Crush

by Jen Doyle

  He cut himself off abruptly.

  Here, in the light of a new day, could he honestly say that was how he felt about her? Was it possible to love someone you’d only spent a handful of days with, even if it was year upon year? Was he ready to say it out loud?

  Except it seemed he’d also been completely wrong about why his mother was concerned.

  “I saw you that night, Alejandro,” she said, and it brought his thoughts to a grinding halt. “I didn’t know what had upset you so much. But I do now.”

  It took him a minute to realize which night that was. The first night he’d ever been deliberately made to feel less because of the color of his skin. He’d felt it of course. He’d heard people whisper behind his back, had had people ‘mistakenly’ think he was the custodian instead of the valedictorian even though they well knew. But here in this very kitchen was the first time anyone had ever said it directly to his face. Had specifically intended to put him down.

  So Mrs. Barnes did know.

  Alejandro rubbed his hand over his face. And, apparently, she and his mother truly were friends, because this wasn’t the kind of thing you talked about with your maid. Not for the first time in his life, Alejandro realized he should never question his mother.

  “Mrs. Barnes told you?” he asked.

  “Si, Alejo,” his mother said so quietly he almost didn’t hear her. “I know what that man said to you.” She took his head in her hands, the way she used to when he was a boy and could never quite stay still. “And I heard what you said to him about Magdalena.”

  Yes. Because it wasn’t just what her father had said, it was what he’d said in response.

  “Alejandro?”

  Alejandro closed his eyes when he heard Maggie’s voice from the doorway.

  He wasn’t sure how he would have preferred for this to come out—other than never—but this definitely wasn’t it. “Maggie.”

  He took a deep breath and turned, his breath catching at the beauty of her as she stood there, shoulders back and head held high. With everything he had he wished he could have figured out a better way to do this. That instead of being angry with her for all these years and at himself for never confronting it—and then dazed into denial for the last twenty-four hours—he’d have thought of some way to answer Maggie’s inevitable question:

  “What is she talking about?”

  Maybe if Mrs. Barnes weren’t standing right there behind her he could have finessed it. Or if his mother wasn’t behind him glaring at him so forcefully it was like a thousand tiny knives in his back. “Your father—”

  “Daddy wasn’t well, honey,” Mrs. Barnes jumped in with, her arm going around Maggie’s shoulder as she, too, was now stepping into the fray. Although for some reason she seemed not just to be helping Alejandro out, but, from the way she was looking at him, apologizing for her husband as well. “He said some things to Alejandro that I don’t think he meant to come out quite as harshly—”

  “Racista,” his mother interjected.

  Nope. Alejandro would never, ever question his mother again.

  And he suddenly also had a whole new level of respect for Mrs. Barnes. Though she didn’t confirm that statement, she didn’t deny it either. Instead she just acknowledged it with a nod and went on, “—as he may have intended.”

  Maggie’s eyes went wide as she looked from her mother to Alejandro and back to her mother again. “What did he say?”

  With a glance up at Alejandro, Mrs. Barnes cleared her throat and then quietly answered, “That the Harvard scholarship should have gone to you. That if Alejandro weren’t…” She paused, clearly remembering the word her husband had used as well as Alejandro did. She cleared her throat again and went with the much more politically correct, “…Latino, the scholarship would have been yours.”

  Her face going white, Maggie shook her head. “But it wouldn’t have.” Then she turned and, looking right past Alejandro, said to his mother instead, “His grades were better than mine. They shouldn’t have been,” she couldn’t quite resist, it seemed, “but they were.” To her mother she said, “Daddy knew that.”

  “I know, Maggie,” her mother said. “He was just so proud of you and he wanted you to have the best.”

  Although she didn’t actually respond to that, the look on Maggie’s face was clearly wavering between hope her father had actually felt that way and the knowledge that the likelier choice was that he’d just been unhappy his daughter hadn’t been declared number one.

  “And,” Mrs. Barnes continued, “he wasn’t very good at keeping his thoughts to himself.”

  “No,” Maggie answered in a way that made Alejandro think there was a reason behind her being shocked to hear her father was proud of her. “He wasn’t.”

  Unfortunately, she also remembered there was something else to the story. She turned to Alejandro. “And what exactly was it that you said back to him?”

  He wanted so desperately not to tell her. But if she somehow heard it from someone else…

  He resisted the urge to close his eyes and wish this all away. Oh, how he hated his hotheaded twenty-one-year-old self right now. “I told him if he wasn’t careful, I would get you to fall in love with me. We’d see what he had to say then.”

  Definitely pale now, Maggie whispered, “When?”

  Hated. “The summer after our senior year of college.”

  Knowing full well the first time they’d come across each other in the Lakeside was that very September, Maggie’s voice was pure ice when she asked again, “When during that summer?”

  “August,” he answered with just enough hint of a pause for her to realize…

  “Oh, God.” Though her face went pale she seemed to get stronger and stronger as she spoke. “That first time after we graduated from college. I always wondered why you would pick me of all the women in that bar.”

  It hadn’t been. If only it had been this would all have been so much simpler.

