Page 59 of Caught in a Bad Fauxmance
Andy must’ve filled Dad in—he knows to go to Maya’s room first when he and Isabel get home. I left my door open on the off chance Maya decides she wants to speak to me again sometime this century. Dad stilled in the hallway, nodding when he caught my eye.
“Quédate aquí,” he whispered, like I have somewhere else to go.
Their voices are muffled through the thin wood of her door, but I can still hear him pleading and her shouting. With her therapist, she’s (mostly) learned to work through her anger in ways that don’t build up to outbursts. This is the kind of meltdown she reserves for especially enraging occasions—breakups and bad grades. Failed love and failed tests. This isn’t a breakup, I tell myself, chewing on my lower lip until it hurts. Siblings always make up.Wealways makeup. Even after she ruined my favorite T-shirt in the fourth grade. Even after I accidentally read her diary. After every fight and bruise, we found our way back to one another.
Then why does this time feel so different?
The sun has set by the time Dad comes to me. I shove my sketchbook under my pillow when his shadow stretches across the floor. He’s worn down, as if he’s aged ten years in the span of one conversation. He closes the door, locking it before sitting down on the edge of my bed. This is a practiced routine, the post-sibling-fight talk. Sometimes he and Mami would flip a coin to see who would take who because the two of us were too much for one person. My instinct is to explain my side of the story as soon as he walks in the door, but I bite my tongue. He’s shouldering two burdens tonight. I owe it to him to make it easy.
“Your sister’s pretty upset.”
I want to say, “Yeah, we’re not sitting alone in the dark for our health,” but instead I just say, “I know.”
Dad sighs, long, drawn out, and tired. “It’s a good thing you did, standing up for him.”
I peek up from my hoodie cocoon. “Really?” Dad’s the last person I’d expect to be on my side.
He nods, rubbing at the circles beneath his eyes before facing me. “What they did to Maya was horrible, but you knew better than to fight fire with fire. And I should’ve taught you that a long time ago, but I let my ego get the best of me.” He rests a hand on my knee. “I’m glad you were mature enough to see that, though.”
The tears start welling faster than I can control them. Ididn’t need to hear that I was right, or that Dad was proud of me. Knowing that I don’t need to feel guilty for feeling something other than contempt for Julian is enough.
“I should’ve been honest with you from the start of this whole trip.” Dad pulls his hand away. My nerves come rushing back, settling in my stomach at the somber expression on his face.
“About what?”
He shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. “Your sister…She’s been having a hard time lately. With you in California now.”
My throat locks, so dry it burns. Dad stops me when I open my mouth, holding his hand up to let him finish.
“She’s happy for you, we all are, and you know that. It’s just…she misses you. After your mom, and the move, you two held on to each other so hard. It felt good, knowing you would always have each other. But she’s worried, Dev. She said you can take days, weeks sometimes, to reply to her texts. You don’t FaceTime like you used to. If this mentorship goes your way, she thinks maybe you’ll stop coming home as often.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“I know you wouldn’t, mijo,” he interrupts, taking my hand. “Butshedoesn’t know that. You two have been together since the day you were born. It’s been hard for her, learning how to adjust.”
The cold shoulders, the scoffs whenever I brought up California, the eye rolls every time I focused on my application instead of listening to her. At CalArts, I was so worried about catching up, so obsessed with trying to be likeeverybody else, that I shut out the one person who could’ve talked me through it. And even now I was too stupid and hung up on my own selfish goals that I hadn’t stopped to ask myselfwhymy sister was pulling away. I pulled away first.
“Isabel and I thought this trip would help,” Dad continues. “Coming here, to this place you both loved so much. And at first, we thought it was working. Everything with the games…It felt just like old times. Maya looks so much like your mom sometimes, it…” He trails off, shaking off a buried memory. “We thought it was bringing you two together again, but…I guess we only saw what we wanted to see.”
That makes two of us.
“I’m not saying you have to break up with Julian, or anything like that,” he reassures. “I know I’ve been hard on the guy, but he really doesn’t seem as bad as I thought. You should’ve seen him after you and Maya left. Got all up in his siblings’ faces, shouting to the high heavens before laying into that boy in the overpriced polo shirt. Dios mío, he sounded like my mother.” He chuckles softly, and I do too.
The thought of Julian is comforting. More comforting than it should be.
“Try to talk to her. Not today—you know she always needs time to cool down—but later. And have fun. I know the games mean a lot to you both and how complicated thatmust feel this year. Everything will be okay, win or lose. It would be tough, but losing this place doesn’t mean we’re losing her too.” He fingers the gold chain around his neck, Mami’s wedding band dangling at the end of it. “Took awhile for me to accept that too.” He nudges my shoulder with his own. “Don’t let a game ruin what you havehere.”He points to his heart, then to Maya’s room. “¿Entiendes?”
I nod because I don’t trust my voice not to crack, and wipe my nose with my sleeve.
“We’re proud of you. Never forget that,” he adds more sternly. “Seeing you work so hard on this stuff for your mentorship…kinda makes me want to pull out some of those projects we left in the shed.”
“You should,” I say. “Give Mr. Cooke a run for his money.”
Dad laughs, slapping me on the back. “Not this time. These’ll just be for me.”
We fist-bump before he ruffles my hair and heads into the hall, looking a bit less weary than when he came in.
He pauses. “Maybe take another shower. You smell like a slaughterhouse.”
