Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet: Chapters 11–15

"Every time I try to make changes or reprimand someone, it’s a mess. I’m just not that guy. I’m not the disciplinarian.”

"Every time I try to make changes or reprimand someone, it’s a mess. I’m just not that guy. I’m not the disciplinarian.”

“I haven’t found anything else yet,” I say, trying to coax him out of his pride.

My knuckles blanch around the edge of my seat. “What does he want?”

One woman has a blue pin stuck to her jacket—a token of sobriety that the shelter gives out to tenants who’ve stuck to their ninety-day commitments.

His eyes widen as the food hits his plate. “Don’t be stingy, now.”
“Oh, Francis, we’ve got to save enough for everyone,” Mrs. Rodriguez teases.

I nod, afraid of divulging too much about my previous place of employment and being forced to answer how exactly I got myself fired from my family’s restaurant.

Josie’s eyebrows quirk up.

I feel like an imposter. But what’s even more terrifying is the fact that Josie doesn’t see me as one.

I can’t tell if two adjacent apartments are competing...or if one of my new neighbors just has really eclectic taste...and also possibly a hearing problem.

“I thought I smelled something divine coming from your apartment a few nights ago. Were you baking?”

I go back to the pantry, shoving aside bags of flour and sugar before pulling out a bottle of lavender extract.

For the next several hours, Mrs. Damas and I work in tandem—measuring, mixing, tasting, pounding, cutting.

I backtrack, attempting to be less blasé.

My cheeks flush and I feel like an idiot.

Mr. Daly’s showing off a beat-up mountain bike that he probably picked up at some estate sale this morning, and there are bags of takeout from the seafood place near the highway strewn across the card table in front of them.

“Seems we had a few more pests than we thought.” He heads to the kitchen, nonchalant.

“And it’s about to get a lot warmer. Ped bab cone Thai ka,” Manee mumbles, laughing to herself as she saunters back through the beaded archway.

I’m not invincible.
Not in this country. In this body. In this brown skin.
I’m afraid.

On the way to her apartment, we drive in silence, Pen probably attributing mine to the volcano inside me about to erupt.

I try to figure out how to bring it up without ruining the last few days and all the ones we haven’t spent together yet. I just want that part—the yet—to still be intact after I’ve told her everything.

“I don’t want to be a liability at the restaurant. I don’t want El Martillo to use me to—”

Why the hell did threatening him compel him to put his hands on me?

I prod at one of the ice-cold empanadas and it feels like something dead.

Aspiring chef turned premade Hot Pocket peddler.

It’s not like Nacho’s, where we were people’s priests and therapists and surrogate grandchildren.

I lean out the window and wave, trying to usher her forward. She’s still shouting into the speaker box, totally oblivious.

It’s called nepotism. Josie’s my aunt and I’m her favorite nephew.

“What’s that smell?” Josie sniffs, smoke billowing up from the fryers.

“Now, the customers expect to be greeted with a little Latin flair.”
My brow furrows again. “Latin flair?”
“An accent,” she whispers.

Maybe when she said “Gives them the full experience,” she didn’t mean my experience. She meant theirs. The experiences they’ve cultivated at places like this where the food is as authentic as this mustache stuck to my face and where the Latinx people they meet are characters instead of human beings.

I’m not the boss. Josie is. And as degrading as it is to pander to such harmful stereotypes, I can’t pretend like there’s no risk involved in me refusing to follow her orders.

But then he says, “I’ll cover the register for you,” once again exuberant at the misfortune that keeps hurling itself in my direction.

I follow Josie to the bathroom, counting the linoleum tiles as we approach the door marked MEN.

I hold my breath and then I venture inside.

My lungs are the first to go, the smell of the stagnant toilet water making them clench.

“You smell like a gas station.”
“Close,” I quip, wandering the apartment looking for a clean towel. “We cook our empanadas in motor oil.”

I make my way to the shower.
“Don’t wallow in there.”

But instead of being buried by that feeling, I clawed my way back out. Somehow. And yet, it doesn’t feel like a fluke.

“You’re telling me Pen Prado is too cool to swoon?”
“Pen Prado is too cool to kiss and tell, that’s all.”