“Take it back!” Lexi roars when she breaks free of Rory’s grip.
“Fine! You can have attorney client privilege!” Rory concedes.
The three men at the table, myself included, and the baby watch on, the closest thing we’ll get to the kind of entertainment normally reserved for college football here in the Heights.
I bet if I turned my head from the show in front of me and looked at the chicken coop, all the girls would be lined up watching, too, even Henrietta the Eighth who’s notoriously fussy and choosy about who she reveals herself around.
“Fine,” Lexi says, head held high.
“Sucker,” Rory mutters as she heads back to her seat.
“What did you just call me?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, okay. Well then, why don’t we talk about the?—”
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Rory backpedals, but it’s too late. Lexi’s eyes are locked on Wyatt’s.
“—man who used to make her sandwiches at the bodega!” Lexi declares triumphantly, and Rory huffs out loudly, stomping a foot and glaring her down with narrowed eyes.
“You’re such a bitch!”
“Takes one to know one!” Lexi retorts.
“You know, if you ever get in a relationship, I’m going to remember this moment. Payback is an even bigger twat than you are sometimes,” Rory tells her.
“Sandwich man?” Wyatt asks in a dangerously low voice.
“There’s nothing to know,” Rory insists, reclaiming her seat next to him and putting a hand on his thigh for reassurance. “He was just really good with his meat,” she says calmly, with a little shrug.
My brother’s eye twitches.
It feels like poetic justice for all the shit he’s given me since my return.
And for that reason—maybejust the tiniest bit also because of the progress we’ve made while working together this past week—my third family dinner in the Heights is the best one I’ve had so far.
TEN
AMELIA
I should’ve changed my email sooner.
I’ve been distracted, with Van Gogh, with this little crush of mine, this fixation. The new routine here, it lulled me into a false sense of security. I lost track of time, whittling away the days painting new businesses, watching Weston work on my engine at night, and programming in between, with occasional texts from Lexi to distract me. It’s been two and a half weeks of that routine already, and it’s flown by.
Normally I change my email addresses every month, at most. It’s probably been six weeks or more that I’ve had this one.
The tinny robotic sound that came through was just like every other, the ones that alert me to emails from my mom, from my co-workers, or the occasional message offering to enlarge my penis size.
Hope filled me at the notification. Maybe Mom’s tulips have bloomed and I’ll get to see this year’s bed.
It gives me a sense of home whenever I see the colorful buds, no matter where in the world I am, the soft petals take me right back to a different time. I can feel the safety I used to know before everything went to shit. Smell the hotdish in the oven, hear the music blasting from my brother’s bedroom down thehall. My mom’s whistling as she makes taking care of her family look like something she’s lucky to be able to do.
After seeing the subject line of this email, though, that sound will now send my body into fight or flight.
The way my blood chilled, icing through my veins in slow motion as the horror spread through my system, cell by cell. My stomach turned to liquid and slid through my middle, pooling somewhere around my coccyx. The mental turmoil that went into overdrive at the realization he found me.
I force myself to take a deep breath and read the words, not just stare at the subject line.
