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Fausto looks up properly now.

I should have known this was coming eventually. I’ve spent weeks carefully keeping Merry in one part of my life while everyone else stayed in another, which was easy enough when I could tell myself we were only seeing each other. There was nothing defined enough to bring home and place in the middle of the dining room table for everyone to examine.

Except three days ago, before everything went to hell, I had realized I wanted her to be my girlfriend.

That feels monumental now.

“We’ve been seeing each other,” I say. I clear my throat and try very hard to avoid everyone’s gaze on me.

Mamá’s expression changes first, immediately followed by Fausto sitting back in his chair.

“How long have you been dating someone?” he asks. His tone carries enough offense that I almost smile.

“Not that long,” I reply quickly. It really hasn’t been that long, I don’t think. “A few months.”

“Months?” he says, and his eyes bug out of their sockets like a cartoon character. “It wounds me that you told Maggie and not me.”

Maggie snickers as she takes a long pull of the bottle of beer in her hand. “Maggie isn’t a chismosa like you are.”

He accepts this without argument, which is wise.

Mamá has abandoned whatever she was doing with the container and begins moving things around at the island, although I know her well enough to recognize that she is no longer accomplishing anything. She wants to hear the conversion without looking like she’s waiting for it.

“What’s her name?” Fausto asks.

“Merryweather.”

He looks at me for a moment. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Fausto!” our mother hisses from the kitchen, but I can see the remains of a smile on her lips. “Please, hijo, language.”

“Perdón.” He doesn’t sound apologetic at all. He is still staring at me, waiting for me to admit this is some kind of…. joke? Prank? “Merryweather is her legal name?”

“As opposed to what? Her stage name?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she’s a Disney princess.”

Maggie laughs into her beer, which only encourages him.

I don’t mind. For the first time in three days, the situation has become funny again, and I had almost forgotten that it was. Somewhere beneath the embarrassment and the intimacy, and the fact that Merry and I now know things about each other we hadn’t intended to share, there is still the objectively ridiculous reality that I managed to date a customer.

My favorite customer.

Not that anyone at this table knows that part yet.

“She’s white, isn’t she?” Fausto asks, with enough satisfaction that I immediately know what he’s doing. “And not a Latina?” He uses that specific mocking tone. Classic younger sibling.

Mamá makes a quiet sound from the island that could be a laugh, although she keeps her back to us.

“Anyway,” he says, settling farther into his chair now that he has finally been presented with an opportunity for revenge, “I just think it’s interesting that after all the flack you gave me for Genevieve, you’re secretly dating a white woman named after a fairy.”

“I wasn’t intentionally keeping her a secret.” It’s not true, but maybe it’ll buy me some time.

My mother finally gives up pretending she has anything left to do in the kitchen. She wipes her hands on a dish towel and comes to the table, taking the empty chair across from me.

“So,” she says, folding the towel over her lap. Her expression is no longer of casual curiosity. “Tell me about her.”

I don’t know where to begin.