Fanfare

  A snack turned into shopping around for a new pair of tennis shoes for Steph and earrings for Maria. Before I knew it, another two hours had gone by, and my Sunday was shot. The only redeeming factors were the huge smiles on their faces from an excellent day filled with memories they would probably cherish until the next It-Boy came into their lives.

  I almost wished I could go back in time to when I was their age. I had been obsessed with Ricky Martin (haha!). I guess if I had spent the morning waiting in line to see Ricky and was then treated to junk food, tennis shoes, and earrings, I would say my weekend was pretty much made. One day, both Steph and Maria would realize how much more it took to make them happy than it used to, and a day like today would seem like a blissful epoch from their past.

  We piled into my little black Civic, and I reached into my purse for my iPod so I could plug it into the adapter.

  “Dammit!” I said angrily.

  “What’s wrong?” Steph asked.

  “I think I left my iPod in the mall. We have to go back in.” I groaned.

  “Do you think someone stole it?” Maria guessed.

  “I don’t know! Maybe I left it on that table from earlier. We’ll check at lost and found.” This was what I got for trying to be good.

  We marched back into the mall and to the information counter. Of course, the meet-and-greet had ended an hour ago, so the table that was swamped earlier that day was no longer there. Information directed us to lost and found.

  “Hi,” I said with chagrin as I walked over to speak with the individual who monitored the small room where my iPod hopefully waited for me.

  “My name is Cris, and I think I lost my iPod earlier at that autograph signing in the center of the mall.”

  “Yes, a number was left for you.”

  What? Why wasn’t my iPod left for me?

  “A number? Um, okay,” I said with frustration.

  He wordlessly handed me a small piece of paper with a telephone number on it. Nothing else was written on the paper.

  “Uh, did they say anything else?” I asked.

  “They just asked that you call later on this evening.”

  Man, I swear. If some stupid teenagers took my iPod and expected some sort of reward, I would hunt them down and tell their parents. I was seriously pissed, and once I got my hands on the junior racketeers, they were going to wish they hadn’t tried to make a quick buck.

  What a perfect end to an excellent day. We walked back to the car in silence.

  “I’m really sorry, Cris,” Maria said quietly as we took our seats.

  “Don’t worry about it, chica. I’ll get my iPod back.”

  I sure would. In fact, I would get it back today. Screw waiting until tonight to call this little hustler. I grabbed my cell phone and ruthlessly punched in the numbers written on the small piece of paper. It rang several times before it cycled to voicemail. I cleared my throat, intent on leaving a stern message. The final ring chirped before the recorded greeting.

  “Hi, this is Tom’s cell. If you managed to wrangle this number, you’re either a close friend or family member or have otherwise managed to impress my agent greatly. In either case, I should respond shortly. Thanks.”

  It beeped and waited for me while I sat there in shock. “Uh, um,” I stammered. I couldn’t just hang up! Caller ID had ruined that escape.

  “Uh, this is Cris. Um, I think you might have my iPod. Could I, um, have it back, please? This is my cell. Uh, can you please call me back?”

  I hurriedly pushed the End button to complete the worst voicemail message in the history of voicemail messages. I had asked a movie star to give me my iPod like a kid on the playground who wanted her ball back. Why the hell had he taken it anyway?

  “Cris? Are you okay?” Steph asked me when she saw the look of utter disbelief on my face.

  “Yeah, sweetie. I’ll be fine.” My mind swirled with thoughts, and most of them centered on my extreme curiosity. I could not fathom why he would take something he could simply leave with lost and found. If he gave the mall a number, why didn’t he just give them my iPod? Maybe he had forgotten about it and only remembered too late to leave it at the mall? Sure. That had to be it. But then why would he give me his cell number and not send some minion to take care of it? I was certain he had many people at his beck and call. The questions burned in my mind as I drove to Steph and Maria’s home to drop them off.

