Learn to Love You by Jade Hernández
swallow me through the floor, Diosito. I don’t want to live.
Okay, I did want to live. That was a complete exaggeration, but you couldn’t blame me for being embarrassed, could you? It happened every single time I was near Damián “Junior” Águila-Gutierrez. Also known as my best friend’s younger brother. A measly ten months separated the two, putting all of us at the ripe age of twenty-five.
It was inevitable I’d make a fool of myself when he was around. Just like it was inevitable that I always seemed to look like shit when he was around, too. It almost felt like a curse at this point.
I could practically feel Gabriela containing her laughter behind me as we made our way over to the dining room table where everyone else was already seated and Doña Gloria, their housekeeper, was serving heaps of steaming chilaquiles on their plates.
The smells wafted over to me and my stomach let out a soft roar. Despite having been dancing and drinking late into the night, I was wide awake and starving. Maybe it was just Doña Gloria’s cooking. The woman was a grade A chef, a master in the kitchen, and, for as long as I’d known her, could make any and every single dish taste divine.
It was why I loved coming to the Águila-Gutierrez house. Well, one of the reasons, anyway. I’d been coming since I was an awkward, lonely kid in elementary school. Gabriela had always been loyal to a fault and the moment she saw me, she’d declared us friends, and had been dragging me to her house almost every day since.
That fierce, unwavering determination within Gabriela was just one of the reasons my best friend and I were exact opposites in almost every aspect. But even if I was nothing like the Águila-Gutierrez clan, Gabriela still tried to fit me into their little unit somehow. Like I belonged there.
Because of the deep-rooted camaraderie we’d shared for years, it was so easy to think of myself as a part of their family, especially when my own was so disgustingly absent.
Gabriela took a seat next to her youngest sister, Valentina, leaving the only two available spots for me and Junior to sit next to one another. I tried to keep the panic off my face as I took a seat next to him. While there was an adequate amount of space separating the two of us, it felt like little more than a suffocating compact of bodies that weren’t meant to share the same area.
Before I could think too hard on it, Doña Gloria was there, dumping tortilla chips covered in salsa on my plate.
The smells pulled me from my momentary alarm, causing my stomach to let out an embarrassing growl and my mouth to water. Hmm. Chilaquiles. I really loved the dish, especially after a night of drinking. It was practically a traditional weekend meal for me at this point. Even the simplest of foods in this household always hit me like a feast, if only because it was better than anything my own mother could have ever given me.
Once I added the fixings–cheese, sour cream, onion, raddish, lettuce, and avocado–I dug into my meal, eating in silence while everyone else around me chatted animatedly in between bites.
This was another thing I liked about being here. I liked picking through the tones, comparing, analyzing every single member of their close-knit family. A lot could be taken from a single interaction with them.
Like how the four sisters looked like their mother, except in different shades, sizes, and textures. Each girl was darker than the last, their skin in varying shades of brown and tan, all with the same midnight hair, though Ximena’s curls were the wildest. Tight and thin, she kept it away from her face and held up with paintbrushes while Sofia’s was straight and in a single braid down her back. Valentina’s was stuck somewhere in the middle. Like her genes didn’t know if they wanted to be straight or curly and stopped right in between, leaving a wild mess behind. Gabriela’s was wavy, cut into beautiful layers that she never left unstyled.
Whereas I came to breakfast with a bird’s nest on my head. I guess I just hadn’t been thinking, my brain too addled with the few tequila shots we’d tossed back the previous night.
Their voices rose and fell in crescendos around me, like different stations of a radio playing at the same time. Valentina was practically screaming in Hector’s ear about the new fowl that had been born and how excited she was to care for it, while he nodded and indulged her like he always did. Mamá Claudia and Doña Gloria were speaking amongst themselves, with firm and elegant flicks of their hands and wrists. Ximena was in deep conversation with her quieter sister Sofia, and Gabriela and her father were talking about the rancho’s income.
“Wild night?”
I nearly choked on a thin strip of lettuce as Junior lightly elbowed me in the side. I could feel my cheeks reddening as I turned to face his humorous grin. My tongue felt almost leaden in my mouth. That goddamn grin weakened me. I should have been immune to the charm he exuded, given all the years we’d been in one another’s presence, yet being around him got harder—not easier—with time.
Junior was beautiful. I wasn’t sure if you could even call men that, but he was. It was in the full features of his lips and the smooth texture of his brown skin, wide dark eyes and soft hair shorn short against his scalp. There was a time he was lanky, his limbs skinny, his joints knobby, head and ears almost too big for his body.
The joy of practically being raised together meant we got to witness each other’s awkward phases. If you’d told me then that Junior would grow from the skinny boy who yanked on my pigtails in passing to the ripped specimen sitting next to me—who still yanked on my hair—well, I would have laughed.
Not so funny now, huh?
