Finally tired of the windowsill and not that crazy to learn how many more layers of paint—how much more evidence of lives that may have passed through this room—might lie beneath the surface, I turned and looked up at him. “You know I do.”
His voice softened as he said, “Do you trust that I think we both maybe need to get away from all of this, aunque sea por un poquito de tiempo?”
Silence stretched between us—a silence in which all I could think was, when?
When had the tables turned? Digame, when had Nick become my particular voice of reason? Had the shift occurred at some point during one of those nights we spent together? When he let me cry into his shoulder and held me and reminded me in so many small ways I was human?
Silently, I took his outstretched hand and let him lead me down to his SUV where he hummed under his breath to the music from the stereo as he drove.
Again I was hit with just how far the tables had turned as I recalled driving to the beach the day of Ray’s funeral, not telling Nick where we were going. Asking for his trust.
“You know, I can practically hear it.”
“Excuse me?”
He reached over with one hand and tapped my forehead gently as he eased onto an off-ramp. “You’re thinking so hard, I can practically hear the gears grinding.”
A laugh—more a puff of breath, actually, something soundless between a laugh and a sigh—escaped before I could stop myself. “Just thinking how much things have changed.”
He nodded, one side of his mouth curling in a slight smile that suggested he was maybe getting all the little ironies too, but he didn’t actually say anything until he’d parked the car and come around to my side, one hand braced on the open door, the other on the frame above my head, hemming me in, but not unpleasantly so.
“Would I be a complete dickhead if I said I’m kind of glad?”
Brushing my fingertips against the faint bruises under his eyes, I smiled. “No.”
A deep breath lifted his chest as he returned my smile. While he busied himself feeding the meter, I wandered toward a wide window, trimmed in acid green tinsel, shaking my head at the elaborate pastel dresses on the mannequins, with their ornate beadwork and ruffles. The rest of the window was crowded by portraits of fresh-faced girls wearing similar gowns and elbow-length gloves, tiaras perched in elaborately curled updos as they posed in impossibly lush tropical settings. My gaze ranged along the street taking in the cigar shops and mercados blended seamlessly with Home Depot and Radio Shack and Burger King, into the pastiche that was Little Havana.
I’d been here before of course, for Carnaval with Ethan and Nora. More cultural awareness of course—but at least it was my own. During those visits, Calle Ocho had been a riotous, seething mass of humanity complete with killer food and art and music. Today, however, it was just a busy city street on a Wednesday afternoon, albeit a busy city street with a fairly singular character.
“Have you ever been down here before?” Nick stood in front of me, bouncing lightly on the balls of his sneakers, falling back on that jock’s exuberance that was endearing or obnoxious, depending on my mood.
“Yeah,” I replied and nearly choked on my tongue at the way his face suddenly fell. “But never on a Wednesday afternoon,” I finally managed to splutter as his crestfallen expression morphed into a glare. “Come on, Nick, don’t be that way. Tell me, what’s so special?”
“You’ll see.” And just like that, the bounce was back as he took my hand and started off at a walk that was just this side of a jog. God, what a pain in the ass. If he was like this at thirty-seven, I could only imagine how he’d been as a little kid, all eagerness and live wire energy.
“Had to park kind of far away, but that’s okay, because it’s a great day and it gives us a chance to look around and it feels good to walk, doesn’t it?”
Digging my heels in for the second time today, I tugged on his hand until he stopped and turned. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with the Nick I know?”
The smile was still there along with something else, an obvious relief that relaxed his features and brought to mind, yet again, an exuberant kid, even with the fine lines radiating from the corners of his eyes and the sunlight picking out the grays scattered through his dark hair. Not even the stubble that was a regular thing for him these days could mask the boyish cast to his face. And all I could think was hellion.
“You know this is me.”
His smile faded slightly as our gazes met—his kind of anxious, if I was reading it correctly.
I squeezed the hand I still held. “You don’t say?”
