Page 24 of Love at Teamsgiving
As for the cast of characters for the Cruz family: it’s Ma and Pop, plus Tony, Paulie, me, Charlie, and Joey—the youngest. We’re arguably a louder and more colorful crew. Each of our given names is Spanish or Italian—with some overlap for our middle names because they couldn’t agree—but when we started kindergarten, Ma signed us up with American variations. Everyone calls me Mikey, except for Junie, as of recently. Not sure why she changed it up. Maybe trying to erase the version of me that she knew.
The truth is, I have changed a lot, yet I still feel very much the same as I did for years, as I stand outside her door. However, recent events have me debating whether to knock again.
Having moved teams for the last few years, I’ve been in NYC for games but haven’t taken a walk down memory lane. The vacuum store on the corner is gone, which is no surprise—who goes to a vacuum store? Now, it’s a chain coffee shop, so I can no longer speculate how it’s a front for the mob. Three of my favorite pizza shops still look as dingy and perfect as ever. But there are loads of new boutiques and trendy restaurants popping up along these once-familiar streets.
Despite the changes, no other place has felt quite like home, not even when I moved my parents and my two younger brothers with us—first to Washington State, then to St. Louis, Missouri. Now, we’re heading to Nebraska.
Ma, born in Italy, says she’s tired of these cold places and wants me to get a contract somewhere warm. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly up to me. My father, from Mexico, is happy wherever we are so long as the family sticks together. He’s not thrilled that Tony and Paulie, my two older brothers, live in Colorado and Texas, respectively. But they come to as many games as possible, never miss a holiday, and insist on Sunday family video chats. They also both agreed that once we settle down somewhere, they’ll consider moving closer—I tease it’s because they miss Mom’s meatballs. Until a few years ago, we’d always been within a ten-minute train ride of each other.
It really is a family affair, and once upon a time, Junie was a part of it.
If things had been different ...
And I think that’s just it. A part of me held onto hope that even though my family left the city, with Junie’s still in their old place, I had a tether to what could have been.
Now that she’s soon moving to Corn Town, aka the middle of nowhere, Nebraska—oddly, the same as me—we’re closing a door on this place for good.
But are we opening a new one? I’m not foolish enough to think we can ever go back to the couple who defied the family feud and fell in love.
I knock on the door to 4B one more time. No answer. Perhaps she has already left. But the creaky old wooden floor betrays that someone is inside.
Unless we’re dealing with ghosts ... of the past, but still. It’s nearly autumn, the gateway to what Juniper used to call spooky season and her favorite time of year.
The door swings open, and Erica stands there, her smile uncertain. In a flurry, she says, “I was just going. Thanks for teaming up and taking on the wedding planning. Can’t wait. It’sgoing to be great. Byeee.” She breezes past me and disappears down the stairs.
Juniper takes her place with her hand gripping the door like she’s about to slam it. “Yes?”
“Yes!” I repeat, knowing the real question she wants answered is what I’m doing here, but I reply as if we’re both agreeing to get along.
“No,” she says, starting to close the door.
The grin that spreads on my lips cannot be helped, even though I know it probably looks cocky—without a doubt—high on her list of things she hates about me. “It’s like I manifested you.”
Junie cuts her gaze at me. “You can’t manifest a person. I have free will. Anyway, you showed up here at my apartment. Why?”
“You’re right. None of that woo-woo nonsense.” My mother would slap me upside the head for saying something heretical like that.
But the subtext catches up to Junie. Right. On. Time.
Her expression contorts in confusion and then shifts to what can best be described asSay it ain’t so. “Do you mean to say that you were thinking about me?”
My grin grows because once the spark ignites with Junie, there’s no putting it out and I don’t want to. Never have. Probably never will.
Am I a glutton for punishment? No. But like opposite magnetic poles, we attract each other—case in point, right now as she leans forward and I close the space breath by breath, inch by inch.
“Whatcha doing?” I ask, my voice a growly whisper as if anticipating her snarky answer.
She wears smoky eye makeup and peers at me like I’m a numbskull. “Packing, obviously. Pretending that the afternoon didn’t happen. That you’re not here.”
Her gaze traces me from my head to my toes. I heat up all over, then fake a shiver in response to her comment. “So cold.”
“Cold like ice, Miguel. But you’re used to that. I’m pretty sure you prefer it.” Of course, this is a reference to our breakup, which was partially influenced by my hockey career, but that’s not all, and she knows it.
“Why are you calling me by my given name? It’s so formal. I feel like I’m being scolded.”
Her lip curls. “Because the Mikey I knew—quit on me.”
She avoids my gaze, but I catch the way she saysMikeylike a puck in a net. There’s an undeniable familiarity, a name she’d whisper as she’d drowse when we’d ride home on the bus after away games. Ones where she’d shout my name in the arena and I could hear it above the roar of the crowd. I miss those days. Seeing her in my jersey. The two of us against the rival team—against the world.
