Camila tilts her head, amused. “Half. My mom is white, and my dad is Brazilian. You didn’t know that?”
“No! How would I know that?” Valeria laughs.
Camila laughs, too. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.” She shrugs, still grinning. “Sometimes I forget we haven’t known each other forever.”
Valeria can’t help but feel giddy at that. Camila is so easy to be around that she forgets she hasn’t known her as long as the girls.
“Do you visit often?”
“Not really,” Camila says. “My parents and I used to go at least once a year when I was younger, but I haven’t been back since I moved out.”
“How come?”
“The only person I loved seeing was my grandma, and she passed when I was a junior in high school, so I never felt the need to go back. How about you, do you travel a lot?”
Valeria wants to ask more, know more about the woman sitting across from her, but Camila moves on so fast that Valeria takes the hint. If she doesn’t want to talk about it, she’s not going to push.
Instead, they talk about how Valeria has never left the country but really wants to go to Spain someday. Camila gives Valeria a much-needed update on Miso and tells her about the latest painting she’s been restoring, until their plates are clean and they’re nursing the last of their juice.
“So tell me about this project with Isa,” Valeria asks.
“Honestly, I don’t know much about it. Just that it’s a piece by an artist she’s featuring at the gallery, and it got damaged during transport.”
Somewhere behind her, Valeria hears a voice that sounds like it’s saying her name, but she doesn’t register it at first; it barely cuts through the hum of the trucks. Then it comes again, a little clearer this time.
Valeria turns around, and it’s Brooke. Despite all the tension between them, warmth fills her chest.
“Brooke,” she says, smiling as she stands, her chair scraping lightly against the floor.
Valeria walks toward her automatically, the way her body has done a hundred times before, ready to pull her into a hug. The moment she stops in front of her—close enough to actually take her in—Valeria realizes Brooke is livid.
Her arms are crossed so tightly around herself that her knuckles have gone pale. Her eyes move past Valeria toward the table, toward Camila, before they snap back to Valeria with a sharpness that steals the rest of the smile straight off her face, and the warmth in her chest cools into something uneasy.
Brooke raises an eyebrow. “Why aren’t you picking up your damn phone?” Her voice is loud and stern—not enough to make a scene, but enough to make Valeria’s chest tighten. “I’ve called you twenty times. Twenty. I thought something happened to you.”
She doesn’t wait for Valeria to answer before she barrels on.
“I came to ask Maria if she’d heard from you, because no one at the clinic knew where you were. No one. So please,” she says, stepping in closer, “explain to me what the hell you’re doing here.” She glances toward Camila. “And what the hell is so important that you couldn’t look at your phone?”
Valeria’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out at first. Her brain scrambles, tripping over explanations, excuses, anything—but all of it feels flimsy under the heat of Brooke’s stare.
“I—Brooke, calm down,” Valeria manages, hands lifting slightly. “I’m fine. I—I didn’t hear my phone and I?—”
“Oh, you didn’t hear your phone,” she snaps, loud enough that a couple of people at nearby tables glance over. “Great. Fantastic. That explains absolutely nothing.”
Camila shifts behind Valeria, her chair squeaking against the floor. She can feel her watching them, probably unsure whether she should look away, stand up, or say something.
Brooke’s eyes land on her again—quick but sharp—before landing back on Valeria.
“You disappear in the middle of your work day, you don’t tell anyone where you’re going, no one at work knows anything, I’m calling you nonstop, and you’re just—” She throws a hand in the air. “Here?”
“It’s not—” Valeria starts, but Brooke cuts her off.
“I don’t want your excuses,” Brooke spits the words out like they taste bad.
Valeria turns as Camila tenses, and her shoulders go rigid, too. Heat creeps up the back of her neck at the fact that Camila has a front-row seat to Brooke handing Valeria her own ass. She feels like a kid being scolded, and she hates how small it makes her feel. It’s embarrassing.
“Brooke,” Valeria says, more firmly this time, “Youneed to relax.”