  He’d wanted that to be the case. He’d wanted to hate her as much as he hated her father. But when she’d walked into the bar that night and he’d looked up to see her standing there, all he could see was that the girl who’d rocked his world the night of Reid Romano’s party had turned into the woman who’d been haunting his dreams. He hadn’t been able to let go of her since.

  Highly aware both their mothers were right there with them, he mostly mumbled, “Conversation wasn’t exactly our thing.”

  Not seeming to care about the parental factor, Maggie muttered, “No, it certainly wasn’t. We seem to be much better at having sex than at talking.” Then she added, “Angry, hateful sex, apparently.”

  No. It hadn’t been that. It had never been that. Not even when he’d wanted it to be. But before he could even open his mouth to say so, she held up her hand, returning to her original train of thought. “So was that your plan all along?”

  “It wasn’t my plan. I was twenty-one. I’d had—”

  “You did have a plan,” she said, coming at him, her voice no longer cold. It just sounded angry. And sad. So very, very sad. “You went to Harvard. You graduated at the top of your class in both undergrad and grad school. You could have had any job you wanted but you came back here to teach kids ‘like you.’ Yes, you had a plan.” She brought her hands up to her head and ran her hands through her hair. “Why didn’t you tell me? In all these years, why didn’t you say anything?”

  His head was pounding. There were more emotions and thoughts banging around in there than he thought he was capable of. He didn’t want to have this conversation here, but he had a feeling this was the only chance he was going to get.

  And, yes, okay, maybe he was a little angry himself. “We’ve spent fourteen years doing this, but not once did it occur to you to take it outside of your room. I had to sneak up to see you every night.”

  “You were the one sneaking up!” she yelled. “As if you didn’t want anyone to know who you were seeing. Because, why on earth would Alejandro Garcia be seeing M
aggie Barnes for any reason whatsoever?”

  Trying not to think about how sad it was for her to speak those words, or acknowledge the look on Mrs. Barnes’s face when she realized the same, he answered, “You’re the one who thought that, not me.”

  “Right!” She threw her hands up in the air. “Because you’d be gone before sunrise every time. So, hell, yes, I thought it was because you couldn’t stand the thought of waking up with me.”

  “Maggie, no…” God, no. It was because waking up with her meant conversation—a conversation he’d desperately wanted to avoid.

  “I knew this wouldn’t work,” she said. “I can’t believe I thought it was worth trying.”

  Had she not been feeling the same things he had? Had he been entirely delusional about that? He looked at her in disbelief. “You’d give up? Just like that?” But maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. “Of course you would. You left the place you love because it was easier to run than to demand your father give you the respect you deserved.”

  “What?” she snapped. “I don’t run.”

  She certainly didn’t shy away from arguments. If it weren’t this particular situation, it would have been yet another thing that turned him on. Except then she hit low.

  Avoiding the part about her father entirely, she approached him, her words a near hiss. “Sitting up on that mountain and looking down over everyone below just to say that you’re better than them is better?”

  And it pissed him off. “Not better,” he snapped. “As good.” He wasn’t at all proud of where he took it, but the words came out all the same. “Because there’s no trust fund for me to fall back on. If that means building my own house with my own two hands in a place that keeps reminding me why it’s worth the fight? Then hell yes, it’s better. Every single time.”

  He wanted to take it back as soon as he said it. As soon as he saw her react, her head snapping back as if he’d slapped her across the face.

  “That’s how you think of me?” she asked. “Like I’m just playing around because I can always fall back on my trust fund?” But then the fire came back. Furious, she stepped right up into him. “Just so you know, that trust fund pays for the college educations of our admin staff back in New York and their kids. Except some of them aren’t our staff anymore because they were part of the thirty-two people I had to fire last week! Thirty-two of my friends, by the way, of which I now have only one—my boss, whose all of twenty-two and thinks I’m a ‘hella ball-buster.’” Her face fell and her lips actually trembled. “Which really, really sucks.”

  Which was when he suddenly remembered why none of this mattered. Because she was brilliant and strong and feisty and totally able to stand on her own—and because he wanted to be the one who was there so that she didn’t have to. “Maggie…”

  “Don’t!” She held up her hands and turned away. “Don’t say my name like that. Like you care so much.”

  “I do—”

  “I’m crying right now.” She, yes, sniffled. Glaring over her shoulder at him, she said, “Don’t you dare try to be the good guy right now and make me forget why.”

  He took that as a good enough sign for him to take a step towards her.

  But she was done. Cold. Not the Maggie he knew and…

  Loved.

  Yes, loved.

  “I think maybe it would be better if you left,” she said.

  Wait. “What?”

  “Oh, and about that running thing,” she added, “just so you know, I’m moving back home. My condo is already on the market in New York. But I guess that’s not your concern any longer, is it?”

  Before he could wrap his head around any of that, she said, “Goodbye, Alejandro.” Without a backwards glance, she turned on her heel and left the room, leaving a heavy silence in her wake.

  What had just happened?

  Mrs. Barnes gave a sad shake of her head before coming up to him and giving him a quick hug as she quietly said, “I’m sorry, Alejandro,” before following after her daughter.

