Page 111 of Along Came Amor
At the sound of her voice, Roman looked up from where he sat in a plush armchair. Their eyes met, and his face broke intoa wide smile. Setting down his tablet, he padded over to her in nothing but his boxers.
“Buenos días, mi amor.” He dropped a kiss to her forehead, then handed her a hot cup of coffee.
She accepted it and took a small sip. “Mmm, thanks. Good morning to you too. Did you do all this while I was asleep?”
“I wanted to surprise you.” He gestured at the table. “Help yourself to breakfast. I’m checking in with Camille. If I rearrange a few things, we can stay an extra couple of days.”
Ava hadn’t met Roman’s assistant, but Roman spoke highly of her organizational skills, something Ava could appreciate. He’d said Camille was handling things in his absence, but when he’d briefly turned his phone on the day before, he’d been inundated with missed texts, emails, and voicemails. Rearranging “a few things” would mean a logistical nightmare for Camille, so Ava put a hand on Roman’s arm before he could continue.
“We should head back,” she said. “You’re busy, and I didn’t clear out my fridge.”
It was the best she could come up with before the caffeine kicked in. As much as Ava didn’t want this to end, she knew Roman had more important things to do than get massages and go swimming with her.
That sarcastic little voice in the back of her head whispered,You just can’t let yourself have too much of a good thing, can you?
Ava kindly told that little voice to mind its own business.
Roman studied her face for a moment, like he knew the fridge thing was an excuse. But all he said was, “All right.”
Ava set aside the coffee and resolved to make the time they had left memorable. She gave Roman’s arm a tug, catching him off guard and toppling him onto the bed with her.
“We still have a few hours before we have to leave,” she said,climbing on top of him to straddle his thighs. The sheet fell away, leaving her naked, the only thing between them the silk of his boxers.
The way he smiled up at her made her heart squeeze. His sweet brown eyes filled with tenderness, and... shit, maybe that was love. It had been so long since she’d seen it. She hoped she was reflecting something similar back at him. Not love yet, but... something.
He cupped the back of her head and pulled her down for a kiss, sending her thoughts scattering. She made no attempts to reel them back.
By the time they sat down to eat, the food was cold, but neither of them cared.
On the plane, while Roman was on the phone with a senator explaining Puerto Rico’s real estate crisis and the political corruption surrounding the electrical grid system, Ava listened with one ear and tried to lose herself in the crochet project she’d brought. But making a blanket for a coworker’s baby shower just wasn’t holding her attention. Even as her fingers worked the hook, guilt ate at her.
Why did the thought of returning home, back into her family’s orbit, fill her with trepidation? She loved them. She would do anything for them.
Except tell them about Roman.
Setting aside the yarn, she pulled out her personal planner and flipped to a section in the back that she used for journaling. Riffling through her pencil case, she selected a fountain pen with purple ink and began to write.
At the top of a clean page, she wrote,What will happen if I tell my family about Roman?
And then she made a bullet list.
The “What Will Happen?” game was a tool Colleen had given Ava for when her anxiety threatened to get the better of her. Instead of spiraling out, her therapist had directed Ava to actually ask and answer the question that plagued her.
For the first point, Ava wrote,They’ll tease me.
Teasing was a fact of life in the Rodriguez family. At first it would start with a wink-wink nudge-nudgeAva tienes un noviolevel of teasing, like she was sixteen. But after that, the helpful “reminders” would start.
Remember what happened with Hector, they’d warn.Do you really want to go through that again?
She knew, because they’d done it to her mother when Patricia had dared to go on dates after breaking up with Ava’s father, even though it had been an amicable split and years had passed.Remember what happened with Miguel, they’d said.
Of course, no one said anything to Ava’s father when he started bringing Olympia to family gatherings. And when Tio Luisito divorced his wife and married a man, everyone fell over themselves to congratulate him, and not a single person had saidRemember what happened with Helen.
None of the women were allowed to forget their mistakes, and god forbid they moved on from the wrong man. Internalized misogyny was a real beast.
On the next line, she wrote,When it’s over, they’ll make my life hell.
If she’d learned anything from her experiences, it was that true love wasn’t forever, at least not for her.
