“Choking?”
“Yeah.”
“How were you choking?”
He lowers his brow while he looks down at me. “I wanted to kiss you so many times on those first few dates but I kept chickening out at the last second.”
This actuallyisnews. Because he’s many things, but sexually intimidated is not one of them. Difficult communicator though he is, he has a very easy sexual charisma. Every kiss, every progression or push, it always felt so natural with him. There was never:And now! the moment he touches my boobs for the first time.Or:There he goes trying to get my jeans undone.Not that things were never clumsy or funny, because sex is often both, but more that he always seemed like whatever was happening was exactly what he wanted to be happening, exactly the way he wanted it.
“You thought I’d reject you or something?”
“No. Not really. I guess…It was more like, I knew I was only gonna taste it once, that first kiss.”
I catch my toe on a cobblestone and Vin lunges forward to steady me.
“Mind the lasagna!” I shout, and it makes a lounging group of skateboarders laugh.
“Sounds like a sex move!” one of them calls to us.
Vin is still clutching me by the elbow, eyes narrowed at them. “The fuck that kid knows about sex moves, he’s like thirteen.”
“I’m actually kind of intrigued by this,” I say. “Which body part is supposed to be the lasagna, you think?”
“Oh, for the love of—” Vin shuffles me along.
“Thanks for coming, Vin,” I say happily, almost looping my arm through his but just patting the lasagna instead (an alternate, more tame sex move).
“So, who are we bringing food to, again?” he asks.
And so I tell him about Esther and Fabi, which leads me to Reggie, which leads to Shan, to Stacia and Cindy, to Penny, to Em, a brief word on Lauro (to which Vin raises his eyebrows and says nothing), and lastly to Daniel.
Which gets us all the way to the stuck buzzer of Esther’s building, onto her elevator that smells like soup, and through her front door, where she’s beckoning us and demanding we put our shoesthere! No, there!
“Well, come in,” she says. “Good lord, you’re tall.”
“Sorry,” Vin says.
“Why would you be sorry about that?” Esther asks.
“Oh.” He’s stymied. “I guess I’m not?”
“Good. Fabi! Company!”
Fabi emerges down a long pink hallway decorated with gilded family photos. His eyes light up when he sees me, but he stops in his tracks when he sees Vin.
“Who’s that?”
“This is my husband, Vin,” I tell him. “He’sterribleat kung fu.”
Vin is handing off the food to Esther,yes, ma’am-ing her, but he does a double take at me. “What did you just tell him?”
“Nothing. Oh, Fabi, do you play the trumpet?” There’s an open case in their living room. It’s sitting atop a floral print couch under a windowsill where they’re growing basil.
“No, that’s Abuela.”
Esther’s back from the kitchen with two cups of something for Vin and me. “Horchata,” she says to me, handing one cup over. “Horchata,” she says to Vin, handing the other cup over.
“Thank you,” Vin and I say in unison.
