A/N: I know, I know. It feels like it's been forever. I horribly underestimated how exhausting recovering from major surgery would be and I only got a little writing in every day, but I'm feeling good now and I'm back. How's everyone feeling with the news that Season 3 will be the last season? I didn't see that coming. Like, not even a little bit.
~ Chapter 6: Armando ~
A piercing scream pulled me from my sleep. If you could call it sleep when I felt like I just closed my eyes. Isa was already out of the bed in Lera's spare bedroom. It would eventually be the nursery and it was mostly set up for that, but the baby was sleeping in her room until she was old enough to sleep through the night. Lera wasn't worried about moving the bed until she got closer to that.
You would've thought Lera having the baby was the best thing to happen to Isa. She was smitten. I didn't miss this. I loved our kids, but I did not want to go through this part again. The midnight feedings and the diaper changes and weeks of feeling like I was mostly zombie and only part human. In Texas, I hadn't gotten time off after we had our kids, so I took a few days that we really couldn't afford for me to take but couldn't handle me not taking before my days evolved into a sleepless cycle of trying to stay awake at work and trying to fall asleep at home. It was the hardest with Pilar because Victor was still so dependent on us. He was still in a crib when she was born. He would wake up crying when she woke up crying, so it took both of us to handle it every time.
Isa seemed to forget how tough it had been. "It would be like this if we had another one." Not a chance.
When Adrian was born, Victor and Pilar were able to help out. Victor did the dishes more than we did, they both could get Adrian to calm down unless he was hungry, and my parents were over more than they weren't. That didn't mean it wasn't hard, but Isa didn't seem to remember that. We hadn't talked about kids in a long, long time. Not since she found out she was pregnant with Adrian and we realized we had another surprise baby on the way. We'd both been in complete agreement back then. Now, all of a sudden, Isa had baby on the brain again.
Sure, Mila was cute. Really cute. And part of me did think about how nice it felt to have a baby sleeping in my arms again and how soothing it was.
I forced myself out of bed towards the fading cries. We only had one more day here - we'd be leaving tomorrow night, stopping after four hours or so, and leaving early Sunday morning to make the rest of the trip. We wanted to be home around noon. Isa seemed to take it as her personal mission to get in as much time with Mila as she could. We'd see her again in two months and the way Isa talked about it, you'd think that was years away.
Isa held Mila while Lera rubbed her eyes. "You got this?" She asked. I didn't think she was even awake as she rolled over in bed.
"I got this," Isa whispered back. I didn't know why she bothered whispering. Mila was making more than enough noise. "I'll go make her a bottle." She carried Mila to the kitchen. It was a small miracle that she didn't bump into a wall when she couldn't take her eyes off of Mila.
"Let me," I told her. I pulled a bowl out of the cabinet and filled it with hot water. It only took a couple of minutes for her bottle to be warm enough, but it felt like a long time.
The moment I passed the bottle to Isa, Mila was silent. "Look how precious she is," Isa told me.
I rolled my eyes. Isa's phone suddenly started to ring. It felt jarring in the silence. Isa had left it in the kitchen to charge - we'd forgotten our chargers in our hasty departure and were on a very strict schedule to use the only charger Lera owned.
"It's Victor." I quickly answered and put the phone on speaker.
"What's wrong?" Isa asked immediately.
"Why do you assume something's wrong?" Victor asked. Even if he hadn't been calling this late, it would have been obvious that he was stressed about something.
"Because it's after midnight by you." It was actually almost 1:30 by him. Mila let out an unhappy cry when Isa stopped feeding her so she could stand up. Isa repositioned Mila so she could keep feeding her.
"Um… so, yeah. Pilar…" Victor trailed off for a moment and my mind mentally filled in the blanks. Was pregnant, snuck out, was spending the night with Felix. "Please don't freak. She fell off a chair. I'm taking her to the ER right now. I think she broke her ankle."
Isa stared at her phone for a second before she pressed mute. "I knew this was a bad idea," she told me. She started pacing which seemed to be lulling Mila off to sleep. Her eyes kept drifting closed. "We never should have left."
"This could have happened regardless," I pointed out.
"How do you break your ankle falling off a chair?" she demanded.
"I don't think she was sitting on the chair, Isa," I pointed out.
She shook her head. "Start packing. We can be back in Atlanta in what? Twelve hours?"
"If we fly there. Isa, breathe. Victor's there."
She shook her head and unmuted herself. "We're coming home."
"No!" Isa and I exchanged a surprised look. "We'll be home before you get here. I can handle whatever she needs. I will call you the moment we leave to let you know what happened. Tia Lera needs you right now and so does Mila. Stay in Texas until you have to go back to work, just like you planned. I promise I can handle this."
Isa frowned. "I want updates." I could tell she didn't like it and I wasn't sure if that was her acknowledgment that Victor could handle this or if she just needed some time to think this through.
"As often as you want," Victor promised.
"Is Adrian with you?" she asked.
"No." Isa passed me Mila and the empty bottle so she could take her phone and go into the hallway.
Isa was gone nearly twenty minutes. I was dozing off in one of the kitchen chairs when she came back in. She immediately started pacing. "Stop. They'll be fine," I told her.
"You said that when we left to come here and now look what happened."
"It could have happened even if we were home," I pointed out. "Victor's responsible. It'll be fine."
I could practically feel her skepticism. "I can't believe this happened."
"Isa, you can't think clearly right now. Why don't we change Mila and go back to bed? She'll be up again in a couple of hours. Probably before they leave. We can't go back to Atlanta right now. It's almost midnight and you promised your sister we'd be here until tomorrow night," I reminded her.
She let out a huffy sound. "How can you think about sleep right now?"
I wanted to tell her that I could think about sleep because I wasn't crazy, but I didn't think that would help my case. "Isa, please."
That was all I said but her defensive, "I'm not crazy" meant I hadn't done as good of a job as I'd hoped.
"Aren't you though? This isn't the end of the world. Pilar broke her ankle. Maybe. We don't know for sure." I was pretty sure that Victor wouldn't have said it unless he was pretty confident that that's what happened. He'd been subjected to Isa's overboard panic to the point where I'd worried that he would only tell us if he was really, really hurt.
I didn't need to see her to feel her glare. There was something about her anger that seemed to physically manifest in the space between us. It had always been like this.
"It doesn't matter if she broke it or not," Isa snapped. "She got hurt and we're not there to help."
"She's not a little kid anymore," I reminded her. "Ise, our kids are growing up. Victor's going away to college soon."
"Just for the summer," she grumbled.
"Pilar's starting her junior year. Adrian's moving up to the upper elementary school."
Isa sighed. "I know she's not a little girl anymore, but… does that mean she's ready to do things like this without us? That she just doesn't need us?"
That's when it clicked. I stood up, trying not to jostle Mila too much. When I looked at Isa, she didn't look angry; just desperate. "She needs us, but not in the same way anymore." We went through this once before. When Victor went to Vegas. Both of us had to face the reality that he was growing up. We'd gotten pieces of it before then, small signs that he wasn't the same little kid that we'd been holding onto. He had a job, had a serious boyfriend, Isa had walked in on them, but we'd clung to our denial. Those weren't signs of his maturity, but random unrelated cases. I expected letting go of Pilar's youth to be easier but, in a lot of ways, it was more difficult. Maybe because we'd messed up so badly with Victor, but I wanted more time to get things right with her.
Isa sighed. "You're right." She shook her head. "I know you're right."
"Come on." I went to Lera's room and place Mila in the bassinet. Lera was fast asleep. We'd tried to let her get as much sleep as she could. In two days, she was on her own again. Isa hated that. She wanted to be here for Lera as much as Lera had been there for our kids.
When we got back to our room, I held Isa tightly. I knew she wasn't going to sleep. As much as I'd accused her of being crazy earlier, I knew it stemmed from a place of love. She hated feeling helpless when it came to our kids more than anything. It always brought out an irrational side to her.
