1 Chapter 1
“Juan Hernandez.” Esmerelda said my name as we sat in her dark parlor. She rolled her crystals around in her palm, and then flung them across the purple velvet tablecloth like a craps dealer in Vegas. She gasped as they settled. “A triangle,” she said.
“A triangle? What does that mean?” I asked her.
“Only the spirits know.”
Fifty bucks on my MasterCard for that? She had already told me my true love would be someone already familiar with me, yet someone I’d never met. Chances were, she’d be right. Her bases were pretty well covered.
Fresh out of college after six years—I was never academic material—I was trying to choose a life plan. The psychic was a last resort, as I needed help deciding whether or not I should stay out west or move back to the east coast. I’d partied my way through Arizona University after graduating number one hundred and ninety four out of two hundred and seventy students. I’d been proud of myself for landing in the top half of the class, until someone pointed out to me I hadn’t. No shocker, I’d flunked every math class I’d ever taken. My summers had been spent making up the grades with Mr. Darcy, who was pretty hot all sweaty. He had sexy, hairy legs he got to show off in shorts during the month of July, and truth be told, I’d popped a boner once or twice trying to see what kind of underwear he wore by looking up the leg holes when he sat on the corner of his desk to explain Euclid.
I was a teacher now. How Ironic was that? My last two years at AU I’d really buckled down. I loved music, and I wanted to teach it to little kids. The piano had captured me at a very young age, thanks to Mrs. Cornell, the organist at the church my parents dragged me to every Sunday. The minister’s sermons were intolerable, but after the service, while everyone else would retire to the community room for coffee and Jetta Hopper’s homemade banana bread, I would sit on the bench beside Mrs. C. and tinker with the electronic keyboard that had a piano setting as well. I wish I could visit her again, but she was old when I was little and had passed away years ago. I hadn’t really kept in touch with anyone back home after fleeing across the country, but as the plane touched down in New York, my high school bud, Colin, who I’d called ahead, met me at the airport.
“Juanita!”
I hated that nickname. “Colon, you asshole.” I gave it right back, imagining, as I hugged him that he and I would be making love by day’s end. Though I wasn’t even certain I believed in psychics, Esmerelda’s words were all I had, so I was going with it, looking for triangles on Colin’s person, though with my luck, I had just left my one true love back in Arizona.
“What you been up to, Juan? Get laid yet?”
“Plenty, douche bag.” Suddenly, I was a teenager again, instead of the semi-mature twenty-five-year-old I had become.
“So you finally know what a woman tastes like. Good for you.”
I had no idea what a woman tasted like, and had no desire to find out. I’d tasted plenty of men, however, and other than my grandma’s tamales, perhaps, they were my favorite thing to eat on planet Earth.
“I’m gay,” I told him right out. I figured, what was the point of beating around the bush? “No pun intended.”
“Huh?”
“I said I’m gay.”
“I got that part,” Colin said. “But where was the pun?”
“Oh.” I’d forgotten the bush part was only in my head. “Never mind. You’re not gay?”
“Nope. Not even a little.”
“Oh.”
“Disappointed?” He smiled, and that put my mind at ease. Even if he wasn’t gay, at least he didn’t seem grossed out by the fact that I was. I’d gotten kind of used to just being gay in college. It wasn’t a big announcement every time I met someone new. Being back home, I was going to have to go through that a little bit, I figured. People I hadn’t seen in six years were going to have to be told, starting with my parents.
Things were a bit strained there. My father was an old-fashioned Latino man. He’d wanted me to go into the family restaurant with him and my brother, Manny. How many Hernandez boys did it take to roll an enchilada? I’d figured two could get the job done. I’d wanted something else, though I’d had no idea what as I’d stepped onto the bus out of town.
