Grapes Upside Down

32. Crystal

~Madisen~

"Noah comes home today, right?" I ask Graciela during lunch, my Spanish smoother than ever. She blinks in a noticeable manner, glancing up from her pastel de choclo.

"Haven't you spoken with him?" Her head tilts to the side, eyes narrowed in curiosity.

"No." Hot tears prickle, outlining the circumference of my eyes. "I think he's upset with me."

Señor Mendez, who is home from work on an extended weekend, closes out his cell phone and tosses it on a nearby table behind him when he hears the small sobs hiccupping out of me. He pats my back in a fatherly fashion, then exchanges a rapid laser-tag conversation with his wife which I can't decipher.

"You're going out with someone?" he inquires after obtaining information from Graciela. Due to the multiple meanings of the word salir (to go out, to leave, to date), I'm not quite sure how to interpret the question.

"I met a guy the other day," I explain with stilted words.

"Noah likes her so much; I'm sure it's hard for him," Graciela hums to her husband.

A tumbleweed of anxiety tangles up inside my stomach; I'm hearing the sentences being spoken, and I comprehend the words, but it all enters my brain like sour beer jumbling up the meaning. Interpreting pertinent information in my non-native language reminds me of wearing a mask during the pandemic and the perpetual sensation that it was blocking my vision. I could in fact see, but a constant unnatural film clouded my entire sensory perception.

"I thought that he had..." I begin, but no expression to convey the concept of a "crush" surfaces in my vernacular. "That he liked me, but he never actually said anything."

"He loves you," Graciela responds simply, gently, automatically. "The way he treats you and looks at you says it all."

Burying my face in my hands, overwhelm swallows me up.

"All the times that I thought a guy loved me in the past, I was wrong."

"Well, Madicita, you weren't wrong about Noah." Graciela rubs my arm with a gentle thumb.

"But... but..." Smearing the tears across my eyelashes, I try to pull out the words I need from the junk pile of thoughts popping around my brain. "As much as I was hoping for something to happen with Noah just a few days ago... now my feelings for Ignacio are... growing fast."

"Ignacio?" Eduardo repeats, surprise ringing in his voice. "He's Chilean?" His course, spikey eyebrows furrow sharply.

"Yes."

"Oh, Madicita. That sounds so complicated. If you fall in love with someone here, think about what will happen when you have to go home." Graciela's words flutter out as a silken blanket, warm and protective.

"I know. It doesn't make any sense. It's stupid and disastrous." I pull in a long breath that quivers like a rusty, sputtering engine. "But...I can't not see him, now."

The way my host mom freezes, mahogany eyes surveying my face, I can tell that she senses the depth and intensity of my feelings. Her lips hold a perfectly horizontal line, nonjudgmental, but worried. I don't know if her concern is for me or for Noah.

I'm terrified, too. Because a rational core sense of self is screaming at me not to fall for a man from another country. Yet, there is another steel-solid truth in my gut--a mutated, second avocado pit--that knows I'll be stepping off the Mendezes' porch hand-in-hand with Ignacio at 10:00pm, tonight and every other night until my departure on August 8th. It's an inevitability wrapped in silvery stardust, an irrational trust in the tides of destiny.