His smile broadened again, the fine lines at the corners of his eyes deepening as he squeezed back. “And just there’s something about being down here that…I don’t know…” He turned and started with the power walk again. “It just juices me up at the same time it relaxes me.”
“You don’t say?” But the dry tone was utterly lost on him as he guided me toward an open window, holding up two fingers.
“Dos, por favor, hermano,” he said to the man behind the counter before turning his attention to the bakery case. “Y dos cangrejitos también, si puedes.”
“Nick, it’s not like we don’t get café and pastelitos on a daily basis.”
“Yeah, but it’s different down here,” he insisted, gesturing with his thimble-size paper cup of steaming hot Cuban jet fuel. “And no one ever has the cangrejitos,” he mumbled around a huge bite of pastry. “I love these suckers.”
I was laughing so hard, I could barely choke down my own coffee and had to take several deep breaths before I could even manage a bite of the sweet pastry filled with the savory ground beef picadillo. Still chuckling, I watched as he ordered another coffee and pastry and promptly inhaled both. “Remind me to drive us back, since you’re probably going to crash, and hard.”
“Nah.” Dropping a few bills on the counter and nodding at the man, he draped an arm across my shoulders and led us toward the corner where we actually waited to cross the street, rather than jaywalking, like everyone else and their mother appeared to be doing. “A little sugar and caffeine aren’t anywhere near enough to bring me down.”
“Yeah, let’s see if you’re still saying that when you take a header into the mashed potatoes at dinner.”
“Nope.”
“Of course, you’d say that.”
“No, I mean, no mashed potatoes for dinner. More like yuca con mojo instead. Or maybe congrí. Sound good? I hope so, because we’re going to Versailles for dinner. Total Little Havana experience.”
Felt like I hadn’t stopped laughing since he’d initially pissed me off. Frankly, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed this much. “You were that certain I’d come with you that you planned it down to the menu?”
Just then the light changed, and we stepped off the curb and crossed the street. On the other side he stopped and shrugged with a sheepish expression and shy smile. “I hoped.”
And there he went—catching me completely off-guard. Again.
“All right, so what’s next in Nick’s Little Havana Experience?”
He pointed with his free hand. “That.”
“Oh, cool. We walked past when we were here for Calle Ocho, but it was so crowded, we didn’t have a prayer of getting near, let alone, in.”
“You still won’t. This is as close as we can get. We’re way too young to be allowed entry.”
My jaw dropped. "You're kidding."
He waved in the direction of the pavillion. "See for yourself—tell me there's anyone in there who doesn't qualify for AARP."
My smile felt like it was going to split my face as I caught my first glimpse of the tables and players—heard the familiar chorus of furiously clicking dominoes and salsa music and the loud arguing that seemed to be passing for conversation. Pretty much could pass for the annual Santos family reunion, come to think of it. “We’re a loud bunch, aren’t we?” I observed with a sidelong glance at Nick who stood wi
th a shoulder propped against the tall wrought iron fence that bordered the pavilions.
“Feeling your Cuban half today, Libby?”
“How could I not?” I studied Nick’s face—how he continued to relax, the lines of worry smoothing out. “What about you, Jersey boy?”
“It seems more like…what it should be.” Grabbing the top of the fence with both hands, he leaned back on his heels, his gaze roaming freely, taking it all in—the palm trees and blue sky and the red-tile roof of the pavilion and the players seated at the tables with their heated games and conversations—before focusing on me again. “At home, we had the sense of family, knew our background, but something about the atmosphere down here—” He stopped with a self-conscious snort. “I’m sure it sounds stupid.”
“No.” Glancing back over my shoulder into the pavilion then up at him, I said, “I get it. I don’t know how I do, but I get it. It makes sense.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Maybe one of these days you can explain it to me, then.”
“The minute I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.”
