“The Titans will make the playoffs.” I grab my water bottle and bag from the corner of the studio. “I don’t anticipate them going too far, though. Not this year. He’ll come here after his last playoff game and plans to stay until he has to report for pre-season workouts.”
“Wow. That sounds serious.” Quinn smiles warmly. “He’s a good man.”
“The best.” I deftly shift topics. “I’m loving the Girl, You Better app, by the way.”
We chat about the app and how it might be improved until we reach the front desk. As soon as employees spot her, Quinn is pulled in several different directions.
“I gotta go.” She kisses my cheek. “Make sure to log your points.”
“Alright, Sarge,” I joke. “I will.”
I’m leaving, focused on logging my workout into my phone when I bump into someone entering the building as I exit. We somehow end up trapped together in a partition of the revolving door.
“I’m so sorry! I . . .”
Him.
“Imagine seeing you here,” Jared drawls, standing still so I can’t move forward either. His closely cropped hair glints golden in the bright morning sun.
“It is my gym,” I answer caustically.
“Your gym,” Jared says, arms folded across his chest. “Your city. I don’t remember you being this possessive.”
“I’m surprised you remember me at all.”
One dark blond brow ascends and that wide mouth tips at one corner.
“Pretty Pastel,” he murmurs, his deep voice and his damn seductive scent suffusing the tight glass-encased space, making it a hothouse.
“What?” My mind blanks because he couldn’t be saying . . .
“You still use the same dryer sheets.” He leans forward and sniffs my shoulder.
“Stop that.” I bat him away, conscious of the fact I didn’t take the shower I had planned.
“Are they or are they not called Pretty Pastel?” he asks.
His self-satisfied look darkens and intensifies the longer we stand transfixed in this glass box of boiling air.
“You don’t want to know all the things I remember, Ban,” he says, his laugh husky. “Or maybe you do.”
“I do not.” Our words, our breath, whatever is condensating in this partition between us, is literally fogging the glass. “Let me out.”
A woman enters on the other side, bewildered that the revolving door isn’t revolving, that we aren’t moving. Jared flashes her one of those smiles, and she blushes and bats her damn eyelashes. We can only get out of this if he steps forward and I step back. Even for just the few seconds it takes to free us, it feels like he’s advancing on me.
“I’ll be seeing you, Banner,” he calls from inside as I walk to the parking lot.
“Not if I see you first,” I mutter.
I click my car open and climb in, slamming the door with unnecessary roughness. I don’t even make it to the interstate before the phone rings in my car, my mother’s name displaying on the screen.
“Hola, Mama.”
“Hola, Bannini.”
When Mama’s family first moved here from Mexico, she spoke no English. One teacher in the overcrowded San Diego public school took extra time and care to make sure Mama learned English and helped her adjust to her new circumstances, her new country. That teacher was Ms. Banner Johnson. My namesake, but my family calls me Bannini. How that started, no one remembers, but it stuck.
“How are you?” I continue in Spanish. “How’s Papa?”
“Ehh. We are fine. Always fine.”
“Papa’s taking his medication?”
Considering what Mama cooks every day, diabetes was practically an inevitability. I’m constantly after Mama to adjust their diets. Between what he eats and how hard he works running the construction business he built from the ground up, I have reason to worry.
“Yes, yes,” Mama replies with a touch of impatience. “How are you? Are you eating? You were wasting away last time I saw you.”
Only my mother would accuse me of wasting away at a size ten.
“I’m eating. Promise, Mama.”
“How is my boy?” Mama’s voice goes soft and sweet with the question, and there’s no doubt who she’s asking about.
“Zo is fine.” I laugh and take the exit to my house. “He’s at my place. Still sleeping when I left.”
“Tell him I’m mad he was in San Diego and I didn’t get to see him,” Mama says. She’s actually chastising me for not bringing Zo to the house.
“Scheduling was tight,” I say by way of apology. “I’ll make sure you get to see him soon.”
“He’s coming to Anna’s quincea?era, yeah?”
My niece, Anna, turns fifteen this year. The quincea?era is like our blowout sweet sixteen party . . . but at fifteen. Our bat mitzvah. Our rite of passage making the transition from girl to woman, and the perfect excuse to throw a massive party.
“That’s months away, Mama, but, yes. Zo is planning to be there.”
“Good. He’s family.”
Even before we started dating, Zo was considered family. That first Christmas after his family died, I invited him to spend it with us. He’s been adopted into my family and spends every holiday with us. They dropped hints about a romantic relationship between us years before Zo expressed interest. Once they found out he wanted more, the teasing, the pressure only intensified. It was just a matter of time. We’ve only been dating six months, but talk of a wedding and little bebes for Mama to spoil has already begun.
“Camilla knows I’m paying for the venue, right?” I ask. My sister is a single mother, doing so much on her own and always refusing my help.
“She didn’t like it,” Mama admits, “but she has agreed.”
“Why is it so hard for her to let me help, Mama? We are sisters.”