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Sylvie leaned against the counter, the marble cold against her palms. As she watched her mother rant about Lauren’s mom, her stomach churned.
Is this what I used to look like? Getting bent out of shape over nothing?
“Don’t you ever want to stop, Mami?”
Her mother looked up from where she was running a green plantain over a mandolin slicer to make chips. “Stop what?”
“Stop arguing with the Machados,” she replied, a weight lifting off her shoulders like she’d slipped off a backpack full of concrete. “Aren’t you tired of it? Like what are we even fighting about?”
Junior gasped. Her mother’s face creased in horror. Time stopped.
“What’s going on here?” Sylvie’s father froze, his stocky frame in the open sliding glass doorway, a tray full of meat in his hands. He stared at his family like he was about to witness the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
“Sylvie either got laid or had a brain transplant, I haven’t decided,” Junior responded from the couch.
“Junior, por dios, don’t be rude,” their father snapped.
“I’m just saying that maybe we’ve been wasting our energy disliking them for no reason.”
Sylvie wanted to divulge the truth, but didn’t know how to form the words. Couldn’t they just agree to drop the rivalry with the Machados without her having to shatter everyone’s image of their great patriarch?
The doorbell broke the tension in the kitchen.
“Junior, go get the door,” their mother instructed. “And please behave while we’re all together please. No fighting and no talk of the Machados. I don’t want indigestion.”
Sylvie sighed. “I’ll be outside.”
Plopping down on a lounger in front of her parents’ extravagant pool, Sylvie crossed her feet at the ankles. She pulled her phone out of the side pocket of her colorful leggings.
Sylvie: How is Sunday lunch at the Machados’?
Lauren: OMG you mean the informal campaign meeting this has devolved into? There’s so much Vote Carla Machado for Councilwoman merch everywhere, I think my mom miiiiiight be going a little overboard. I just had to talk her out of branding toilet paper.
Sylvie: Toilet paper, huh? That’s kind of genius. It will be novelty to her supporters and a laugh for her detractors. I know my mom would love to buy TP with your mom’s face on it. LOL.
Lauren: THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT SHE SAID! Are you two working together???
Sylvie: Could you imagine if we were secretly BFFs?
Lauren: How diabolical. It wouldn’t surprise me coming from either of you. How’s it going over there?
Sylvie: I suggested an alliance between our two households, both alike in dignity. In fair Miami, where we lay our scene. . . . ten guesses how that went.
Lauren: Our high school English teacher would be very impressed by your recollection of the Bard.Did they ask you if you’d lost your whole mind?
Sylvie: Something like that.
Lauren: What prompted that??
Biting her bottom lip, Sylvie debated how much truth to tell. She glanced up at her father poking at whatever he was grilling. She forced herself not to hold back.
Sylvie: I don’t know . . . maybe I woke up thinking about you. . . It resulted in a bout of momentary insanity.
Lauren: How weird . . . I woke up thinking about you too. Come to think of it . . . I went to bed thinking about you. I may have dreamt about you. . . .
Sylvie’s heart leapt into her throat. She curled onto her side to keep the sun from beating down on her face.
Sylvie: What were you thinking about?
