Between staying late at work and her “date” with Darren, she had managed to avoid her cousin all week. Ramón hadn’t seemed to notice, probably because he’d been too preoccupied with his overdue taxes to even ask why she’d been coming home late. But tonight, it seemed her streak of luck had run out.
She opened the door to his apartment and peeked inside. Ramón was in the kitchen, unpacking bags of groceries. Which meant he probably planned to cook a tragically inedible meal for them, during which he would grill her about when she would return to school and how long she was planning to stay on his couch.
She backed silently out of the door.
“Good, you’re home,” he called out before she could shut it.Busted.“You’re just in time. Grab some silverware and set the table.”
Vero knew that tone. It was the fatherly one he’d used with her since he was twelve, whenever he felt like his whopping three and a half years of maturity over her warranted a lecture. Resigned to her fate, she slunk inside, stripped off her sweatshirt, and dropped her purse on the couch. With a sigh, she helped him unpack the last of the groceries, a hodgepodge of ingredients he probably had no idea what to do with. Ramón’s mother had taught him how to cook, but that didn’t mean he’d liked it. When it had been Ramón and Javi’s turn on Wednesday nights, it always became a contest to see who could mess it up worse, because in their adolescent boy-brains, they thought if they overcooked the meat and burned the vegetables enough, they might be excused from their weekly meal prep duties. But Aunt Gloria had proved to be more stubborn than the two of them combined. She’d made them sit at that kitchen table until they’d finished every bite. To this day, Ramón’s greatest culinary success had been Kraft Mac & Cheese with hot dogs in it instead of on the side.
Vero did a quick analysis of the contents of the grocery bags. She reached for the cutting board, a knife, and a peeler, and put Ramón to work chopping.
“Thanks for your help with those tax forms,” he said as he started on the carrots and onions. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“It’s not like I had anything better to do.” She wasn’t about to tell him she’d taken a job.
“Yeah, we should talk about that.”
“About what?” she asked as she drizzled oil into a frying pan.
“You said you needed a break for a few days. It’s been more than a week. You’re going to fall behind in your classes.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Whatever is going on with your sorority sisters can’t be more important than your degree. If they’re bothering you so much, why not just move back into the dorms?”
“It’s not that simple. I just need a little more time.” She dumped a slab of ground beef into the sizzling pan.
“How much time are we talking?”
“I don’t know, Ramón! I didn’t realize your crappy couch would be such a hot property. Maybe you should list it on Airbnb. You might make some money.”
That shut him up. “You talked to Javi?” he asked as she oversalted the meat.
“I ran into him last night.”
“He didn’t mention you two spoke.”
“Andyoudidn’t mention he lived here.”
Ramón set down his knife. “Vero—” He was interrupted by a loud knock on the door. They stared at each other across the narrow width of his kitchen before he moved to see who it was. “You might want to make a little extra,” he said over his shoulder.
“Why? Are you expecting company?” She tossed her spatula into the pan. If he had invited Javi to dinner, she was leaving. They could burn it themselves.
She froze as Ramón opened the door.
“Hey, Norma.”
Vero felt herself pale.Oh god.What was her mother doing here?
She looked around her for another way out, but the apartment was two stories up and there were no windows in the kitchen. Maybe she could climb inside the oven. She’d rather be cooked alive than endure the dinner conversation that was coming. She was going to kill her cousin. Slowly. She was going to pluck out his toenails and put hot sauce in his eyes. She was going to tell his mother about the time when he was sixteen, when he snuck out his bedroom window and let Tracy Lippett give him a blow job behind the bushes in his back yard. Or the time he and Javi told Aunt Gloria they were spending the night at Markie Billburg’s house and they drove to a party in Ocean City, got drunk, were kicked out of a strip club, and woke up the next morning under the boardwalk. They came home and told Aunt Gloria they’d both caught the flu, but they were really too hungover to go to school.
“Mom!” Vero pasted on a smile as her mother came into the kitchen. Norma handed her a foil-covered plate that smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, and Vero resisted the urge to peek at it. Her mother was a tiny whirlwind. A five-foot-two-inch wrecking ball of unfiltered honesty and brutal determination. She was unstoppable, like the Terminator, if the Terminator gave the best hugs and made the world’s most delicious tres leches cake. “What a surprise. What are you doing here?” Vero glared at Ramón over her mother’s shoulder as they hugged. Ramón responded by setting the table for three.
“I couldn’t reach you. When I called your cousin to see if he’d heard from you, he told me you were here. Why aren’t you in school?” she asked, getting straight down to business.
“Well… you see… there was this situation that came up.”
“What situation?”
