Brooke’s fingers start to move, answering the text, but then her fingers freeze, and her eyes slide slowly up to me.
“Oli,” she says. “Did Amy text you that she isn’t coming to the party?”
I say nothing.
Her eyebrows curve in confusion. “Is that why—” She cuts off, and my stomach turns. Her eyes go wide, and she says, “Oh shit. You like her, don’t you?”
I push away from the bar and walk into the living room, pretending to rearrange plates of snacks. If she sees my face, she’ll see that it’s gone completely red. “No, I don’t,” I say, trying to sound stern, but I just sound like a little kid with his first crush.
I hear her step out of the kitchen and come into the living room, and I work to keep my back to her as she comes to stand beside me. “Oh please. You have a big ol’ crush on her. Dear God, that’s adorable. I’ve never seen you so much as show affection for a dog.”
“I am not showing affection.” I turn around to glare at her.
She throws back her head and laughs. “Oliver, you’ve been sharing music with her. I’m pretty sure that’s as close to a declaration of your undying love as you’re ever going to get.”
I grit my teeth. She’s lucky I don’t just toss the tray of cupcakes in front of me onto the floor. “That is a very specific situation. That is not a mixed-tape situation. It is not a show of affection. Don’t you have cupcakes to be stressed out about?”
But she’s grinning at me, and I know she’s forgotten all about the cupcakes.
“Hey,” Brooke says, latching on to my arm and shaking it. “Cheer up. This is going to be so much fun, even if Amy doesn’t come. Look, Marshal’s here.” She gestures at the door just as Marshal slinks in. He’s holding a bouquet of carnations that he hands Brooke, blushing furiously. Dear God.
Brooke smiles and gives him a hug.
“Why the long face, partner?” Marshal asks once Brooke has unhanded him.
While a few more people find their way into the living room, I take a deep breath and decide that coming here tonight was an absolutely awful idea.
AMY
AN HOUR INTO dinner, I want to pluck my eyeballs out.
“Why are you dressed like that?” my cousin, Lupe, sitting on my left side, asks me, as if I haven’t been sitting right beside him in this exact dress for the last hour.
I ignore him, but Tía Marci leans over him to see me. “I think you look beautiful. Perfect for Valentine’s Day.” She reaches across Lupe like he isn’t even there and takes my chin in her fingers. “You look just like your mama when she was your age.” She purses her lips. “I think you might have gone a little heavy on the eyeliner though.”
I gently pry my face away from her fingers and smile, close-lipped. The less I say, the better off I am.
I glance down at my phone in my lap. Oliver never texted me back after I told him I wasn’t coming, and I’m trying not to take it personally. Nothing says he has to text me back just because I texted him. He’s probably having a great time at the party, a much greater time than I’m having.
I can feel it coming before it does, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up even as Rosa, across the table, finds my eyes. “How are things with the hottie, Amaría?”
My eyes sweep over the table to Mama. She’s the only one who knows Jackson and I broke up.
It’s now that Carlos looks around the table, like he’s just now realizing that Jackson isn’t here. “Where is Jackson?” he asks, his voice booming over everyone else’s.
“We broke up,” I say, because it’s not like they’re not all going to find out anyway, and the table erupts into noise. I sit back in my chair and let them talk over one another until finally, Mama yells, “Okay, okay, okay! It’s done, it’s over, let it go!” She sends me an apologetic glance, but I just look away from her.
Into the silence, Rosa says, “Well, that was probably for the best. I mean, it wasn’t like he was going to follow you to California, right?” My stomach knots when she says this, and maybe it’s true and maybe it’s not, I guess either way it doesn’t matter, but the fact that she said it at all hurts anyway.
Until Mama says something worse.
Quietly, like she thinks I won’t hear her, as if she can’t help herself, she says, “If she goes to California.”
It’s not a new comment. It’s not something she hasn’t said a thousand times in a thousand different ways and tones and languages. But when she says it now, in front of our entire family, something inside me snaps.
I push away from the table loudly, and everyone watches me as I stalk past Mama. But I can’t let it go that easily. I can’t let her get away with that.
So I spin around, pin her surprised eyes with a glare, and say, “Would it kill you to believe in me?”
She doesn’t say anything, and for the first time that I can remember, neither does anyone else.
OLIVER
“I ALWAYS THOUGHT it was pretty awesome that Lauren owns a record store and is going to law school,” Morgan says. “I mean, how intense is that? I couldn’t even handle two majors. I had to drop one of them.”
“Yeah,” I say, taking a sip of the orange soda and champagne in my cup. It isn’t exactly the classiest of drinks, but it’s better than tequila shots. “Lauren is doing a pretty good job with the shop. What were you majoring in?” I hold in a cringe because if there was an award for being the worst at small talk, I’d finally have trophies in my room like Mom always dreamed about.
Morgan, tall with a dark pixie cut, sips at her own drink. “I was majoring in psychology and literature, but I dropped lit. It’s just been rough trying to juggle school and work and my band.”
She says it in a way that makes it obvious she wants me to ask her about her band. I didn’t know Morgan was in a band. Maybe she’s never mentioned it before, but chances are better that she has and I wasn’t paying attention.
“What do you play?” I almost care, too. I’ve always liked Morgan. She’s pretty and music savvy and has a nice way of talking. But there’s just no feeling there.
“I play guitar, drums, and piano. Not all at the same time.” She lets out a nervous laugh. Huh. She’s nervous. Who knew?
Over Morgan’s head, the front door opens, but I ignore it. People have been filtering in all night, but I don’t know any of them, so I’ve stopped glancing over every time someone comes in.
But out of the corner of my eye, I can just make out the shape of the person standing in the doorway—someone very short, with long dark hair—and when I look over, Amy is standing in the doorway in a little black dress, her curly hair flowing around her face, and fuck, I suddenly understand all those awful, cheesy, predictable love songs. Because if I was the kind of person to write awful, cheesy, predictable love songs, I would write one about her right now.
And then, like she knows I’m on the verge of writing ballads, Amy’s eyes scan every face in the apartment, and when she finds mine, she smiles so big I think I might die because she was actually looking for me, and I can’t even believe that.