  After stopping inside to say hello to my Aunt and Uncle, I began the half hour drive home to my mother. I had managed to conceal my heavily distracted mind from my Aunt by sticking to banalities, but I knew I would not get away with that at home. Mami missed nothing, and now that it was just the two of us, her eyes were even more watchful. What I wouldn’t give for a semblance of privacy. As much as I wanted to move out and live on my own, I knew I wasn’t ready to leave her. Too much had happened this year, and it was too soon for her to lose her daughter right after she watched her husband succumb to cancer.

  It was time for another reality check. Lately, I had given myself lots of those. It was a major reason why I managed to maintain an air of sanity. Each time I wasted precious moments of my life dwelling on things I had no control over, I forced myself to review the facts.

  Fact: This guy is a movie star.

  Fact: You are nobody.

  Fact: You don’t want anything to do with him.

  Fact: Men make absolutely no sense.

  Fact: Men lie.

  That was it. I was done. There was no reason to continue obsessing about being given Thomas’s personal cell phone number. It didn’t matter. I would get my iPod soon, and then this would just be another funny story to file away for a rainy day.

  Renewed by my reality check, I hummed quietly along with some tuneless song on the radio and let the music take over my thoughts. I’ve always had a love affair with music, and nearly all of my most consequential memories had rippling harmonies in the background. I associated almost everything important in my life with some form of music.

  My Cuban-born father was a classical cellist. As a little girl, I would sit on the floor while he played. I would place my tiny hands on the base of the gleaming wood instrument and revel in the vibrations singing through my fingers with each resonating note he drew across the strings. He would smile down at me. Tu eres la luz de mi vida. I was the light of his life. He was the rock in mine—the only man I could ever trust. My mother was born and raised in Puerto Rico and walked to the silent beat of drums. When she was younger, when her knees didn’t give her trouble, she would dance in the kitchen while cooking us dinner, even when no music could be heard.

  I couldn’t live without music. Now that my father’s quiet laugh and sparkling eyes were no longer in my life, the connection we shared through music was the closest thing I had to being with him.

  I walked in the door of the little house I shared with my mother. “Mami?” I called out.

  She sat in front of her TV, watching her soap operas on Univision. God help whatever schmuck owned Univision if anyone messed with Mami’s telenovelas.

  I plopped down onto the sofa to dutifully tell her about my day. We spoke solely in Spanish at home and, even though I no longer considered it to be the language I conversed most adeptly in, there was always a sense of innate comfort to the Spanish words that rolled off of my tongue I didn’t necessarily feel when I spoke English.

  I fixed dinner while she sat on the sofa and told me how much her knees had pained her that day. Mami was the quintessential martyr, and I didn’t know what she would do with her day, or talk about, if she were actually absent a slew of debilitating ailments. I listened patiently. She knew that my threshold was about twenty minutes, and she milked every moment of it. After we ate, I went through the mail and made sure there were no unpaid bills before I went upstairs to check my email and take a shower.

  My phone began to ring as I made my way up the stairs. It was Gita.

  “Hey babe! How was your Sunday?” she asked.

/>   “Man, it was boring as hell.” I groaned. I proceeded to tell her about waiting in line forever to meet some tween idol.

  “C, you’re such a good cousin. I don’t think I’d do that crap for my own sister!”

  “You’re lying, Gita. I know you would, and then you’d call me at night to complain about it just like I’m doing right now.” I laughed.

  “Well, at least let me try to make you feel good about sacrificing your entire Sunday for them. I spent mine at the library studying accounting crap. Seriously, remind me why I’m going to school while working full-time. Spout the lies about opportunity cost and whatnot so I can feel like I’m not killing myself for nothing,” replied Gita.

  “You know that—” Beep. “Hey Gita? I have a call on the other line, give me a sec.”

  “Hello? This is Cristina.”

  “Hi. This is Tom.” I nearly dropped the phone when I heard his softly accented voice.

  “Uh, hi?” I squeaked.

