Page 5 of When Javi Dumped Mari

Mari

Eleven Years and Seven Months Before the Wedding

After listening to my mother’s latest voice message, I blow out an amused breath. Even though she relocated to another continent, she still expects daily updates on my life. And now she’s on WhatsApp. Jesus, take the phone.

“Earth to Mari, are you listening to me?”

Katy Maldonado jumps in front of me and waves in my face.

I sidestep her and set about arranging the stickers and flyers for the Fall Club Fair on the folding table. “I heard you the first time. Be approachable. Be friendly. Be informative. Not a problem, I’ve got this.”

We’re standing on a busy stretch of Centennial Walk, a brick-paved path that serves as Belmont’s main thoroughfare.

If you need to be anywhere on campus, you’re likely traveling along Centennial.

And if you want to be harassed by a student group looking for new members—say, the Latin American Student Association—the Walk is where that will happen.

“You’d better,” she says, straightening the stickers as if I hadn’t just done that.

This girl is uber high-strung, and if she weren’t the LASA president, we’d never say a word to each other.

She slings the strap of her thousand-pound backpack over her shoulder, nearly tumbling to the ground from its weight. “I need to get to class.”

No, Katy, what you need is some weed and the kind of random hookup that will leave you bowlegged for a week.

“Don’t worry about this,” I say, trying to calm her nerves. “I’ve got it covered. I’m VP for a reason, you know.”

She gives me her patented “bitch, please” side-eye, then says, “Yes, and we all know the reason: You won a popularity contest.”

What. A. Viper. She hovers and hisses, and then when you least expect it, she strikes, using her sharp teeth to sink her venom into your bloodstream in milliseconds.

Katy wants me to give up my position, because she thinks I didn’t earn it, so she pushes my buttons, hoping I’ll implode from the frustration.

Not going to happen, Katy. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but if my father’s words never hurt me, yours certainly won’t either.

When she fails to get the reaction she wanted, Katy fakes a smile.

“Be sure to stay the entire hour. No one’s going to relieve you before then, and we don’t want to leave the table unattended.

Oh, make sure to talk up the holiday ice cream social.

And don’t forget to tell them we’ll have pizza at our first meeting. ”

“Absolutely, will do. But you better get a move on, Kay. You’re going to be late for class.”

She gives me a frosty look (Katy hates that I gave her nickname a nickname), then flounces away in a cloud of hubris.

Finally.

Now I can focus on reeling in a few new club members.

And we need them. Desperately. Only student groups with at least twenty-five members receive school funding, making outreach efforts like this club fair essential to LASA’s continued existence.

But I’m working with terrible odds. Belmont’s a relatively small liberal arts college, and Latinx students represent just six percent of the student population.

That number drops significantly once you subtract the Latinx-on-the-admission-application-only cohort and the folks who have no interest in building a community inside Belmont’s walls.

So here I am, holding a platter of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies (individually wrapped, of course), a playlist of music by Latin artists on repeat (Pitbull never says no to a collab, apparently), while I guard a table displaying Latinx-themed stickers (because college students love decorating their laptops).

Yes, I might be doing too much, but my father has set his sights on sending me to law school, and I can’t very well make that happen if I’m vice president of a defunct student group.

Plus, organizations like these matter. For me.

For every Black or brown student navigating through spaces with people who don’t look like them.

So I’m not letting LASA go down without a fight.

Half an hour later, I grudgingly accept that the cookies are the main draw.

Or perhaps it’s the skinny jeans, because honestly, my ass looks amazing in them, and these boys have nothing but sex on the brain.

Whatever the reason, there’s a small crowd of people wiping crumbs off their faces as they (not so intently) listen to my pitch on why they should join the group.

After I name all the Ben Javier walks around in a cloud of contempt.

It’s a shame, too, because he could make a living off those high cheekbones and dark almond-shaped eyes.

That fact deepens my displeasure at seeing him here.

“What I mean is,” he says, “if someone wants to join LASA, they should know what they’re getting themselves into. For instance, are we Hispanic or Latinx? Because I, for one, see no reason to refer to myself as Hispanic; that’s tying me to the colonizer.”

A few people nod; others speak softly among themselves.

“And how about prejudice and colorism in our community?” he asks, pacing as if he’s an instructor in a classroom instead of a student on a walkway.

“Are we just going to sweep that under the rug? I can’t tell you the number of times a fellow Latino expressed surprise when I spoke Spanish.

All I’m saying is, any organization worth its salt is going to tackle the important stuff, not waste my time feeding me Ben & Jerry’s. ”

That last comment elicits a few snickers—just as he intended.

Well, shit. He’s not playing around. Little does he know I’m here for it.

I give Javier my bubbliest smile. “Thank you. This is precisely the energy our organization needs. Because all of these issues are important, and wouldn’t it be great if we had a safe space to discuss them?

The thing is, LASA is what we make of it.

What we need are people like you to join us and help us develop meaningful programming to tackle the hard questions.

Prejudice in our community? I can write a dissertation on that topic from my personal experiences alone.

And what terms we use to identify ourselves is no small matter.

I’m Brazilian American, so ‘Hispanic’ doesn’t even apply to me.

But you know what? We can talk about all this, and even have a bowl of ice cream while we do it.

Maybe then we can think about building connections instead of focusing on the negatives.

” I hold out a pen to him. “So what do you say, friend ? Are you ready to sign up and be a part of the change?”

Javier blinks at me. I’m not entirely sure he absorbed a single thing I said.

“What?” he asks.

“Be a part of LASA,” I say, waving the pen. “Join us and bring all your amazing ideas with you. I mean, you’re good at identifying problems. Are you capable of coming up with solutions too?”

He blinks some more, his maddeningly exquisite jaw clenched, then scans the crowd that gathered to watch our exchange.

Seconds later, his face relaxes, as if he’s just realized the corner he talked himself into and isn’t all that mad about it, and then he chuckles.

It’s truly a thing of beauty to watch, this reluctant surrender.

With a sigh, he gingerly plucks the pen from my fingers.

“You’re probably going to regret this,” he says softly enough that no one else is likely to hear him.

I immediately imagine Javier whispering dirty nothings in my ear, then mentally smack my brain for going rogue. Recovering quickly, I smile at the dozen or so people lined up behind him. “Actually, I don’t think I will. You’re an ass…et already.”

When he’s done adding his name to the sign-up sheet, he straightens and readjusts the strap of his backpack. “Make sure there’s vanilla at the holiday social. It’s my favorite.”

I step back and eye him from head to toe. “Pegged you as a vanilla type the first time I spotted you.”

His eyes narrow. “Cute.”

“I know.”

“Bye, Marisol.”

“It’s Mari.”

“Marisol it is, then,” he says before strolling away.

Ugh. Javier’s insufferable. And ridiculously handsome. Which probably means I’ll be dating and dumping him within a week.

***

“I’m telling you, watching those two yesterday was hot,” my best friend, Sasha, tells our third roomie, Brittany, fanning herself. “It rooted me to the spot, so I ended up being late for class. Seriously, you had to be there to get the full effect of the hotness.”

“I was there, and she’s exaggerating,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Also, stop saying ‘hot.’ It’s annoying.”

“Annoying is you telling me how to use my words. I learned them all by myself and I’ll put them in a sentence however I want.”