“That one is next to mine and it’s smaller. Go down to the kitchen and have something to eat or sit down and rest. I’ll finish this.” He took another load from the top of the stairs and put it inside the room I didn’t want.
I picked up a bag myself and put it in the room that I had chosen. “I’m not going to the kitchen. I don’t want to rest and when I do, I’ll be in here,” I announced.
“Oh, I get it.” César nodded wisely. “Yeah, I talked to my mom about this. She mentioned that pregnancy made her really unreasonable.”
I froze. “What did you just call me?”
“Do you hear yourself? You’re saying that you’re tired but you won’t sit down, you’re hungry but you won’t go eat, and you want a smaller, shittier room.” His eyes widened. “Wait, no, don’t…”
Too late, because I was already crying. “Don’t call me unreasonable! I’m not! No one gets to control me and tell me when to eat and sleep!”
César just stared. “Damn. Is this how you act all the time or does it come and go?”
Rage boiled inside me. “That’s it, you condescending douche. I knew this was a bad idea. The only reason I’m here is because when Kaya screws, she sounds like a gorilla in heat. But I’d rather be back at the zoo!” I stalked into the bedroom that he had chosen for me and picked up a grocery bag of my stuff.
“Stop carrying bags!” César demanded. He tried to take it from me but I held on. The handles ripped, and the contents—my belongings—fell onto the floor of the hallway.
I knelt down to pick everything up. “You can carry the rest, if you’re going to bitch at me about doing it. Carry it down and leave it outside my car. Thanks, bye,” I said.
He just stood there. “No, I’m not doing that.”
“Then don’t complain about me doing it myself. I’m going home.”
“No.” César sighed hugely. He leaned against the wall and slid down until he was next to me on the carpet. “At least you’re sitting,” he commented.
I didn’t say answer; I wasn’t giving in. He hadn’t won this fight.
“What is all this?” he asked. He reached and picked up one of the old photos I had been trying to stack with the others.
“It was my mom’s. Her stuff.” Unlike me, my mom had saved things: my inheritance had been bags of pages she’d torn from magazines, pictures, newspapers, letters, all kinds of scraps and odds and ends that I hadn’t thrown away yet, either. Half of what César had carried had been her crap, what she’d called her “personal papers.”
“Is this her? And you?” He held up a creased photo.
I looked at the picture of my mom and me, at about age seven. Both of us sat on a chaise lounge in the sand with a beautiful turquoise ocean behind us. My blonde curls had been bleached almost white by the sun and I had a huge smile. “Yeah, that’s us on the beach in the Caribbean somewhere. Warren Wilde used to take us on vacations with his other family. That was when I thought he was my uncle. That son of a bitch liar.”
“That’s crazy,” César said. He looked more at the picture, then up at me. “Your mom was a knockout. You look just like her.”
“Thank you. Are you giving me a compliment to make me submissive?”
He snorted. “I’m saying you’re beautiful, but you knew that already. I remember meeting you for the first time, and you weren’t short on confidence.”
“Like you are!” I imitated him flexing. “I’m so strong, I can carry six hundred pounds on my own,” I said, my voice deep. “You go sit in the corner, Camdyn.”
Now he laughed. “Here.” His long fingers swept everything back into the torn paper bag. “You need a better way to keep this together.” He gathered up the bag and stood, and then he walked into the bedroom with it. The room that I had said I wanted. “There, that’s yours,” he told me when he came out. “I really don’t care which bedroom you take, but I thought the other one was nicer.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m not unreasonable. Usually. I slept for about an hour last night and I am exhausted.”
“I shouldn’t have said that to you, anyway.” He held out his hand and pulled me to my feet. “I’m hungry, too. What do you feel like eating? We don’t have to follow the meal plan exactly.”
I thought. “You know what sounds delicious? Korean barbecue. Once I went to a restaurant in Los Angeles where they cooked the food right in your table.”
“Hm. That may be beyond the limitations of my kitchen. What were you doing in California?”
“It was when Warren had a game out there. We used to travel around with him sometimes. God, that food was so good, I never forgot it.” My mouth watered at the memory. “Korean barbecue and also pork chops with ranch dressing, that’s what I want. And also a ribeye, cooked medium, and a lot of cucumbers.”
“Cucumbers I can do, but I don’t make a lot of meat. What about vegetable stir-fry with tofu?” He laughed again when he saw my face. “I must have something good.”
César had everything in his kitchen. He clearly hadn’t been kidding about liking to cook, and as he moved around making dinner, I remembered to be grateful that I was here, in the quiet house where the thermostat was set much higher than Kaya’s 62 degrees without me having to fight to turn it up. I thought about when I had asked him how much I would owe per month, and he had just shaken