“It was pretty tame,” I replied. The tightening of my fingers against my fork grounded me. If he looked at me, he’d never know how my stomach twisted into thousands of knots before exploding from the pressure of thousands of fluttering butterflies taking flight. Every single nerve-ending seemed to hum when he was near, begging for a scrap of a touch. My heart pounded until I could feel the rapid beating knotting into my throat.
I couldn’t let any of that show. Not because I didn’t want to, not because it was kind of embarrassing to reveal my true self around him, but out of necessity. I was born into a household that thought feelings were a nuisance, and expressing them would be more trouble than they were worth.
Junior’s eyes were searching, flicking over me with a curious, assessing gaze. Like he was trying to find a lie in my words, or like he was comparing them to my disheveled, hungover appearance.
I suddenly cursed myself for not taking a brush through my hair before coming down.
“I can see that.” His lips pursed as his eyes flicked back up to mine. His brown depths glittered with amusement, and I recognized the teasing almost instantly. I was all too familiar with it.
I turned back to my plate, a part of me wishing the floor could just swallow me whole already while I shoveled another forkful into my mouth, my every movement methodical and practiced.
Junior just liked to ruffle my feathers, to see what kind of a reaction he could get out of me. It had been like an ongoing game between us since childhood. I was always the shy one, eclipsed by his sister’s blinding light, quietly trailing after her, always the voice of reason. Calm. Collected. Mature for my age. He’d taken to jesting, making me want to blush at every turn even if my body would never give him the satisfaction of that.
I liked that routine between us, because Junior had never been hurtful. Not like the other boys at school. Not just because his mother would have taken a belt to his behind if she’d found out he was being mean to anyone, but also because Junior had always been a genuinely good guy.
Conversation flowed after that relatively easily around me. Gabriela chimed in about our “wild” night out at a club in the city, a place we frequented a few times a month.
“What were you out celebrating this time?” Hector asked laughingly.
Gabriela brought her mug of café up to her lips. “It was a celebration and mourning put together in honor of Mayda. She goes back to work in a few weeks and needed a night out before all the craziness starts.”
“Aw, cariño that’s wonderful,” Mamá Claudia, the Águila-Gutierrez matriarch, crooned in my direction. “Are you excited about your new post?”
Genuine pride shone in her eyes that made me swallow back emotions for a second. It was a look she’d been giving me my entire life and it got to me every single time. It was more than my own mother ever gave me, that was for sure.
“It’s a dream come true,” I answered honestly.
I’d always wanted to be a school counselor, and after years of applying, I finally got the job.
“She has to go in today and set her office up,” Gabriela continued.
An uneasy feeling slid down my spine as I caught the glint in her eye and heard the mischievous tone of her voice. She was up to something. I recognized that look. It was the same shine she always got before she dragged me into one of her crazy schemes.
“It’s in a few hours, but I have to help papá with the accounting today and I can’t take her. And since her car isn’t here…” She trailed off, letting her family fill in the blank.
I barely contained myself from mouthing What the fuck are you doing?
“You can’t be late on your first day.” Mamá Claudia set her mug down on the table, giving me the practiced, overly dramatic look of a surprised telenovela star. She thrived on punctuality and being late as a nightmare for her. For a moment, she got a pensive look on her face before she snapped her fingers as an idea burst. “Junior can take you!”
My fork clattered against my plate, eyes widening. I took in Gabriela’s smug expression. It was all I needed to see to know that this was planned.
Bitch.
I made sure my eyes conveyed that particular message loud and clear, and she stifled her laughter behind her hand.
“I couldn’t impose…”
“Nonsense! How else would you get there? An Uber? No, no, no. Junior will help you.”
“I wouldn’t want to cut into his work time,” I argued weakly.
“Está bien,” Papá Damian cut in. “He can spare a few hours.”
My fingers twisted into my napkin and I all but ripped the cloth at the seams. “But—“
“It’s okay, Mayda.” Junior’s hand came down to rest over mine, his touch easing and eliciting anxiety all at once. My heart pounded up to my throat, and I turned to meet his warm gaze and easy smile. “I’ll take you.”
“I don’t want to monopolize your time…”
“Nonsense!” his mom called out from across the table. “You’re family, too, mija.”
In the end it was that single word that did me in.
Family.
I’d known them since I was a child and was related to them all but by blood. That’s what it felt like sometimes, but it was often easy to place myself on the outside of their little unit. Like an orphan staring from a windowpane at something I’d always wished I had. Like it was my greatest desire within my grasp, grazing at the tips of my fingers hovering not quite within my reach.
And I treated it like it was mine just the same.
I gave them an indulgent smile and slid my hand out from under Junior’s, missing his warmth almost immediately. I chastised myself for feeling that way. It wasn’t like that’s where his touch belonged. Just like I didn’t quite belong at their table and yet there I was. Belonging, but not. Tolerated, but loved. Ni de aquí, ni de allá. The words had never resonated more so than they did in moments like this. When I felt like I didn’t belong here, there, or anywhere else. At this point, it felt likeit was a habit for them to have me at their table.
And some habits were just harder to break.