7
Three suppers later, after Spencer’s roast chicken (yummy) with a side dish of Gordon’s ramblings on Winchester home developments ruining the beloved medieval feel of their town (snooze fest), I close myself in my room. The clock pegs Miami time at early afternoon; Pilar should be done with her summer session class at Florida International University.
My sister’s face materializes on FaceTime. Again, she’s parked inside La Paloma’s back office, which is now looking more like her space than Papi’s. Just like the kitchen becomes more mine every single day, even when I’m four thousand miles away. Mami and Papi are letting go of La Paloma matters, little by little, transitioning their efforts into finding a new cake shop property. In less than one year, all the managerial responsibilities will fall onto Pilar and me, and I can’t wait to get started. After a quick greeting I have to say, “Take me in.”
Pilar knows where in is. “But, you—”
“Just do it, yeah?” The it’s half your fault I’m here and I miss it so much look must be blaring across my face because she huffs and walks her laptop through the rear corridor.
“After ten whole days, the paint’s the same and the floor, también.”
“Shut up, Pili.” On my panoramic tour, I note the wholesale flour and sugar bags piled in the storage room. Closer to the kitchen, rack carts wait in line. Now she pans over fluorescent lights and the huge metal sink area and flour-dusted work spaces.
“¡A ver! Say hello to Lila in England!” Pilar barks. I hear my nickname under today’s back room soundtrack of Afro-Cuban jazz. Estrellita. Javi and Marta and Joe rush the screen and blow me kisses.
I return them, emotion scarring my throat. I also learn my parents are on a big catering run. “Angelina around?”
“She’s on a break.” Pili walks the laptop to a cooling rack heaped with trays of empanadas. Angelina would be responsible for those. “She’s doing fine at being you. Better than fine.”
“Wait. Bring me closer.” I lean into my phone. “I told Angelina to take her time with the egg wash and not just throw it on like abstract art. It doesn’t even reach the edges half the time. Do you think we’ll ever get nominated for Family Style with food like this?” It was our dream to appear on the popular Food Network program showcasing family-run food establishments. But it wouldn’t happen with sloppy pastries. “Marta should have caught this.”
Pilar resets her screen just in time for me to catch her eye roll. “I had one fifteen minutes ago. Delicious,” she says.
“Pili! Tell her.” La Paloma cuisine has standards.
“Oh, no. Not my territory. I’ll have Javi take care of it or something.”
I slump onto my four-poster bed. “But really? The taste was on point and the texture, too?”
“Sí, hermana. Now, tell me you’ve been at least going out into town.”
“I’ve been… running.”
“Lila…” Pili extends my name, long and whiny—Leeeeeela. “Do you think avoiding Winchester will magically change it so you’re back in Miami sooner? Is that your game?”
Ugh. I could throttle my sister and all her rightness. My face tells her so. But then my chin crumples and my eyes well into overflow. I could just as easily slide in next to her on our sofa. Our talking spot, late at night with our shoulders pressed tight, eating snacks I’ve likely made.
Pilar covers her face with both hands. “I’d tell you to go out, make friends or whatever for me. Or if I really wanted to be a jerk, maybe even for Abuela. But you won’t. I know you have to want to for you.”
She means for me to want to go on, move on, carry on. So many ons. I glance away for a beat. “When people ask, I’m doing amazing here, okay? A dream vacation.”
She frowns. “Your fake-glossy Instagram is one thing. Shots of pasteles and views out your window. But I’m not lying for you.”
I wanted Andrés and Stefanie’s parents to see my very best. “Think of it more as creative marketing. Of which you’re the expert.”
She just shakes her head.
“Pili,” I say at length. “Angelina’s empanadas were good but, you know, not as good as mine, right?”
Pilar’s back in the office that will officially become hers soon. She curls her ruby-painted lips inward. “Nothing is ever as good as you and me.”
We’ve hung up, but my eyes are still damp when I reach for the TV remote. Muffled sound fills my room, but I’ve pressed no buttons. I hear faint voices, happy, laughing voices. It’s not coming from Gordon’s room, either. At the side window I find a small clutch of bodies hovering in the adjacent church yard.
