“It’s okay to want this, isn’t it?” she murmured. When Sara didn’t respond, Anamaría swiveled her head away from the thin wall to face her friend. “Because I do want it. So badly it scares me.”
The words were a scratchy whisper, weighty with dreams too long deferred. Goals she didn’t want to hold back anymore. No longer willing to wait. Not for anyone.
Sara placed her hand over Anamaría’s on the armrest between them and gave a gentle squeeze. “It’s more than okay. You deserve this. Anyone who loves you, who knows and respects you. Anyone who’s worthy of those from you in return will tell you the same.”
Unbidden, Alejandro’s last words to her tiptoed through Anamaría’s mind, meandering lower to leave warm, mini footprints on her heart.
They’re crazy if they don’t wanna work with you.
Would he be as excited for her as Sara was? As the rest of her familia undoubtedly would be?
She didn’t know. And it shouldn’t matter either way.
Still, a tiny voice she’d been unable to completely silence whispered from a dark corner of her heart . . . it did matter. He mattered.
After their tentative truce the other day, she could no longer deny it.
* * *
“Why all the secrecy about your exhibition? I thought the idea was to give your mom a distraction?” Enrique tossed the question at Alejandro like a grenade over his shoulder as he maneuvered his SUV out of a tight downtown parking spot Monday afternoon.
At least, E hadn’t asked in the middle of their meeting at Bellísima with Marcelo and Logan. Alejandro didn’t want to discuss his dysfunctional familia drama in front of the other two men.
Who the hell was he kidding? He preferred to avoid the topic altogether.
Scooping up the verbal explosive, Alejandro lobbed it back toward the front seat. “Better question, why won’t you consider an exhibition of your own? It’s clear Marcelo’s interested.”
The stony silence that greeted his observation told Alejandro he’d hit a nerve.
No flip remark from E. No casual shrug of the shoulders in his devil-may-care way. His response was a telling white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. His profile flinty angles of tight jaw, steely cheekbone, and a thin line of lips.
There had to be a juicy story behind Enrique’s surprising decision to suddenly stop pursuing his passion after graduating from art school in Miami. Relegating his skills to painting geometric-shaped wood pieces with the beachy Key West themes tourists plunked down their money for, mementos they carted home, then often forgot about. Pieces Enrique could create blindfolded. One-handed.
But, as someone with his own secrets he preferred not to examine, Alejandro respected his friend’s privacy. A concept neither one of their mothers seemed to understand.
Especially when it came to Alejandro and Anamaría.
Heaving a disgruntled sigh, he adjusted the seat-belt strap crossing his chest.
He hadn’t seen or heard from his ex since she’d been coerced into delivering his mami’s cell phone last week. That didn’t mean she’d been far from his thoughts. Or that he hadn’t been treated to a regular update about her comings and goings. His mami had been glued to Instagram, waiting for each new post about Anamaría’s trip to New York so she could like or comment. Whether he wanted to see the pictures or not, his mami had shared them.
If he wasn’t hearing about her trip, then his mom was regaling him with stories of AM Fitness expanding and the people whose lives Anamaría was changing for the better. From free Zumba classes at Saint Mary’s to health and fitness presentations at the high school and fun runs around the city raising money for one charity or another. While he’d been off capturing images around the globe, Anamaría was busy making a difference here at home. Expanding her reach as she took on clients vacationing in Key West who hired her for virtual training sessions after they left.
Hell, even his staunchly traditional father had succumbed to the pressures of meeting his customers’ changing preferences by adding some of Anamaría’s healthier Cuban food options to the Miranda’s menu. The man made a huge concession like adapting his beloved father’s recipes but couldn’t understand that his son wanted to honor their familia legacy in his own way.
Another sign of how Anamaría belonged here. While he did not.
As he sat sideways in the back of Enrique’s SUV, Alejandro’s gloomy thoughts blurred along with the sights of Key West’s Old Town neighborhood through the passenger window opposite him. Refurbished old Conch houses with their wide verandahs, white picket railings, and gingerbread details invited visitors to pull up a rocking chair and find respite. Flamboyán trees with their fiery red miniature petals and vibrant fern-like leaves offered shade and eye-catching adornment for the small lawns. Their colorful petals dotted the cracked gray sidewalks as if pointillism artists had used the concrete as their canvas.
He itched to be out there again. Lazily strolling the streets of his childhood. His Canon cradled in his hands. His eyes absorbing the contrast of light and shadow, the intricate play of colors. The movement and emotion of the world around him a palpable force. Discovering an interesting mark and stopping to observe. Patience more a necessity than a virtue. His heart slowing to a dull thud as he waited, anticipated. Trusting the innate sensation that guided him. Certain it led him toward what every photographer sought—the decisive moment.
The millisecond when your breathing stilled, the camera shutter whirred, and you were gifted with the perfect image.
One in a stream of images many unpracticed eyes might say were all perfect. He knew better. There could be only one. And that only if he was lucky.
Trusting his instincts had resulted in some of his most prized photographs. Like the one taken along the Malecón in Havana. A wave crashing against a seawall pockmarked from years of serving sentinel confronting the ocean’s caustic brine. Wispy arcs and drops of salt water shimmering in the air, hovering over a lone fisherman who braved the elements, a slender fishing rod clutched in his weathered grip. His threadbare clothes and worn sandals as much a part of him as the unrestrained, life-affirming grin slashing across his dark complexion.
And yet even that spectacular photograph was rivaled by another. Several others. All taken in the stolen moments he’d carved out for himself during the week he’d spent on his familia’s native island of Cuba for a magazine shoot.
He’d spent an afternoon slowly strolling the dusty streets in Centro Habana, a residential area dilapidated and crumbling though still teeming with life, juxtaposed in stark contrast with the tourist-filled posh hotels and museums of Parque Central and El Paseo del Prado. There, in Centro Habana, he’d eventually found the old establishment he’d heard tales of but had only seen in a faded, creased photograph framed in a place of honor beside a cash register that dinged each time a satisfied customer settled their bill in the restaurant built for its namesake.
This discovery had come after a morning excursion to Santiago de Las Vegas where his paternal grandparents had met, courted, and married before moving to Havana, where they opened the original Miranda’s. Alejandro’s father and uncle had been born in Havana, spending their early years watching their father hard at work building his dream. Until, desperate to give their sons a better life, one they could choose for themselves, Alejandro’s abuelos had packed a small suitcase for each child and put them on a plane to the United States. Prayers and hope for the future whispered as the young boys headed toward uncertainty.