I didn't know when I fell asleep, but I woke up to Mila again. It was technically Lera's turn, but I felt from the dip in the bed that Isa had decided to take over her shift.
Lera was sitting up in bed and was holding Mila by the time I got to her room. "I can do it," Lera said quietly. She looked better than she had in days. She couldn't have gotten more than 3 or 4 hours of sleep, but it was so much more than she'd managed up to that point.
"Lee, enjoy the sleep right now. You pumped enough earlier. We got this." Isa held out her arms for Mila. "Trust me, you're not going to have a chance to sleep like this. Not for a long time."
"You're sure?"
"Positive." Isa won the battle and Lera passed Mila over after kissing her head.
When we got to the kitchen, she turned to me. "Victor still hasn't called."
I glanced at the clock. It was after 2:30. It had only been about two hours. "Maybe they're still there. X-rays take time."
"Or he doesn't want to tell us what happened," she grumbled.
I sighed. A brief spurt of rationality earlier and then this. "He's going to call," I told her firmly. I half expected her phone to start ringing. When it didn't, I took a seat at the table. Mila must've just wanted to be held because she was fast asleep already.
We fell into a comfortable silence that wasn't broken until Victor called.
She answered it right away. "Is she okay?" Isa asked.
He wasn't on speakerphone, but I could still clearly hear him in the silence. "Yes. She broke her ankle and foot. She's wrapped up and needs to see an orthopedic to get a cast, but she's okay. We're gonna call the ortho tomorrow. You're on speaker if you want to talk to her."
Isa's entire demeanor changed. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm okay. Really. Victor is taking really good care of me. He's gonna take me home and then we're all gonna go to sleep," Pilar promised.
"Told you so," I whispered quietly.
Isa swatted at me.
"How's Mila?" Victor asked.
"Fast asleep in my arms. She's perfect. Such a little angel," our mom cooed. "Doesn't she make you want another one?"
"No," I said roughly.
"Picture it. Another little girl. We could even it out for Pilar," Isa suggested. It was half-hearted. She knew we couldn't have another kid.
"No," I said anyway. Isa grunted. It felt like I needed to remind her that I wasn't trying to be the bad guy. Another baby just didn't fit into our plans. "You always get like this when you're around babies. What's your plan? One kid in college and one in diapers. No. You can wait for Victor to have a kid." Or Pilar but I was so far away from being able to picture Pilar as a mom. I still wanted her to be my little girl. I was almost as bad as Isa.
"On that note, we're gonna be home in two minutes," Victor said uncomfortably. "I'll check in with you tomorrow. Good night."
Isa stared at her phone as the call screen disappeared. "He hung up on me." She fumbled with her phone and I realized she was about to call him back. I snatched her phone.
"Isa, no. It's almost 4 by him. He's probably exhausted. Let him focus on driving and getting home in one piece, okay? If he doesn't call tomorrow like he said he would, then you can let him have it."
She wasn't happy with that, but she didn't argue with me.
Thankfully, Victor gave us frequent updates. By the time we'd gotten back to Texas, we knew everything that Pilar had done since she left the hospital.
So, I was surprised when Victor asked if he could talk to me just a few minutes after we got back. I had no idea what this could be about because we'd talked more since Friday than I think we ever had.
"What's up, flacco?" I asked we lingered silently in the hallway. From where we were, I could see that Isa had Pilar and Adrian in a death grip on the couch.
"I, uh, I needed to…" Victor crossed his arms in front of him. He let out a huffy breath. "Adrian…" He trailed off again
I glanced back at the couch. "What happened?" I asked. What could make Victor this nervous? Adrian looked okay.
When I looked back at Victor, he almost looked determined. "I know you think he's a little kid, but he's really not anymore," he told me. He rubbed his arms as if he was cold. "I didn't learn about any of this stuff from you or mom. I learned the wrong stuff from my classmates and then the right stuff from Benji. I don't want it to be like that with Adrian."
"The wrong stuff? What are you talking about?" I asked.
"Adrian's curious about how two guys can have sex," Victor said slowly.
I froze. I couldn't begin to sort through what I was feeling. "He's too young to know about this."
"That's bullshit," Victor said angrily. He seemed to hear himself after he said it because he glanced towards the family room. They didn't appear to have heard him and he made a conscious effort to lower his voice. "Sorry, but… I was his age when I started hearing about it and it really messed with my head. Everything I heard made it seem like a joke or like it was gross or something. You told him about how a guy and a girl could have sex, but you think he's too young to know about the kind of sex I have and that makes me feel like shit. I don't want him to know about my sex life, but I also don't want him to think that the fact I have a sex life is a secret. Why is he too young for this? What do you think will happen?"
I closed my eyes. "You're right," I told him. "Let me talk to your mother, let me bring it up at PFLAG, and then we'll figure this out."
"Thanks." He started to walk away.
"Vic?" He turned back to me. "I wasn't trying to create a double standard. There are some things that I don't think of until you tell me, and I'm sorry. I know that's not fair to you."
Victor ducked his head. "I know you didn't mean it." He went to his bedroom and my heart sunk. I wondered if we'd ever get this right. Most of the time, I felt like we did an okay job. Then times like this reminded me that we still had so much to learn.
There was no time to talk to Isa that night because there was little that could pull her away from Pilar, Victor, and Adrian.
Mother's love wasn't enough to change how exhausted she was. The few hours of sleep we'd gotten last night in no way fended off our fatigue, so we called it right after Adrian went to sleep. I meant to tell her what Victor and I had talked about, but I wasn't awake long enough to do it.
The next morning, Isa was up before me. After a quick shower, I found her in the kitchen. "Smells good," I said quietly.
"I figured it was the least I could do. I missed a full week of meals." I was honestly impressed she didn't try to cook for them last night.
"Vic and I had an interesting talk yesterday."
"Oh?" She asked. She put the pan she'd been using in the sink and turned the water on.
"Adrian was asking some questions about how he and Benji can, you know. He thinks Adrian has a right to hear it from us." Isa's back was to me, so I couldn't gauge her reaction. "What do you think about that?"
"I don't know," she said softly.
"He said he thought it would be better for Adrian to hear it from us," I told her.
She turned off the water and turned to face me. "Do you agree?"
"I don't think we have much of a choice. Victor's right. If we want him to feel like he's no different than anyone else then we need to have this talk."
"He said that?"
"Not exactly, but I could tell. I wanted to talk about this at PFLAG tomorrow night. Maybe you want to come?"
She pursed her lips before she nodded. "I want to hear what they might have to say about this." It was that easy. She must've wanted to change the subject because her next words were, "Victor's going to walk Adrian to your office before he has work."
"I'm going to have a late night," I told her. I had a headache just thinking about how much work I was going to need to do today.
"I figured. I'll pick him up on my way home."
"Is Vic cool with that? Watching Adrian all morning and then working all night?"
"It was his idea," Isa told me. She blew on her mug and I could see the steam from her coffee blow away. "He's already up if you want to talk to him. He's going to talk to his boss today and see if he can switch his schedule to nights during the week. Maybe pick up some longer shifts."
"That's nice of him."
"I think he feels responsible." Isa put her mug down. "That visit's going to cost us."
I nodded. We hadn't talked about it yet, but we knew. Victor somehow knew too. I didn't have the greatest insurance. Just the copay for the emergency room was outrageous and I knew we were going to have to pay a percentage of her x-ray and c-t scan costs.
"The orthopedic was kind enough to give Victor the bill."
I groaned. "How much?" I'd forgotten about that. It just added to the expenses
"Before insurance? They billed for a little over 3,000. We won't know the actual until your insurance releases the claim."
"What's her cast made of? Gold?" I asked incredulously.
"How much of that are they going to cover, do you think?"
"Not much. They'll cover 70% of the visit, but I doubt I'm anywhere near my deductible for her cast."
I didn't miss the flash of worry that lit up her face before she hid it away. She coughed. "You're going to be late." She handed me a tumbler that I was sure was filled with coffee. "Your lunch is in the fridge."
