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“You should have that ring,” I suggest.
“No! I have one.”
She slips her fingers under her collar and pulls out a chain with a ring attached.
“Is that a ruby?” It’s hard to see in the dark.
“Yes. I didn’t want a diamond—because of unethical mining practices. So you should hold onto Abuela’s ring until you propose to Olive for real.”
“Francesca…” I have to come clean, but admitting I outright lied doesn’t come easy to me. “We were pretending. All of it. The engagement, the dating story. It was all fake.”
“What do mean, fake? Like, she’s nacho girlfriend?”
“Very funny, and… it’s complicated. We were trying to make her cheating ex-boyfriend jealous. Then Abuela and Dad saw us… ahem pretending… and then it snowballed from there.”
I twist my features, ready for my super good-girl sister to lecture me, but she’s laughing instead. Doubling over, belly clutching, ugly snort laughing.
“I knew it,” she blurts. “Edmund owes me ten bucks.”
“You knew it? Wha… how?”
“Oh come on. You reached for the same black cashmere glove and wrote your phone numbers in used books? Suuuure, John Cusac. Loved the movie, by the way. You were great in it.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have left Olive in charge of the meet cute.”
Admittedly, I didn’t even know what a meet cute was before Olive. In retrospect, I could have handled it better.
Francesca wipes tears from her eyes. “She’s adorable, Ignacio. I really was rooting for you.”
“You and Edmund had a bet going. How is that rooting for me?”
“I see the way you look at her with your tongue hanging out and those puppy eyes. And when you’re not looking at her, she’s watching you all dreamy and gooey. It’s not as fake as you think.”
I know that’s true at least.
“I need to find a way to break the news to Abuela, don’t I?”
She shrugs. “Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m going to go collect my ten bucks.”
She starts to skip away.
“Hey, Panchita. Keep it between you two, okay?”
She zips her lips and takes off.
Nate lights one of his cakes. Streaks of fire coil upward and crackle into a spectacular display of blazing sparks so bright, they illuminate our faces, almost as blinding as daylight. Speckles of vivid orange, yellow, and blue cascade across the night sky like weeping willows made of glittering gemstones, just raining down sparkles. One after another, deafening bangs transform into sunbursts of color leaving behind smoke and the smell of campfire.
From where I stand, I can just make out the side of Olive’s face—an enormous radiant smile spread across her features as flashes of color dance across her cheeks.
I breathe in the sight of her and I can see for the first time in my life, that nothing and everything makes sense. This beautiful chaos that is life is a whirling, shimmering firework. All I’ve been doing is burning out, while Olive glows and shines. She’s the human equivalent of pop rocks.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, drawing me back to the real world like cat hair into a vacuum.
I’ve been waiting all day and he decides to call now? It’s already the next day in Europe. What gives, Enrique?
I answer the call as I walk away from the firework noise, although it’s impossible to escape it.
“You dork. What have you been doing that takes you forever to call back? Wait. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
