Melted & Shattered (23 page)
“You’re not driving. It’s only sixteen hours to Sabinas.” José said. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but I refused to give in.
“
Only
sixteen? That’s not even counting time on the border waiting to cross. I can’t sit in the car doing nothing for sixteen plus hours, and you aren’t going to drive sixteen straight. So hand over the keys, or I’ll take the fucking Monte.” That was a wee little lie, as the Monte was parked at Chris’ house, covered from the elements while I was gone. But I’d call a cab to get over there if I had to.
“Why do you need to drive so ba
d?”
“Did you not hear what I
just said?” Very slowly I told him, “I’m not sitting bitch for sixteen hours. Hand over the keys.” José scowled. “I’ll drive us into Texas, and then you’re welcome to take over.”
He slapped the keys to the Yukon in my hand. When did we start fighting like a married couple?
“When you demanded to drive.” Fuck. I didn’t think I said that out loud. Crap. The last thing I needed was another Larry. Although, José was way hotter than Larry if I had to have unrequited love goin’ on.
Elle. Don’t go there
. Damnit. I really needed to stop picturing José without his clothes. Fuck. This was going to be a long ride.
We changed drivers outside of Austin, and
José handled everything at the border. I showed my passport and the papers the university sent. Border patrol grilled José for longer than seemed necessary, but once we were on the road, he said it was typical. We arrived at Fernie’s grandma’s farm well past midnight Sunday night.
Abueli
ta, as I was instructed to call her, was more than welcoming. Tío Oscar was gone for the night, so I was getting his bed. Abuelita thought José and I were together, but didn’t see a ring so José had to sleep on the couch, though between my sleepiness, and poor Spanish, I missed this exchange. Fernie gladly told me about it the next morning. As it was, I fell into Tío Oscar’s bed and was out before you could say
tortilla
.
The next morning, I woke to a rooster’
s cock-a-doodle-doo. No, seriously, there was a fucking rooster outside my window. It was not how I expected to be welcomed to Mexico. I fell asleep in my clothes the night before, and all I had was a backpack with sweats and my toiletries in it. I snuck into the bathroom, showered, and swapped my jeans for the sweat pants, planning to get a new outfit from the Yukon later. I smelled coffee brewing, and my stomach growled for some.
I padded to the kitchen and found Abuelita at the stove. She said something in Spanish, to which I understood nary a word. It must have been obvious because she said, “Coffee. Eggs. You?” I nodded. Co
ffee was all I needed to hear, eggs was icing on the cake. She motioned for me to have a seat at the kitchen table. I guessed it to be around eight or nine in the morning, though it felt like I'd only slept an hour. Abuelita had just put a cup of coffee, cream, and sugar in front of me when Fernie came though a door off the kitchen, in from the backyard. It wasn’t really a backyard in the American sense. It was more of a large patio area that was fenced in, and behind it was the farm. Not a Missouri farm. No corn. No wheat. It was an animal farm, with cows, horses, chickens, and a fucking rooster that was begging to be shot if it didn’t stop making so much noise.
“Hey,” Fernie said, wiping his brow of sweat. He exchanged words with Abuelita in
Spanish, which was fascinating, since I’d never heard him speak pure Spanish. It was mostly Spanglish back home in Missouri.
“Hey. You look like you’ve been up for a while.”
“I had to feed the animals.” He said it like he’d been doing it for years instead of weeks. He sat down across from me, and Abuelita put two plates of food in front of us. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what it was, but I was starving. I was willing to eat lizard at that point, and I heard there were plenty of them around.
“You going to Monterrey today?” Fernie asked.
It was dark the night before, so I didn’t see much of Sabinas. Although I would’ve liked to stay for a tour, I wanted to get to school and handle whatever needed to be handled. I also wanted to get to my place and have some privacy. A plan started forming in my head.
“You gotta get up early to feed the animals every morning?” Fernie nodded. “Wanna ride to Monterrey with me and
José? I’ll have him bring you back tonight?”
“Really?” Fernie’s eyes lit up like he’d won the Price is Right Showcase Showdown.
“Sure.”
He exchanged words
with his grandmother in Spanish, and it sounded like she didn’t have a problem with him coming along, or at least I think that was the conversation that transpired. I finished breakfast, and changed into a fresh set of clothes. While I did this, José showered and Abuelita made him breakfast.
We were on our way out, having
said goodbye to Abuelita, me promising to return soon, when José noticed Fernie following us to the Yukon.
“Well, see you later, man,”
José told him. Fernie gave me a questioning look.
“He’
s coming with us,” I told José.
“When was this decided?”
“When you were showering. You can bring him back tonight.”
José
wasn’t stupid, he knew this was a losing battle, so he motioned for Fernie to get in the Yukon. It took a little over an hour to get to Monterrey. I was fascinated at everything outside the window. The mountains, the little towns we passed through, even the sky looked different here. I’m sure I looked like a cliché American with my face plastered to the window, taking in the different world I’d stepped into.
Fernie and
José talked in Spanish, and I gave up listening. I knew José was doing it to irritate me, so I didn’t give him the pleasure of reacting. He really didn’t know who he was dealing with. Broken Elle was gone and some other Elle, more similar to the pre-J Elle, was in place. Maybe it was Mexico Elle? José knew me before J, but it wasn’t until after the shooting that we started to kick it outside of work and he got to see pieces of the REAL Elle—or what was left of the REAL Elle. I was pondering how our friendship had evolved since then, when I started to see signs of city life ahead.
Monterrey was huge, set against the backdrop of the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains.
