June

The sky was so dark and the candlelight so small, I could barely see him sitting there opposite of me. We'd all said we were going to bed. Despite that, the two of us were still here, in the calmness of the California night. I tried to make out stars, but they were hidden, either because of pollution or clouds.

Valentina had been right, I guess. Living here, in the large, modern house where you didn't have to run into someone for hours if you wanted to, I'd had more privacy and time alone than I'd ever had in New York. Would I be able to get used to all the people if I'd ever move back there? I liked having the room to breathe.

"So," I said to Nathan, after we'd sat in comfortable silence for a while. "What do you think about Vale?"

"She's... certainly something."

I laughed. "Yes, she can be a bit much, I know."

He was thinking, turning his glass in his hand like it was a merry-go-round. "Lena could be a bit much as well. Differently, though."

Lena. I think I had her figured out a little by now, creating a picture of who she had been by tying all the broken pieces together they'd given me. "I have an uncle, Antonio," I said, and he looked up, a glint of light in ocean blue eyes. "The one year, he's totally happy and has all these big plans to start his own business. The next, he starts drinking, and abuela has to hide her money. Sometimes he disappears, for months on end. And then he returns, with a whole new plan to start his own book store, or set up a homeless shelter."

"Lena was like that."

So I'd thought. "It's a horrible way to live. Abuela is always worrying about him, whether he's happy or depressed. And when he's gone, she prays more."

He let the glass slip from his fingers. It fell and rolled a few inches before coming to a standstill. "Well, it's not a walk in the park for your uncle, either."

I didn't know what possessed me, if it was the night air making me brave, but I put my hand over his, in the middle of the table. "I never said it was," I said softly, watching those eyes. My fingers tingled from touching his. "I just meant, it can also be hard on the ones who care." He didn't respond, apart from not retracting his hand. Suddenly, I wondered what Valentina would think if she saw us like this. I threw a quick glance at the house; the kitchen was darker than anything outside. "You... you loved her a lot, didn't you?"

This time, he did take back his hand. Had I gone too far? The silence was nerve-wracking all of a sudden, and my body tensed, when: "I don't know. I was always too worried about her to feel anything else." Another silence. I could feel he was gathering the right words. "Sometimes she... sometimes she'd be so happy that she led me to believe it would be okay this time. But it never was."

Poor guy. I couldn't imagine what that must have been like, never knowing what you were in for. "I guess sometimes things are so messed up that there's not really anything you can do."

"Do you believe that?"

"Yeah. I do. My uncle, he's thirty-eight... I don't think he'll ever be just okay. And sometimes, something like that can get too much for a human being to bear."

He nodded slowly. "I still think we could've done more."

"How?"

"I don't know. But it can be manageable, bipolar disorder. Plenty of people are able to live a fairly regular life with it. But Lena didn't exactly have a stable home." A deep sigh. "It was all such a mess, you know. Nothing worked. At some point, she had this new idea to help herself when she got bad. She signed a contract with a care facility that said if one of us felt like she was spiraling down, we could call, and she would be taken in so they could keep an eye on her. The first time I called, she accused me of wanting to imprison her and fled. I looked for her for hours."

"Did you find her?"

"Eventually, yes. There was this... guy... She always went back to him when she was starting to decline. It was never a pretty sight if you found her there."

"She was lucky to have you, then."

He shook his head. "I'm lucky to have known her." A small smile and he looked up to me: "This one time, shortly before she took her own life, she came to me in the middle of the night, saying she'd had this great plan and I needed to come with her immediately. I had no idea what was going on; she didn't explain anything. We drove all the way back to our high school, and she made this large graffiti mural on the back wall of the building. It was beautiful. The school actually decided to leave it there when it turned out she'd died. I go there sometimes, just to see it again."

I could see it happening in my mind, even though I had no idea what Lena had looked like. Somehow, I pictured her as a tall girl with bright pink hair and a gigantic smile on her face, wonder in her eyes, paint everywhere over her clothes and body. "I'd love to go with you one day. I mean, if you'd like that."

He nodded slowly, a sort of peacefulness in the way he moved. "Yeah... yeah, I think I should take both you and Sam there someday. She'd have liked that."

"Sam said he was always a little afraid of her."

