Rachel had been messaging him for three days now. Her timing was random and the subject matter unpredictable. But every text seemed confessional, like things she’d never admit to anyone else. That tattoo story had opened the floodgates, and now he had the paparazzi’s favorite “ice queen” whispering secrets in his ear.
Nathan leaned his head back and stared at the decorative red plates lining the wall above his brother’s head. He should be confessing too. He should tell her that no one ever saw him like this, waiting to be summoned to dinner like one of his father’s employees. He should tell her that while every other Vasquez was content to live on the estate that had been in their family for generations, being in his parents’ house for more than five minutes made him into a person he despised. The baby of the family. The troublemaker. The afterthought his parents tried to ignore.
Nathan dimmed his screen, but Joe kept typing, probably some multi-paragraph text with bullet points and footnotes. Abuelita had nicknamed his brother Apollo, because Joe was basically perfect. Grades. Sports. Table manners of the gods. He was twelve when Nathan was born, and instantly became the ideal older brother, helping with feedings, changing diapers, taking trips to the park. But at some point, Joe missed a step and brought home a B+ instead of all As. Their parents staged an intervention and took him off babysitting duty. While Joe became entrenched in high school and everything that came with it, Nathan’s favorite hobby was pushing Carla, his nanny, to the point of cursing him out in Spanish. She quit the day he hid in a toy chest for six hours and popped out like a giddy, deranged jack-in-the-box when the police started searching for ransom notes.
Joe finally stopped texting and dialed someone’s number. “It’s me,” he barked into the receiver. “Did you get my text?”
Nathan leaned forward and whispered, “Hey, Joe. That’s not how texting works.”
Joe ignored him and snapped, “It’s all in there!” at the poor bastard on the other end of the line. “Go read it.”
“The guy can’t read the text if you won’t let him off the phone.”
Joe angled away from Nathan and lowered his voice. “Hey, so uh… I’m gonna hang up now so you can read it.”
Nathan gave him a thumbs-up and mouthed, “Good job!” Joe responded with a middle finger and disconnected. The change in his brother’s demeanor was immediate. He relaxed his shoulders and unclenched his jaw, studying Nathan’s clothes with a bemused smirk.
“Do you even own a shirt with buttons?”
Nathan grinned. “Yes. Do you own anything that isn’t from some tragic Arthur Miller play?”
Before Joe could respond, they were smothered by a cloud of perfume. Sofia was dressed casually for dinner, which meant a multicolored caftan with jewelry and no makeup. Her dark hair was piled on top of her head in a complicated swirl of thick braids that probably took half an hour to create. Her sense of fashion would only give so much in the name of casual comfort.
“Joseph! It’s been so long since we’ve seen you at dinner.” She pulled him down into a hug. “I’m going to have meals sent to your office. You’re too skinny.”
“You only say that because I’m vegan.”
She patted his face. “Please don’t talk about it like it’s an identity.”
Meat was their mother’s love language. Most of her family lived in Monterrey, and all Nathan remembered about their rare visits was eating his weight in machaca and carne asada. When Sofia learned Joe had switched to a vegan diet, they didn’t speak for days.
“How is my grandson?”
Joe beamed and quickly brought up photos on his phone. “Angel’s doing great. He got these new Nikes and only takes them off for bath time.” He tilted the phone so Nathan could see a photo of his six-year-old nephew wearing white Air Force 1s with a puffy-cheeked smile that flashed all five of his remaining baby teeth. It was a full-on cuteness assault that made Nathan feel guilty for not reaching out more. He made a mental note to hype Angel up over FaceTime later. “He keeps talking about showing them to Uncle Nate.” Joe paused, and added, “Zara’s fine too.”
Sofia’s smile slipped. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen Xiomara.”
Joe pretended he didn’t notice his mother’s obvious contempt for his wife. Over the years, he’d become adept at hearing only what he needed to when it came to their parents. But Zara wasn’t. She’d once admitted to Nathan that she could never eat in Sofia’s presence. “She watches me like a movie villain waiting for me to keel over because she’s secretly poisoned my food.”
“She’s been busy,” Joe said. “Her last film just wrapped in New York.”
“Yes, yes, how wonderful.” Sofia spun around and beckoned Nathan closer with a wary look that reminded him why he hadn’t been home in months. They embraced, his arms stiff and cautious, hers a little too tight for comfort. When it came to Nathan, Sofia would always waffle between ambivalence and outsize concern, and he could never tell which was genuine. She’d never wanted two kids and would often joke about the number of pregnancy tests she had taken with Nathan, hoping to see a negative result. Then she’d quickly follow up with sugary soliloquies. “Of course, I adore him. My little Rivera, always gifting us with beauty and light.” But to Nathan, it felt like being loved in fits and starts, as if the feeling vanished when he wasn’t standing right in front of her.
“How have you been?” Sofia asked. “I hate thinking about you alone in that laundry place. What if someone broke in while you were sleeping?”
“For what? A midnight merlot stain emergency? There’s a basket of Tide sticks by the door, so I’ll be safe.”
She nudged his arm. “You’re not funny.”
“You’re right. No one uses Tide sticks in Oasis Springs. They’d buy another outfit.”
Sofia tried to hide her smile. “Be serious,” she said. “I know you’re attached to that business, but there’s an open position in marketing at the company—”
“Mom,” Joe interrupted. “Leave him alone. Nate’s not interested.”
“Let him tell me that.”
“Nate’s not interested.” Nathan parroted his brother’s clipped baritone.
“Listen to him, Sofia.” Nathan’s father appeared by the doors of the dining room. “He clearly wants nothing to do with the company.”
Beto cast a shadow over their mood in his black suit and bloodred pocket square. He was tall and broad, like his sons, but with dark eyes, unlike the golden-brown color they’d inherited from Sofia. When Nathan learned about black holes in school, how nothing escapes them, not even light, he pictured Beto’s eyes, placid as midnight, absorbing his excuses for a bad grade with the apathy of a gravitational pull.