We began wandering around the perimeter of the fenced area where I made happy noises over the mosaic walkway with its swirls of tiles in tropical colors bordering a narrower walkway made to look like domino pieces. Before I knew it, I was jumping from domino tile to domino tile, an impromptu sort of hopscotch, laughing and feeling like a carefree little girl, except I’d never ever been this carefree as a girl. For one, I’d always been painfully shy and self-conscious; besides, I’d been too busy trying to look responsible and well, normal, to ever allow myself to indulge in this kind of silly, impulsive fun. But something about the atmosphere—about the day—seemed to demand I surrender to little girl impulses. At least this once.
“Oye Libby, come here.”
I was back against the fence, observing a particularly entertaining exchange between two feisty old men who were so grizzled, they made my seventy-eight-year-old abuelo look downright youthful.
Utterly engrossed, I replied, “In a minute.” Actually, I was getting kind of worried that if the old guys kept it up, one, if not both of them, was liable to keel over dead.
“Olvidate, m’ija, it’s liable to go on like that for hours. They’re like that every week. But you’re welcome to join the pool.”
At the new voice, I turned to find Nick settling on a nearby bench next to an older man, handing him a soda before gesturing that I should come over.
“Pool?” I asked as I approached.
The older man nodded, the corners of his mouth twitching. “On who drops first and when.”
As the yelling behind me got louder, and the insults more vicious, I looked to Nick for confirmation.
He nodded. “Even they’ve got bets on which one of them’s gonna drop first. Here.” He handed me a can of Sprite as I sat down and laughed as I pulled a face at the bendy straw before taking it out and tossing it in the nearby trashcan. After waiting for me to take a long drink, he said, “Libby, this is who I wanted you to meet—Tico Martinez. Tico, this is my friend I keep telling you about, Libby Walker.”
“Of course, Libby. Mucho gusto.” Tico reached past Nick and offered his hand, warm and dry, his grip gentle, but firm at the same time, reminding me of…of…something. As his hooded blue gaze searched my face, the feeling of familiarity intensified, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“Igualmente,” I replied. “You talk about me?” I said to Nick, as I released Tico’s hand and lifted my soda.
He shrugged. “Sure I talk about you. I talk about a lot of stuff with Tico. He’s a priest.”
Bastard. He had the nerve to sit there and laugh as I struggled between swallowing and choking and sneezing at the bubbles of carbonation making their way up my nose.
“It’s okay,” he whispered in my ear as he rubbed my back. “I didn’t know he was a priest either when I first met him.”
“You suck,” I whispered back with a sharp elbow to his ribs that only had him laughing harder. “Gracias,” I said to Tico who was handing napkins across the big laughing goon.
“Not nice, Nick.” Tico’s voice was mild, but with a definite stern vibe that had Nick squirming.
“Yeah, I know, but I gotta tell you, it’s definitely worth another turn on the Rosary for penance just to have seen that look on her face. I always wondered what kind of expression I copped when you told me you were a priest.”
Finally under some semblance of control, I carefully lifted my soda again, making sure to keep my sips small and a wary eye on Nick, in case he was planning on using me for anymore social experiments. And also kind of keeping a wary eye on Tico, too. I’d never really interacted with priests—much. There had been one memorable dinner at my grandparents’ house, back when I was about five or so, where the special guest had been a priest of the scary, black-suit-and-collar variety insisting I needed to be baptized and Nora responding by offering him “ceremonial incense” in the form of a huge doobie.
No more priests at dinner with my abuelos after that.
Tico, with his faded jeans and battered ball cap, seemed more in line with the so-called priests Nora had hung with throughout my childhood, although clearly he wasn’t. Which made it difficult to figure out how to deal with him—a vibe he easily picked up on.
“Just call me Tico, mi vida. Despite all my years at seminary, I’m not real big on all the titles.”
“He used to date girls, too.”
My stare shifted from Nick, to Tico, who merely sighed and rolled his eyes, then back to Nick.
“You were never an altar boy, were you?” I groused, stifling the impulse to dump the remains of my Sprite over his head.
With a smirk that could only be described as unholy, he sat straighter. “I was a kick-ass altar boy.”
Tico groaned. “Un poco respeto, m’ijo, por favor.”