The window makes a terrible banshee cry when I crank open the panes. Voices halt and all eyes spring onto me. Of course, Orion Maxwell cranes his neck toward the inn side of the courtyard.
“Lila from Florida,” he calls while his siblings or friends or brainwashed tea cult members watch.
I manage a small, courtly wave.
“Trade that window for a balcony and you’d pass for Juliet,” he says. The melodic lilt of his accent is warm against the cool, black sky.
But Juliet? Only if Shakespeare secretly wanted to pen Romeo’s paramour with a messy topknot, costumed in a black tee and boyfriend jeans. “Goodnight Orion and Orion’s—”
“Join us.”
I steal a fleeting glance back into my softly lit room. Oh, so much to do. Binging a few episodes of Family Style on demand, and a moisturizing face mask, and trying to channel the regular sleeping pattern I left back in West Dade. “I. Um.” My sister’s gone from my screen but I still see her face, can already feel the warm grin she’d send across oceans if I told her I not only went outside, but talked to actual teens.
“Coming down is really in your best interest.” The others have gone back to their conversations, but Orion breaks away, stepping toward the wall. “I’ve been in the Wallaces’ guest room. Your bed faces north and I can’t begin to tell you what sort of trouble that spells.”
It’s over—I’m laughing. Can’t help it. The Lila variety of laughter has been out of season since March. I’ve hardly been able to find it. But here, it sprouts up wide and leafy under a yellow moon.
Staying in or going out—it’s my choice. On my terms. No one is trying to force me into more than I’m ready to give. And tonight, I won’t lie to myself, either. That bright wave of laughter felt the kind of good that baking does. I hold out my hands, conceding.
Orion grins.
I nearly collide with Gordon in our hallway.
He looks up from his phone. “Sorry.” Another sorry abuser. “Just going down to meet some mates.”
“Me too, actually.” By the time we reach the second floor, I’ve filled Gordon in on my meager Orion history and hangout invitation.
“He told you the one about your north facing bed, then?” He spits out a laugh. “Ridiculous bloke. He’s really into superstitions. Keeps a storehouse of them in his head.”
The number four is considered unlucky in China. Now it makes sense.
“Interesting,” I say, following him down to the foyer. We choose the kitchen side door since it’s closer to the courtyard. Dim fluorescent lights are always on, and tonight Polly’s bowl of farmer’s market strawberries waits for her, or me, to make a compote for filled butter biscuits tomorrow morning. It’s been three days since I worked through midnight, fixing my epic pound cake fail. And just as many days since Polly had to admit my redone cake was more than good and that I was somewhat worthy of a spot in her kitchen.
On one condition: “We will be making the recipes out of my folder. And only those recipes,” Polly said. If I wanted to work with flour and sugar, I had to comply. But Lila Reyes from Miami was not without ideas. And tricks.
Tonight, I cross through the Owl and Crow side lot with Gordon. A wooden plaque designates the neighboring stone building as one of many Church of England Parishes. Nothing states a group of teens may absolutely and especially not hang out in its walled courtyard after hours
.
Orion slaps Gordon on the shoulder, then points at one of my cap sleeves. “You might want to run back up for a jumper.”
“A what?”
“Sorry. A sweater.”
“I’m fine,” I tell him. Truth is, my toes are icicles frozen onto flip-flops and the hair on my arms is standing military tall. Still, no. I mentally channel Miami summer nights. Warm pavement under bare feet and musky breezes still heavy with the heat of the day.
Orion shrugs. “Suit yourself.” He swivels around and tells the other three, “This is Lila. She’s from Miami and spending her summer at the Crow. After almost two weeks of sharing a washroom with Gordon, she’s likely well versed on his cologne abuse.”
A few yards away, Gordon texts with one hand and flips off Orion with the other.
Friends are spaced like triangle points. Immediately, a black guy one head taller than Orion steps up and swallows my vision. He pokes out a hand. “Remy.”
“Lila.”
