Walking away from job offers keeps my family’s side-eye chambered. I don’t know if I want to recommit to a lifetime of labs or lecture halls. There’s also management. Maybe I should’ve studied rocket science to figure it all out.
My mother has her own way of expressing loving concern. Like reminding me I’m inching closer to forty, am not investing in a retirement savings plan, and have no prospective life partners, because grandbabies.
She means well, but she has always said what she felt and felt what she said.
My parents never told Marcela and me the reason they divorced. My mother was a couple of years older than my sister is now when she filed. That was almost a decade after we moved to Maryland. I was two when we came to the States. My father always travels for work. That’s how they met in Panama, during his time working for the US embassy. If I had to guess, his work schedule is what sent her back to Panama a single woman.
“I’m at a home improvement store,” I say to change the subject. I pick up a paint sample. The mint green matches my sweater. It’s my favorite color, one that reminds me of the sun reflecting off the water near my mother’s property in Coronado.
“Eh?”
“La ferretería, Mama,” I say about my impromptu trip. “Tengo que arreglar un estante que se cayóy la barra de la cortina de ducha.”
“My goodness, Miri.¿En qué tipo de casa vives que se está cayendo a pedazos?”
“There were a couple of accidents,” I say.
“Accidents,” she repeats. “No has estado allá ni un mes y ya estás destrampando la casa. Have mercy, Jesus. What happened to the shower rod?”
The answer is riding the shopping cart like it’s a chariot.
What should’ve been an in-and-out solo trip became a joint expedition down every aisle. Now the cart is full of things I don’t need. I found a new closet shelf that I got cut down to size and a shower rod to withstand the weight of a rugby player.
Everything else in the cart is Antonio’s doing.
He talked me into grabbing “a few things”: plants, kitchen counter appliances I’ll never use, and accent pillows for the sofa I didn’t let him sleep on last night. He’s buying everything as a housewarming gift, committing me to more things to unpack and store in my home.
Once we soothed our injuries, we crowded around the tiny kitchen table Antonio engulfed with his body to talk and eat. Six hours passed with no signs of fatigue. He left around midnight, which surprised me as much as his eight a.m. “Good morning, whatcha doing today?” text did.
I wasn’t expecting to hear from him so soon, but he told me he was free today to help. Then he showed up at my house at nine with two coffees and a smile. I whipped up eggs with toast, and here we are.
Not once did I get lost in my head trying not to act odd. I was safe being me. Comfortable.
Antonio pushes the cart in a circle. He accelerates down the aisle and kicks up a Timb, shifting the shopping cart at the last minute to avoid crashing into a display of light bulbs on sale. He bounces back at the force of his torso colliding with the metal handlebar with an “oof” and catches a potted plant on the cart’s bottom shelf.
I muffle a laugh at him scratching his beanie, which matches his orange coat. Our eyes lock as an employee calls for assistance in the tile department over the PA system. A smile creeps into a grin above his trimmed boxed beard. It spreads the smooth, wide lips that came dangerously close to mine last night.
The proximity of our mouths and the Skinemax nudity of his body covering mine shut off my ability to process. Everything in me overheated.
Panting in Antonio’s face like a Boston terrier or him sprinting into my room wearing a towel the size of a washcloth wasn’t how I imagined his first visit to my house, but it happened. Just like the eyeful of bulge against the white cotton between his gladiator thighs did.
God, those thighs.
The weight of them almost sent me through the floor. I didn’t get a full look at him mid-fall, but you better believe I snucka peek at them…and at the butt I’ve seen stretch out his rugby shorts.
“Miri!”
I jump when my mother’s voice cuts through the inappropriate replays of my bestie, who’s staring like he’s onto my secret.
Am I that obvious?
“You listening, child?”
The number you are trying to reach is not in service.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say without a clue what we were talking about.
Antonio pushes the cart closer. His smirk pulls his lower lip between his teeth. I reroute my attention to something that won’t fog up my glasses or get me cussed out from Central America.