I was overwhelmed by its size, more than five times the size of St. Louis. We drove through a variety of neighborhoods, from what seemed to be their ghetto to what looked like the swank side of town. Fernie gave us some narration along the way, pointing out different buildings and landmarks. José seemed somewhat familiar with the area, commenting here and there on Fernie’s narration.
“Are your parents from around here,
José?” I asked.
“No
t here, a little farther south, but I’ve been to Monterrey before.”
“What for?”
“Just visiting,” he answered, vague as hell.
We finally arrived at the Universidad Regiomontana. It was beautiful, with modern architecture and a variety of different buildings to navigate. It was amazing. And fucking scary as hell. What had I gotten myself into?
José put our previous squabbles aside, and he and Fernie helped me to get registered and fill out all the university paperwork. There was an array of housing options, and I had chosen the one that got me my own place. It was the most expensive, but fuck it, I wasn’t paying. J was.
After touring
the campus, we all piled back into the Yukon to drive the three blocks to where I’d be living for the next four months. It was crazy how beautiful the weather was and how bright the sun shined down upon us. People walked everywhere, unlike back home where you drove the half mile to the gas station for a soda instead of walking.
The room
I rented wasn’t huge. Maybe it could be compared to a loft with its open floor plan. It was larger than an American sized studio apartment, but not by much. A bed sat in one corner with a night stand and lamp. There was a small kitchen area in the opposite corner. In between both was the only separate room, the bathroom, which thankfully wasn’t as small as I expected. It had a full bathtub with shower, a vanity with a mirror and cabinets below. The toilet looked like a commercial toilet you’d find at Target, not in an American home, but it worked, so I wasn’t complaining. The rest of the loft space held a couch and desk.
“There’s no TV,” Fernie pointed out.
“I’ve got my Kindle. Plus I’ll be in school, so I’m sure I’ll be busy.” I sounded confident, but I was trembling inside. We went out for dinner, José ordering for me, and I suddenly felt like I was in over my head.
I was sitting in a booth next to
José, Fernie across from us, when José put his hand on my leg under the table. I didn’t realize it’d been bouncing nervously.
José
leaned over and whispered to me, “You’ll be fine. You’re one smart chica,
mi
cielito
.” He shot me his signature smile, and I tried to give him one back.
Deflecting my nervousness, I whispered back, “You gonna tell me what
cielito
means one of these days?”
He leaned back in the booth, stretching his arms out behind us. “Maybe.” Then he winked. He fucking winked. What the hell? I laid my hand over my chest, and felt the token under my shirt. Was I still waiting for J?
I'd worn the necklace since Chris gave it back to me, so I couldn't act like I was done with him, but I also couldn't dwell on it now. I had plenty to think about, like how did I think I was going to pass a class taught in Spanish when I could barely order dinner in the language?
José
and Fernie dropped me off at my new apartment, as I’d decided to refer to it, and they headed back to Sabinas. José was going to stay the night and said he would contact me later. Thank God my apartment had a land line. I had my cell phone, but the rates were sky high being in Mexico, although I guess J could pay for that too.
The next morning I woke up and decided to check in with Chris. I told her I’d call
as soon as I arrived, but by the time I’d settled in the previous night, I was wiped, and had totally forgotten to call. She didn’t seem to mind once I had her on the phone though. We chatted about the city, and I filled her in on my tiffs with José. She was convinced I needed to fuck him, to which I informed her was never going to happen.
“Grab a pen and take this number down. You can get a calling card and call me on this for cheaper than the cell. Just text my cell if you want to call and we’ll set up a time.”
“OK, hold up,” she told me. “Hey, toss me that pen over there,” she told someone in the background.
“Paper too?” a man’s voice asked.
“Yeah.” I heard some moving on her end before she told me, “OK, what is it?”
I rambled off the number and quickly followed it up with, “Who the fuck do you got up in your place? I know a man’s voice when I hear it and that ain’t Aaron.”
“Some guy from the bar I picked up.”
“Ya’ll seem pretty familiar if you ask me.”
“Good thing I didn’t ask,” she responded.
“Whatever biotch. I miss you and I love you.”
“I know.”
“Fucking stop Han Solo-ing me,” I pouted.
“You know I love you, girl. Now go fuck José and call me later to talk about it.”
That was how our conversation ended. I missed her already.
José came by later and we walked around the campus and the city streets in the area. We weren’t arguing anymore, for which I was grateful, and he was back to his normal charismatic, fun loving self. It was so easy to be around him that it scared me. It wasn’t like with J. With J, everything was natural, like even though we’d only known each other a short while, it felt like we’d known each other forever. I realized that didn’t make sense, but that was how it felt in my head, and my heart too.
José
was a mystery. One I was interested in learning about, but not like J. There was so much starfishing going on with J and me that at times I thought I didn’t know him at all. At the same time, I felt like I knew him on a deeper level than I knew anyone, even Chris. When we were together, although there were many things we didn’t speak of, we were ourselves. I didn’t pretend to be any one of the Elle’s. Not Kitchen Elle, or Clubbin’ Elle, or School Elle. I was able to be the REAL Elle, and not in short increments, but all the time. I didn’t have to check myself before I spoke, or analyze the situation to see which version of me I needed to be. I just...was. I was me.
“Hey, where’d you go? You were all spaced out on me.”
I looked at José. Shit. I couldn’t exactly say I was in J-Land. “Just thinking about how different everything is.”
We were sitting at a park by my new apartment eating empanadas we’d purchased from a street vendor.
It was huge, with a large fountain in the middle. There were statues everywhere, in the fountain, around the fountain, and just all over the whole damn park.
“For instance, I’m pretty sure these aren’t FDA approved,” I said in reference to the empanadas. “I mean, they’re really f
uckin' good, but who the hell knows what’s in them.”