Chapter Text
When Alex was eight-years-old, he tried coffee for the first time. He’d grown up watching his mother prepare it every morning, captivated by the ritual—she would boil milk on the stove, then pour it over a mug of instant coffee and brown sugar, stirring the whole thing vigorously until it turned a pale, frothy beige. Sometimes, as an afterthought, she would sprinkle in a pinch of cinnamon. When he was very young, Alex would drag a kitchen chair over to the counter and stand on it to get a better look at Raquel’s process, his brow furrowed in concentration in a way that always made her laugh.
In the afternoon, while Alex and Jaime were busy studying in their bedroom, she would repeat the process and take two cups out into the backyard. It was a small yard, ostensibly shared with the other tenants of the building, but Raquel and James were the only ones who ever put it to any use. They would sit together after work, sharing instant coffee over a tiny table and trying their best to avoid any topics of conversation that might bring reality crashing down on them. Their arguments were reserved for the kitchen, late at night or early in the morning, when James had failed to come home on time, when he confessed to having lost another job, when he noticed the stack of bills Raquel hadn’t paid yet. But these lazy afternoons in the yard were safe from argument: protected, like the warm mugs cradled tightly in their hands.
When the sound of their laughter floated through the boys’ bedroom window on the second floor, Alex would inevitably set aside his homework and watch them from above, though Jaime would grumble and tell him to leave them alone. Despite his distractibility, Alex would always finish his work before Jaime (“It’s because you’re little, and they don’t give little kids real homework,” Jaime would say), and if Raquel and James were still out in the yard he would dash downstairs to join them.
On one of those rare, blessed days when homework hadn’t been assigned, Alex paced restlessly in the bedroom. He’d been sent up with Jaime as usual, an injustice beyond anything he or anyone else in history had ever experienced. After he’d said as much a couple of times, Jaime looked up from his homework to shoot Alex a filthy look.
“Just read a book, Alex,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“I can’t,” Alex wailed dramatically. “I’ve read everything we have a million times!”
“Not everything, just the baby books.”
“They’re not baby books!” Alex said, stomping his foot. “They’re chapter books and they’re long and you can’t even read them.”
This was only partly true. Alex still had trouble with some of the more advanced books, but his mother would sit with him in the evening and help him sound out the trickier bits. Still, most of the books in their parents’ room were off limits. Jaime said it was because they talked about sex and drugs and other things Alex wasn’t supposed to know about.
Jaime’s face reddened, but he turned back to his workbook instead of taking the bait. “Whatever.”
Alex took some satisfaction out of his glimpse at Jaime’s homework, which had more answers crossed out than filled in. “You haven’t finished your times table.”
Jaime kept working.
Alex crouched down and snuck a finger under his brother’s nose to point at the paper. “You’re supposed to know these already. Mrs. Baker said she was gonna start teaching us this in the spring.”
“Get your finger out of my book.”
“What’s seven times five?”
“Thirty-five.”
“That one’s easy,” Alex said quickly. “Seven times eight?”
Jaime shoved him away. “Let me study, Alex!”
He stood up and walked in a tight circle around Jaime. “Seven times four?”
“Fuck off,” Jaime snarled.
Alex involuntarily clapped his hands over his mouth. “You can’t say that!” he said, and to his embarrassment his voice came out shrill and childish.
“Fuck. Off,” Jaime repeated.
Tears sprung into Alex’s eyes, and he said in a rush, “just because you’re stupider than me doesn’t mean you get to talk like that!”
Instead of responding, Jaime grabbed a heavy book from the pile next to their bed and hurled it at Alex, clipping him on the shoulder. Alex ran from the room and slammed the door behind him, crying in earnest and clutching the aching spot on his arm. He charged down the stairs, fully prepared to throw the backdoor open and call out for his parents. When he put his hand on the door handle, however, his outrage petered out. The pain in his shoulder suddenly filled him with shame instead of anger, an inexplicable weight in his stomach, and the thought of landing Jaime in trouble for what he’d done made his skin crawl. Instead he wiped away his tears and sniffed hard, taking in a few shuddering breaths the way he’d been taught by Mrs. Baker. Opening the door a crack, he listened in on his parents to make sure he wouldn’t interrupt something important and get yelled at for it.
