Page 16 of A Lot Like Adiós
Michelle:
Hello, she’s a badass bounty hunter who never loses a target. Besides, she’s his BFF, so his guards are down.
Gabe:
Fine. So he’s like, “Tell my father I’m never going back.” And she’s like, “I would, but it was your mother who hired me.”
Michelle:
And then he’s like, “AY DIOS MÍO, my mami is alive?!”
Gabe:
Uh, maybe not exactly like that.
Michelle:
And Riva stuns him anyway!
Gabe:
Of course she does...
Chapter 5
Gabe kept his gaze glued to the windows as they exited the highway at Pelham Parkway and drove down the tree-lined avenue through the streets of the Bronx to their old neighborhood. Faded memories clashed with the reality lit by yellow streetlights. There was something disconcerting about being back—an underlying sense of comfort, but also ofwrongness. He didn’t belong here.
As they turned off Eastchester Road onto Morris Park, he twisted in his seat to look out the window at a familiar green-and-white logo.
“Was that a Starbucks?”
Michelle let out a muffled snicker. “Yes, Gabe. Even the Bronx has Starbucks now.”
As they crossed Williamsbridge Road, Gabe was hit with a pang of grief. That was where his father’s stationery store had been before it’d closed, shortly after Gabe left for college in California.
That move—along with the way he’d dropped the news—had been the beginning of the end of his relationship with his parents.
It had been right after Michelle ripped up his flight printout and kicked him out of her room. He’d gone home to pack and make dinner, and he’d blurted it out the second his dad was done eating.
I’m going to California.
His parents hadn’t been happy, to say the least. The shouting match that followed had spanned two languages and countless old arguments about school, Gabe’s choices, and family obligations. His father had dismissed Gabe’s accomplishments—like graduating with honors and getting a scholarship to UCLA were nothing—and his mother had called Gabe ungrateful.
And then he and his father had their last big fight about the stationery shop.
You are part of a family, Gabriel. Families make decisions together. You need to stay here and help with the store.
Pop, the store is going under. It’s only a matter of time.
The store will be fine if you help—
Nothing I do is going to help the store!
It would if you tried!
The store is your dream, Pop. I’m going after mine.
To do what? Play baseball? What are you going to do, join the Yankees?
