Читать книгу Night and Day - Andie J. Christopher - Страница 11

Chapter 4

Letty walked up to her parents’ glass mansion with an empty stomach. Huge mistake given that her mother had decided to “help” her lose weight in every way she could possibly think of when Letty was around six. The pediatrician had told Señora Gonzalez that her younger daughter was in the eightieth percentile for weight in her age. Never mind that she’d been in the ninetieth percentile for height—the only way to succeed in that test was to be below fifty percent.

The first diet her mother had put her on had coincided with the family’s move to Starr Island. Her mother hadn’t grown up with money, but she was acutely aware of how rich people should look, dress, eat, and behave. Elena had always been able to flourish under the new regime, whereas Letty had always missed the smaller house they’d moved from. She’d missed the rowdy neighborhood kids, the big family meals, and the absence of sticks from her parents’ asses. Well, her father didn’t have a stick up his ass, but he didn’t exactly pay attention to things like feelings or the care and feeding of his daughters.

Instead of trying to understand how much Letty missed her home, her mother had withheld food. Letty’s most striking memory of her childhood was the feeling of hunger—her stomach lurched now with the memory. And hiding what she was eating and feeling guilty for everything.

And, given that she didn’t have the same willowy body type as her sister, the more weight she gained, the worse her mother treated her. It had taken so many years for her to realize that she wasn’t wrong for being an average-sized woman. Every time she battled back her mother’s voice in her head, she felt stronger. She’d faltered when Simon had made it seem like he was dumping her because of her dress size, but she knew he was dumping her because of him—at least most of the time.

Still, every time she went to visit her parents, she hoped that things would be different. The hope that they would magically go back to the people they were when they’d lived in less opulence persisted, even though her rational mind knew that it would never happen. She hoped that her mother would appreciate her for being kind or smart or resourceful, but it always came down to the fact that she was not thin. Longing filled her with each step she took toward what she knew would be an uncomfortable evening.

As she peered inside the house, she had no sense that she belonged here. So different from the old house. She even missed the orange Formica countertops from their old kitchen and the brown shag carpeting from their tiny living room. As she pulled open the heavy glass door to her parents’ current house, she felt more of a chill than the move from the humid air and the air conditioning warranted. Everything in the house was white, as though it was specifically designed to make people wary of getting too comfortable.

But then, her father had made some lucky real estate investments that had rolled over into other kinds of investments, and their life had changed completely. In short, money ruined everything.

Elena had offered her younger sister cover whenever possible, but she wasn’t always around anymore. And when Elena was away, making money from her gorgeous features and rockin’ body and dating billionaires—like today—Letty’s mother liked to use her model sister as a cudgel to attempt to undermine Letty’s self-esteem.

Letty wondered if she would ever find the feeling of home again. Unbidden, an image of Max floated through her mind. It was weird because they’d just met, and he’d been insufferably rude at first. Yet, heat floated over her skin at the memory of the way his gaze had raked over her with a kind of heat that she’d never experienced.

Her heels made clacking noises against the white, marble floor. They always dressed for dinner, regardless of how meager the servings would be for the Gonzalez women. As she approached the kitchen, she heard her mother yelling at their current housekeeper about something not being right. She pressed her hand to her empty belly, trying to force down the need to be sick as she passed the powder room on the way to the dining room. The sound of her mother’s voice made it imperative that she avoid the kitchen right now.

The dining room table wasn’t set, so they must be eating out by the pool. She found her father there, dressed as though he’d walked off the set of Miami Vice in the late eighties and had never changed his costume. Her mother’s efforts at image-control for the family had not been nearly as successful with her father as they had been with her sister.

Her father simply didn’t care. As an adult, she’d often been embarrassed by her parents. For all their trying to fit in with people who came from more or more established money, they were gauche in a way that she hadn’t realized until she was around other rich people.

He didn’t look up from his tablet or otherwise acknowledge her. Letty dropped into the seat she assumed was hers and flipped through her phone for a few minutes. Before coming tonight, she’d done research on the Delgado family to prepare for the questions her parents were sure to have about her current employer.

