“I promise you’ll be back way before your show,” I tell her. “Please, just come with me.”
Vic leans against the door frame, looking so much like herself today. Like someone who is going to be at the theater by noon with her hair pulled tight and her eyeliner darkened and her routines practiced. Her American Ballet Theatre T-shirt looks new, but somehow exactly like all the others. She’s got warm-up leggings. Socks. And about ten Congratulations balloons bobbing in the hallway behind her head.
Ah, that’s exactly who she looks like. Someone who has gotten into Juilliard.
“Really?” I point toward the helium bouquet.
She kind of shrugs.
Vic’s parents pop out from the kitchen and wave at me. “Mercedes!” Vic’s mom splashes coffee on the white floor as she rushes my way. “Did you hear the good news?”
“I did! Congratulations!” I say it to the Caballinis, to the house, to the balloons. And I suppose I say it to Victoria, as long as she wants to hear it.
She asks where we’re going, and I don’t know.
It feels good to be in the Pontiac, which has been running like a dream ever since I traded Mom’s car for it. I like the Pontiac’s voice a lot better than the Ford’s—a low roar as opposed to the Ford’s nasal hum. Ahhhh—brake—ahhhh. It makes me want to sing along.
Vic says, “I knew I was right to be worried. All that time you were spending at that building. I thought about finding Lilia and asking her to stop letting you in, stop messing with your life.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” I tell her. “It’s all on me now.”
“Lilia?”
“She left.”
For all the ways that Vic could be relieved by this news, I think it terrifies her in just as many. Lilia is gone. My heart and mind are living somewhere in the spaces between those words. Gone. It’s all up to me. Angela and the other artists and the Estate and whatever I choose to believe about the balance of secrets and the origin of beauty itself—they are in my ridiculous little paint-stained hands.
At least I can make this Pontiac fly. Ahhhhhh.
“Mercedes,” Vic says. “Dearie. Please, just stop.”
Fine.
I pull into the parking lot of a buffet restaurant. “Have you ever been here?” I ask.
“Nope.”
“Me neither. It’s perfect.”
They’re serving breakfast. Even Vic, with her show in four hours, cannot resist eggs and fruit and one small pancake. The place is packed and noisy, with families and seniors everywhere, and not even enough chairs for Vic and me. We’re seated side by side in a pink padded booth in the far corner of the restaurant.
“Remember this moment,” I tell her. “This may be the most Florida breakfast of your life.”
Vic smiles, but her mouth is full of pancake.
“So you’re going, huh?”
She nods. Chews. “June,” she finally says. “I’m going to stay with my aunt and uncle until the semester starts.”
Of course. I can already see it. She will live in a corner of their Brooklyn apartment, behind makeshift bedroom walls made of Broadway cast albums, used-up pointe shoes, and American Ballet Theatre T-shirts.
“That’s, like, two months from now. What are we going to do?”
“What do you mean?” Vic says. She stares at her orange juice. She has actually gotten orange juice. That’s about as weird as her wearing jeans. Orange juice is delicious but also kind of unforgiving. I should know. That glass is not going to let itself out of her sight.
“I mean, we’ve admitted that we’re scared. We’ve accused each other of shit. We’ve gone silent. Now we’re even more scared.” I grab the orange juice and take a big gulp. “But we can’t go on like this. How long are we gonna do this, Vic? I’m supposed to come visit you and play an epic game of ‘How Many People?’ in front of The Starry Night at MoMA. You’re supposed to let me make you cocktails on grad night. We’re supposed to know each other.”
“We do know each other.” Vic looks straight at me for the first time all morning. “I was going to say that the only thing we can do is move on, and then I was going to wonder aloud how to do that, but you’ve already done it.”
“Really?”
She has made a smiley face with the remaining pieces of her pancake. I don’t know if that’s something her parents used to do for her when she was little, or if that is all Vic herself, but it is ridiculously charming and I still love her.
“Yeah,” she says. “You committed to it. To our friendship. You weren’t too scared to knock on my door this morning. I was just, like, terrified of you after a while. But, good Lord, it’s you, dearie. I had to stop myself from laughing when I saw that you’re wearing your purple sandals this morning.”
Wait, what was I saying? Still love her? As if I had taken the matter of whether or not I loved her, hung it as a little cloud over my head, and waited to see if it would rain down on me. No. I shouldn’t assume that love is as temperamental as the weather.
“These shoes are classic,” I tell her.
“Indeed they are,” Victoria says.
She eats through every bit of the smiley face, and I finish my eggs and her orange juice.
And then she says, “I keep thinking about what you told me at the dance studio.”
“What’s that?”
“That when you kissed me, it was perfect.”
It was.
And I keep thinking about what Lilia/Abuela said about the Estate’s magic: It’s the best version of you. That’s maybe too much to live under for the rest of my life, but for a moment? Sure, yes, absolutely. The best version of me kissed Vic. I can live with that forever.
“Yeah?” I say.
“I wish I knew . . . I wish I remembered what that was like.”
“We’ll never re-create it.” Around us, the restaurant hums, remaking itself every few minutes as people go in and out. Coffee refills. Buffet refills. Servers taking breaks. Vic and I haven’t even been here for an hour, and I think we’re about the closest thing to a constant in this place right now.
I lean toward her, nudge her shoulder. “But I can show you a little bit.”
This is the most imperfect place. This is a place and a time and a motion that could wreck everything. Vic trembles, and so do I. Her rough T-shirt brushes my arm, and one of my purple sandals falls off. It’s cold in here, and there’s soft rock music pumping from the ceiling speakers. She’s not my girlfriend, and she may never be, but in this one bright moment, I am enough for her, and she is enough for me.
It is just one kiss. Light and breathy. I’m sure I taste like orange juice. I don’t know where to put my hands, if she’d want them in hers or on her knees, so I keep them in my lap. But it is the dot that completes a painting. Maybe not quite the signature in the right-hand corner, but close. So very close.
We return to the Pontiac. I drop her off at home so she can finish getting ready for the Gershwin show matinee. And I know where I need to go next. But my hands sweat against the steering wheel, and I can’t bring myself to go there yet.
“Moreno?” Tall Jon says, rubbing his eyes against the midday light hitting him through the doorway. “Everything okay?”