Delayed (10 page)

The two of them hugged it out one last time.
 

“This calls for celebratory Christmas cookies,” her mom said, before getting up to rummage through the pantry for ingredients. The apartment was quiet for a few seconds.
 

“Oh no. What are we missing?” Olivia asked. She was already regretting having taken a shower so early. Her mom was still in their traditional Christmas Eve pajamas.
 

“Milk and sugar. But I don’t think any of the grocery stores are open today. The gasoline station might be, though.” The tone was a hidden command, an optional command at that.
 

Olivia stood up. She placed her present on the counter. She wondered for a moment what her dad would throw her way when she returned. He always gave her some classic volume from the little shop called Bee’s Books in Glensford. They’d gone to the bookstore once a month back in the day; it was their own little tradition. This year he’d probably forget to buy anything. His time was consumed with other matters.
 
Especially now that Jocelyn had finally given birth to a little girl.
 

“I’ll go to the gasoline station,” Olivia said. “Do you need anything else?”
 

Her mom ran to her purse and pulled out a card, “Maybe pump ten dollars worth of gas into the car. Hurry back,” she said.
 

Olivia nodded and slipped on her shoes. The car ride to the station took less than two minutes; the entire way was paved with beaches on one side and vegetation on the other. Winter wasn’t really winter in Shepton.
 

When she walked inside, she realized other people had had the same brilliant plant. It was packed. Olivia squeezed her way to the refrigerators in the back. There were only two gallons of milk left. She took one, wishing luck to whoever found the other. Then she made a run through the aisles for sugar, and chocolate, her mom’s silent request.
 

The line barely moved, giving Olivia time to scan all the touristy items: shirts, pencils, postcards, and brochures. Then something caught her eye.
 

It was the keychain. It was the only one dangling on the display, the metal palm tree her mom had given her almost three years back. The one she’d left at Nick’s beach house.
 

She picked it up without thinking. As she approached the cashier, she asked him the question that had always been on her mind.
 

“Does this bring you luck?”
 

The teenager behind the counter shrugged. He looked like he’d just woken up. “It brings tourists. I guess it might make it easier to find your keys. So maybe it’s good for bringing things back to you.”
 

Olivia stared at the keychain in her hand. She wanted to believe that, more than the luck story.
 

“Are you buying one?” he asked.
 

She shook her head. “I already have one.”
 

And she hoped that somehow, it might bring her back to the person she’d lost in the airport six months before.
 

11

January 2007

She kissed him on New Years Eve. It had been unexpected, and to make things even worse Nick had walked away before they could say anything to each other.
 

It’d been almost two weeks since then, and Rita hadn’t called him once. Which he didn’t mind, sometimes people needed space. What caught him off guard was having her show up to their SAT study group session, alone. The other two members were missing.
 

Nick entered the room. San Mateo had assigned their group the very back room in the library, the part where there was very little heating. It felt like an ice cube. Rita sat in a corner of the table, her head propped up on the practice book. She sat up as the door swung closed.
 

“You came,” she said, in a very matter of fact way.
 

He nodded, calculating which seat was the furthest away from her. Or should he act like nothing happened and take his usual spot across the table? He went with the latter option.
 

Rita opened up the book to the page they had left off on before winter break. The room grew silent.
 

“Greg and Luisa had to go to a senior debate meeting,” she said.
 

Nick rummaged through his pockets for a pencil. The keychain felt light in his uniform.
 

“We can catch them up next week,” he said, as casually as one could say, to the person who’d surprised kissed you.
 

Rita continued to flip through a few pages; the sound of moving paper filled the room. Nick was already starting to lose feeling in his fingers.
 

“How was your winter break?” she asked him, out of the blue. Casual conversations were not a regular part of their study group sessions.
 

He bit his lip, knowing what she wanted him to bring up. But he wasn’t going to, not if he could avoid it. “It was relaxing, mostly uneventful.”
 

She stared straight at him, her dark eyes motionless. “What about New Years? Anything happen then?”
 

“Rita…” he began.
 

“Nick. I want to talk about it. I didn’t kiss you so that you could ignore me.”
 

“I’m not ignoring you. I just think it’s better if we don’t talk about it. Let’s pretend that it didn’t happen.”
 

Rita sat up straighter, the gentleness in her expression vanished. “No. I don’t want to pretend. It happened. I kissed you because I like you. I’ve liked you for a while now.”
 

The confession felt even more burdensome than the kiss. Nick cleared his throat. He didn’t know how to respond to romantic confessions, since this was the first he’d experienced.
 

“Oh. Why are you telling me this now?” He really was curious. They’d known each other for almost three years.
 

“I got tired of waiting for you to make a move. You’re so quiet most of the time that I don’t know if you like me too or if you see me as a friend,” her voice grew more impatient. “I want to know Nick. Did the kiss mean anything to you?”
 

Nick thought about the question. Had it? He tried thinking back to the night of the party. The kiss had made him feel surprised, a little warm afterward, maybe even dizzy, but that may have been the New Year’s punch.
 

“I don’t know,” he admitted. It wasn’t like he had a repertoire of kisses to compare it to. His first and only kiss had been with Olivia, and that, well there were no words that could quite describe what he had felt then.
 

Rita sighed. She slammed the SAT book shut. “It’s simple Nick. When you look at me, do you feel attracted to me? Or do you just see me as your study partner?”
 

He let himself ponder her questions again. He scanned her features, soft and pointed as they were. Her eyes were deep set and chestnut brown, matching the hue of her skin. She was beautiful; he’d never thought anything else. But there was a difference between recognizing beauty and being attracted to it.
 
