Page 6 of Portrait of A Lost Artist
I hook a necklace around my neck, turning around and huffing at her words. “But it will happen,” I reassure. Surely Lorenzo and I aren’t anything official, but it feels like it. The textured touch of his hands against my shoulders, trailing down my waist until he pulls me in and kisses me like he’s feverish for my touch. He hasn’t said a word, but the mumbles against bedsheets and pillows have to mean something. “You had to see the ring, Al. It was just there, waiting for me—”
“I’m just saying.” Alessia lifts her hands in the air, almost popping her tits out. She always wears low-cut dresses and tonight is not the exception. I can practically hear the tías in the event we’ll have at the family restaurant tonight, gasping at the sight of Alessia’s bare back in that electric blue dress. “Everyone in Havana knows that the Pacheco’s are difficult. Come on, we know Zeke is difficult, and he’s his brother.”
Zeke, more known around our town as Ezequiel, is also my best friend. Dating back to elementary school, when he’d plaster sticky bubble gum from his mouth to my hair. I had never hated Zeke, as much as he liked to annoy me back then, because my mom and his are skin and bones, always together, preaching the God they talk about every Sunday morning.
Though, I know exactly why Alessia calls him difficult.
“You’re just saying it because you two totally hooked up.”
My mom may say I’m not the brightest compared to my brother, Adam, because the oldest child always gets some recognition and if it’s a man, overall, it’s even worse. However, I noticed that when Alessia moved in two years ago; she became a victim of Ezequiel’s charms. A musician trying to make his way through the world of mambo.
“We have never!” Alessia gasps, twirling her hair and passing it over a shoulder before sighing. “You’re the one who likes to make hook-ups complicated. Don’t project yourself onto me.”
“Me and Lorenzo are not a hook-up. Well, not just that.” I clasp my hands over my waist and that’s all it takes for Alessia to drag herself over to me, wrapping an arm over my shoulder and staring right through our matching brown eyes. “Alessia—”
“I just want you to internalize what you two really are. Best outcome, that ring is for you—”
“It is for me.”
“The worst outcome is that it isn’t. You and Lorenzo have been off and on again for years, babe.” She instructs, as if I didn’t know that perfectly well, before pressing a chaste kiss to my cheekbone. “Now that you’re back, it’s been two years of getting together, fucking, pulling apart, fucking again. I get it, he’s your first time, your first love, whatever you want to call him...but just know that whatever happens, he’s not the only man.”
Though he feels like he is. Lorenzo Pacheco entered my life at the same time that Zeke did. I was throwing mud at Zeke’s face one day, as the rain poured on the garden of his old, blue house, when Lorenzo appeared through the door, cast in the glow of a yellow light, as he instructed us to go have dinner. He was so different back then. I was only nine years old, while he was thirteen, and he had definitely not grown to be the man that he is today.
Then came seventeen, the year of my life in which I felt the happiest. With high school only a step away, and the end of adolescence nearly in sight, Lorenzo noticed me. He was drunk off the wine on his father’s shelf when he entered the living room, black hair curled at the edges, parted right in the middle, showing his curved smile on his tan skin, paired with rounded cheeks and a red t-shirt. I was working on a project, as Zeke was half-asleep on the side, and he helped me.
He stole a kiss from me just before he went back to his room, and Zeke never noticed.
After that, picking me up from school was all it took for him to lavishly drive through town in his family’s old truck. They worked as fish-sellers, so it stank horribly, but I couldn’t care less. Every day, I would go anywhere he wanted after school, from throwing rocks into lakes to kissing against the hood of the truck.
That same truck—and I hate admitting this—is where I lost my virginity. To him. To Lorenzo. The man that I have always loved.
We separated because of my scholarship, though nothing was ever that serious. He started dating someone else a year after, seriously so, and I ventured into the world of my long-term relationship. Not that I would put it as high as the pedestal I have my first love to be in, but it was something different. The trial and error that ended with me returning to Havana and coming back to Lorenzo’s arms.
Freshly single since two years ago, mind him.
“Where is my future sister-in-law?!”
The wooden door slams open to welcome Zeke, holding a bottle of beer up in the air and smiling at the mere sight of me. He moves over to where we are, tugging me away from Alessia’s hold and pressing my face to his chest. Motions rough, I can’t help but laugh against the fabric of his military green t-shirt.
“See? Someone here is actually supporting me.” I reply, grasping Zeke’s face in between my hands to catch a sight of his grin. He’s much different from Lorenzo; his black hair buzzed at the sides and braided at the top, framing his elongated face that only has something in common with Lorenzo. The cheeks. Apart from that, Zeke’s beard is longer, lips puffier—eccentric, in their own ways—, with a down-set nose and brown eyes that clash against the piercing on his eyebrow.
“If you’re listening to Alessia, you’re missing out on the fun,” Zeke teases, speaking in quickened Spanish that Alessia catches onto in the matter of seconds. I’d say she has a better Cuban accent than me, actually.
“I’m just trying to protect her from the Pacheco’s. If he’s like you—”
Zeke smirks. “...He’s an amazing time.”
“No, he’s a fucking headache, and if we’re uniting the two families that love each other to the core and it goes horribly wrong, we’ll create an awkward atmosphere.” Alessia, always the voice of reason, toys with the strap of her dress before me and Zeke exchange a glance.
“...Do you want to have the Pacheco last name or are you giving Lorenzo the ‘Del Real’? Because the latter would sound so badass.”
“Right?”
“Alright, I’m not being listened to.” Alessia picks up both of our bags, ignoring the laughter that escapes both our lips before she gives me my white purse. “Let’s go before we get calls from Mrs. Del Real. Last time we didn’t show up on time, she had us washing the dishes.”
This night will be absolutely flawless.
The pride of the ‘Del Real’ family is our restaurant. A generation ago, my grandfather created the restaurant, then passed it to my mother.Aseréserved the best Cuban dishes for tourists that passed by or workers that wanted to wet the roof of their mouth with coffee, as well as burn it with the juiciest steak in town. Though, everyone expected Esperanza Del Real—mom, as known by me—to pass it down to her children, either Adam or I, that was never in her mindset. She said that we had to venture into genuine success, because the restaurant would die the moment she did. And so, we kept on with her promise, both picking a university career and going off in different tangents.
