Page 52 of Sleeping with the Frenemy

Since Tostón had no idea what she was saying, only the high-pitched tone of her voice, he got even more excited. He jumped and barked and licked.

Leo rushed forward to grab the leash and tug him back, but he made the mistake of using the wrong hand. Tostón gave a hard tug and pain shot down Leo’s arm then back up. “Fuck,” Leo shouted, immediately dropping the leash to grab his shoulder.

Abuelo shot out of his chair and stood in Tostón’s path to Doña Fina. “No,” he said in the deep and loud authoritative voice Leo had only ever heard a very few times in his life. It was the voice that had all of his kids and grandkids jumping to follow his orders without comment like little soldiers. Apparently, it also worked on great-grandogs because Tostón skidded to a stop right at Abuelo’s feet and sat down. Abuelo calmly bent down, grabbed his leash, and walked them back to the table to sit in his chair. “Quédate aquí y pórtate bien,” he told the dog with a rough pat on the side. He looked to Leo then, concern written all over his face. “Are you okay?”

Leo nodded. His arm was no longer screaming in sharp lightning-like pain, but tingling in the all-too-familiar pins and needles sensation. He continued to breathe through the feeling as he made his way to the table and plopped into one of the two empty chairs.

“Do you need an ice pack?” Doña Fina asked in Spanish.

Leo shook his head. “I’m fine.”

She didn’t look like she believed him. “Escucha esto, it was 1965 and I was preparing for Miss Puerto Rico. Mi mamá estaba nerviosa. I was the shortest of all the contestants. She went to the nicest boutique in San Juan and bought me the highest pair of—” she paused for a second, a look of deep thought on her face and her hands making circles next to her head as if that would make her thought clearer “—tacones,” she said, apparently giving up on remembering the English word. “I mean, así de grande.” She held up her thumb and forefinger in an L shape to demonstrate about a six-inch heel. “She wanted me to wear them all of the time, so I could practice walking in them, but I was still dancing every day and my feet were always sore. I didn’t want to wear those shoes too, so I lied to her and told her that I wore them when really I didn’t.” She paused to take another sip of her lemonade. “Time passes and finally it’s time to practice walking on the stage for the swimsuit competition. My mami brings me the shoes and tells me to put them on. I’m as tall as the other girls now and, because I already know that I look the best in my swimsuit, I feel amazing. I know I’m going to win. Then I take one step down the stairs y—” she made a wretching motion with her hands “—mi tobillo se dobla. I fall down the rest of the stairs and land right on my face. I mean, I thought I broke my nose.” She shakes her head. “They had to carry me out and they made me miss the rest of the practice so I could stay off my feet. But you better believe that I wore those shoes every day after that. And when the day of the contest came, I was back out there in those shoes strutting up and down that stage like nothing ever happened.” She waved her hand in the air while saying, “After that I discovered I had done damage to the ligaments in my foot, ankle, and knee, so I couldn’t dance professionally anymore.”

Leo sat there for a moment trying to figure out what that story had to do with anything. “I’m sorry, Doña Fina, but I don’t get what you’re trying to tell me.”

She shook her head as if sad that he was so dense. “Sometimes we have to deal with a lot of pain in order to reach our goals, but it’s worth it.”

“But didn’t you just say that you’d damaged your ligaments and couldn’t dance anymore?”

“Si, pero gané Miss Puerto Rico and that’s all that matters.”

Leo frowned. He didn’t see that. He saw a woman who’d ruined her chosen career in order to reach a short-term goal. “Are you telling me that it was worth getting shot and losing my career, because now I can dedicate my time to winning Sofi over?”

Her eyes widened. “No! No! Claro que no! I’m saying that sometimes things happen that we can’t control and we need to find a way to make the outcome a positive one.”

He still didn’t see how her story demonstrated that, but he wasn’t going to argue with her about it.

“We called you here to talk about the next steps of the plan,” Abuelo Papo said.

Leo almost rolled his eyes. They acted like they were all on some intense secret mission. All they’d done was sit there pretending like they knew nothing of the situation while other people convinced Sofi to move in with him.

“Having the two of you adopt the dog was a good idea,” Doña Fina was saying, “but Sofi now knows that your sister’s fiancé isn’t allergic.”

“Yeah. I know. She already chewed me out for that, but I wasn’t lying.” Leo had honestly thought Liam was allergic to animals. He could’ve sworn he’d heard it somewhere, but he could not remember where or who’d said it. “And it wasn’t an idea I had. It sort of just happened.”

Abuelo and Doña Fina looked at each other and then away. Doña Fina bit her lip while Abuelo looked like a cat with a stomach full of canary.

Leo got a bad feeling. “What’s going on?”

“Yo no hice nada,” Doña Fina said, her hands up in the air like a criminal being confronted by the cops. “I only mentioned how cute the dogs were when they came for pet therapy.”

“And you said that Sofi always wanted a dog when she was little,” Abuelo added.

“Abuelo,” Leo intoned, rubbing at his suddenly achy temples. “Please tell me that you didn’t plant Tostón in the alley for us to find.”

Abuelo threw up his hands. “What was I supposed to do when I saw him sniffing around the parking lot? Leave him there so he could get hit by a car? It was a sign! Destiny! Fate, I tell you!”

“Oh. My. God.” Leo closed his eyes and shook his head. “How could you have known that he’d stay in the dumpster enclosure? Or that Sofi and I would go into the alley?”

“I left him a big pile of arroz con gandules and why do you think I told you to take out the garbage?”

There were so many ways that could’ve gone totally wrong. The odds of it working out exactly as his abuelo had planned were so slim. Leo was astounded that it had worked. He wanted to be upset, but he was more impressed than anything. But still, he needed to put a stop to their plotting behind his back. “No more planning things that include innocent creatures that could get hurt,” he said firmly. “And talk to me before you do something else.”

“Claro. We didn’t mean to overstep,” Doña Fina said, all big eyes and pouty lips.

Leo snorted. That one was about as innocent as a three-time convicted felon serving a life sentence.

“You act like it didn’t work out perfectly,” Abuelo grumbled.

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