What You Always Wanted (29 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Angela's in her room doing homework, Elise has been tucked in and kissed by all of us, Mrs. Morales is in the TV room catching up on the soap operas she recorded today, and Mr. Morales left this morning for the Middle East or somewhere on a business trip. Jesse reheats dinner for himself, and I stare out the kitchen window into the blackness of the backyard.

My mind zips back to the night I first learned I was getting a sibling, and how good I felt jumping out my shock on the trampoline. I can't see it, but I know it's out there, waiting for me, calling to me.

“Mind if I go jump while you eat?” I ask Jesse as I head for the door.

He laughs. “Want me to turn the lights on for you?”

I shake my head. “I think the moon's bright enough.”

“Okay.” He sits at the breakfast table with a plate of an unidentifiable cheesy, spicy-smelling mess. Another one of his mom's cooking experiments. “I'll come find you when I'm done.”

Take your time
, I almost tell him. The promise of being alone for even just a few minutes rushes me out the door, across the flagstone, through the grass, and up the cold miniature ladder. I hear the crinkle of dead leaves break apart under my feet as I begin to bounce, and soon there's nearly a pile of them in the middle. I make it a game, trying to manipulate which way the leaves go with my jumps, but they dance around me as they please. I dance with them, flying high, kicking, doing splits in the air, bouncing off my back over and over until I can't push myself upright.

Exhausted, I lie among the leaves and catch my breath, my hair fanning all around me. I stare up between the silhouettes of the tree branches to the hundreds of tiny dots of light that sparkle against the black sky. My eyes water and my throat stings but I focus on the stars and force my worry aside.

She's going to be fine. The baby will be fine.

We'll all be fine.

A tear slips down the side of my face despite my inner pep talk, just as someone comes outside through the back door. Footsteps grow closer, and soon Jesse's crawling toward me on his hands and knees. He flips over onto his back in a practiced, springy motion and lays his head on my stomach like it's a pillow. Little fluttering things awaken underneath him, and I relish the electricity that spreads through me and dries the tears I'm thankful it's too dark for him to see.

“When Angela and I were little,” Jesse says through a yawn, “we'd shine flashlights at the stars. We swore it made them brighter.”

I giggle, picturing a miniature Jesse lying out here on the trampoline with a flashlight aimed at the sky. I reach for his hair, but stop myself just before my fingers dive in. It feels like something I should be allowed to do now, especially since I can kiss him anytime I want, but it's so new.

“The sky doesn't look like this back home,” I say as I start slow, brushing a palm over the ends of his hair. “We always lived too close to the city. I could only ever really see the brightest few.”

“I'll miss nights like this when I live in a big city,” he says, taking me off guard. We haven't really discussed future plans yet. “One day.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Some of the guys want to go to the University of Texas, which is in Austin, so I'm considering trying to play for them, or maybe the Aggies. I'm also thinking about LSU or North Carolina. This season I should be able to line some things up, talk to some scouts. See what my options are.”

“I have an option for you,” I say, getting a bit braver with his hair and lightly massaging his scalp. “You could study theatre. With me.”

“Uh, don't think so.” He laughs. “That's not gonna get me on a pro team.”

I don't feel like igniting an argument tonight, so I drop it, indulging him with his professional baseball fantasy. “Fine, fine. What team do you want to play for?”

An owl hoots from somewhere in the trees as he considers my question.

“It's not really something you choose, but if I played for the Astros I could live close to my family. Though it might be fun to go somewhere really far away, like Boston.”

Pretty far from here, but relatively close to New York, where I hope to be.

“Boston. Is that the Red Sox?”

He turns his head toward me, the movement tickling my stomach. “I'm surprised you know that.”

“It's one of the few I do know,” I admit. “In Chicago we have the White Sox, right? Well, I remember getting confused when I first heard about the Red Sox. I thought Chicago's team had to change their name for some reason, so I imagined that the person who washed the uniforms accidentally put something red in with all their white socks. Only when I got older and learned how to do laundry myself did I figure out it would have only made them pink anyway.”

Jesse laughs so hard he starts coughing and has to sit up. When he composes himself, he leans over me, balancing on his elbows on either side of my head.

“Just when I thought you couldn't get any cuter.”

I start to smile but he crushes his mouth to mine. All my emotions from the day fill my head in a rush and I grab his hair by the fistful, yanking him down to me so hard he falls onto my chest, nearly knocking the wind out of me. But he's still not close enough.

He slides a hand down my torso and hooks it on my waist, then pulls me against him, leaning back at the same time until we're both on our sides, facing each other. The stretchy fabric
underneath bounces us gently. I palm his neck and pull him closer, our lips parting again and again, the lengths of our bodies pressed together. He slips his ankle between my calves, and I shiver as his fingers make contact with the bare skin just above my jeans. I expect his hand to wander, exploring my back, but he moves to comb his fingers through my long hair.

“I like that boy. Very respectful.”

And my mind ruins everything when I remember I'm spending the night here, and now I'm wondering if my parents were thinking straight enough to realize they suggested I sleep under the same roof as my new boyfriend.

Feigning the need to come up for air, I let my kisses travel toward his cheek, then to his scar. I touch it lightly with a fingertip. “How'd you get that?” I ask in a whisper so as not to disrupt the calm of the night.

“Chicken pox,” he answers quietly. “I was six and remember being very itchy.”

“Aww, poor little thing.”