"Thanks." I accepted a kiss from her. "I was hoping they'd be up by now."
"It's summer, and it's early. They'll be here when you get home," she assured me.
I still wasn't happy about it. I stopped in to see Victor before I left. He was typing away madly on his computer. He turned when he heard his door open. I could see from where I was standing that he was filling out some kind of form. "What's that?"
"They sent me an email with some paperwork for the program."
"I thought we were getting that by mail."
He shrugged. "I guess they want to save a tree. This one is supposed to help me find a compatible roommate," he explained. "They ask so many questions. Why do you think it matters if I wear socks or shoes inside?"
"Maybe they don't want to put you with someone that has a thing against bare feet," I told him. "I'm heading to work."
"Did mom tell you? I'm dropping-"
"Adrian off on your way to work. I know. Thanks," I told him. I lingered in his doorway for a second. "You don't need to jump through all these hoops, you know. We're okay. Your mom and I, we can handle it."
He looked at me almost blankly. "I was in charge," he told me quietly. "This wouldn't have happened if I wasn't distracted. I feel like I should help out while I can. Things are gonna be rough once I leave."
I really couldn't argue with that, so I simply said, "thanks" again before I left.
It felt like Tuesday night came very, very quickly. Perhaps it was because we weren't looking forward to getting advice on this, but we were pulling into the parking lot before we could blink an eye.
"Are you ready for this?" I asked. Isa had only been here a handful of times, almost exclusively when she needed advice about something.
"Not even a little," she said. She let out a breath before she got out of the car.
While Isa rarely came, last Tuesday was my second time missing PFLAG since I'd started going and all the regulars had noticed my absence. That part was easy. Isa and I could talk about Mila as long as we needed to and, once everyone knew I hadn't missed for a bad reason, the questions were endless.
When Jack arrived, approximately ten seconds before the meeting was supposed to start, he called the meeting to order.
We didn't bring up our question until Jack said, "we're going to end there unless anyone has something else to add?"
It wasn't intentional that we waited so long. It just felt like we never had our opening. And then it was presented to us on a silver platter.
With reluctance, Isa raised her hand like we were in a classroom. It took Jack a moment to realize that's what she was doing. "Uh, yes. Isabel."
"Yes. We were hoping to get some advice." Isa sounded nervous. "Our nine-year-old has started to ask questions about how sex works for same-sex couples. We don't know how to talk to him about this."
I had expected support, so I was confused by everyone else's confusion. Shelby was the one to speak up. "What do you mean?"
I could feel Isa stiffen, so I took over.
"We mean, we're struggling to figure out what's appropriate to tell him and how to do it in a tactful way," I clarified.
"Have you not talked to him about sex yet?" Jack asked. His eyebrow was scrunched.
"I have," I admitted. "And it wasn't until my older son, Victor, talked to us this weekend that I realized… it's not fair to Victor that we only talked about straight sex with him. I want to get this right so, one day, when Adrian has a kid of his own, he'll know how to do it."
Another woman, Laylie, spoke next. Her hands rested on her swollen belly and her legs were stretched out in front of her. Her husband sat next to her. He rarely spoke. "When I got pregnant, my seven-year-old had a lot of questions. When we explained to her how babies were made, we also explained that not every couple can make a baby. I didn't go into too much detail, but she knows how two women, two men, and a man and a woman can have sex. We also talked about how not everyone's sex is the same as their gender so nothing is absolute. Most of the time, two men can't make a baby, but sometimes they can. Same goes for women. And sometimes people have babies that don't have a gender."
"You don't think that was too much for her?" Isa asked.
"Not at all. It's only too much if you act like it's too much. For my seven-year-old, that meant she knows that sex looks different for everyone and different doesn't mean wrong."
"Different doesn't mean wrong," I repeated. "Do you mind if I steal that line?"
She grinned at me. "Usually I charge for that," she teased.
"Armando, you still look nervous," Jack observed.
I clasped my hands in front of me. "I guess, I'm putting all this pressure on myself because I didn't get it right the first time. With Victor or the first time I talked to Adrian. I never thought to talk about anything other than the kind of sex I assumed they'd have one day. I feel like this needs to be perfect this time."
"It's not gonna be perfect." It was Ophelia this time. Ophelia had the whole spectrum of sexuality in her house. She had six kids (she'd planned for four and then ended up being pregnant with triplets) and four of them had experiences and identities that brought her to this group. She'd been coming here forever. Long before Jack took over as the head of the meetings. "Heaven knows that once you think you get it right, you'll find out there's something entirely new for you to talk to him about. That's how it was for me. You think you've got the sex talk down and then, suddenly, you're Googling nonbinary sex with a transgender man and you're completely out of your element. Just let him know that a sex talk isn't one and done. You're going to have years and years of checking in with him and talking to him about sex."
"And talk to your other boy. My stepdaughter was able to help me figure out the right way to talk about it," Juergen said. He was not a man of many words and, when he did speak, his words were carefully considered.
"I also talked about how people need to give and receive consent before having sex," Laylie added.
"You talked about consent with your seven-year-old?"
"A kid's never too young to learn that no means no."
I nodded. "Thank you all. This was helpful."
"The most important thing is to go easy on yourself. If you're on edge and uncomfortable, Adrian's going to pick up on that. It's okay if you mess it up as long as you follow up and fix those mistakes."
Isa and I didn't speak after the meeting. I knew that I was going to have to be the one to talk to Adrian.
Long after Isa went to bed, I went to Victor. My mind was reeling after everything we'd talked about at PFLAG, but I felt like I probably should have asked Victor about this in the first place. We didn't avoid talking about sex with Victor, but we also kind of did. We trusted him to be safe and he knew way more about it than we did, so it was easy to leave it alone and not think about what happened behind his locked door.
I expected him to be asleep, so I walked into his room without knocking and found him lying down on his bed and holding his phone above his head. He glanced at me. "Uh, Benji, I gotta go."
"Actually, can you keep him on?" I asked.
Victor's eyebrow scrunched, but he sat up. "Hi Armando," Benji said cheerfully. Victor didn't turn Benji so I could see him.
"How's it going?" I asked.
"Pretty good."
"What's going on?" Victor asked.
"I'm going to talk to Adrian tomorrow. About, you know."
"Okay," Victor said slowly.
"I was wondering, and you don't have to tell me, but what do you wish I would've told you when you were younger?" I asked. "I got some stuff from the meeting tonight, but I wanted to hear from you."
Victor shifted uncomfortably, "I don't know," he muttered. He looked perplexed.
"I know for me, anything would have been helpful," Benji told me. "Just being told that it's okay for two guys to have sex would have been a game-changer. We live in such a heteronormative society, and talking about sex through a single lens only add to that problem,"
Victor sighed. "May I give you the topic of one of Benji's college essays."
"You're already writing college essays?" I asked surprised.
"We had to write some samples in Junior English," Benji explained. "Once a month, we got a different prompt to write about. I liked that one."
"Benji got an A on it. He'll probably use it." Victor looked proud. "Anyway. I agree with Benji. Hearing about it would have been awkward but probably would have made it way less scary when I started questioning. I can't tell you what would have helped because we never talked about it."
"I talked to you about it," I protested.
"Yeah. After I was having sex with Benji."
I stared at him because I hadn't realized that. We'd had the most unpleasant conversation of my life back in October and I'd just assumed that I'd gotten to him in time. I knew it was too little too late, but I'd always figured I'd at least caught him before they slept together and I felt like… how did I miss that? "Oh."
"Besides, I don't think that's how you want to talk to Adrian. I doubt he needs the condom talk. I think he's old enough to know some things but, yeah, I agree he's too young for that."
I rubbed my temple with my thumb. This was the opposite of helpful. "Vic, I texted you," Benji told him.
Victor fumbled with his phone for a second. "Huh," he said after a moment. "That's not the worst idea I've ever heard."
