Page 23 of The Right Garza

Tillie smirks mischievously. “Or maybeIcan give you a grand-baby.”

Monica whips around and swats at her with the spatula but Tillie dodges her, giggling hysterically. “Don’t even joke about that! No boys until you’re twenty-one, you hear me?”

Tillie rolls her eyes as she picks up a mug and pours herself coffee.

I wag my finger at her. “I say no boysperiod. They all screw you over in the end. Just focus on building your career, your finances, your self-esteem, and self-confidence, so when the time comesyoucan choose the man youwant, not the man you need.”

“What Lexi said,” Monica concurs.

“So, are youbackback?” Tillie asks me over her mug of coffee. “If not, for how long, and what are you doing today? Will you be here when I get home?”

I snicker. Tillie might have changed in appearance, but she’s still the same excitable, intrusive little girl who talks too fast and asks too many questions. “I’m back in L.A., yes. But Redlands, just for a few days. And I plan on spending today at the restaurant with Mama, see how she’s doing. The last time I was there it was still being remodeled. I’ve only seen pictures of the renovations.”

“Awesome, you can drive down with me then!”

“You’re going there?”

“Yeah. I work there on the weekends. Miss Mendez didn’t tell you?”

I shrug. “She might have. But that’s great, though. I used to wait tables, too, from when I was fifteen until I was eighteen. But only during the summer.”

“Alicia does, too,” she says. “We both plan on going to culinary school, so the experience is great. We’re learning a lot from Miss Mendez.”

“If you tell anyone I said this, I’ll deny it to my last breath: To better your culinary skills, pay closer attention to Rosa. For managerial and entrepreneurial skills, pay closer attention to Mama. They compete all the time over who’s the better cook, and Mama will strangle me for saying this, but Rosa is better. Mama’s strengths lie in managing, directing, and building.”

“I would imagine,” Monica chimes in. “She held supervisor positions at some of the best restaurants until she landed that big managing job at POLA before…” she trails off and gives me a sympathetic look.

Before she got cancer and had to give it up.

We’re momentarily doused in silence before Tillie breaks it with her perkiness. “Oh my God, I’mstarving. Can we take breakfast to go, Mom? I don’t want to be late.”

“Of course.”

A few minutes later, Tillie and I spill out into the garage with Tupperware containers of saltfish fritters, sausages, and eggs.

I whistle at the sporty yellow convertible parked next to Monica’s Prius. “This is you?”

“Yep.” She grins proudly. “My bothers got it for me on my sixteenth birthday.”

“Nice. They told you no boys allowed inside?”

“Ugh. As much as Iwantto date boys, boys don’t want to date me. They’re all scared of my brothers.” We slide into the car. “And there’s nothing,nothing, I can do without them knowing. It’ssoannoying. They’re like walking satellites. Sometimes Ihatebeing a Garza.”

“I can imagine,” I mumble.

Firing up the engine, she slides me a look. “They do the same thing with you, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

She pulls down the handbrake. “They know everything about you, Lexi. Everything.”

She hits the gas.

Of course they fucking do.

Chapter TEN

“Not even sex?”