Of Hustle and Heart (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

ZACARIAS

I
nab two of Rico’s most promising new hires to fill Bruno’s abandoned spot as head of the events team, and we head for the school at breakneck speed. After running three lights and praying to God we’d make it in time to meet Principal Aubrey Logan, I swerve into the parking lot, tires squealing, and park the catering van as close to the front as I can get. I instruct the staff to begin unloading the banquet equipment and vault from the truck, adrenaline beating in my ears. I straighten my collared uniform shirt as I walk through the parking lot. My business face is on, thanks to Whitney’s coaching.

I hurry up the outdoor cement steps leading to what looks to be a hallway entrance to the bottom floor of the three-story school. As I pull open the heavy glass door, I catch a glimpse of my long, unruly brown curls in the door’s reflection. I wish I’d taken more time getting ready this morning. I brush my hair back behind my ears with the palms of my hands.

I round the corner to find Principal Logan and her assistant principal standing in the hallway in front of the main office. Seeing me turn the corner like a maniac raises their guard and puts them on high alert. They whip their walkie-talkies to their ears, ready to call campus security.

“Hello,” I say, extending my moist palm to the graying high-school principal. “I’m sorry I’m late.” They look me up and down, the older woman’s glare lingering on my strong features. As they stare, they notice the logo on my shirt. Principal Logan’s colleague speaks first.

“Oh, you’re from the restaurant?” she asks, extending her hand in return. I grab it for dear life, and she smiles, her brown skin gathering at the corners of her mouth.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m—”

“Bruno?” Principal Logan asks as I turn to introduce myself to her.

“Uh, no,” I say with a sheepish smile. “I’m Zacarias. I’m one of the supervisors at Rico’s.” The women nod in unison, perfectly timed bobbleheads.

“Oh, okay. Well, I’m Mrs. Welch. I’m the assistant principal.”

She’s a black woman, her hair cropped short and cut close to her head, and her voice is warm and informal like the khaki dress suit she’s wearing. Every time she speaks, I feel a little better about being late.

“Well, I rushed on in so I could check in with the front office and you, Principal Logan. My crew is unloading…” I laugh nervously, still trying to catch my breath. “Again, I’m sorry I’m late.”

The two women read the sincerity in my voice and take it to heart. They wave away my apology.

“Honey, I don’t even think you’re late,” Mrs. Welch says as she pats me on the arm.

“How old are you, Zacarias?” Principal Logan asks.

“I’m twenty-four, ma’am.”

“Are you in school?”

I hesitate; I’d considered dropping out. “Yes, I am. I attend Baylor.”

The women coo, raising their eyebrows and smiling at me the way my mother does when she’s pleased.

“Well, you are a very nice young man. Well mannered, and he goes to Baylor!” Mrs. Welch cackles softly and raises a hand in the air, signaling a high five. I laugh and return the gesture.

“Well, Zacarias, we have a few parents here to help out with the picnic,” Principal Logan explains. “They’ll meet you in the visitor’s parking lot and show you where to set up.”

“Okay, that sounds good. Is there anything else you need from me before we start?”

Mrs. Welch smiles directly into my eyes. “Yes,” she says. “Ignore our senior girls. Some of them think they’re the cutest things in the world, honey.” She waves her hand, dismissing the antics of Chesney’s senior girls. “And they
will
flirt with attractive young men.”

The volunteers from the PTO are remarkable to work with. With their help, the catering and service of the senior picnic is not only as perfect as any of Rico’s events has ever been but is also actually rather amusing. The high-school girls come on to us full force, batting eyelashes and wriggling hard in their tight tops and jeans.

The flirtation and advances are distracting to my servers and bothersome for the parent volunteers and the senior boys. These girls have no shame; in fact, adult supervision does nothing to slow them down. If anything, it sparks them up even more. The girls seem young—not from lack of makeup or fancy hairstyles, which they all have in common. But it’s the immature nature of their advances. They giggle more than a twenty-year-old would, they ask irrelevant questions, and they linger at the serving table way too long, failing to take the cues that would tell an older girl it’s time to leave. The senior girls are indeed cute, and they know it, like Mrs. Welch had warned. But that’s all. Thank goodness, they are in no way a temptation for me, but my servers eat it up, reveling in the adolescent adoration. It makes me happy to embrace my upcoming twenty-fifth birthday. I am a grown man—at least I try to be anyway, for Whitney’s sake.