"You can say it."
"Say what?"
"Benji, you're a genius."
Victor rolled his eyes. "You are very smart."
Benji chuckled. "That's not really what I said," Benji pointed out.
"Should I go?" I asked uncertainly.
"No. Benji just had a not-terrible idea," Victor explained.
"What a compliment," he muttered.
A smile twisted at the corner of Victor's lips. "He thought it might be a good idea for you to start with the things that are the same no matter who is having sex."
"Like… like what?" I asked uncertainly. I wasn't sure if I was opening a can of worms by asking.
Victor seemed flustered. "Uh… I didn't think you were going to ask that," he told me.
Benji seemed to jump in and went to Victor's rescue. "Like it should happen between two people in love, that they should talk about what they want from sex. That there's oral and penetrative sex. I don't know. I mean, how far are you going to go? I assume you're going to tell him the general idea, but are you going to talk about how one guy is the bottom and one is the top."
"Benji! He's nine," Victor said. "I can barely talk about… that."
I had to look away because I'd been unprepared for this turn in conversation and it felt weird. I wasn't sure where the weirdness was coming from and I didn't want to somehow say or do the wrong thing right now.
Benji snorted. "Yeah, but… your dad's still there, right?"
"Yep." Benji didn't say anything else, so Victor took over. "Don't overthink this, pop. Tell Adrian how it works and then see if he has questions. I think that's what I would've wanted," he told me. "And maybe say something about how nothing anyone else says changes the fact that it's okay to have sex as long as you're doing it with someone you love and trust." He looked down at his lap. "It took me a long time to believe that because Benji's the only person who told me that."
"He's right," I said quietly. I knew it was too little too late, but suddenly, I needed him to hear it from someone else as well. "Thanks for this. I'll let you get some sleep." I hesitated a moment before I left, knocking on the doorframe as I left.
I did not sleep. Thank God for coffee because I didn't think I'd be able to get through my day without it.
I managed. It helped that my day was chaotic. My morning was full of meetings that I was too involved in to fall asleep during and my afternoon was spent tackling the work that had built up over the past week that I hadn't gotten to yesterday and probably wouldn't get through tomorrow or the next day.
I considered staying late just to avoid the conversation, but I knew I couldn't. I owed it to Victor and Adrian. And part of me thought I owed it to myself. I always said I wanted the world for them and if I didn't do this, those were just empty words. I owed it to who I wanted to be as a dad to fumble through the next awkward hour of my life.
When I suggested ice cream, Adrian's face lit up. We ended up at the park I knew Isa had taken him to a couple of times. I'd never been here before but she'd described it as calming. It was.
Adrian was transfixed by the ducks in the pond. The words still refused to come. It wasn't until I finished my ice cream that I found my voice. "Victor told me you were asking some questions this past weekend."
He looked confused. "I guess."
"He said you were asking questions about how two boys… uh, I mean two young men can be, uh-" I tried to figure out how to describe this, but the word was honestly evading me as if my brain was repressing anything that might help with this conversation.
"How they can have sex," he finished. He looked hopeful, which only put more pressure on me. I needed to do this right.
"Yes," I agreed. I bunched the napkin in my hand for something to do. "Do you remember what I told you about sex?"
"That it was what a man and a woman did when they were in love," he told me.
Victor's words echoed in my head. You told him about how a guy and a girl could have sex, but you think he's too young to know about the kind of sex I have and that makes me feel like shit.
"I did say that, didn't I? I was wrong. It's what two people do when they are in love. Any two people." I was probably a little more forceful than I should have been but if he took anything away from this conversation, I wanted it to be that.
I thought it went okay. I did what Benji suggested and started with the things that are the same and fumbled my way through what I hoped was an age-appropriate description. I was careful to say that there's nothing shameful about different kinds of sex.
He didn't say a word while I spoke, which inexplicably made it harder. At least with questions, I would have had direction.
When I finished, he was quiet. I hoped he was just processing everything and not figuring out how to deal with a new emotional trauma.
Isa called me almost an hour after we got to the park. "Where are the two of you?" She asked.
"We're still at the park."
"How'd it go?"
I glanced at Adrian. I had no idea how to answer that question. Adrian was usually my little open book but right now? He was blank. "I'll fill you in later."
"Are you leaving soon?"
"I'm not sure. I'll call you once we're in the car."
"Okay." She was quiet for a moment. "I'm sure you did great. Love you."
"You too."
My phone call must've spurred something in Adrian because he finally spoke. "Can I ask one more question?"
He'd barely asked any questions so I thought he was entitled to way more than one. "Of course."
"Why couldn't I know this before?" He fidgeted with his hands as if he was nervous to ask about it.
I shouldn't have been surprised by his question but it threw me off. "It's not that you couldn't know. We never thought to talk to you about it."
"Then how'd you know to talk to Victor about it?" I looked away from him, but his soft, tiny "oh" still felt like a dagger to my heart.
"We didn't know it was a conversation we needed to have because it wasn't something we'd ever had to deal with," I told him. Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't a good excuse. I still found myself rationalizing. "You have to understand that no one ever talked to us about this either."
"Then how'd you find out about it?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that you knew all this before Victor came out, right? How'd you find out."
"Oh… I guess we found out through other people. Through them talking about it or…" I looked at Adrian. "You need to go into some kind of interrogation field when you grow up, macho, because you are good at this."
"Good at what?" he asked innocently.
"I hear you. It's messed up that the first time Victor heard about… this stuff, it was probably people making fun of it or joking around. All I can say is we're better now. We know better. That's part of the reason we're talking about this." He nodded, but I could see he was upset about it too. "Do you have any other questions for me?" I waited for him to shake his head. "Then, let's head home."
He didn't speak a word while we drove home. I almost asked him nearly a half-dozen times if he was okay, but I wasn't sure I wanted the answer.
When we got home, Victor was sitting on the floor and seemed to have gathered all of Creekwood in our apartment.
Lake and some girl I didn't recognize were also on the floor. Pilar was stretched out taking nearly the whole couch for her cast. She made just enough room for Felix to squeeze in next to her. Rahim was sitting with his legs over the side of the chair he was sitting on - a bold move after Pilar got hurt. Another girl was sitting in front of him. There was some kind of game on the coffee table and from the excitement on Felix's face, it wasn't hard to realize that this was his idea. "What? No Mia?" I asked.
"She's not coming," Pilar said annoyed. "Not until we're done."
"Hey, cut her a break. She's having a time right now," Victor said defensively. He glanced at Lake before he sighed. "She's in an impossible situation."
Pilar held up her hands. "Whatever."
"Ah-ha!" Felix said triumphantly. He played a card that looked like a ghost had somehow been stabbed with a knife. "So, I move my bride to the crypt and he or she is officially reunited with their bride or groom. Look at me being inclusive. Ight, what do your instructions say?" He looked around the circle and only then seemed to realize that he'd interrupted a confusingly tense conversation.
"Our instructions say that we were lured here with the promise of pizza and instead we've been forced to play a really confusing game that only you understand. You could be cheating for all we know," the girl in front of Rahim said. She had a bright blue streak in her hair that almost seemed to glow in the dimming lights.
"We did feed you pizza," Victor pointed out. "You chose to stay for this. I came home to this nonsense."
"Sounds like a party," I said. "I thought you had work."
"Dad," Victor said. He turned to face me and glanced at Adrian. "I did, but Sarah realized that she needs me to work a double on Saturday, so she told me to go home. I would've called but…" he trailed off but he didn't need to finish. He knew what today was. "How was work?"
"Andrew played Turtles and Tortoises with me," Adrian said smugly.
Victor snickered. "How'd you con him into that?" he asked.
"I did not con him," Adrian said indignantly. "He knows a good card game when he sees it."
"Sure." Victor rolled his eyes. "Even Felix won't play that with you anymore and he loves weird games."
"Because he changes the rules so he always wins," Felix protested. "Now will someone read the instructions?"