Her mother had never stopped trying to get her to lose weight; she still viewed her younger daughter as a commodity. When Letty had worked for Art Basel, her mother had lorded it over the people in her social circle. On more than one occasion, she’d expected Letty to use her position to exact revenge against someone who her mother felt had slighted her or her father—by withholding an invitation or omitting their name from a program. Letty hadn’t complied, which was just another way that she disappointed her family.

Sweeping out of the house with a glass of what Letty assumed was Pinot Grigio, her mother floated toward the table. Her mother always floated toward Letty’s father. She soothed and massaged his ego in a way that made Letty and Elena exchange knowing looks and roll their eyes. With their father, their mother never expressed her disappointment with a scathing glance or a disappointed click of the tongue. Their mother’s mercurial personality had become a joke that they shared to blunt how painful it had been.

“I heard you found a job.” Of course, her mother would have heard. Her daily lunch at the club was more effective than a high-level security briefing.

“Yes. I did.” She knew better than to elaborate on her answers before her mother had made her feelings about the new position clear. Even though excitement at working with an artist as talented as Max bubbled up every time she thought about the project, she knew better than to show any weakness in front of her mother.

“Max Delgado is handsome.”

Oh no. This was going to turn into her mother matchmaking again—for Elena. If she thought Max was handsome, he wasn’t going to be for Letty. According to her mother, Letty was too fat to date someone handsome—probably even too fat to be with someone ugly and rich. Not that her mother would ever use those words, but she’d made it clear through her actions. And not that Letty was really fat; she was only fat in her parents’ circles in Miami.

That was probably why she’d been so taken in by Simon’s seduction at first. He hadn’t hesitated to meet her sister or her parents, he’d charmed them all. And he was handsome. With shame, Letty remembered how smug she’d been when her mother had seemed impressed with Simon’s interest in her.

“He’s a very promising artist.”

Her father finally looked up. “Do you have enough money?” He was always trying to pay off his daughters, as though—somewhere deep inside—he might feel some kind of guilt about their piss-poor parenting skills and want to make up for it. Letty hated taking his money, which she would have been forced to do at the end of the month if she hadn’t found this job, but he still offered.

“I was going to invite you to Palm Springs with me this winter.” Her mother finally, thankfully, poured Letty a glass of wine. “I don’t suppose you’ll be able to do that with me, now.” Her mother pouted. Letty hated seeing her mother pout; it was as though she thought she could get away with being even more passive-aggressive that way.

“What’s in Palm Springs?” Maybe she could pretend to be curious for her mother’s sake. Sometimes it was just easier to go along with her mother’s bullshit.

“Well, there’s this health spa that I’ve been dying to try.” And then her mother’s eyes lit up. “You juice fast all day and get colon hydrotherapy every afternoon.”

“Sounds fun.” She took a sip of the only juice she was ever interested in consuming—fermented grape—and waited for her mother to continue.

“And there’s hiking.”

Letty imagined the hiking was challenging on no food and a thoroughly clean colon, but she kept that to herself. She preferred trail mix as hiking fuel. The only good thing that had come out of the three different summer fat camps her mother had sent her to was that she’d gained a love of physical activity. She’d avoided a fourth summer fat camp by joining the field hockey team at her high school. Even though she’d never been thin, she’d always been strong and athletic. As an adult, she reveled in her strength.

She could tell that her mother was going to try to press her into going to this desert colonic death camp with her and was relieved when the food came out even though Letty and her mother got a measly portion of salmon and three artfully arranged pieces of endive and her father got a New York strip steak and cheesy potatoes.

He grunted and set up his tablet so that he could continue reading his e-mail during the whole dinner.

“Well, Max Delgado is handsome.” Of course, her mother was back to that.

“I hadn’t noticed.” Letty looked down at her plate to avoid her mother seeing the obvious lie on her face.