Within the picnic’s first forty-five minutes, the food choices dwindle down to a few long trays of quesadillas and fajitas, leftover shrimp and steak, and a couple pieces of grilled chicken. The tortilla chips and sides vanish, as does the pico and guacamole, and we run out of rice. The athlete boys eat multiple servings of everything, which triggers the memory of how much my brothers, John and Francisco, and I ate when we were teenage boys. My mother always cooked, and we always devoured it. The memory makes me smile.

After lounging on the school’s front lawn for almost an hour and taking enough selfies for a month’s worth of Instagram posts, the kids come looking for leftovers. Fortunately, the PTO group steps in, obliging Chesney’s seniors with freshly baked cookies and more sodas and water. Much to the kids’ delight, one of the parent volunteers picks up cinnamon rolls from the Cinnabon store located in the galleria a few blocks away, to top off the event.

“Must be nice to be graduating from Albert Chesney,” I say to Fred, one of the servers, who chuckles under his breath. “At my senior picnic, we got Taco Bell soft tacos and Otis Spunkmeyer cookies.”

Fred nods. “At my senior picnic, they gave us sandwiches and chips. No dessert, though,” he says, his eyes cutting to a group of senior girls sitting on the lawn, staring at us.

I check the time and decide we have twenty minutes till cleanup time. The sun has subdued a bit, and the wind blows pleasantly around the picnickers and those who work to satisfy them. Whitney has called twice, but I’d missed her calls, so she has texted me:

All is well? How is everything going?

I text back:
Will be back at the restaurant in an hour
.

There’s a girl sitting in the stairwell in front of the school. I first noticed her about forty minutes ago, after the initial rush of food had been served. She hadn’t come near the food tables or any of the kids. She stood in the middle of the stairwell, watching, her arms folded behind her. She gazed out on all of us, taking in the scenery, but never left her place. And now she’s reclining on one of the middle steps, legs tucked underneath her, seemingly content in her solitude and scrutiny. I lean back in my fold-out chair at Rico’s buffet table and watch her. I have no choice. She’s interesting to watch and seems different from the girls who are sprawled out on the lawn for display. I break my gaze, realizing it is inappropriate to sit there, purposefully staring at a high-school girl. I force myself to look away and catch sight of a tall, muscular boy staring at her just as hard as I’d been. Aside from the pretty girl whose head is in his lap, he has every right to.

He knows her. I can tell by the genuine concern smeared all over his young, handsome face. He talks with his group of friends and pays just enough attention to the girl in his lap to keep her satisfied, but it pales in comparison to the obvious interest he has in the russet-skinned black girl posted in the stairwell. The tall boy’s eyes shift from his group to the girl at such a troubling rate that I feel it must be exhausting to be split between two things so far away from each another.

I get tired of watching, so I debate whether I should take her something to eat. I hear one of the boy’s friends ask, “Why is Zina sitting over there by herself?”

He looks at her for too long, and the pretty girl in his lap notices. He shrugs. “I don’t know why she wouldn’t come to the picnic. I tried…” he says. “But she’s okay.”

I turn my gaze toward this Zina. So she is a senior.
Strange
. I frown.
So she’s not hungry?
No way. I gather a plate of leftovers and tell my staff we’ll start to clean up when I return. I cover the plate with a couple of napkins and head toward the stairwell. Man, oh man, I am nervous as hell.

CHAPTER 5

ZINA

I
almost got it out, and if the second-period dismissal bell hadn’t rung when it did, I might’ve. I didn’t want Shannon to think I was being weird and antisocial about the senior-class-events stuff, but this pride shit wouldn’t
let
me tell him. I lower my head and drag my knees into my chest, squeezing them against my round breasts, grieving for the fun and the experience I’m missing out on. Today is beautiful, and I can’t even see it.