  “Am I calling at a bad time?” He actually sounded a little nervous.

  “Um, can you give me a second? I have a call on the other line.”

  “Truly, I don’t want to be a bother. I can call later.”

  “No, no. Just give me a sec.” My hand shook a little as I pressed the button to switch back over to the conversation I was having with Gita. Calm down, Cristina! You’re acting like an idiot.

  “Gita? I have to go, but I’ll call you back.”

  “Right, it’s actually still Tom.” Great. Dumbass.

  “Sorry. Let’s try this again.” I fumbled around with my phone a second time. I really should have read that damned manual at least once instead of pompously discarding the packaging and placing ill-gotten faith in my own technological aptitude.

  “Gita? I’ll call you back,” I said in a rush.

  “Okay, sure! Bye!” she replied.

  “Tom? Sorry about that,” I said while attempting to slow my speech.

  Jeez! I really wasn’t enamored at all, but I think the whole famous thing was getting to me. I pursed my lips and steadied my shaking voice. I’d rather eat shit than have him think he could make me freak out just because some idiots in Hollywood thought he was easy on the eyes.

  “Don’t apologize. It’s not a big deal.” Again, I felt like I detected a faint level of anxiety in his voice that caught me off guard. Wasn’t being obnoxiously self-assured a staple characteristic of the cinema elite?

  “Are you nervous?” I blurted without thought. Strike two, Cris . . . or maybe three. I’d lost count.

  “Uh.” He exhaled in surprise at my bluntness. “Actually, I am. I don’t normally call girls I just met in passing. It’s not exactly at the top of my list of fun things to do.”

  Right. Sure. Pretending to be the awkward guy was apparently his current trick for tricks. “I guess you don’t normally take their iPods either,” I said with a sarcastic laugh.

  He chuckled softly. “No, I don’t typically do that. I actually rescued your iPod. You should probably thank me. Some girl thought she’d struck gold.”

  “Unless ‘gold’ is code for a lime green iPod with a giant scratch across the screen, I don’t know why she would want it. There’s probably not much on there that would interest her. I’m not into the Jonas Brothers.”

  “So I noticed. What exactly draws you to angry music with a politically-charged message?”

  I thought for a moment. “Irreverence and rebellion.” If he asked, I would give it to him straight. I had enough experience with word games to fill a book that would make The Brothers Karamazov look like a walk in the park.

  He laughed comfortably this time. “I can see both of those things in you.”

  “How?” I asked carefully.

  “I actually noticed you before you made it up to the signing table. You were squinting oddly at me.”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t see anything. I left my glasses in the car.”

  “That was probably unwise. Sight’s important.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Freaking Hana.

  “I thought you hated every moment of standing in line. Whenever your friends came over to talk to you, you couldn’t wait for them to leave. Most girls like having the distraction and the attention of their peers, especially in public. I dunno, I think it makes them feel desirable.”

  Man, he had noticed a lot. “How did you manage to sign all those autographs and notice enough around you to make social commentary?”

  “Are you kidding? Do you know how many times I’ve had to sign my name in my life? Honestly, I’ll bet if someone handed me a pen in my sleep, I’d wake up with my name tattooed over half my body and all across the sheets.”

  “So, you’re subconsciously a narcissist? Interesting—a narcissistic movie star. There’s a new one.”

  “And here comes the irreverence. Aren’t you supposed to be charming? Usually, girls I meet go out of their way to be charming to me. You actually went out of your way to suggest that I’m a racist wanker.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Do you want to know the funny thing? I actually like Daddy Yankee.”

  He laughed loudly. “A Latin girl who likes reggaeton. It’s downright shocking.”

  I was surprised at how easy he was to talk to. “I can be charming when I want to be. It just wasn’t my day.”

  “I honestly prefer the irreverence. It helps to ground me.”

  “If you’re telling me that you dislike hearing a bunch of girls say how gorgeous you are, I’m going to scoff in disbelief.” Shit, I’d used the word “scoff.”