  His own mother, on the other hand, raised her eyes to the heavens, clearly asking what she’d done to deserve her idiota son who talked for a living but couldn’t manage to tell su amada how he felt. She muttered something under her breath about him being as clueless as his father, and then dismissed him with a harsh wave.

  Having screwed up bigger than he thought was possible, Alejandro did as he was told and left.

  12

  Maggie was running late. She hadn’t expected to spend most of her day sobbing, nor had she expected her mother to, well, care.

  No, not just care. She’d also taken the entire day off, during Crush, no less, and called in enough favors to get massages and facials at one of the most exclusive resorts in the area. Not just for the two of them, but for Alejandro’s mother as well. Which was…

  Odd. And discomforting, considering Maggie couldn’t even think his name without wanting to wail.

  Alejandro’s mother appeared to not just be the housekeeper, something else Maggie was entirely unable to process, but also her mother’s friend. And equally sympathetic despite the horrible thing Maggie’s father had said to the woman’s son, not to mention the things Maggie herself had said to Alejandro.

  But, no, both Mrs. Garcia and Maggie’s mother had been loving and caring and comforting.

  Mind. Completely. Blown.

  And when they’d finally parted ways at the end of the day, Alejandro’s mother had cradled her head and said, “El amor y el dinero no los puedes esconder.”

  Love and money cannot hide, Maggie was able to translate. “But what does that mean?” she’d asked. Because the love part sounded like it could be good, but the money part was clearly an issue, so she wasn’t sure.

  Rather than help Maggie figure it out, Mrs. Garcia had just said, “You will see, mi niña. You will see.”

  Maggie sure hoped so—and she hoped she would see really soon because this was turning out to be her worst trip home, ever. Considering her last one was to bury her uncle, that was saying a lot.

  Taking a close look at herself in the mirror, Maggie twisted her hair into a knot sitting low on her neck and then stepped back. Her eyes were still red from the crying, and, unfortunately, they matched her complexion due to this afternoon’s facial. And the black dress was too formal for the Lakeside, but everything else she had in her closet at home was high school-era and woefully out of date, not to mention out of fashion the day it was purchased as she hadn’t had even an inkling of her mother’s taste until she’d moved to New York. She was heading back east tomorrow afternoon, though, so tonight was her last chance to make her Santa Christa I Am Here To Stay And Anyone Who Doesn’t Like That Can Kiss My Ass debut.

  Which of course didn’t make a lot of sense given the whole actual heading back thing, albeit only temporarily so. She’d even wavered in her choice for a few hours after Alejandro had left—after these last few days, she couldn’t imagine being here and not being with him. Then she’d reminded herself she’d never before in her life let a man influence her major life decisions and she wasn’t about to start now.

  With one last look, she turned off the bathroom light, grabbed her bag, and headed out into her soon-to-be-again hometown. Because Alejandro was wrong: she didn’t run from her problems. She charged ahead, unafraid, ready to take on the next thing that was in front of her.

  Um, most of the time.

  Like tonight, which would be the first time since that very first one after she’d turned twenty-one where she was actually going to be social. To not just sit at the bar among women she didn’t really like and wait until she spied Alejandro and he spied her. She had no expectation of seeing him there, in fact. She had no expectation of seeing him again.

  The thought nearly broke her, and she paused right there on the sidewalk outside the bar before going in.

  But she straightened out her shoulders and, keeping her head high enough to ignore the dampness of her palms and the slightly sick feeling i
n her stomach, she walked in the front door and scanned the room.

  It was even more packed than she was used to—and since she only ever came here during Crush, that was saying something. A lot of places did night picking, and it seemed as though some of the crews had stopped in for a drink before heading out. Plus it was still early enough for folks on the breakfast or brunch shift at one of the restaurants to not have headed home for the night yet, and, of course, those who’d be gearing up for the tastings and tours still had hours before heading home. When Maggie had decided on coming here tonight, she hadn’t quite realized she’d be putting herself on display in front of the entire town.

  Telling herself it didn’t bother her one bit, she walked up to the bar. Since she spent as little time in Santa Christa as possible, she didn’t have a lot of close friends here. The women she tended to hang out with—or, rather, near—were more like sticking with the enemy you knew. They were a little catty, not overly nice, but having been part of the New York social scene for so long, Maggie could navigate them with ease. It was the people she actually liked who made her nervous. Like Dana Romano. Claudette Duval… The list went on.

  Choosing not to dwell on that, however, she ordered herself a drink and then turned to see if she could find her brother. He was partly the reason she was here, after all. After leaving her mother and Mrs. Garcia, Maggie had decided that if she was going to stay in Santa Christa—not running, thank you very much—she needed to build her network back up.

  Except then she’d gotten all teary again because that was the most pathetic thing ever. Build her network? Who thought that way? She wanted to make friends. To not sit back in some corner the way she used to and watch everyone else have fun. Having no idea where to start, she’d approached it as she would have a challenge at work: start with known connections. Since her brother was the only one she had, she didn’t have a lot of options. So rather than list all the reasons Drew wouldn’t want to meet up with her tonight, she’d texted him to see if he was free.