“Sorry, excuse me. A kick-butt altar boy.” Nick’s grin only got bigger. He was getting such a charge out of this, jerking my chain—trying to jerk Tico’s even though he probably knew that, as a priest, Tico’s chain was too incredibly long and impossible to jerk.
It kept on like that for the next half hour, Nick saying these outrageous things waiting to see how I’d react or how Tico would scold him, laughing and looking impossibly young and I knew he’d been that carefree, not just as a kid, but I got the sense, as an adult, too. Maybe not to such an extreme, but he’d been walking that damn tightrope for so long.
So I egged him on and teased him and pretended to be affronted just to hear that laugh and feel him tug my braid or rest his hand on my shoulder. And in turn, I felt in every word or touch how very much he wanted the same for me—how he wanted me to feel loose and carefree, even though he knew it wasn’t an attitude that came naturally to me. It was his gift to me and it made my heart twist a little more with every touch or shared glance.
Finally, Tico stood, saying, “Well, it’s that time, but I’m glad you finally brought Libby by to meet me.”
His expression turned serious as I stood to say goodbye. “M’ijita, Nick’s told me a bit about your husband. With your permission, you’ll both be in my prayers.”
Definitely not a scary black-suit-and-collar priest or one of Nora’s holistic nutbar types. Just a decent human being. Taking the hand he held out, I replied, “At this point, I’ll take all the help and intervention I can get. We’d be very grateful.”
Both of his hands enveloped mine, his steady blue gaze studying my face and, once again, that powerful sense of familiarity washed over me. Then as he leaned in and kissed my forehead, it hit me. Marco. Tico reminded me of Marco. A priest and a doctor—healers both.
“It’s my honor. Dios te bendiga, mi vida. And come see me again, with or without the diablito.”
I grinned as Nick’s eyebrows drew together at Tico’s assessment of him as a little devil. Well, really, what did he expect?
“Libby, if you could excuse us—Nick, can I talk to you for a second
?”
Nick glanced from Tico to me. “Uh, yeah, sure. If it’s okay with you, Libby?”
“Of course, it’s okay.” But I was confused too, the way Tico was studying Nick with a small smile beneath that hooded blue gaze. Even so, his expression seemed carefully neutral, his general demeanor more subdued than it had been all afternoon.
“I’m just going to watch.” I indicated the pavilion where the geezers were, as predicted, still going at it. “Decide who I’m going to put my bet on.”
Wandering away, I was careful not to even glance over my shoulder, although the back of my neck prickled with awareness the entire time they stood there, talking. Or rather, Tico talked. Quite a bit, actually. I didn't hear so much as a peep from Nick until I heard him said goodbye. I was afraid, especially after seeing that expression on Tico’s face, that Nick might slide into a mood, but he surprised me. He was still so exuberant and cheerful—so the real him, as he’d said—that I wound up not giving their exchange another thought until later that night when he knocked on my door, barefoot, in shorts and a T-shirt, his hair damp and messy.
“Why do we even bother going to our separate rooms?” I asked on a laugh, still sort of giddy and high from fresh air and good food and more laughter than I’d experienced in way too long. But Nick wasn’t laughing, although he did smile as he dropped to the bed and held out his arms.
“Because I want you to always have the opportunity to say no,” he said quietly as I settled in next to him, already familiar enough with the contours of his body that I knew where my head fit best against his shoulder. That I liked being on his left because the steady drum of his heart beneath my ear soothed me; the most basic of lullabies.
“That’s not going to happen.”
That was it for a while. I was a little surprised, truthfully. As frenetic and loopy and purely happy as our day out had been, I might have thought that we’d try to keep that going as long as possible. But maybe it had been because we were down in Little Havana, which had an identity and magic all its own, and now we were back to the life that had thrown us together in the first place. Back within proximity of the hospital I knew both of us had called as soon as we got back and that I also knew was one reason we did continue the pretense of going to our separate rooms, even if only for a few minutes.
Both Sides Now Page 14