"Sorry, man. I think we have to wrap this up," Victor said. He watched Adrian as he went to his room. He climbed to his feet and stretched. "You win?"
Felix huffed. "Whatever. You have no sense of adventure."
Victor didn't look like he heard him as he went to Adrian's room. I wasn't sure if I missed some kind of secret signal, but Adrian opened his door before Victor even knocked.
"Felix, are you staying for dinner?" Isa called.
"That would be great."
"Rahim and Ryker are staying too," Pilar called.
Ah. Ryker. I probably should've figured that out. Victor had told us they were over a few times while we were gone.
I went to the kitchen to check in with Isa. She gave me a whispered, "we'll talk about it later" before she went back to making dinner.
Isa saying we'd talk about it later meant that all of our kids would be in bed before she'd so much as broach the topic. "How bad was it?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "He was just… quiet."
"Good quiet or bad quiet?"
"Neither. He was just thinking a lot. He, uh, asked why he couldn't know before."
"What did you tell him?"
"The truth." I rubbed the back of my neck. "That this is still new to us and we didn't think to talk about it before. I think he got offended on behalf of Victor. He didn't say it, but he knows we messed this all up."
"He's not wrong. Do you ever think about how different things would be with Victor and Pilar if we had the answers they needed us to have?"
"Ise, no one has all the answers. We're gonna make mistakes. Just thank God that He gave us kids strong enough to handle them."
"Every day," she said softly.
We got ready for bed after that, but there was this kind of… tension that seemed to saturate our bedroom. We were both restless. Around 1, Isa gave up and got out of bed. She was probably going to clean the kitchen. That had always helped her. She spent a lot of time cleaning the kitchen when she found out she was pregnant with Adrian.
I didn't last much longer. I knew sleep was a lost cause when I started figuring out, to the minute, how much sleep I'd get if I fell asleep.
I heard soft talking from Victor's room and figured if he was awake anyway, I might as well check in with him. I thought it might have been Isa, but I realized he must've been on the phone with Benji. "Hey, can we talk real quick?"
"Uh. I'll be right back. My dad wants to talk to me," he said quickly. He dropped his phone on his bed before he walked to the hallway. Maybe it wasn't Benji. Part of me wanted to ask, but I didn't want to pry. "What's up?"
"I just wanted to see if Adrian said anything to you earlier?" He scrunched his forehead. "He was really quiet after we talked, so… is he okay?"
Victor studied me for a moment. "He's good. He had a few more questions and he figured I'd answer them since you told him everything. Questions about me and Benji." He ducked his head. "I told him a little about March."
"I thought we agreed not to tell him," I said surprised. Victor had been the one that pushed it the most.
"Yeah, but… I don't know. I guess I didn't want anyone else to be able to twist it. I didn't realize how much he already knew."
"He did?" I asked surprised. I thought we'd done an okay job keeping this from him.
"Yeah. I guess he's got a few classmates with siblings that go to the high school, and since he was my brother…" He squeezed his eyes shut. "I know you didn't want him to know, but I told him. That me and Benji made a mistake and had sex somewhere we shouldn't have and that someone took a video of us. His classmates told him that we made the video but he had trouble believing that. Honestly, dad, we're really lucky that they all thought it was hilarious that Adrian didn't know about how two guys could have sex when he has a gay brother or… I don't even want to think about what they would've told him." I winced. He was quiet for a minute. "Thank you."
"For what?" I asked.
"Talking to him."
I shrugged. "It was long overdue," I told him.
"No," he said softly. "I'm sorry for what I said the other day. I was just tired and it had been a stressful week. You talked to him. That's all that matters."
I would've thought he was lying to make me feel better, but I could see he meant it. "Okay. I'm sorry we didn't think to do this before."
"You know, I once told Benji I didn't want him to have to teach me how to be gay," Victor said quietly. "It was this shame I carried with me and part of me always believed he resented me because I was so new to all of it. It was part of all the problems we went through. I didn't realize that we both had to teach each other what it means for us to be gay because we have different experiences and it means different things to us. Benji couldn't teach me how to be gay even if he wanted to. He could just show me what it meant to him. It's not super fun to teach someone about what it's like for me to be gay, but I'd rather do that than let it cause problems. I forgot that doesn't just apply to Benji. I know how hard you try to support me, and… I should've told you how I felt months ago instead of expecting you to just figure it out. I'll do better."
He disappeared back in his room. I pushed his door fully open before it could close. "No." He turned to face me.
"What?" He asked confused.
I needed a second. I knew something was wrong about what he'd just said, but I needed my brain to catch up with the rest of me. "It's not on you to do better."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean… yeah, it would be nice if you could talk about this more but that's on us too." I closed my eyes for a second. "We're afraid… I'm afraid."
Victor looked started. "You're… afraid?" He said the word like it didn't make sense to him; like he too was holding onto this belief that I was invincible as strongly as I was holding onto the little boy that used to beg me to take him to the basketball court in Texas and called me his number one teammate.
"Yeah." I clasped my hands behind my back. I couldn't stop myself from shifting uncomfortably even though it didn't help. "I don't know what I'm doing. I haven't known what I'm been doing since that first night you told us you were gay. I don't want to lose you."
"Dad," Victor said softly.
But I wasn't done, so I didn't meet his eyes. "I thought I was doing enough because I've been going to PFLAG and I found people to talk to and I wrapped my head around you and Benji."
"That is enough," he told me.
"No. Because I didn't talk to you. How many times over the past year have we talked about this?" I asked him. He didn't answer because it was a rhetorical question. "How many times did we only talk about it because we had to?" Once again, he didn't need to answer. We both knew. We'd never talked about it if we hadn't had to. Every talk had been the result of something. Benji's mom walking in on them, me accidentally reading a note Benji had written him, that video, Adrian's questions. Even then, we'd talked about it as little as possible. Nicknames for Benji and acknowledging that he had a boyfriend… it wasn't enough. I never should have thought it was. In the beginning, I'd been looking at it like it was a competition. I was handling it better than Isa so that was enough. It was never a competition. It should have always been about Victor.
"It doesn't matter," he muttered. "You tried. That's enough."
"Yes, it does matter," I snapped. Victor looked startled. I heard a door open behind me. "You shouldn't have to settle for enough."
"I never thought I had to." He took a seat in the chair by his desk and I could see how exhausted he was. In the dim light of the only light in his room, the shadows made his face look almost gaunt. I wanted to blame the shadows because I didn't want this to be another thing we missed. "I just figured you were doing your best. And it wasn't like…" he glanced over my shoulder before he looked down at his lap. "I don't know."
I realized that the door opening must've been Isa coming to check on us when she put her hand on my shoulder. She moved forward and crouched in front of Victor.
"Mijo." She said it softly, almost like a prayer. She brought her hand to his cheek and he looked up at her. "Say what you're thinking."
"That is what I'm thinking," he told her. He pointedly looked away from her when he said that.
Isa sighed. She knew the expression on his face as well as I did. He wasn't going to break. "Do you remember what we talked about when you and Benji were fighting?"
Victor scrunched his forehead. "You just kept asking me if he was really worth the fighting."
I couldn't see her face, but I could imagine how it would twist. She shook her head. "No, I mean after you found out about Derek and were panicking."
"Oh." He was quiet for a moment. "You said that I would hurt Benji more by not talking to him about how freaked out I was about Derek than I would by telling him."
"Yes. You told me you wanted to be strong for him and didn't want to make this more difficult on him, but it worked out, right? Talking to him about it?" Victor nodded. "The same thing goes for us, amore. You may think you're sparing our feelings, but it hurts so much more to know that there is something you think you can't tell us."
I thought he was going to stay silent because over a minute passed. I would've left, but Isa never got up from her crouched position. Finally, after several minutes, Victor whispered, "I don't want to seem ungrateful. You've both done so much for me."
"But?" Isa prodded.