“What’s he like?” Her mother couldn’t be deterred in her nosiness. “The Delgados are a good family—though the mother is—”

Her mother’s eyebrows went up as if to convey something bad. Letty couldn’t help being curious and tried to fight off the urge to ask more. And failed. “His mother is what?”

Lowering her voice as though what she was about to say would conjure something evil, her mother said, “She’s just been to rehab.”

And that was a bad thing?

Instead of starting a fight with her mother, Letty said, “Well, it’s good that she got help.”

“Except now, there’s talk of divorce.” Her mother chewed a bite of her salmon. “And his father, even though he’s a bit of a downer, is not going to last long on the market.”

“Hmmm.” Really, what could she even say to that?

Her father had his markets that he watched and her mother had hers. Sometimes she felt sorry for her mother. Letty had never met her grandparents, but they must have sucked to have raised a woman so devoid of the ability to connect. And she often wondered how she and Elena had escaped the same fate. Their mother had been an only child, and her family had been dirt poor. Maybe it was because she and her sister had never known true want? Or maybe it was because they had each other? Or those few years of a normal, middle-class life before their father had become astronomically rich.

Had her grandparents made her mother feel like nothing so that she felt the need to prove that she was more than everything and her daughters were more than everything? Whatever it was, for the first time since before the time Simon had dumped her, Letty recaptured the bone-deep feeling that her mother’s neuroses—about Letty’s body and her relationship status—were not her own.

She didn’t know if it was finding a new job and knowing that she wouldn’t have depend on her family’s help—help that would come with desert-colonic-death-camp type strings—or the feelings that her new boss aroused in her that gave her enough confidence to ignore her mother’s mild swipes for the rest of the dinner.

Whatever it was, it got her through and even put a smile on her face as she drove away from her parents’ house that night.

* * * *

Letty might have kept all of her clothes on, but all the bending and picking up and stretching for things all over his studio had him feeling as though she’d done a daylong lap dance just for him. Good thing he could work with a hard-on or he would have to pull out of the gallery show for sure. Having been in New York for a decade, he had a short track record in Miami that he didn’t want to burn out because she’d turned back the clock on his libido to adolescence.

After she left, he realized that the sketches he’d made of her movements were going to work out into a centerpiece for the show. He’d already transferred several pieces to the gallery, but it had been missing something spectacular.

She wouldn’t recognize herself in the piece, but he would know it was her. Abstract art was satisfying that way. People saw what they wanted to see.

Sort of like they’d done with his family growing up. They’d seen the Delgado family as the image his father had wanted to project to the world. Perfect wife, perfect children—the perfect American immigrant story. But, behind closed doors, his father had punished every step out of line with consequences that ranged from a stern twitch of his mouth to a slap to the face.

His older brother, Joaquin, had borne the majority of the beatings. Mostly because he was gay and hadn’t bothered to conceal that fact from their father from about the age of thirteen. Not that their father hadn’t detected some difference in his oldest son that he believed would reflect poorly on him long before that.

Even though Max hadn’t escaped their father’s wrath, Max carried guilt about how much Joaquin had protected him from their father’s abuse. Mostly, he’d dealt with it by avoiding getting too close to anyone, including his family. Every time he got close to people, they got hurt. His mother and brother were prime examples. His sister was the only person in his family he hadn’t been close to growing up, and she was the only one who turned out fine. Now that their mother was in rehab and divorcing their father, it felt as though things had opened up for them.

It made Max both hopeful and wary. His mother would probably just go back to using. Or, even worse, go back to his father. He just couldn’t trust that things would stay on a good path, not with his career and not with his family.

Walking in the back door of his brother’s new restaurant on South Beach near closing time filled him with dread, but he couldn’t help the pride he felt seeing his brother bark orders at the more junior chefs. Through the culinary world, Joaquin had reclaimed the authority over his own fate that their father had tried to strip through his emotional and physical warfare.

Every time a green kid working the kitchen said, “yes, chef,” to Joaquin, Max felt it too.

