“No, you will just gossip with all the tias and the neighborhood book club.”
“It’s just to gather more opinions, Domi. That’s not judging or gossiping. No me digas chismosa.” She smiles, pushing her glasses back, my own eyes reflecting at me through hers. “Now, if you wanna tell me el chisme, I’m here.”
It’s not gossip, it’s a crossroads, with both sides leading to a train coming head-on.
“Why did you assume it was a girl?”
She smiles, and even through the screen, I can see her grabbing her cafecito in her green and tan, Coquí-decorated mug, which she carries with her everywhere she goes. “It’s always a girl. There’s a different look you Diazes all get when you’re in love. I’ve been waiting to see it on you.”
“I’ve been in love before,” I reply.
Her features soften. “Not like whatever you’re feeling right now. You look like it physically pains you, whatever is going on with her. ¿Que e’ lo que pasa, and how can I help?”
How do I explain to her that there is a girl, but there can’t be a girl? At least, not this one. How do I tell her how I feel about the one woman I wasn’t supposed to feel anything for and one I can’t give what she needs?
I do anyway. At the risk of sounding needy or stupid, I do. I tell her about our age difference and how she’s wild and free and I’m not. How she’s art, music, colors, and sunshine, and I’m the complete opposite—a tainted shadow just trying to keep my head down.
But I also tell her how I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m with her, and how just thinking about her fixes my mood. How I had lost hope at finding love ever again, and how Riley gives me an inkling of it, even if I can’t go there.
I tell her how happy she is and how she makes everything she touches bloom.
“She’s young.”
Mom smiles. “So was I when I met your dad. I was an adult, though, and so is she, correct?”
Yeah, they’re ten years apart, but Mom was twenty eight when they met, not barely out of college. A sigh escapes me. “If we were in different stages of our lives, I would tell you I feel like I belong to her beyond my body, Ma, with my entire soul, but that’s not the case. And I won’t ever be enough to keep her flame alive.”
Mom softens her features, relaxing her expression lines the way she would when we were little and skinned our knees. It makes me feel like a little boy again, asking for something he can’t quite have.
“She deserves to shine bright. She deserves to fly,” I add.
“Have you told her this?” I don’t know what I was expecting my mom to say, but it was definitely not this. When I told her about the divorce, she was not surprised. She’s pro-marriage, or so she says, but she said anyone who couldn’t have seen that happening was blind, including me. She had no questions about it; she heard me and offered support. Now, though, it’s different.
I shake my head.
“I don’t think you should count a relationship out just because you think you’re not enough for them or because you think you shouldn’t be in one with them, especially when you clearly feel that way about her.”
“Which way?”
“You know, and if you don’t, you need to stop lying to yourself.”
How doIfeel about Riley? If I let go of the fear and the concern of what people would say…how do I truly feel about her? “I don’t know that there’s a word for this feeling.”
“It’s love, cariño. Love.”
“I’ve never known this feeling, and I’ve loved before.”
Her know-it-all smile shows up, framed by the phone, reminding me she’s not here, but at the same time taking me back to moments when all I needed was for her to understand, and she did.
Like she’s right.
“You said that, but I’m telling you, you’ve never loved like this before, and that’s okay. It makes it even better. Maybe she’s not your soulmate. I know you have an all or nothing mentality, and the whole remarrying after divorcing might not be in the cards right now, and that’s okay. She’s what you want right now, who you want, and I think you should go after her. Stop living in fear.”
Fear.
I’ve always considered myself brave, but I don’t think that’s the case. I’m more measured, careful, only taking calculated risks. Even taking this job was one. I knew if it didn’t work out, my savings would carry me for a while. My investments too. But falling in love again?
There’s nothing calculated about it.
