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His number changed when he left. His social media hadn’t been updated in five years. I made the mistake once of asking Poppy to track him down, and not only had she failed, but the grilling-slash-teasing-slash-flak I’d gotten only reinforced the theory that telling them would be an unmitigated disaster. I got ahold of his email, but everything I sent went unanswered, eventually bouncing back undeliverable—email address doesn’t exist, the error read.
The first thing I did when I got back a few days ago was ask after him, and on finding out he was in town, I devolved into a nervous wreck. He’d popped over to Houston to take care of some business and would be back in a few days they said, which was maddeningly nonspecific. And then there he was, standing in the diner like he’d been there all along.
I’m telling him tonight.
My stomach climbed over my heart and into my esophagus.
Because how the hell did you tell a man he has a preschooler he didn’t know about?
I watched Priscilla for a moment, her lip between her teeth and her eyes narrowed in concentration as she held the jar under the tap with full and complete focus. She was, for lack of a better term, my mini-me. If you held up a photo of me at her age, you’d only be able to tell who was whom from the 90’s neon. And if you ever got a hold of a video of me as a kid, you’d see we were the same level of sassy, thick-skulled, and irreverent. Genetically, it was very satisfying. As a mom? Well, let’s just say I had my work cut out for me.
She was lucky she was cute as literally all hell.
And tonight, Sebastian would learn she was his. I only hoped he fell in love with her like I loved her.
I hoped he forgave me long enough to try.
My heart gave a squeeze so tight, it hurt.
No one could get a hold of him in Africa, and on coming home, he immediately left again with his mom and grandmother for Houston for Mercedes’s treatment. My cousins couldn’t seem to get any solid answers, and I couldn’t get ahold of Abuela or his mom. I couldn’t even get anyone at the restaurant to call me back. Not on purpose, I was sure—one of Sebastian’s high school girlfriends looking for him couldn’t have been a priority when they had cancer to contend with. At some point, I must have sounded like a stalker. But it wasn’t as if I could bust out the Yellow Pages and look him up. And I couldn’t afford a private investigator.
Now here I was, about to change his life. I only hoped he wouldn’t hate me. In the deep-down spaces of my heart, I wouldn’t acknowledge the secret wish that he’d tell me he loved me and wanted a family.
He decided at seventeen that he didn’t want kids, not after what happened with his abuela and mom. Instead, he wanted to go off and save the world. Which, I heard through my gossiping cousins, he was about to leave to do again.
“I heard you’re seeing him tonight,” Daisy said.
“Seriously, is there a group chat I should know about?”
“What are you guys going to do?” Poppy asked.
“Hang out at his place, I think.”
“The Vargas ranch,” Daisy said on a sigh—they were among the richest families in town, and their ranch was a marvel. “I don’t know how many pool parties I got drunk at over there.”
“Closer to a hundred than seventy-five,” Jo sassed.
Dottie gave them a look. “You’d think you were raised by wolves and not a devoted single mother.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” Jo said.
Dottie’s eyes brushed the ceiling, probably asking Jesus for strength with the motion. “You all need to find yourselves boyfriends. Or girlfriends. Or they-friends.”
“You know the deal, Mama,” Poppy said. “We don’t date until you date.”
“It’s a stupid rule, and it’s unfair to you. There isn’t a man in this town I’d care to canoodle with,” Dottie answered.
“Promise to never say canoodle again,” Jo said.
“If you won’t canoodle with anybody in town, we ought to cast a wider net,” Poppy suggested.
Jo’s lip curled. “Not you too.”
“It’s fun to say,” Poppy said with a shrug. “Especially if it pisses you off.”
“I still think internet dating is the answer,” Daisy noted. “Especially after that date with Jeremiah Higgens.”
The Blums collectively groaned.
“I just don’t know if I could be with a man who has a crease that serious in his Wranglers,” Dottie said. “They coulda stood up and walked around town on their own.”
Jo snorted a laugh. “Because that was somehow worse than the chewing tobacco stuck in his teeth.”
“Or the fact that he goosed Mom’s ass in Abuelita’s in front of God and everybody,” Poppy noted.
Priscilla lit up like a Christmas tree and stuck out her hand. “Bad words! Pay the money.”
