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I laugh. “What are you majoring in at SJU?”
“Music engineering,” he says with a smile, breaking his eye contact with the road to give me a quick smile.
“What does one do with a music engineering degree?” I ask seriously.
“One can do a lot with a music engineering degree.” He grins at me. “But I’m hoping to produce music. I want to find artists and bands that speak to me, songs that give me that ‘umph’ feeling. And I want to make sure the world feels that too.” He looks over again and smiles. I grin back at him.
“That sounds incredible, Hayden,” I tell him. His cheeks pink a bit. “So when you’re not in school, what else do you do?”
“Well I love to skateboard,” he answers.
“Oh I know.”
“I’m actually really good,” he defends.
“Yeah, our first encounter is proof of that,” I say, and he laughs in response, lifting his hand to wave my words off.
“Destiny had other plans that day, Ana Reyes.”
He had asked for my last name at some point during our night and now he keeps saying my full name.
Again, he’s still a weirdo.
He has one older sister who graduated from Brown a few years ago. There’s a significant age gap between them, but he said they’re still fairly close as siblings.
He peppers me with questions just as much as I did with him. He is super interested in my family, asking lots of questions about how it was transitioning during our move to the States.
“It must have been really hard to learn a whole new language,” he says thoughtfully.
“My parents were already bilingual, so they tried to teach us both languages. But it’s completely different speaking English sometimes at home to going to a completely English speaking school. It was a hard transition,” I say.
“I’m sure,” he replies. “Have you ever gone back to visit?”
“Twice,” I answer. “It’s not easy to find the time, and most of our family relocated here over the years. We still have a few cousins there and we keep in touch the best we can.”
He nods. “You must have a really awesome and rich culture.”
I smile. “We do. We’ve definitely been ‘Americanized’, but it’s also pretty cool to fuse two cultures together—our Puerto Rican roots with the new life we created for ourselves in the States.”
A few moments and questions later, he pulls up to our last spot. A smallish vintage diner looking building, with a neon sign spelling out ‘Cheesy Dan’s—Worlds Best Cheesecake’. Hm. I’ll be the judge of that.
Each time we’ve gotten out of the car he tries to rush around to open my door for me, but I always beat him to it. He’s stopped grumbling about it though. We walk side by side into the building and get seated in a small booth against the windows. I open the menu to find just about every possible kind of cheesecake. From normal sounding ones like chocolate cheesecake and caramel cheesecake, to ‘maple bacon crumble cheesecake’ and ‘sour green apple cheesecake’. That last one makes my stomach turn.
“Which one is your favorite?” I ask without looking up.
“Banana cream pie cheesecake,” he answers as I lift my eyes to his from over my menu. He’s smiling. God, when is he not smiling? My face hurts just by looking at his constant grin. His hands are clasped on the table in front of him. I look back down at my menu and see ‘dulce de leche’ cheesecake. Done.
“You decided?” he asks, eyebrows raised. “That was fast!”
“I don’t mess around with my dulce de leche, gringo.”
“What does gringo mean?” he asks. I hide my smile at his adorably terrible pronunciation.
I bite my lip, wondering if I should tell him or let him find out for himself. He’s too nice so I decide to put him out of his misery. “White boy. Or even blondie sometimes,” I admit. He laughs.
“I like it,” he says. We give our order to the waiter that comes around and once he leaves, Hayden says, “So…is it safe to assume that you’re not seeing anyone right now?” His voice sounds a little hesitant. Nervous, even.
I smirk, “I’m not.”