Remy’s smile is seasoned with big, jovial kindness, and the rest of him is decked out in rolled-sleeve plaid, trim jeans, and Euro-style sneakers.
“Hold on, people. I saw her at the window.” The nasally voice comes from a wooden bench. On it, a girl lies on the seat and loops black denim legs over the back, dangling fuchsia Converse high-tops. “Almost got it.” Upside-down bench girl arranged her curved body into a gray stretchy top and suede fringe vest, accented with a huge turquoise pendant necklace. I could never pull off this look, but it totally works for her, strong against ivory pale skin and white-blond hair.
She shuts a purple notebook, then stands in a one-shot maneuver. “Sorry. I have to get my ideas down or it’s like they never were,” she says and flutters pages. “I’m Jules. Never Juliana.”
Orion’s speed drill catch-up reveals she and Remy are a couple, Remy’s family owns the best pub in town, and Jules is a songwriter.
Orion adds, “One thing, mind what you say because it might appear in one of her lyrics.”
“He’s not exaggerating,” Remy says.
The slight tug of apprehension surprises me. I try to cover it with a quick smile. “I’ll remember.”
“No matter what, it can’t top me mistaking Lila’s batter bowl for Polly’s and helping myself to a sample,” Orion says, taking a few seconds to detail the whole story, waving his own flag of embarrassment, all by himself. I don’t know if this kind of easy, self-deprecating honesty is a British thing or an Orion Maxwell thing.
When he’s done, Remy nudges a snickering Jules. “Think you can work Ri’s moment of glory into a song?”
“I think I sort of owe it to music itself, a fail like that,” Jules says.
“Yeah,” I say through a giggle. “My abuela would have been after you with her rubber sandal, asking what kind of manners your mother taught you.”
Before my mouth even closes, my words strike faces. Orion’s head drops away, nodding slowly. Remy’s whipped out his phone but it’s as upside down as Jules’s posture when I met her. The songwriter studies her lyric book again.
¿Qué hice?
My fault. I did it, but I don’t know what it is.
After what seems like centuries, Jules chimes in, “You’re from Miami, then? A few years back, my parents took me to Los Angeles in July. You know, the typical holiday. Hollywood Walk of Fame, Beverly Hills. There was a heat wave and my makeup dripped off everywhere. I was going for, you know, aloof British rocker, but it came out more like Hampshire skunk face with sweaty pits takes on West Beverly.”
I’ve only just met her, but I have a sudden urge to bake Jules-never-Juliana “thank you” cookies and “you saved my ass” pastelitos.
Remy grins; it steals his whole damn face. Orion steps closer, features starched and ironed, awkward wrinkles a memory.
I realize I’m twiddling my fingers. Actual twiddling and my words race over my own curiosity and everyone’s awkwardness. “Miami in the summer is like taking LA and dunking it into a vat of boiling tar topped with a steam sauna and hot rain. Gordon can tell you, he’s—” But Gordon has moved to the broad lip of the dormant statue fountain—probably a saint—in the center of the courtyard. Next to him, a girl who looks a couple of years younger than the rest of Orion’s friends is chatting with him. “Anyway, why do you hang out in here?”
“We all live close and the Crow grounds are off-limits except for guests,” Orion says. “Most of the year it’s too cold to hang outside at night.” He shrugs. “Winchester summer is short. We catch up here and take in our little season of agreeable weather while we get it.”
“This isn’t my usual definition of agreeable weather.” Cold-edged night wind dashes over rain-soaked pavement from an earlier downpour. Dashes over me. I can barely feel my toes.
Orion’s gaze travels up and down my outfit. “This is how Mrs. Wallace told you to pack for England?”
Grumble. “More like how I told myself to pack for England.”
“Well.” He shrugs out of a gray cable knit cardigan with a wide collar and large buttons. Off his body, it’s something a British grandpa might choose. But on Orion, it looked like it had been imagined and crafted just for him. Casual and modern and perfectly arranged about his lanky frame. He holds it out, sheepishly. “Watching you chattering your teeth and gathering goose bumps has made me even colder. So, you wearing this while you’re down here would actually benefit me as much as you.”
