“No, you may not have any of my Doritos,” Rafe replied. “Get your own if you want them.”
Grace just wrinkled her nose. She’d never be able to eat Doritos again, not after what she’d read about preservatives and food dyes when she was pregnant with Peach. “I don’t want your Doritos,” she said. “Keep that fake cheese to yourself.”
“It’s not really cheese until it’s spelled with a z,” Rafe told her. “But I digress.”
“Are your parents divorced?”
“Yep,” he said before popping a chip into his mouth. He crunched. “Am I mutating yet?”
Grace threw a piece of lettuce at him, which he caught before it hit the table. “Masterful reflexes,” he said. “Just FYI.”
“Your parents?” Grace said.
“Yes, ma’am. Split up when I was five. I’m pretty sure the world is only turning because they got divorced. Otherwise their fights would have probably made the planet implode.”
The idea of parents fighting was so foreign to Grace. Her parents had always argued behind closed doors, whatever battle they had smoothed over by the time the sun rose next morning. She had never even heard them yell at each other.
“What about you?” Rafe asked.
“No, they’re still married.”
“Throw the rice.”
“But Maya, she—”
“Is that your sister?”
Grace paused.
“The sort-of sister?” Rafe amended.
“No, she’s my actual sister,” Grace said, and was surprised by the bristle in her own voice. “Maya’s not ‘sort of’ anything.”
“I’m sorry,” Rafe said, and he both sounded and looked sorry. “That was an asshole thing to say. Carry on with your tale of woe.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “Never mind.”
“No, wait. Shit,” he said, then set down his chips. “Okay, I’m really sorry. You were telling me something serious and I blew it. Let’s have a do-over, okay?” He pretended to hit a rewind button. “Aaaaand back.”
Grace had to give him points for effort. “Okay,” she said. “So Maya’s parents—”
“The parents of your real, true, actual, one hundred percent sister, yes, go on.”
“—are getting divorced.”
“Well, that sucks. Is she upset?”
“It’s hard to tell with her,” Grace replied, reaching for one of her apple slices. “She sort of plays it cool a lot of the time.”
“That sounds healthy,” Rafe said. “She’s probably super upset on the inside. You should talk to her.”
“I’m still trying to figure out how to talk to her. And Joaquin, too. They’re both just . . . They’re different.”
“Well, yeah, welcome to having siblings,” Rafe said. “My dad actually had two kids way before he met my mom, so my brother and sister are both in their twenties. It’s like having four parents. I don’t recommend the experience, by the way.”
“But do you think . . .” Grace tried to choose her words as carefully as she could. “Do you think that . . . like, okay, when your parents divorced, did it . . . Are you . . .”
“Did it completely fuck me up?” Rafe asked. “Is that what you want to know?”
“Yes,” Grace said with a sigh of relief. “Exactly that.”
“Well, you better hope not, since you’re the one who asked me to lunch.” Rafe reached over and swiped one of her apple slices. “Relax, I’m just trying to counteract the Doritos.”
“I don’t think that’s how science works,” Grace said.
“Whatever, Bill Nye.” Rafe stuck the slice into his mouth, then chewed. “And to answer your question, no, it did not fuck me up. It made things more difficult, of course, and I still get two Christmases, two birthdays, all of that good stuff, but I’m not fucked up.”
“But do you think that you could have had a better experience?”
Rafe was eyeing her carefully. “Why do I feel like you want me to say what you want to hear?”
“Because maybe I do,” she admitted, and then she realized that she had chewed the top of her straw into two separate pieces.
“Wait, no, let me see if I can follow your train of thought,” Rafe said, sitting back in his chair. “I’m taking AP Psych at school, so don’t worry, you’re in good hands.”
“Great,” Grace said. “My brain feels super safe right now.”
Rafe just waved away her concerns, staring at her for almost thirty seconds. Grace hadn’t realized how long thirty seconds actually was.
“You’re worried that the adoptive parents you chose for Peach are going to split up,” Rafe finally said. “That’s why you’re asking all these questions. You’re not worried about Maya, you’re worried about the baby. God, I’m so going to get a five on this AP test. I’m going to clobber it.”
Just hearing the name fall from Rafe’s mouth made her eyes fill with tears. “That’s it,” she said, her voice wobbling.
Rafe, however, went from looking triumphant over his future AP test to looking absolutely horrified. “Oh, shit,” he said. “I made you cry. Ohhh, shit, this is not good.”
“No, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Grace said, waving him away, but Rafe was already climbing out of his side of the booth and coming over to hers. “It’s fine, it’s just . . . no one’s ever said that name before. I’m the only one who calls her Peach.” She used one of the paper napkins to wipe at her eyes, suddenly mortified. This was probably why she had a hard time staying in touch with her friends. She didn’t want them to be there for the all-too-frequent waterworks.
Rafe was sitting next to her now, his thigh pressing against hers. No boy had been this close to Grace since the night she and Max had had the sex that produced Peach, but she didn’t scoot away from him. “I know I’ve told you this before,” Rafe said gently, “but I am terrible when girls cry. I’m awful. I’m going to really screw this up, so do you think you could stop crying before it ruins our beautiful friendship?”
Grace was laughing even as she kept wiping her eyes. “No, you’re fine, it just got me,” she said. “That’s all. I’m fine, really.”
Rafe seemed dubious, but he let it go and just handed her a fresh napkin instead. “Feel better?”
Grace nodded. “It’s just that I basically had one job as her mom, you know? I had to pick her parents, and I thought I did a really good job, but—what if I didn’t? What if fifteen years later, Daniel and Catalina split up and it ruins her life?”
“Why does it have to ruin her life, though?” Rafe said. “My parents split up—it didn’t ruin my life.”
“I don’t want anything to be hard for her,” Grace admitted. “I just want to say that I did the right thing for her, that’s all.”
“You did,” Rafe said. “You know you did. And nobody has an easy life, Grace. Not me, definitely not you. I mean, you had a baby at sixteen, right? But your life’s not ruined.”
“I don’t have any friends,” Grace said, and now she was crying again. “Nobody texts me or calls me or stops by to say hi. I don’t run cross-country anymore with Janie—”
“You ran cross-country?”
Grace nodded. “Varsity. But now I spend all day with my parents and they act like I’ll break if they say the wrong thing to me—”