I smash my finger on the doorbell, pressing down on it over and over.
“Julian.”
“Leti.” There’s no helping the smirk quirking the side of my mouth. “Get your ass out here.”
“You can’t tell my ass what to do.”
“I can if you want me to stop.” I keep my finger on the bell, ringing it incessantly. “I swear to god, if you don’t open up in five—”
The door swings open, a disgruntled Leti on the other side. She’s still in her pajamas, her feet bare and hair piled at the top of her head in a messy bun. Her arms cross over her chest, and I immediately notice she’s not wearing a bra.Fucking lord, this woman.It doesn’t help that ever since our kiss, my hormones have gone into overdrive. I’ve touched myself every single day this week to the memory of her knees straddling my waist, her tongue in my mouth, those little sounds and gasps she’d make…
“Happy?”
“Ecstatic.” I force my eyes away from the outline of her nipples through her white top and up to her face. “Go get dressed. I figure we can make it back by five if we hurry.”
“Whatever.” She shuffles toward her bedroom as slowly as possible—just to fuck with me, no doubt. I follow close behind, taking a seat at the foot of her bed as she disappears inside her closet. “How are preparations going?” she calls out.
“Fine. Your mom is making tortillas from scratch.”
“That figures.” Her scoff is muffled, but I make it out just the same. “Anything for the baby of the family. Meanwhile, when I asked for homemade tortillas for my twelfth birthday, I got a lecture for being ungrateful.”
“What do they usually do for your birthdays?” I ask, already sensing I won’t like the answer. But I want to know, and I’d rather hear the truth from Leti than her sister.
“Nothing.” She comes out wearing jean shorts and a T-shirt, her hair down in silky strands that fall to her shoulders. “Not since the disaster that was my quinceañera anyway. I’m not worth the effort.”
“That’s not true.” But nothing I say can negate the sadness shining in her eyes. She shakes her head, refusing to look at me.
“It is,” she says. “I’m the problem child. Too loud, too mean, too much. All because I’m the only one who’s willing to stick up for myself in that house, even when it fucks with their plans. Always have been, always will be.”
“Andrew was really that bad?”
She nods, but I still have a hard time imagining that.
“We both were,” she says. “But if anyone asks, don’t tell them I said that. Under no circumstance am I ever willing to admit I’m part of the problem.”
“You? Never.” She returns my smirk, but it falls when I ask, “What happened at your quince?”
“My mom’s word took precedent over my own,” she says. “She overruled me on the dress and theme I wanted, and was frustrated that none of my damas could work up the nerve to ask a boy to be their escort. But the real icing on the cake was when I ripped the eight-hundred-dollar dress she picked out right before it was time to take pictures.”
“On purpose?”
“That’s what my mom accused me of. Her and everyone else.” She grimaces. “As fun as this trip down memory lane has been, can we go now?”
“Oh. Sure.” I watch as she picks up her purse from the floor and stomps out of her bedroom, contemplating how much I should push the subject. By the time I catch up to her, she’s tying her tennis shoes in the living room. “Leti—”
“What more do you want to hear, Julian?” She doesn’t raise her voice, but if anything, her even tone only scares me more. “How humiliating it was to be screamed at by my parents in front of all my friends and family, even when I tried to explain that it wasn’t my fault? How heartbreaking it is to realize my parents will always see me as the worst version of myself? Or that for eleven years, my parents made good on their threat that if I so much as moved a toe out of line, it would be the last party they ever threw me?”
“You were fifteen,” I tell her. “It’s unfair of them to punish you for so long.”
“It’s hardly a punishment,” she says. “What am I, twelve? I don’t need anyone to throw me a birthday party.”
“Yeah, but I bet it hurt watching them throw Andrew and Elena their own parties for the past eleven years knowing they wouldn’t do the same for you,” I tell her. “It’s a punishment straight out of the manipulative, gaslighting parents’ playbook. If you ever meet my dad, you’d understand how I know. Your parents meant to make you feel bad about yourself.”
She bites down on her lip to keep it from wobbling, her brown eyes swimming in unshed tears she keeps trying to blink back to no avail.
“This is why you didn’t want to come today, isn’t it?” The realization hits me square in the chest. “Leti, what happened to the dress?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