Victor sighed. "But nothing. You've done everything for me. You got to a point where you're okay with Benji. He feels like he's welcome here. That's enough." Isa must've made a face because Victor continued. "It's just… sometimes…" he let out a huffy breath. "Sometimes it feels like you've wrapped your head around the boyfriend thing, but there's so much more to being gay than having a boyfriend and I worry that you might not see that because you've never known me as gay and single and… I love Benji so much, but he's not my whole identity."
I stared at him because… I had kind of equated Benji with him being gay. I struggled to think about what else there was because being gay seemed to literally be about who he was interested in.
"Can you tell us more about that?" Isa asked quietly.
"Um, well. Sure, I guess. You know, it's like… Benji is a huge part of my life, but being his boyfriend is still just a part of me. I'm a gay athlete which is a whole thing especially now that I might be playing in college. It's figuring out how to act in the locker room so I'm not the gay kid in the locker room, but just another guy on the team and figuring out how to be okay that, no matter how well they know me, I have teammates that want nothing to do with me because I'm gay. It's realizing that as sh- as rough as that can be, I also have teammates that have gotten over it or were on board with it from the very beginning and that, maybe, if I never came out, they never would have figured out how to be okay with someone that's gay. And that's just figuring out basketball. That doesn't begin to cover who I want to be when I'm in school and fighting what so many other people think it should mean for me to be gay to figure out what it actually means to me and learning that I am so proud to be who I am. I'm not ashamed or embarrassed or exhausted by how much extra work it is to be out and proud and myself. And it's-" Victor cut himself off abruptly, probably because he ran out of breath. "Sorry, I know that was a lot." He hung his head again.
"It wasn't a lot," Isa assured him. "Keep going."
"It's late," Victor hinted.
Isa nodded slowly. "Okay, but we will continue this conversation." Her words sounded uncertain, almost like she was asking a question.
Victor looked at me, looked at her, and held her gaze, a look of determination on his face. For a moment, I saw so much of Isa in him. Most of his nervous habits came from her, but so did his stubbornness. I didn't understand it right now. At least, I didn't understand it right away. While he and Isa were in their weird staring contest, I tried to figure it out. A few months ago, I would've said that Victor would have been the first to break, no question about it, but he was so different now. Since he was little, I'd admired how strongly he clung to his belief in right and wrong. That had never gone away; now, he also had the strength to hold out as long as he needed to stick to that belief.
For a moment, I felt like I was standing in his doorway, note from Benji clutched in my hand. It had happened in January. I hadn't thought anything of it when I picked up the piece of paper that had fluttered from his bag. Then, I'd opened it and everything had changed. I don't want to make you uncomfortable, he'd told me when I asked him about it. I'd known they were having sex but that? It was so much more than I'd been prepared for. My answer had been, more uncomfortable than reading this? I'd known the moment I said it that it was the wrong thing to say. We'd had a grudging conversation that he'd admitted had been nice in its own weird way. When I'd asked why we didn't talk about it more, he'd just said, you never asked, so I figured you didn't want to know. I'd brushed it off at the time, figuring it stemmed more from his discomfort.
"Didn't want to know," I whispered out loud. Both Isa and Victor looked at me. "That's what this is about, right? We don't talk about it, so you think we don't want to know." Victor looked at his clasped hands intently; he might as well have confirmed it. "I need you to hear me; our discomfort is not the same as disinterest." I stole that line directly from one of the dads at PFLAG. When he'd said it during my second PFLAG meeting, I'd pretty much ignored it. I hadn't understood what he meant at the time; now I did. Just like I understood his reluctance. "Your mom and I, we don't always know the right question to ask or if there even is a question to ask but that doesn't mean we don't want to know. Vic, we love you and if it matters to you, it matters to us."
A tear slipped out of Victor's eye. He blinked rapidly before he nodded. Suddenly, he started to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Isa asked.
"Nothing," he said. He still let out intermittent chuckles.
"Okay. I think that's a sign that you need to get some sleep." I gently pulled on Isa's elbow.
"We'll talk more tomorrow," Isa said determinedly.
I shut the door before Victor could give us an answer because I had a feeling we'd fall into a never-ending cycle of Isa demanding an answer that we all knew Victor wasn't ready to give us. He'd been patient with the time it took us to get to this moment; we needed to be patient with him as well.
Isa did not seem to agree. While the exhaustion I hadn't felt earlier hit me at that exact moment, it seemed to only fuel Isa. I wasn't sure when she finally crashed, but she was soundly sleeping when I woke up for work.
In the two and a half weeks between when we had that talk and when Victor left for his program, we talked a little about this. It was hard; we didn't have much time. When we weren't working and Victor wasn't working, it seemed like one of his friends had plans to squeeze in some kind of social life for him. I couldn't begrudge them that, but it meant that we most checked in with him in passing.
Isa essentially put a claim on Victor for the night before we left, so he gave up whatever Fourth of July plans he probably had to be with us. We all sat in our living room, talking in quiet voices. I think we were all aware that things would be different once we got back to our apartment tomorrow without Victor. It shouldn't have been all that different than when he went away for the weekend with his basketball team or with Benji or when he went to Vegas, but there was something that felt final about it. Like we knew that, even though we still had a year left with him, he would be leaving us for good soon. He'd be going away to school and moving who knows where for work. This was just the beginning.
I had to give Isa credit, she only cried twice - once when she gave Victor his going away gift (a new bag for basketball), and when Victor told her we should all turn in.
When I woke up, I had a feeling Victor was nervous because he was in the kitchen making pancakes. He had his earbuds in and, every now and then, I could hear him whisper a lyric to a song I didn't recognize. Isa was up and was sitting at the kitchen table watching him.
I sat down next to her. "Morning."
"Shh," she whispered. "He hasn't noticed me yet."
"How long have you been up?"
She glanced at the clock. "Maybe half an hour."
"And he's been up that whole time?"
She nodded. "He made something that looked like biscuits first."
"Biscuits? That's new." We watched him for a minute. "Who exactly is he feeding?" I asked as he added some pancakes to a precarious stack that looked like it could feel every person that lived in this building.
She shrugged. "We might be eating pancakes all week."
"Do you think we should stop him?"
She shook her head. "Let him be." She was quiet for several minutes. "Do you remember the first time he cooked for us?"
I shook my head. I couldn't pinpoint when it had started; I just knew that it quickly became a staple in our lives.
"It was our anniversary," she said quietly. "He was six. He stole the alarm from our bedroom and somehow figured out how to set it but didn't know what he was doing so he set it for 3 am."
It was like everything clicked into place. I didn't know how I forgot that. "He made us toast and raw bacon because he never turned the stove on."
Isa chuckled. "You forgot about the chicken nuggets."
"I didn't forget; I just blocked them out." They'd been black all the way through. To this day, we had no idea how long he put them in the oven for, the oven he managed to set to 500 degrees. He'd walked into our room with Isa's oven mitts on holding two burnt chicken nuggets with Pilar trailing him with a plate of toast and bacon. It had been early. Maybe 4 or 5 and Victor looked so proud of himself.
It had taken Isa and me a minute to realize what had happened and then Isa started freaking out because of everything that could have gone wrong - Victor could have burnt himself or Pilar, they could have burnt down our apartment, what if they'd tried to leave, he could've fallen off the chair he climbed on to turn the oven dial. Isa's list had gone on and on. Victor had stood there, literally trembling and when Isa asked him what possessed him to do that, he just said "happy anniversary" before he ran to his bedroom and hid under his bed.
"For months afterward, Victor was my shadow in the kitchen. He wanted to know how to do stuff, so they wouldn't get yelled at again. And then one day, he started to help. Little things at first. Opening cans, washing vegetables, mixing stuff."
"I don't remember that," I admitted.
She shrugged. "You were working. The only time you weren't was on Sundays, and Vic wanted to spend time with you." A small smile spread across her face. "Sundays were your days, and it worked out. He grew up to be a lot like you; we're lucky."