I hug him for a moment before rolling myself onto my back and releasing a few breathy laughs. Lying side by side, my head resting on Jesse's arm, we listen to the quiet of the night, watching a series of fast-moving clouds hide the moon.

In my sleepy haze, I think about the two sides of Jesse. The confident jock with a fan club and dreams of a sports career, next to the secret dancer who moves with strength and grace and doesn't share it with anyone. Except me.

I smile in the darkness, thankful to be in on his most guarded secret. Happy he chooses to dance with
me
.

*   *   *

After a few texts back and forth with Dad to say good night, I trudge upstairs and get ready for bed, then open the door to Angela's room, relieved to see she's still awake. I didn't want her thinking I slept in another room and snuck in just before the alarm went off in the morning or something. Though seeing her after she knows I just kissed Jesse is only slightly less awkward.

“Hey,” she says from her usual side of the bed, flipping through an issue of
People
.

“Hey. What's the latest?” I ask, nodding toward the magazine.

“Nothing I believe,” she says, tossing it aside.

“Then why read it?”

She shrugs. “Better than homework.”

I slide into bed next to her and adjust the pillow so it's as flat as possible. “I always forget to bring my memory-foam pillow over here. I don't know how you sleep on these awful things.”

“Did you brush your teeth?” Angela randomly asks. “Because I wouldn't want any of Jesse's cooties crawling over here.”

“Cooties?” I let a cautious laugh escape. “I brushed. We're good.”

She clicks off the lamp and settles into the sheets. My eyes adjust to the pale blue of the plug-in night-light near the door and I stare at the posters on her walls. Young new actors and musicians I'm unfamiliar with keep watch over us, their “sexy” smiles taking on a more sinister if not perverted vibe in the dimness. I much prefer my classic posters over these, but I shiver when I think of sleeping in my own house alone all night, knowing my parents are at the hospital with the beeps and the blinks.

“So, I've been wondering,” I begin, too curious to fall asleep yet. “Are
we
good? You and me?”

“What do you mean?”

“With Jesse and everything. I know you were really against it. I mean, you even encouraged me to go on a date with
Brian
. Epic disaster.”

“Hey! Y'all are still friends, so don't blame me for the kiss of nothingness.”

“I don't, I don't. I guess it was just weird that you were trying to play cupid all of a sudden.”

She grunts.

“What?”

“Well . . . I haven't been totally honest with you.”

“What do you mean?” My brows scrunch together as I turn my head to look at her, even though I can't see much in the weak light but a mass where her hair is.

She sucks in a deep breath and squeaks the air out between her lips. “Okay . . . yes, it's kind of weird that my friend is dating my brother, but I'm not as completely scandalized by it as I thought I'd be. And that whole thing last month, me trying to steer you away from him, that was more about Dad than me.”

“Uh, why would your dad want me to date Brian?” But as soon as the words come out of my mouth, I know exactly where she's going.

Angela flips over to face me, talking low as if someone might overhear. “Dad's done more than a little hinting around, to both me and Jesse, for years now. Always telling us how we need to embrace our heritage, and I totally do,
you know. He's always halfway teased Jesse about how he needs to find a nice Latina who knows how to take care of him.”

“Which I'm definitely not.” My lips push out in a scowl. He can't just assume I won't be a good wife.

Not that I'm thinking about marriage. At all. It hasn't even been a week.

In my head I see Gabby, the girl Jesse brought to homecoming. The family friend Jesse used to hang out with as a “favor” to his dad. The naïve side of me thought maybe he meant “hang out” as in show her around, take her to dances, entertain her, or keep her out of trouble. But really, his dad was hoping there would be more.

But . . . I'm not the only person in this house right now who is not Latina.

“What about your mom?”

“Her maiden name is Applegate. I think that's Scottish, maybe? I don't know, but her family's lived in Michigan for, like, ever.”

I have to force myself to keep my volume down. “If he's okay with marrying your mom, why is he freaking out about who his son's going to end up with? Especially now. He's only seventeen.”

“He's not freaking out,” she assures me with urgency. “He likes you, he really does. You have nothing to worry about there, honestly. I'm telling you this so you can see what Jesse's dealing with in his head. It's not, like, the law of the land, but it's a subtle pressure that's been built up for years, so it's there.”

“And now it's in my head too.” Here I was so worried about finding someone to meet my standards, I didn't consider that I might fall short of someone else's.

“Don't worry about it. Jesse likes you a
lot
or he wouldn't have made it so official.”

I don't even want to know about the plethora of “unofficial” girls before me. One more thing to fret over.

“So, do you feel pressure too? How come you never talk about any particular guys?” I ask, hoping this might be the moment she finally opens up about the tensions with Red. I don't want to put any words in her mouth, so I refrain from mentioning him yet.

“It's more pressure I put on myself. I want to make Dad happy, and I see how excited he gets when I speak to him in Spanish. I like when he takes me to Mexico to visit his family, and they teach me family traditions and recipes. When it's time for me to go to college, I'll be proud to go where he went.” She pauses. “There's a whole invisible list of things he wants for his kids and I've always seen myself as the one to check those off, you know?”

Truth is, I don't know. I don't know anything. I don't have a specific culture like hers to latch on to and pass down. I don't understand the inner battle between wanting something and feeling obligated to want something else. Or someone.

I close my eyes and muster the courage to just flat-out ask, “So you like Red but you feel like you shouldn't?”