“Can’t you just take more hours?” James was saying.
“I told you already, they don’t have anymore to give me,” Raquel replied, her voice brittle.
“Then we’re just gonna have to get by, and things’ll pick up around Christmas. They always do.”
There was a long pause.
“I can’t believe you,” Raquel said quietly.
“What?”
“Do not put this all on me. Do not do that.”
Alex stared at the peeling green paint on the door and gripped his shoulder tighter. Maybe it would be better to just run out now and interrupt them, he thought. This wasn’t supposed to happen, they weren’t supposed to have this conversation in the yard. He’d heard it all before, none of it was new. Papá would fret about the money and make a couple weak suggestions, mamá would shoot them down and tell him to get a real job, papá would escalate things and yell at her for not respecting him, for not being patient, for not being grateful. If things were really bad, he would end it all by calling her selfish, and she would tell him to get out of her home. He knew that this was how things went. But they weren’t supposed to argue here, now, during his and their favorite part of the day.
He ran out to them before James could say anything else, throwing himself into his mother’s arms and shaking the little table so that the cups of coffee clattered against their saucers.
He buried his face in his mother’s stomach so that he wouldn’t catch the look she was exchanging with James, the “not in front of Alex” look that she thought he was too young to notice. When he pulled away she took his face by the chin and frowned at him.
“Have you been crying, Alejo?” she said softly. Her dark, curly hair was pulled back into a bun that was beginning to fall apart after a long day working at the resort. Alex shook his head no and blew one of the stray locks back out of his mother’s face. She smiled at that, and pulled him onto her lap.
“And did you finish your homework, Alex?” his father asked. Alex only nodded. “Why so quiet?”
“Don’t question a miracle,” Raquel said.
James laughed, throwing his head back. He was handsome, Alex thought suddenly. Very handsome. Mamá was lucky to have him. They settled into an easy silence. His father sipped his coffee and stared absently at the odd little palm tree that had betrayed them by bending over into the neighbor’s yard. Raquel pet Alex’s hair in a gentle, repetitive motion, a small gesture of affection that he knew he was too old for but nevertheless craved. After a minute, she tapped him on the forehead so he had to crane his head back and look at her. She scrutinized him closely, taking in his pink cheeks, his bright eyes, his spiky, clumped together eyelashes.
“Here.” She handed him her cup of coffee. “Have a sip.”
This wasn’t something Alex had expected. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d pleaded with his parents to give him some coffee, even a little bit mixed in with a cup of milk. Mamá always said he wouldn’t like the taste, papá said he didn’t need the caffeine. From what Alex could tell, caffeine just made people less sleepy, and he didn’t see much harm in that. Now he had a steaming cup of coffee right under his nose. He instinctively glanced at his father to see what he thought of all this, but James just smiled and gave a short wink. And that was enough to wipe out the last of the dark thoughts swimming through his mind. Jaime cursing at him, the bruise on his arm, the well of shame in the pit of his stomach, overhearing a budding fight between his mother and father, right where they were supposed to be happiest…it was all wiped out by a cup of coffee, a smile, and a wink.
“Go on then,” Raquel prompted.
He sipped the coffee, ignoring the bitterness and focusing on the rich sweetness of the brown sugar. It was terrible, unfamiliar and tart, but he managed to gulp it down. He smacked his mouth a few times to try and get the aftertaste out.
“No good?” James asked.
“I like it,” Alex lied. “Can I have another sip?”
“One more, that’s it,” Raquel said.
The second sip was better than the first, though not by much; as it went down, he closed his eyes the way his father sometimes did when he drank coffee, miming satisfaction. But Alex felt positive that he could learn to like the taste—as long as there was plenty of sugar to mask it.