Crimson Lace

The first time I saw Valeria she was on her knees in my mother's living room, and I was standing in the doorway with a bag of ice melting in my hand.

She was wearing a plaid miniskirt, the kind that costs more than it looks like it should, and she was reaching under the coffee table for a phone charger that my sister had dropped. The skirt rode up the back of her thighs. White cotton. Lace trim along the edge, the kind you notice because it's a deliberate choice, not an accident.

I looked away. Then I looked back. Then I set the ice on the counter and pretended I hadn't seen anything at all.

"Got it," she said, and stood up, and that was the moment my sister's best friend stopped being a name I heard at dinner and became a problem I'd have to deal with for the rest of the summer.

Valeria was seventeen. I was twenty-two, home from my third year of college because my father had decided that summer was the right time to remodel the kitchen and that I was the right person to help. I'd argued. I'd lost. So there I was, in a house that smelled like paint thinner and my mother's gardenias, carrying ice for a father who was currently on the roof doing something he shouldn't have been doing at fifty-eight.

"Leo, right?" Valeria said.

She knew my name. Of course she knew my name. She was at the house three days a week, sometimes four, always with my sister Camila, always staying for dinner, always leaving just late enough that my mother would say *ay, mija, let me call you a taxi* and Valeria would say *no, señora, my brother's coming* and then walk out to a car that never arrived.

"Yeah," I said. "Leo."

"You're the one who studies architecture."

"Engineering."

"Same thing."

"It's not."

She smiled. Not a polite smile. The kind that says *I know it's not, I was testing you*. She had a gap between her front teeth, small enough that you'd miss it if you weren't looking, and I was looking. That was the problem. I was always looking.

Camila came down the stairs then, hair wet, phone in hand, already talking before she hit the last step. "Val, did you find it? I swear I'm gonna lose my mind, I can't find anything in this house since Dad started throwing everything into boxes."

"Found it." Valeria held up the charger like a trophy. "Your brother was watching me crawl around on the floor."

Camila laughed. She didn't catch it. Or she caught it and didn't care, which would have been worse.

I went back to the kitchen. I put the ice in the freezer. I stood there with the door open, letting the cold hit my face, and told myself I was being ridiculous. She was a kid. She was my sister's friend. She was wearing a skirt that barely covered anything and underwear with lace on it and I was a grown man who needed to get a grip.

The freezer beeped. I closed it.

That night at dinner, Valeria sat across from me. My mother had made sancocho, the kind that takes three hours and tastes like it, and Valeria ate like someone who hadn't eaten all day. She tore pieces of arepa with her fingers. She laughed at my father's jokes, even the bad ones. She called my mother *señora* and my mother corrected her twice, *Llámame Marta, por favor*, and Valeria kept saying *señora* anyway, which I understood. Some habits are armor.

"Leo's being weird," Camila said.

I looked up. "I'm eating."

"You're eating like a robot. You haven't said anything."

"I'm tired."

"He's always tired," my father said. "Since he was a baby. Slept through his own birthday party."

"I was three."

"You were four. You slept through the piñata."

Valeria was watching me. Not obviously. She had her fork in her hand and her eyes on her plate, but I could feel it, the way you feel someone looking at you in a crowd. There's a pressure to it. A heat.

After dinner, Camila went upstairs to call her boyfriend, which meant she'd be gone for an hour, and my father went to the garage, and my mother started washing dishes. I should have helped. I always helped. Instead I went out to the back patio and sat on the step and looked at the orange tree that never gave oranges.

The screen door opened behind me. I didn't turn around.

"You smoke?" Valeria said.

"No."

"Me neither." She sat down next to me. Close. Not touching, but close enough that I could smell her shampoo, something floral and cheap, the kind you buy at the pharmacy. "Your sister thinks you're mad at her."

"I'm not."

"She thinks you are."

I turned to look at her. "Why do you care?"

She shrugged. The strap of her tank top slipped off her shoulder and she didn't fix it. "I don't. I'm just telling you."

We sat there for a minute. The orange tree rustled. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog was barking at nothing.

"You looked at me," she said. "Earlier. When I was on the floor."

My chest tightened. "I was looking at the charger."

"No, you weren't."

"Valeria."

"What? I'm just saying." She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The skirt bunched up around her hips. I looked at the tree. I looked at the sky. I looked anywhere but at her. "You don't have to pretend. I'm not gonna tell anyone."

"Tell anyone what?"

"That you looked."

I stood up. "You should go inside. Camila's probably looking for you."

"She's not." Valeria tilted her head back and looked up at me. Her eyes were dark brown, almost black, and they didn't blink. "She's on the phone with Andrés. They're fighting. They always fight on Thursdays."

It was Thursday. I hadn't known that. I hadn't known that Camila and Andrés fought on Thursdays, or that Valeria knew about it, or that she'd be the kind of person who kept track of things like that.

"You don't know me," I said.

"I know enough."

"Enough for what?"

She smiled again. That same smile. The gap between her teeth. The way she looked at me like she'd already figured out the ending and was just waiting for me to catch up.

"Enough to know you're not gonna do anything about it," she said. "That's the problem with guys like you. You look, and then you feel bad about looking, and then you look again. But you never do anything."

She stood up. She smoothed her skirt down. She walked past me, close enough that her arm brushed mine, and went inside.

I stood on the patio for a long time after that. The dog stopped barking. The lights in the house went out one by one. My mother called my name and I said I'd be in soon, and I wasn't, not for another hour.

When I finally went inside, Valeria was asleep on the couch. Camila had thrown a blanket over her. She looked younger like that. Smaller. Just a girl in a plaid skirt who'd fallen asleep waiting for a ride that wasn't coming.

I turned off the lamp and went upstairs and lay in bed with my eyes open, thinking about lace trim and the gap between her teeth and the way she'd said *you never do anything* like it was a challenge.

It was a challenge.

I knew it was a challenge.

And I knew, even then, that I was going to lose.