Nathan broke out into a laugh, and I wondered if there had ever been a more beautiful sight than he and I sitting here under the starless sky. "Me too. I think you would've liked her, on her not too bad days. She liked anyone different." He must have noticed my hurt, because he added: "Not like that. I mean, you don't care about fitting in. You just want to be yourself, because you know you're a great person. It's what I like most about you."

Behave, my heart, behave. "I thought that was my cooking."

"Close second."

I thought about the night of the party. I did care then. And I still did. How difficult it was to see Sam sucking up to these girls who would never see me as their equal... "I don't always not care, though. I always think I don't care, but sometimes, I still do."

"You're better at it than me."

"How so?"

"I'm still studying to be a lawyer."

"Oh. That."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"No, tell me."

I smiled mysteriously — apparently, he didn't appreciate it, as suddenly, he'd stood up and was coming at me. "What are you...-" But before I could finish my sentence, I was dragged out of my chair and thrown over his shoulder. "What the hell, Nathan? Put me down!" He didn't listen, probably also since I was laughing so hard my commands must not have made that much of an impression.

"Tell me, or I'll throw you in the pool."

"I'm not Sam!"

"Doesn't matter. Still throw you in the pool."

"Okay, okay! I'll tell you! Now put me down." He did, luckily. My cheeks were probably all red from being pressed into his body and hanging upside down, and I had to brush some curls out of my face.

"So?"

I tried to calculate the distance between me and the back door. In case of emergency, would I be able to get there safely? Probably not, regarding my shitty walking and his long legs. Taking a deep breath, I said: "You don't hate it. Actually, I think you rather like it. You just don't want to admit it because it'd be a thing you'd have in common with your parents."

It was as if I'd hit him with a brick. "I like it?"

Slowly, I started backing away. "Yes, you do. You worked really hard on that project. You were proud when you got top marks. You're doing everything in your power to help that girl. Obviously, you don't like everything about being a lawyer, but you can't like everything about anything. Like, there must be something you don't like about me." Change the subject, change the subject, change the subject...

He stared at me like I was a particularly non-sensical argument. "Yes," he then said, "I don't like how you know me better than I do myself, and I don't like how you tried to hook me up with Valentina the past week."

I giggled. I had certainly not been trying that. If only he knew... "You're an exception, Nathan. I can't count how many boys have come to me begging for a chance with my cousin."

"Yeah, well, she's too young, and she's not my type."

Shit. Too young... If Vale was already too young... Don't think about it, June. You're in luck — everyone gets older without even having to try. "Then what is your type?"

He shrugged, then sat down next to the pool, watching the water flow gently. The drain gurgled as a gush of wind fed it a mouthful of waves. I sat down beside him, and the penetrating smell of chlorine hit me in the face. "I don't know," he said. "Judging by Lena, my type must be 'reckless and out of control'."

"I don't think that'd work on Tinder."

He laughed. "I hate Tinder."

"Me too."

Probably, he caught my meaning, because his eyes were suddenly staring right into mine: "You know you'll find someone someday, don't you?"

"I hope so," I said, trying not to melt into the pool, which was actually harder than you'd think. "Or I'm going to have to marry you and cook for you every day. I know my mom wants me too, but I think I aspire to more than just being the lawyer's wife. What's more, you'll get fat because you'll eat too much." I knew I was babbling, and it was good that he started laughing at that very moment, or I would've gone on and said a lot of stuff I didn't want to say out loud.

"That's it. Funny."

What?

"Funny is my type."

I was glad it was dark out, because I was blushing fiercely, and I think that would've counted as incriminating evidence. "Then I propose a challenge."

"A challenge?"

"Yes. The first girl that makes you laugh, you'll have to ask out on a date. Oh, and you'll have to be attracted to her, of course. Or it won't work anyway." Wait, what was I saying? It wasn't like he was attracted to me — it wasn't like he was going to ask me out. Right? No, no, no. I was too young, way too young. What had I done?

He didn't say anything for a while, until: "I don't know if I can."

Okay. Now I'd screwed things up big time. I was going to have to push him, and I didn't want to — I wanted to be the only girl in his life, even if I wasn't anything more than a friend. Yet, I was a friend, so I needed to act like a friend. "But I know," I managed to say. "You even have to, or someday you won't even remember how to talk to people your own age."

"That's not true. People my own age don't even know how to talk to people like you do." I sent him a look, and he sighed: "I suppose you're right, as usual."

It took me a lot of effort to smile. "Grandma-power, right?"

He chuckled.