¡Ponte un suéter, que te vas a resfriar!
It hurts worse at night. And in the morning, when I’m blanketing dough with damp cloths to rise. And all of the time.
Still, my limbs betray me. They need more warmth than I’ve been able to give them lately. The sweater is in my outstretched arms and a smile is on Orion’s face and, Dios, the wool is so soft. At first I just drape it around my shoulders, but my arms have to tunnel deep and long, folding the long cuffs over my fingers like mittens.
“Thanks.” But we’re all looking at Jules, who’s scratching inside her book.
“Really? That inspired lines? A cardigan and a cold Floridian?” Orion says.
“Never you mind what I’m doing.” Jules writes some more. “At any rate, chivalry is far from dead.” Her entire face blinks. “Chivalry. Ha! That reminds me about Sunday.” She elbows Remy and tips her chin at Orion.
“Right,” Remy says to Orion. “My dad’s all set on that, um, thing you need for that person at your place.”
Jules smacks the heel of her hand on her forehead. “Don’t be such a twat! What’s wrong with saying Orion’s ‘entertaining’ ”—she uses actual air quotes—“a girl and Remy’s dad agreed to provide a nice meal he can warm up?”
“It’s a good second date,” Remy says. “Thoughtful. And you’ve already done the cinema.”
I thought the batter bowl incident provided a solid reference point to Orion’s blush. That was only a preview. A red fruit-punch stain, louder than Gordon’s music, spills from Orion’s cheeks to the patch of exposed chest under his collar. “Will you two kindly shut—”
Movement in the form of Fountain Girl arrowing toward the front gate chops the rest of Orion’s thought. Her fairy-like body shoots up into a cute, bobbed cap of blond curls.
“Hold up, Flora,” Orion says. “You didn’t meet Lila.”
Flora rolls her eyes and holds her phone up.
“You can spare thirty seconds.” His words cut like a meat cleaver.
She stomps toward us on black Doc Martens and skintight gray jeans.
“Lila, my sister, Flora.”
Ahh, sister. Close up, they do look alike, sharing the same curls and clear, peachy skin. Ocean-blue eyes, too, although Flora’s hold a storm.
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
I get a chin lift. “Yeah. Enjoy England,” she deadpans, then tells her brother, “Gotta run.”
“Where did you say you’re off to?” Orion asks.
“I didn’t.”
Orion looks left then right before
gently tugging Flora by the elbow. Yards away, I hear bits of, “The rules don’t change just because Dad’s traveling.” They volley low whispers and obstinate stares.
The other three have moved to Jules’s bench. Gordon and Remy are studying Gordon’s phone screen while Jules writes with her head on Remy’s lap and her knees hooked over the wooden armrest, feet seesawing.
I sit alone on the fountain lip, cold from the stone surface bleeding through my jeans, until Orion makes my party of one a two-top. He folds himself in half, clasped hands over his lap. “She’s fifteen and hates that the four years I have on her make me responsible for her when Dad’s away.”
“He travels a lot?”
“For the shop. He makes a couple big trips a year to remote parts of the world, trying to discover the latest blends or crops. He’s in China now.”
What about their mother? She must have more than a little to do with everyone’s reaction to my unintentional blunder. But it doesn’t feel like my place to ask. It barely feels like my place at all. My mind drifts to what I know, ideas forming. “I could help, too. With Sunday night and your…” My face crinkles.
“Her name’s Charlotte.” Miniscule eye roll over a wisp of smile. “It’s no big secret and my friends are ridiculous.”
“She lives around here?”
“No, but close. A neighboring town. Her family likes the tea at our shop.”
“Looks like she likes more than just the tea.”
Orion’s face pings with mischief and just a touch of mayhem. Blue eyes train onto something shapeless and distant, not walled inside this tiny courtyard. “About your proposition?”
I tug his sweater tight across my chest, burrowing my nose into tree sap and the remnants of woody-spiced cologne. “Right. An impressive dinner—”
A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow Page 5
