” I said. “We have a date tomorrow night.”

Her eyebrows rose. “A date?”

“She remembered. About the night at the bar. That we…talked.” We’d made out right there at the bar, but I wasn’t about to tell my tía that. For all she knew, I was a good Catholic boy.

“You sleep with her yet?”

“What?”

“Mateo. Stories of your sexual adventures reached me even here in the U.S. You’re not one to wait for a date. Much less a priest’s blessing.”

The tips of my ears flamed. “Tía.”

“So, how was it?”

“We haven’t—I wouldn’t—not with Miriam.”

“Oh?” Her eyebrows flew back up. “What’s different about her?”

“She’s…” I leaned back against the cushion. “Special.”

“Besides being resistant to your charms and rude and dismissive, what makes her special?”

“She’s not rude! She’s smart. And funny when she wants to be. And she cares about kids. Yesterday, we volunteered at the library and listened to little kids reading. To cats. Even though Mimi is allergic to them.”

She sipped her drink. “But does she care about you?”

“I…I think so?” At her apartment, she’d kissed me like she meant it. And before that, at the library with that kid sitting next to her and the cat in her lap, her eyes had gone all soft and warm. Like tía’s chocolate. I’d hoped she’d been imagining a future where it was our own kid sitting between us, our own cat in her lap.

Too much? Too fast? When I’d seen that flash of recognition, of memory, on her face, I’d greedily imagined it all. An engagement ring. A white dress. Her belly round with our baby.

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