Page 36 of Loving My Enemy

“What? She’s a nice girl. Beautiful. Polite. And she has that entrepreneurial spirit.” Another smile, overly innocent this time, crossed her face. “It’s the truth.”

“Entrepreneurial spirit, really?” She’d stopped by thirty minutes ago with groceries and a determined look on her face, knowing I couldn’t pass up her cooking. She fooled me into thinking we wouldn’t talk about anything heavy.

“It means life will never be boring.” She turned back to the stove just as the butter started to sizzle. “Onions first, please.”

“What are you making anyway?”

“Something you won’t be able to resist. Finish those tomatoes while you tell me about what’s going on with you and Elka.”

“There’s nothing—” Thankfully the bell rang and prevented me from answering her. “What the hell are you guys doing here?” Preston, Nate, and Tyson stood on my doorstep, wearing the biggest damn smiles in the world.

“We heard that beautiful mother of yours was cooking and our stomachs led us here.” Nate was brave to dare talk about my mother that way. “Can we come in?”

“Of course you boys can come in!”

I groaned and took a step back, waving the intruders inside. “You heard her. Come on in.” Maybe it was better they were here, this way Mom wouldn’t bring up Elka.

“Thanks for the invite, Mrs. Vargas.” Tyson was the first to drop a kiss on her cheek and offer up a compliment. “Traveling agrees with you. A lot.”

Mom blushed and if I didn’t know Ty was screwing with me, I would’ve knocked a tooth out. “Save that fresh talk for your women.” She waved Ty on and accepted a kiss on the cheek from the others. “Set the table and get drinks from the fridge, boys.” It was just like old times, all of us sitting around the table with Mom shoveling food down our throats. When the food was ready and everyone was seated, she went in for the attack. “Okay, now that we’re ready to eat, Antonio can tell us what’s going on with him and Elka.”

“Oh yeah, tell us everything.” Nate leaned forward, chin resting in his hands and a wide grin on his face.

I glared at him. At all of them. But it didn’t matter. “Nothing is going on with us. There is no us.” Except it seemed like there could be; I didn’t even know if I wanted that. I understood her now, a little, but I didn’t completely trust her. “She told me something and I don’t know what to make of it.” It hadbeen eating at me since she told me about her parents and her abbreviated college experience.

“Well don’t leave us hanging,” Tyson urged, holding his hands up defensively.

“Maybe you shouldn’t tell us, if she told you this in confidence.” Preston was always the voice of reason. It was both his best and worst quality.

He was right, of course. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. “She dropped out of college to give her brother a kidney.” That part was shocking enough but when I told them the rest, their expressions were equally horrified. “What does it mean?” Nothing made sense and I dug into the spicy tomato and onion mixture covering the juicy chicken quarters. I couldn’t figure it out, but eating always helped me think.

All around the table, the guys and Mom still sat in a shocked silence while I ate. Eventually they all dug into the food, my question seemingly forgotten. But I should have known better.

“I saw these parents on Dr. Phil once—a couple had a second baby just so that child could provide donor material for their first child.” She shivered and shook her head. “It was heartbreaking but maybe that’s what she meant.”

It was like all the air had been sucked out of the room with her words. Of all the scenarios that had played in my mind, that one hadn’t even been a thought. “People really do shit like that?”

“Watch your mouth, son. And yes, they do.”

“Man, you were a murder detective,” Nate said and shook his head. “You know better than most all the fucked up shit people do to each other.”

“Mouth, young man.”

Mom was a stickler for profanity and Nate’s pink cheeks were proof of that. “Sorry, Mrs. Vargas.”

She grinned. “You’re a grown man. Call me Liz. But Nate is right. This isn’t news to you.”

No, it wasn’t. “Still, it’s just so unbelievable.” Could Elka’s parents have had her for the sole purpose of keeping her brother alive? It was too fucked up to be true.

“Maybe you should just leave Elka alone. You’ve made her time here very unpleasant and it sounds like she’s just looking for peace. Something about her rubs you the wrong way—maybe that’s a sign.”

Maybe my mom was right. But now that I knew her—now that I could have her if I wanted her—Ididwant her. I wanted to know more about what made her smile, what made her laugh. “Or maybe I’ve just been an asshole.”

“Not every woman is a liar, Antonio.” Preston sighed and finished chewing his food. “It took me a long time to realize that and to stop treating every woman I met like she was my mother in disguise.”

“Sounds like Preston will be walking down the aisle soon,” Tyson joked, but Preston didn’t deny it.

Was that what I did? Punish Elka for Sadie’s mistakes? Maybe I had because on those rare occasions when I thought about Sadie these days, there wasn’t sadness in her depths the way there was with Elka. There had been fear, but I knew it was fear that I’d find out who, nowhat, she was. But behind Elka’s sunny disposition was a deep sadness that was always there.

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