No, I realized. Victor wasn't much like me. He had bits of me and bits of Isa in him, but there was something else. Neither of us would have been brave enough to do what he did. There was something strong that lived in him that was uniquely his own. A compassion and fearlessness that we could only strive for.
Adrian was the next to wake up. Unlike us, he bypassed the table to go right to the kitchen. We couldn't hear them, but they seemed to be joking about something. Isa's hand found mine while we watched them.
It felt like seconds had passed before Victor was putting a plate of pancakes in the middle of the table. Adrian carefully held a bowl of sausage and placed it next to the pancakes. "Can you go wake up Pilar?" Victor asked Adrian quietly.
Adrian nodded and ran off to Pilar's room. I thought Victor was going to go grab the biscuits Isa insisted he made; instead, he turned to us. "I don't want this to be a big thing, but I just wanted to say thanks. I know your summer is about to get complicated and… it would have been easier to tell me I had to stay here." I didn't try to tell him we would never do that to him; I knew he already knew. "So, yeah. Thanks."
He started to turn away. "Oh no, mijo. You're not getting off that easy," Isa told him as she rose. She moved so she was in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders. She looked at him for a moment before she sighed. "I know you don't want this to be a thing, but we need you to know that we are so proud of you. You had a tough year -" That might be the understatement of the century. "You worked so hard and you deserve this, so enjoy it."
When Isa hugged him, he seemed to revert back to a little boy. "Love you, mami."
They embraced for several moments before we heard the shuffle of footsteps. Pilar looked like she was literally dragging her feet but perked up considerably when she saw pancakes. "Remind me why we have to be up so early? It's summer. The time to sleep in."
"Check-in starts at 8," Isa told her.
"And goes til 12," Victor muttered. He'd been trying to convince her all week that we didn't need to get there right at 8, but she'd insisted. I think she wanted the time to get used to seeing him in a dorm room. That or Victor was right and she wanted to get his move in over with. Once he was moved in, he hoped Isa would calm down about this whole thing. I was doubtful, but I didn't want to burst his bubble.
Isa actually held it together pretty well once we got there. We had a brief moment where I honestly expected her to assemble an angry mob to take out the kid that didn't want to be Victor's roommate but, other than that, she was calmer than she'd been in weeks.
I guessed she was just holding it all in because she cried for several minutes when we left. "It's only six weeks," I reminded her gently.
She didn't acknowledge that. It turned out there was a cure for this kind of situation - vow renewal planning and Isa wholeheartedly threw herself into it. When she was working, she was in party planning mode. Figuring out how to get a permit for the park and what kinds of permits she needed, price checking a caterer, figuring out music. Especially after she got off the phone with Victor, she threw herself into it.
I figured she'd eventually run out of things to do for it, but it seemed like the moment I thought we were done, she'd found something new.
About three and a half weeks after Victor left, she brought up the one thing that we'd both been avoiding… okay, I'd been avoiding.
"Did you call your parents yet?" Isa asked. She was rifling through the stack of mail that she'd just gotten from the mailbox. To anyone else, it would have seemed like a casual question, but I knew her. I knew that Isa had carefully choreographed this moment to seem indifferent as she asked a question that both of us had the answer to.
"No," I said just as casually as Isa.
She moved an envelope to the back of her stack. "Do you think you're going to do that soon? We need to know if they're coming so we can give the caterer a number."
I sighed. "Ise." She looked up from the mail. "You know they're not going to come. I think we both need to accept that our parents will not be there."
"Shhh," she hissed.
"Victor's not here," I reminded her.
"But Felix is," she told me.
"He's not reporting back to Victor."
Her eyebrows creased. "Do you know that?" she demanded.
I was about to tell her that she was being crazy but… she kind of had a point. Felix very well could mention it to Victor and that kid did not need any more guilt being added to his plate. I dropped my voice to a whisper. "Are you okay with that?"
She shrugged. She wasn't okay with it. I wasn't either, but there wasn't anything we could do. "What did your sister say?"
I brought my elbows to the kitchen table and rested my forehead on my fists. "That she's coming for me, but I shouldn't expect her to pretend to be okay with Victor. My brothers are both on board. Monty said that he was really proud of Victor."
The corners of Isa's lips twitched. "The boys in your family. Seriously."
"We are pretty great."
She stood behind me and rested her hands on my shoulder. "You are," she said seriously. "Great enough to call your parents and at least get their official no."
"Fine. I'll call them later."
"Or, hear me out, you could call them now. They'll be home from church by now. Hopefully, Jesus put them in a good mood." I thought that was wishful thinking of the highest proportion, but her fingers trailed my neck which was immediately distracting. "And maybe you calling them will put me in a very good mood."
I let out another sigh, but we both knew Isa had won the battle.
"Gross. You couldn't have waited?" Pilar asked. Behind her annoyed mask, I swear she was a little pleased. She, like Victor, would probably take a little emotional trauma if it meant she could see us doing well. She went out into the hallway with Felix and returned a minute later without him.
"He had work?" Isa asked.
"Yep," Pilar said simply. She hesitated a moment. "I'm gonna keep Adrian in his room, maybe watch a movie with him and give you two some space to make that call." She disappeared into Adrian's bedroom and five minutes later, we could hear the faint sounds of something playing from his room. It was kind of amazing. One week ago, Pilar never would have offered. I couldn't blame her. She'd always been an independent kid and to have that taken away… of course, she struggled. The scooter that Mia was absolutely adamant she did not buy had been a complete gamechanger. She still had trouble with stairs and needed someone to carry the scooter for her when she hobbled down but had a newfound ability to do things for herself now that she could consistently have a hand free.
Isa handed me my phone and sat next to me. It was always strange when I called my parents. I tried once a week, for Adrian's sake, to get them on the phone and they were always cheery as if their last visit here hadn't been an undeniable disaster. This was no exception.
I put off bringing up our vow renewal as long as I could because I could almost believe that everything was normal when we talked like this. Yet, inevitably, I had to tell them why I called and inevitably, they got quiet. I couldn't see them, but I knew they were unhappy. Their silence was always more telling than anything they could say. It was honestly hard to figure out what they were more upset about. I thought their disapproval of Victor was probably a little stronger than their disapproval of Isa, but it was hard to tell which was going to be the deciding factor for them. I looked at Isa, a woman that went to war with her mother for Victor.
I closed my eyes. Suddenly, I didn't want to hear their excuses. I was sure they were coming, but we all knew that whatever excuse they came up with would be just that. An excuse. Because they couldn't bring themselves to admit their truth out loud, not when they knew we disagreed. I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes. "I know that you're working through your stuff." I thought that was a pretty judicious way of saying that they were clinging to their homophobia despite their adamance that they just needed time. "This is important to me. It's important to all of us. Isa and our kids. They are my whole world. If you can accept that, we'd love to have you here. If you can't, I won't say I understand, but it's your decision. I hope that, as my parents and as his grandparents, you can put aside whatever problem you have with Victor for one day but that's nonnegotiable. If you want to be a part of my family, you are a part of my whole family. That includes Isa and Victor. Your choice." My heart was pounding in my chest. I was forty years old, but I'd never stood up to them. I'd once told Victor how impressed I was that he'd held to his resolve with them because I'd never managed to do it myself. This was all new to me.
There was a long silence. Then my mom's gruff voice, "send us the date so we can figure out a flight."
I didn't try to tell her that we'd sent them an invitation. I didn't want to create more problems by bringing it up. "Thanks, mami."
She hung up without another word. I looked at Isa. Her face was neutral. "I'll let the caterer know," she said softly as she stood up. I watched her as she went to our room and firmly shut the door behind herself. I didn't try to follow her. I didn't know whether she was upset that my parents were coming or upset that I somehow got through to them when her pleading fell on deaf ears with her mom, but she deserved her space.
When she came out to start making dinner, she was still quiet. After that, we fell back into a routine. We worked, made tiny decisions about our vow renewal that I didn't fully understand, and avoided talking about the hard things. I knew we couldn't keep it up. Eventually, we'd have to talk about the invoice we got from the insurance company and her mom and my parents, but I was just as eager to avoid it as she was.
