Page 1 of The Crush
One
Isabel
Wednesday, May 18, 1994
I did not look forward to my graduation day. In fact, the last few weeks leading up to the happy event had felt like nothing but an ominous ticking clock, each final exam bringing me closer and closer to the inevitable future that awaited me as soon as I stepped off that stage.
For my friends, it was different. Any nostalgia they felt over our college years coming to an end was overshadowed by the call of new adventures. New jobs. New cities. New lives.
For me… Instead of a ticket to new opportunities, my diploma was effectively a bill becoming due, and that morning my family had arrivedpromptlyto collect. My hat and gown returned and my dorm room emptied before the incessant flash from my mother’s camera even had a chance to fade.
“Need to get going if we want to beat traffic, muñequita,” my father reminded me at every opportunity, hovering with a stern expression while my three older brothers loaded up my belongings, and I gave each of my friends one last lingering goodbye hug.
Of course, they both promised to call. To write. To visit. All the things you tell someone when you know your time is up, but you can’t bring yourself to say it.
I already knew no one would be visiting me in Laredo, let alone the small community of La Orilla in the southeast outskirts where we lived. Why would they want to go there?Ididn’t even want to go there, yetthereI was soon headed. Dutifully following behind the packed Rivera family suburban in my little red VW Golf as the city of San Antonio faded into my rearview mirror.
Four years. A perfect GPA. A part-time job. Apracticaldegree. Home to visit during each break. Home for good after graduation day.Oh, and mass on Sundays.
Those were the terms of the deal I had been all too eager to sign. Would again, even with knowing that tasting that kind of freedom only makes it all the more difficult when the time comes to give it up.
By that night, I was back to my usual seat at the dining table, back to my childhood bedroom, back to my childhoodentirelybased on the way my parents laid out plans for me like church clothes. Which was how, only a few days later, I wound up sitting in the Ríos driveway, pressing my head back against the seat of my car with my eyes closed and remaining there long past the point where the Texas heat allowed it to be comfortable.
You knew, I remind myself for the hundredth time.You knew how it would be, and you still came back.
Just as you were told.
With a resigned sigh, I throw my car door open before I suffocate, the incoming gust of wind audibly rustling the newspaper lying in my passenger seat. Out of habit, I reach over and tuck thepages safely out of sight before getting out and looking up at the house with a familiar ache in my chest.
Faded tan paint. Overgrown flower beds. Cracked tile roof. A lawn that’s now more dirt than grass. Growing up, I had been in and out of this house nearly as often as my own, our two families interwoven not only by an enduring friendship but also by a shared way of life.
Like my father, the Ríos patriarch Tadeo is a rancher both by trade and by heritage, generations owning and working this land for however many it took for it to simply become a given that the next would follow suit. However, while that assumption had certainly held true in my family—for my brothers as well as me—it hadn’t in Tadeo’s. Not if the last eight years are anything to go by.
I glance in the direction of a sun-faded red truck with a wide white stripe, parked in its increasingly permanent spot farther up the drive as yet another reminder of what, or more accuratelywho, is still missing from this house. Just the sight of it is enough to make me almost forget the covered dish of my mother’s chile relleno from the back seat, and I’m forced to double back before I approach the porch.
Please let him be okay, I think as I climb the front steps.Please let him be—
I’m stopped from a full recitation of my usual mantra right outside Tadeo’s front door, and I scrunch my brows together, baffled when the handle fails to budge as I go to let myself in past the screen door.
Since when has Tadeo started locking the house up?I glance back over my shoulder into the setting sun, confirming that his light gray truck is also parked in the driveway before I start to mentallyrun through his daily routine. Hardly different from the one on my family’s ranch, even if it’s often only Tadeo here checking things off.He should be done and back at the house by now.
My anxiety extends to include him as my knuckles strike the day-warmed wood, and I resolve to head down to the barns to check on him if he doesn’t answer soon. Hearing no one stirring, I knock again and then again.Rap. Rap. Rap.
I’m about to give it one last attempt right as the front door is yanked open, and I stumble forward a step with my hand still raised, colliding into an immovable force. “Sorry, Tadeo, I was—”
The words die on my tongue as I steady myself and look up, instant recognition making my heart race as I question whether I am hallucinating after sitting too long in the hot car. To be sure, I take a step back, waiting a prolonged second for him to evaporate before I actually let myself believe it.
Standing in his doorway and staring back at me with what appears to be an equal amount of surprise, Daniel Ríos is every bit as handsome in his mid-thirties as he had been in his mid-twenties. More so even with the dirt-streaked work clothes, the several days of stubble, and the disheveled brown curls.
“You’re home,” I murmur, too busy cataloging every difference in him to really think of much else to add besides, “Hi.”
His eyes widen slightly before his brow furrows, his shoulders falling and his hand dragging along his jaw on its way to massage the back of his neck. “Hi,” he says on an exhale, his deep voice sounding tired as he gives me an apologetic smile. “Come on in.”
My stomach flips as I quickly move past him like he might change his mind, though I stop again right inside the door when he leans in to shut it behind me. My feet stuck in place by his closeproximity as much as the house’s decor is still stuck in the late seventies.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he says politely, his half-untucked burgundy button-up pulling distractingly taut across his broad back and shoulders as he moves to stand a few paces away. “Pop said earlier that you were coming by to help with some stuff, but we got stuck working on thatfuc—” He catches himself and clears his throat. “Tractor quit on us after lunch. Must have lost track of time. Here, let me take that.”
He comes close again to reach for the dish I’ve all but forgotten I’m holding. Near enough that I can see the way a few errant strands of his dark hair are brushing over his deep brown eyes. That, along with the inadvertent skim of his fingers against mine as he takes the dish, is sufficient enough to send the teenage crush that still resides in my chest into somersaults.
