Page 98 of That Last Summer

“A while.”

“I didn’t hear you,” I admit, more to myself than to him.

“I noticed. I’ve been watching you for twenty minutes or so, waiting for you to turn around and see me. But you haven’t. You didn’t hear my mother when she came up to see how you were doing, or Remedios who was vacuuming when you slipped in through the window. You scared her to death when she saw you crying on my bed.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear any of you.”

“Why are you crying, Priscila?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Try again, I don’t buy it. I’ve never seen you cry before. Not from sadness.”

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t do it,” I say defensively.

“I’m not saying that. I just said I’ve never seen you.”

“Immortalize the moment then, so you have something else to remember when you need to satiate yourself at my suffering expense.”

Alex sighs in exasperation and walks over to the bed. He sits next to me; I stay facing the wall.

“Pris, what the fuck has happened? I’m trying to understand, I swear, but I have no idea why you’d be so upset about your brother fucking a girl. Okay, it’s not pleasant to see a sibling in that situation, but hell, there’s a whole world from there to running away.”

I don’t answer. I sit up just enough to grab the comforter at the foot of the bed and pull it over me. Suddenly, I’m cold.

“Pris. Pris, look at me.” Alex grips my shoulder, trying to turn me to him. “Hey, Pris, unless you’ve realized all of a sudden that you’re gay and have a crush on that girl, I don’t understand why you’re acting like this.”

Now I do turn around, to give him a dirty look. Is that the only plausible explanation? Really?

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says. “I don’t know what to think anymore! Adrián was fucking a girl. Okay, what’s wrong with that? I know him well enough to know that he does that very often. It’s a natural thing. He’s not committed to anyone; he has the right to hook up with whomever he wants, whenever he wants.”

“No.” I sit up and face him for the first time. No way. “Adrián doesn’t have the right to have sex with whomever he wants. And you’re wrong, he is committed to someone: to me. There are almost four billion women living in this world and there are only two vetoes,” I point out with the fingers of my right hand. “That girl is one of them.”

“A veto? Why?”

“That’s something that only concerns Adrián and me. And he knows it.”

“Leaving aside the fact that you have no right to veto anything from your brother, and even less a woman, are you telling me that Adrián knew this girl was out of bounds?”

“You can’t even imagine the extent of it.”

“Well, knowing Adrián the way I do, I’m quite surprised that he’d allow you, his little sister, to veto him any woman, no matter how much you love each other and how well you get along. But in the odd case of him accepting such thing, I find it even weirder—unheard of even, that he betrayed you.”

“You have no idea what kind of relationship I have with Adrián, Alex, no idea, but I’ll give you a clue so you can understand and accept it. Adrián knew he was doing something that was going to hurt me, or don’t you remember that confession he made in your car that night? After Marcos and Alicia’s party? When he told me he’d done something bad and I wasn’t going to like it?”

It’s so easy now, putting two and two together. Of course this is what he meant.

“Okay, I do remember that. But don’t say I have no idea about your relationship with your brother because you’re wrong. I know perfectly well who you and Adrián Cabana are. I’ve seen it all my life.”

“Adrián was acting weird,” I admit out loud. “Taciturn. He’s been avoiding me for the last few weeks, avoiding being alone with me or making plans together just the two of us. That’s not normal. I knew something was up. And now I know what it was.” I laugh half-heartedly. “He’s jumped into bed with my worst enemy.”

“Come on, Pris, what the fuck are you talking about? You never had any contact with that girl in the past. She wasn’t your friend and you’ve never had enemies; you get along with everyone.” Alex pinches the bridge of his nose, frustrated. “I don’t understand.”

“And since you don’t need to, I’m not going to explain.”

Explaining would open Pandora’s box. Unravel the past. Our past. And it could bring disastrous consequences for both of us. Our actual us, the one we are at this point in our lives. And I have enough on my plate right now.

“But,” he insists, “I mean, what the hell can you have against Carolina’s sister?”