It was over two weeks before I'd bring up any of it. It took a surprising conversation at work for me to realize I couldn't put it off any longer.
"What is this?" Andrew demanded as he walked into my office. He held a cupcake in one hand and the card that everyone in the office had signed in the other.
"Did I get the date wrong?" I asked uncertainly. "I thought it was yesterday." I'd added his birthday to my calendar, but I could have put it in wrong.
"No, but why would you do this?" he asked.
I honestly had no idea what was happening right now.
"Take a seat." I motioned to the chair in front of me. "Why are you upset right now?" He slumped in the chair and had a familiar expression on his face. I knew nothing I said could get him to talk about whatever was bothering him right now. "Okay, don't tell me. Did you do anything fun for your birthday?"
He opened and closed his mouth. "Victor told you, didn't he?"
"Told me what?" I asked.
He crossed his arms. "I don't need your pity. It's fine that my parents didn't care enough to wish me a happy birthday yesterday. I got to spend the day with people that care about me." His frown deepened. "I don't need your pity." He repeated it as if it would emphasize his point, but it mostly filled me with exactly that.
"Believe it or not, I didn't know that. They're still mad at you?" I couldn't wrap my head around that. I felt like I'd be overjoyed if my kid came home to tell me he was sticking with his job and mentorship program. Yet, Andrew's parents had been giving him the silent treatment since he told them. I'd hoped they'd put that aside this weekend. This was a big year for him. 18.
"Then why?" He asked. He motioned to the cupcake.
"Because I wanted to do something to celebrate your birthday," I told him. I was starting to think it wasn't nearly enough, but I'd assumed he would've done something over the weekend. He looked like what I said made no sense. "You can thank Fran for the card. Office birthdays are her thing. She'll probably have cake for you later. Pretend to be surprised."
"And the cupcake?" he asked.
I shrugged. "You seemed like you'd like chocolate."
"Do you do this for everyone?" he asked.
"No."
He sighed. "I don't get it. Why are you always so nice to me?"
I studied him for a minute. "Because you stood up for Victor when me and Isa didn't. I know the two of you had problems when we first moved here but that doesn't seem important when you were the one that made Victor feel like he still deserved a place on the team. He didn't give up because of you and now look at him."
"You think that's because of me?" he asked skeptically.
"I do. Victor's a runner. If you hadn't pulled him back in? I don't think he would've gone back to basketball."
He frowned. "I don-"
Before he could finish, there was a knock on my door. "Mando, you have that meeting."
I glanced at the clock and internally groaned. I hated these meetings. Once a week, we had to have a meeting with people all over Atlanta to share the projects we were managing. It didn't seem important to me. "Right. I'll call in in a minute."
Shayla nodded. "I'll let him know."
I looked back at Andrew. "What were you going to say?"
"I don't get it," he muttered.
"What?" I asked.
"Any of this. No one's ever taken this much of an interest in me before."
"I'm sure that's not true."
"It is. I've been nothing but a disappointment to my parents. I was a jerk to Victor when you all first moved here, so this doesn't make sense. You, of all people, have every reason to hate me."
I studied Andrew for a minute. "Do you know what I've learned from Victor? It's that people can change and grow and learn. Maybe you were a jerk to him then, but you're one of his friends now." Andrew still looked doubtful.
Shayla knocked again. "Phil would like to know if you like your job or if you'd like him to find someone that does."
I rubbed my temples. I hated Phil. He was the big boss; the head of the whole company and it seemed to be his life's mission to find ways to stretch us thinner and thinner. My whole position existed because he felt it was feasible for one person to do the job of two people. "Like he could find someone to replace me," I muttered. "I'm calling in now. I'm sorry to cut this short, Andrew. We'll talk more later."
He got up and hesitated at the door. "Mr. Salazar?" I looked towards him as he looked down at his shoes. "Thank you."
"For what?"
He shrugged. "For talking to me like I'm a person. And for remembering." He motioned to his cupcake. He looked like he was going to say something else, but he walked away before he could.
When I got home, I went right to Isa and kissed her. "What was that for?" she asked with a small smile plastered to her face.
"Do I need an excuse to kiss my beautiful wife?"
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "What did you do?" she asked.
"Nothing." I glanced behind me to make sure that Pilar wasn't listening in. "I think we should call your mom again."
Immediately, Isa stiffened. "No."
"You never know. Maybe she'll change her mind."
"You don't know my mother."
"I do, Ise. And I know you. If you could come around, so can she." I hadn't been prepared when it had popped into my head in the middle of my meeting while I was thinking about my talk with Andrew, but it did. Victor gave Isa chance after chance and, eventually, she took that chance and changed. The least we could do was the same for her mom and my parents.
Isa's mouth fell open in a grimace and she creased her forehead. "Are you saying I'm like my mother?"
Yeah, I should've seen that coming. I'd walked right into that trap. "No. You are your father, through and through," I told her. I brought my hand to her cheek. She'd always been close with her mom, but she was her father's daughter. He passed away when she was pregnant with Pilar "You are amazing. I just think we owe it to Victor to try with your mom."
She ducked her head. "You're right," she reluctantly said. "I'll call her this weekend."
"It's Monday," I pointed out.
"And I have to get started on dinner."
I didn't push her. It was a little early for dinner, but she needed the distraction. I sat down at the table. There was a stack of bills that she'd been working through when I got home. We hadn't been talking about it, but I knew it was on both of our minds. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. She had a number written that she needed to call to see if we could set up a payment plan for Pilar's bill. If we could, we'd be fine. If not… well, I'd have to ask for a lot of overtime, but we'd make it. I was trying to figure out exactly how much overtime I'd have to ask for and was weighing whether Phil would budge on his whole flex time over overtime policy when there was a knock on the door.
Isa came out of the kitchen. "Are you expecting someone?"
I shook my head. Who could I possibly be expecting?
She opened the door, and I couldn't see who it was. I recognized Benji's voice as he started to say, "hi Isab-" His voice was cut off when she hugged him. I forgot he was back. It didn't take any effort for Isa to get him to stay for dinner.
Before Victor had left, we'd regularly been able to check in with Benji; a lot had happened in the last four weeks and Isa eagerly asked Benji for more details. She seemed oblivious when he got uncomfortable with the attention and turned the tables to everyone else. Dinner lasted way longer than it usually would simply because we were talking. It wasn't until Felix said he needed to get home before he could get more grounded that Isa went to do the dishes and I put Adrian to bed.
Adrian came to work with me every day, but I rarely had more than a couple of minutes to talk to him and that was usually on our way in when he was trying not to fall asleep in the car. Most days, Isa picked him up on her way home, so he was left with Andrew most of the day. The few minutes I got with him after dinner was usually the only real time we got together, if we even got that. He was brimming with excitement that Benji was back today. "Do you think I could hang out with Benji some days?" he asked hopefully. "Andrew's great and all, but he still has to work." He wasn't wrong. When Victor was dropping Adrian off, Andrew would watch him after he was done with work. Now? It was unavoidable.
"We can ask him." I was a little skeptical. I knew Victor and Benji had watched Adrian a hundred times, but this was the only time Benji had to enjoy his summer. I was sure he had friends to catch up with and who knew what he might be doing with his band?
There was a knock on Adrian's door and Isa poked her head in. "Benji asked if he could talk to us."
"You'll ask him, right?"
I nodded at him. "I'll let you know what he says in the morning." I ruffled his hair. "Night."
When I left his room, I saw Pilar, Benji, and Isa sitting at the table. "What's up?" I asked as I sat down. Benji shifted in his seat, so I looked at Pilar. "I didn't realize you'd be joining us."
"I wanted to be in the loop," she shrugged.
"Okay." I turned my look back to Benji and waited.
"Right, so, uh, yeah," he said quietly.