  “Scoff away. I actually hate it.”

  “Please.” I snorted.

  “I really do.”

  “Explain.”

  Awkward boy was back with a vengeance. “I hate feeling like I have to live up to some figment of perfection they have in their imagination.”

  “So, you can’t handle the pressure of being scrutinized. My next question is painfully obvious. Why would you go into the film industry if you hate having people treat you like eye candy?”

  “Truly, I have no idea how to answer that question. It was just an opportunity that fell into my lap, and it seemed foolish to throw it away.”

  “Yeah, I hear the money’s good, too.” I smiled in spite of myself.

  “It definitely helps. In truth, I’m quite a miser. If you saw the way I lived at home, you’d be really surprised.”

  “You know, I believe you. Enough about this conversation has surprised me into believing that I shouldn’t make snap judgments. Movie stars are people too.”

  He laughed again, then sighed regretfully.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “I actually have to go; I have a plane to catch.”

  I could swear he almost sounded like he wanted to keep talking to me, and I couldn’t stop a surprising feeling of loss from creeping into my stomach. Man, I was pathetic. I must really miss late-night phone conversations with a cute guy.

  “Well, how am I supposed to get my iPod?”

  “I really am sorry about that. I’m going to New York tonight, but I can have it sent to you sometime in the next few days.”

  “That’s fine. If you lose it, I’ll sue the hell out of you. Then I can quit my job and sip Mai-Tais along the Caribbean.”

  “You really are refreshingly irreverent,” he said with a chuckle.

  “And you really are incredibly surprising,” I admitted.

  “That’s a start. Goodnight Cris.”

  “Goodnight Tom.”

  A start?

  TWO

  “You need to understand that we are finished.”

  The frigid words cut at my soul with biting stabs. Eight sharpened daggers hell-bent on merciless destruction. The end of dreams, and the beginning of nightmares.

  “What are you talking about, Ryan?” My voice was steady and calm. I had already mastered the ability to talk my way out of uncomfortable situations. This false sense of control belied the
screams building in my throat.

  “How much clearer can I be? Do you want me to say it, Cristina?”

  “I want you to tell me why.” Even in my nightmare, I looked refreshingly unruffled while witnessing the heart-stopping destruction of my carefully designed future.

  Frosty blue eyes glared at me. There was no warmth to be seen in their bleak wasteland.

  “There’s someone else.”

  Finally, my face showed some signs of understanding. It began at my eyes and rippled through my features with slow deliberation. Pain. More pain than I thought existed—pain outside the realm of physical reality. I would rather have felt thousands of small needles pricking my skin protractedly, one at a time. There was no music in this memory—only the silence of a death. When a soul screams its last, can anyone hear it?

  “Why?” My voice broke. Something suffocated my lungs slowly, as though I were drowning from inside out. I clasped my hands behind my back in an attempt to maintain my posture. I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing me crumble like a beaten dog.

  “Why do I need a reason?”

  “When you destroy a dream, you have to have a reason,” I whispered.

  “You’re not the person I fell in love with. I will never be the person you want me to be.”

  I can change! I wanted to scream. I can be whatever you want me to be! The screams were held back unconsciously by my pride—a blessing I clung to months after the fact. Just don’t leave. My mouth refused to form the words that my heart ached to say.

  I wouldn’t beg. I wouldn’t be pathetic.

  “But I love you,” I said simply.

  “It’s not enough.”

  He looked at me with the blue eyes that had shared four years of laughter and tears . . . four years of successes and failures. Four years of love. Now they were the eyes of a stranger.

  “I’m not staying here tonight. When I come back on Sunday, you won’t be here. Take whatever you think is yours.”

  His eyes narrowed as he watched my world unravel with the gaze of a detached observer. “Don’t worry. You’ll find someone else. You’re very easy to like.” This was the moment in my recurring nightmare where I really wished I had held a sharp object in my hands.