Things were winding down for the night, but he met Joaquin’s gaze as he walked down the line. His brother was still expediting dishes, so Max motioned toward the kitchen door, which led to the bar.

A lot of the new concept restaurants in Miami had open kitchens, but that just wasn’t his brother. When he cooked, he sweated and swore and yelled at fuck-ups—like a gay, Cuban Gordon Ramsey. Some chefs might throw that in as a free show for his guests, but that didn’t fit with Joaquin. He was intensely private and only put himself on display through what he put on the plate. They were alike that way; Max could really only express emotion through his art.

Max posted up at the bar because only one seat was free, even after midnight. People were drinking here before they headed out to the club.

A pretty, blond bartender put his favorite bottle of local beer in front on him. He nodded at her but didn’t say anything. First of all, he wasn’t interested in having her linger and try to get him to take her home again. Second, after spending the day with Letty, he didn’t have it in him to flirt. His cousin Javi—at least before he’d gotten together with his wife—would have had her number about three split seconds after she’d put the beer down. But Javi and his other cousins had never had to keep secrets and keep up façades the way he and his brother had.

Even though they were second or third cousins—he didn’t even know—they’d grown up together. It was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the time he’d spent at the Hernandez house, seeing his Aunt Molly and Uncle Hector function so differently from his own parents—which was to say function at all—had filled him with a longing that he couldn’t extinguish as an adult. The desire to belong, to have someone who looked at him like he was worth something more than derision didn’t die no matter how much he wanted to kill it. Because seeing a family work just made him realize how broken his own had been. How broken he was.

The hoppy, bitter brew slid down this throat, dampening his mood. When he’d walked in, he’d been on a high from getting so much work done that day. Now, he was behaving like the morose motherfucker of his reputation.

He flagged down the bartender. “Do you have a pen?”

“Don’t steal it.” She pulled a ballpoint from her apron and presented it with a flirty flourish that made Max uncomfortable. “I know where to find you.”

Instead of smiling at her, giving her reason to hope, he nodded and grunted, trying to make it sound cranky.

Max grabbed a stack of napkins from the holder next to him. He immediately made marks on the flimsy paper that tore it, but he used it. He didn’t even know what he was drawing until Letty’s curves appeared out of the black marks and ripped paper.

He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there drawing, but when Joaquin put a plate in front of him with something that looked and smelled delicious, the restaurant had emptied out, and one couple lingered at the end of the bar.

“Who’s that?”

“No one.”

“So, you wasted a stack of my napkins on nothing?” Joaquin picked up one of the drawings. “These are expensive, you know?”

Max’s internal reaction to anyone calling anything on the subject of Letty a waste was immediate and violent, but he tamped it down ruthlessly. Everything about him that reminded him of his father had to be subject to the same treatment. Letty was dangerous because she made him feel something. And feelings could go out of control so quickly that he needed to avoid them.

“I was bored.” He unrolled the cutlery next to the plate, covered his lap with the napkin and forked some of the food, relishing his brother’s wince as he fucked up the hoity-toity presentation. “You knew I was going to eat it, yet you still made it pretty.”

“You know that fucking assholes are going to use your sculptures just to show off their money and get laid, yet you still make them pretty.” The bartender brought Joaquin a beer, and he nodded at her. It was kind of like getting a smile from anyone else.

In addition to both being tall, beefy guys, he and Joaquin shared a reputation for being—intense—around Miami. Their sister had laughed her ass off last Christmas telling them about how all the dancers with her company—both male and female—had been trying to fuck one of them. It had amused her to no end that her “surly, asshole brothers” had pulled one over on the entire dance community—they’d all thought that Max and Joaquin were trying to be mysterious, when the reality was that they were damaged.

Because they shared that, the guilt that Max often felt around his brother wasn’t quite as acute as it might have been. Mixed in with his regrets about allowing his brother to take the majority of their father’s abuse was a comfort in the things he didn’t have to say around him.

