Page 9 of It Happened on a Sunday
“Oh, I love your nails!” She smiles again, for real this time, as she reaches out to examine the tiny, painted spiders more closely.
“Thanks! My granddaughter did them.” She beams with the same pride I feel for Mariana.
“Well, she’s very talented.”
“She is! And quick, too, since we’ve all been letting her practice. She’s doing makeup for the school’s fall production, and all the zombies need cyanide green nails.”
Sloane follows my abuela’s gaze to the chipped green polish decorating my own fingers. There used to be a football on mythumb, but it turns out picking at nail polish is a great way to pass the time on never-ending game tape days.
“Bold color choice,” she tells me. “Especially since that stadium out there is draped in blue and gold.”
“What can I say?” I shrug. “My baby sister wants to do the best damn makeup her school has ever seen. And if helping her means getting zombified, who am I to say no? Life’s too short not to go after what you want.”
I’m speaking from experience. This season, I know exactly what I want. A Super Bowl ring, to make up for the one I lost us last year.
Sloane, however, doesn’t seem so sure, which is strange, considering she’s already won the championship. “Going after what you want only works until you realize you’re turning into something with a very nasty bite.”
This time when she grins it’s another flash of her teeth, sharp enough to bleed and just as practiced. Almost like she thinks I need a reminder of who she is.
Or she does.
Because there’s more to her words than I have time to unpack right now, I lob back a softball. “Good thing I don’t bite, then.”
“Good thing I do.” Her voice has just enough snap to tell me she means it.
Before I can think of how to answer what is very clearly a warning, Olivia shifts behind me, like she’s getting ready to break things up. But a slight shake of Sloane’s head has her going still again.
“Oh, I don’t want to keep you,” abuela Ximena tells her. She must have felt the movement, too. “I know you must be exhausted.”
“It takes me a little while to wind down after a concert.” Sloane gently guides my abuela and her unsteady knees over to the other side of the room. When she bypasses the low couch andchooses the small table and chairs that will be easier for my abuela to get out of, I’m grateful.
But I don’t follow them. We’re here for my abuela, not me.
Sloane asks her a bunch of questions, none of which have anything to do with music. Abuela Ximena, aka @black_widow_ximena, is all too willing to share the finer details of her life—and, by extension, mine—with her favorite artist. It isn’t long before she’s told Sloane everything about everything.
She talks about her chickens, the time my sister fell out the window and ripped her favorite pair of blue jeans, and how I have to come fix her wifi and straighten out her DMs at least once a month. Sloane lets her take a selfie or two, but when my abuela starts talking about her grandkids in earnest, I decide it’s time to intervene.
I may have brought her to this concert, but I have absolutely no delusions of loyalty. She’ll throw me and my youthful escapades under the bus in a heartbeat if it means entertaining Sloane.
“It’s probably time we let Sloane get going,” I tell my abuela. “She’s spent nearly half an hour with us, and I’m sure she wants to get back to the hotel.” I know I usually need some alone time after the adrenaline of a game wears off.
Sloane carefully helps my abuela to her feet. “Mateo’s probably right.”
I nearly choke at hearing my real name come out of her mouth. No one but my abuela has called me Mateo in forever. I’ve been Sly since my first peewee football game, when Coach played with my last name—Sylvester—after I snuck my way around the bigger, more noticeable kids all the way to the end zone. Twenty years later and the nickname’s still with me, as is the thrill of scoring a touchdown.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like the way my name sounds on Sloane’s lips, though.
“We both appreciate your time,” I tell her, offering my hand to shake. Her eyes are shuttered when they meet mine, and for a second I think she’s going to leave me hanging. But just as her handler starts to step toward us, Sloane reaches forward and slides her palm into mine.
Her hand is ice cold and shaking just a little. It makes me want to give her a hug, too, to share my warmth just until she stops trembling.
I have a good idea of where she is right now. I’ve spent a year beating myself up for a mistake that cost my team everything. I hate to think that she’s doing the same to herself over a few seconds onstage tonight that almost nobody noticed.
But I saw it. That moment she unraveled. Like she was screaming through the sequins and no one cared.
Since hugging her without her permission isn’t an option, I do the next best thing. I look her in those gorgeous brown eyes of hers and say, “I know you think you froze tonight. But all I saw was you fighting to stay.”
Chapter 5