Maybe it was like art, you could admire it from afar, but it was rare to truly fall in love with a piece.
 

He couldn’t fight off her unwavering stare. “I’ve never thought about it.”
 

“Well think about it,” Rita said standing up. “And let me know if you want to try being something other than study partners.”
 

She pushed the book over to his side of the table, and tucked in her chair. Nick kept his eyes on the book, but he heard her leave the cramped room.
 

Could it really be so bad? Should he give Rita a chance? His family already thought he was strange for not having a girlfriend, so did most his friends at school. Maybe it was time he stopped waiting for Olivia to show up at a random place again.
 

Nick spent the rest of day thinking, and by the next morning he’d come up with his answer.
 

They dated for two weeks, before Nick finally asked Rita to be his girlfriend. It was strange how quickly things had moved in a month.
 

The two of them would hold hands at school. He’d walk her to the classes they didn’t have together, and they would always meet for lunch. In two weeks they’d stopped being two separate people. It was no longer Nick or Rita, but Nick and Rita.
 

“I always knew you two would end up dating,” Mrs. Henderson, their Calculus teacher had said.
 

Teachers and students made similar comments, like the relationship between the two of them had been inevitable.
 

Mimi was the first one to find out in the family. She didn’t react with the excitement that Nick thought she would.
 

“You’re going to have to bring her over to meet everyone,” she’d said.

He knew that too. His Abuela would want to know everything about Rita, and his aunts and uncles would find out shortly after. It was the Hispanic side of the family, the place where there seemed to be a secret network of communication. His dad’s side was quieter, even though his Grandpa Felix was Peruvian; he didn’t seemed as entangled in the web of family business.
 

“We’re not as nosy as Mexicans,” he liked to joke. One time Abuela had overhead him, the argument had lasted for hours.
 

“That’s what happens when you marry Americans,” she said in return, pointing a finger at Grandma Joan, “You lose a part of yourself.”
 

Nick had walked away from that argument. There always seemed to be a similar version of it anytime his Abuela and Grandpa Felix talked.
 

“So how many people am I meeting?” Rita asked.
 

They were standing at the door of his house, noise was already filtering through the walls. The entire driveway was lined with cars. It was the coldest day of January to date.

“Just a few family members. I’d rather do this early,” he said. “That way, you’ll still have time to run off.”
 

Rita smiled. She wrapped her gloved fingers around Nick’s hand. “I’m not running off yet. And you forget that you still have to meet my parents.”
 

He nodded. That was an event he wasn’t looking forward to. He unlocked the door and let her walk in first.
 

It took two seconds for his family to appear.
 

“You must be Rita,” his Aunt Laura said. He hadn’t even known she would be there. His Abuela popped out right after.
 

Rita nodded; she tried to force a smile.
“Hola, mucho gusto en conocerlos
” she said. Nick tried not to laugh. Of course Rita would study up on her Spanish. He wondered if she really
 
felt that it was nice to meet his family.
 

He watched as his Aunts and a few cousins brought her to the kitchen. They’d made a buffet, with the excuse that it was Mimi’s twelfth birthday in two weeks. It was a way of gathering the family without making it seem like they wanted to interrogate his girlfriend.
 

 
Rita handed Mimi a gift bag, which his sister accepted. She pulled Nick aside when Rita went to the bathroom.
 

“She’s pretty,” Mimi said, “Too pretty for you.”
 

“Thanks for the encouragement,” he said.
 

“So I guess that means you and Olive broke up.”
 

“We were never together.”
 

“But you kissed,” Mimi said. Nick knew she was trying to bait him.
 

“We didn’t kiss,” he lied. “Be nice to Rita. She’s probably already scared of our family.”
 

His sister scanned him, squinting her eyes as if she were waiting for him to confess. When he didn’t she gave in. “I’ll be nice, if you like her that much. What about the keychain, though?”
 

Nick raised his eyebrows. He still didn’t know how his sister knew about the keychain.
 
He hadn’t kept the palm tree with him for almost three weeks. It didn’t feel right, to carry another girl’s belongings when he held Rita’s hand.
 

“I lost it,” he lied again. The answer satisfied Mimi and she left his side to join the crowd around the dining room buffet.
 

He had no regrets. As he watched Rita talking with his Abuela, he wondered what he would do if he saw Olivia again. But then he knew it wouldn’t matter, because for once it felt like his life was moving forward.
 

12

October 27, 2007

Olivia was falling asleep while walking. She could barely drag her feet forward.
 

“And on your right, you’ll see Smith Hall, this is where most of our first year students reside,” the tour guide said.
 

She didn’t think the tour of Glensford College would be so painstakingly slow. The website had made it seem like it would be more interactive, not just a guided voice tour of everything that could be found online.
 

“Olivia, perk up. You’re being rude,” her dad said.
 

She rolled her eyes. Why she had agreed to let him come with her, she’d never know. It had been her mom’s idea.
 

“It’s a good way to bond with him,” she said over a phone call.
 

Olivia didn’t know why her mom wanted them to bond. They weren’t even living in the same house anymore. She’d moved in with her mom in August, just after the first issue of the magazine came out. Her dad had finally agreed to let go of the custody agreement.
 

“You can live with who you want,” he said the night of the argument. “I don’t care anymore. Jocelyn’s done everything to make you feel welcome, but if you want to leave, then go.”
 

They hadn’t spoken much since that night. So having him here, on her first official college tour was making her anxious.