One night, when they’d shared a whole lot more than one beer, Max had confessed that he felt like he couldn’t get close to having a real relationship with anyone because he was afraid that he would deride them—or worse, totally lose control and hit them. Joaquin hadn’t recoiled in disgust the way anyone else would have. He nodded and told him that he sometimes felt the same way, that he felt like he was as worthless as their father had said he was.

But now that Laura was happily married to a guy who looked at her like their uncle had always looked at their aunt, he knew they were both having doubts about the once-solid fact that they were both unlovable.

“Her name is Letty.”

“How’d you meet her?”

“Lola sent her for me.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, she hired an assistant for me.” Max took another beer from the bartender, who didn’t try to flirt this time. “All on the pretext of getting my shit organized.”

“Not a bad thing.”

“Yeah, but she’s—”

“Hot?” Joaquin offered one of his rare smirks, more a shift in energy than a facial expression with him. “You could just sleep with her and call it a day.”

“Use Lola as a pimp?”

“She tricked Laura into marrying Charlie. I’d say fucking the girl she’s trying to hitch you with is fair game.”

“Not like I haven’t thought of that.” Max struggled to put his reluctance into words. Sure, his brother knew why he didn’t want to get into a relationship with anyone. But would he understand that doing all the depraved things he wanted to do with Letty would make him want more. She drew him in, and he could so easily be consumed by her.

“You want to do more than fuck her.”

When he’d walked in the door, he’d just thought he was hungry, but now he knew why he’d come here. He’d needed to be understood.

“Yeah.”

“You know, you can have that.”

“Have what?” Max recoiled from his brother’s assertion. He couldn’t possibly be saying that he should have a relationship with Letty. “Marriage? A house in Coral Gables where no one talks about how Mommy takes pills and Daddy yells?”

Joaquin shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

Max didn’t know how he could make it any other way. “You know I have his temper.”

His brother leveled him with a hard look that reminded him why they were there having this conversation. “Yes, but you know that you have a temper. Our father has never been that self-aware.”

“So, you’re just going to run out and get into something with someone?” Said temper flared in Max’s belly. He needed Joaquin to back him on his life mission of staying alone. If his older brother—the only person who got him—wasn’t going to back him up on avoiding Lola’s machinations, he was toast. “She got to you, didn’t she?”

“Who?” Another smirk. Something was definitely up.

“Lola.”

Joaquin shrugged. “No. I just think—” His brother struggled for words. “You’ve never come in here talking about a girl before. This is new, and I don’t think there’s any harm in giving in to your impulses.”

“You know what happens when men in this family give into their impulses.”

“Even our grandfather?”

“He cheated on Lola.” Their grandmother had stayed in Cuba when the rest of the family had moved to Miami. She’d preferred repressive communism to staying with a cheater. Now, she was trying to make up for lost time.

And she seemed set on doing it by meddling in her grandchildren’s love lives.

“Thirty-five years ago.” Joaquin took a pull of beer. “Look at them now.”

Grandpa Rogelio and Lola were—for lack of a better term for septuagenarian rabbit sex—dating.

“I try to avoid it, especially when they get handsy.” That elicited a bark of laughter from his brother that had Max wanting to take his temperature.

“Seriously, what’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” It was about time that his brother realized that there was nothing wrong with him. Max had always looked up to him. It didn’t matter that he was gay, that he was a disagreeable asshole most of the time, or that he was shit at talking to most people. They were brothers, and they needed to stick together.

“That’s right.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you either.” A step too far probably, but his brother couldn’t see inside of his head.

“Letty might not agree.”

“You’re fucked up over this girl.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“If you give it a chance, it might be.”

“I don’t want to risk it with her.” Max shook his head. “I don’t want to risk—her.”

“I get that, but if you never try. If she sees you wanting her and you never try, isn’t that risking her?”

“How’d you get so smart about women?”

“I listen to them without thinking about them naked.”

“Good point.” Max had a lot to think about, and it would help if he could think about them without picturing all of Letty’s generous curves laid out for him to feast on.