I’ll never have another senior picnic; this week will pass by so fast. I’m sure it won’t matter much after graduation. But I still want to enjoy this day, and I’m so jealous of the freedom my classmates have. I watch them run around, disliking them for the consistent structure their parents have always provided for them. Their biggest concerns? Rubbers or no rubbers, sex or no sex, homework or a movie—I wish my shit was so simple.

Yet I try to smile—especially when it looks like Shannon is watching me. He’s too far away for me to know for sure, but I feel his tractor beams all over me, and I don’t want him to think I’m an envious little girl.

Some of the boys have water balloons and squirt guns and start their assault on the unsuspecting. I laugh out loud when a particularly hotheaded group of fugazi girls gets nailed. It’s so fantastic. A water balloon smashes two of them in the back of the head.

“Damn,” I mutter, flinching. One of them is wearing a cute shirt, and as a fellow girlie girl, I sympathize with her terrible loss. Still, I don’t move from my place on the stairwell. There’s no point. I can’t be present here, and life just feels too heavy right now. I don’t know how to fix it. I’m afraid I’ll never be able to. I wonder why I’m left to suffer alone and why Shannon isn’t the type of guy I read about in novels. The kind who’ll ditch everyone, especially the girlfriend, to come sit with me.

But Blanca de la Vega, my comrade for life, finds her way to me as she always has. She walks halfway up the cement stairs and sits next to me, gazing out into the busy traffic on Wesleyan, the street in front of the school.

“Why are you sitting here by yourself?” she asks.

“I ain’t feeling it, Bee.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t pay my senior dues.” I lean back against the steps. “So I guess I can’t eat, huh.”

“Nobody is paying attention,” she says, looking over at the food table. “Go eat.” When I shake my head, she purses her lips and changes the subject. “I saw Shannon in the hall earlier.” She peers over her rose-colored aviators at me. “He said you was gonna ditch.”

“But I didn’t.” I smile at her.

“Why were you gonna skip, and why didn’t you tell me?”

I shrug. “’Cause I just made up my mind to go.”

“Go where?” Blanca asks.

“I need to make some cash real fast.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Why?”

“Because I ain’t got none. Otherwise, I would’ve paid my dues. I’m skipping so I can go home. That’s where my stuff is.”

Before she can ask me what stuff I’m talking about, we’re interrupted.

“Hello.” A beautiful, husky male voice startles us.

We jerk around to see a young man in a uniform dress shirt and dark slacks standing to our left. He’s holding a red Styrofoam plate covered with napkins. Confession time here…One of the most exciting things in the world for a teenage girl is the attention of an older guy, especially one so composed, so well mannered, so easy on the eyes. Jeez.

I don’t know what to do, so I just sit still and let him do the talking.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, looking down at the plate of food in his hands. He seems shy and stands next to the stairwell, unsure of what he’ll do if I refuse his food. He smiles, but it’s a cover-up smile, as if he’s trying to hide his nervousness. I am fascinated. I look at him, my mouth agape, wondering why a guy like him would be nervous around a couple of teenage girls. When he extends the plate to me, I stutter a thank you, and my face flashes all kinds of warmth.

“There’s more food if you want more,” he says as he turns back to survey his banquet table. “And the parents brought cookies and huge cinnamon rolls.” He holds his hands apart, attempting to show us just how big those cinnamon rolls really are. “So there’s dessert too.”

I don’t often see random acts of kindness. The only people who ever watch over me is Blanca’s family and my own. But this guy shows up at the exact moment when my growling stomach starts touching my spine. He shocks me, and I am humbled by his thoughtfulness.

Blanca shoves my shoulder with the palm of her hand.

“Free damn food,” she mutters through a tawdry grin. She nods toward the generous, soft-spoken guy standing in front of us and then intercedes.

“Uh, yeah, she’s hungry,” she says. She keeps smiling and looking up at him for a second too long before she turns toward me. She sees it too.