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Me:Whatever I decide.
Hector:I can live with that.
Hector:When this is published in a few months, may I take you to dinner to celebrate?
Blinking, I wiped the sleep from my eyes, not certain I was reading right. This was why I hated texting. There was no additional information provided by his facial expressions or his body language.
Was he being a boss? A mentor? Or was he hinting at a date?
More importantly, did it matter?
No. I decided it didn’t. He needed to know how I felt as much as I needed to know why he still wore the wedding ring. Clearly, his wife hadn’t returned to his life. Nothing had changed in his house, and there was no way he would have called me over to give him stitches if Andrea was back in his life.
He was in limbo. I wouldn’t enter into any sort of romantic relationship with him while he was married, but he deserved to know that I would wait for him until it was indeed over. If he ever did get divorced, something could come of our relationship. I had to find out if he felt the same way.
Us—I was already thinking ofus.At that moment, I decided the truth had to come out. The paper wouldn’t publish for a couple of months. We could use that time to reestablish the friendship I ruined when the rumors started.
Me:I’d love to go to dinner with you when the paper gets published.
Hector:Really?
Me:Yes.
Hector:What about the rumors?
Me:Fuck the rumors.
It was like Christmas morning.I decided to stay at Dad’s house so we could look at the website together. Sara, too, came over to spend the night with me. She startled awake when I sprang up from the bed.
“It’s too early.” Sara moaned next to me.
“Consider it payback for all the runs you make me do.”
“Are we running after?” she asked as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
“No. It’s my day. Now, get up.”
I hurried to get my slippers on and tumbled down the stairs. Dad was already in the kitchen, making coffee. He had placed my laptop on the table, and it was hard-wired to the internet. No Wi-Fi mishaps this morning. He was nothing if not practical, and today practical was precisely what I needed.
“Good morning,Papi.”
“Buenos días.” He kissed me on the cheek, and I sat in front of the laptop.
“It’s not up yet,” I said.
“What?” Sara asked. Her eyes half-closed, she extended her arm until Dad placed a coffee mug in her hand.
“The article isn’t loaded yet.”
I ordered about twenty hard copies of the journal, which would arrive in a few days. Dad requested copies so he could give them out to our extended family. He didn’t care if most of them wouldn’t know what any of it meant, or the significance of it. He didn’t care about any of it. All he wanted to do was brag.
Refreshing the button every ten seconds only increased my anxiety. As if sensing it, Sara stilled my hand.
“Why don’t you give it a few minutes?” she said. “Maybe Ramiro would like to be here too.”
At her suggestion, I ran to the door, but when I opened it, there he was, groggy and in pajama bottoms and a ribbed tank, but with a smile etched on his lips.
“Morning,” Ramiro said.
