Chapter 8: Pan Dulce

I was out of his bed before my father finished the word "dulce."

I was naked.

My T-shirt was on the floor of the wrong room.

"One second, Dad!" I yelled. "I'm in the shower!"

Mateo sat straight up, wide awake, his hair sticking up on one side.

"Shirt," I hissed.

He threw me the closest one. It was his, the pressed blue one from the bid, inside out.

I pulled it over my head. It came to the middle of my thighs.

I ran through the connecting door into my own room and looked at my bed.

It was perfect.

The sheets were tucked tight. The pillows were plumped. The little chocolate was still on the pillow in its gold paper.

Nobody had slept in that bed.

Anybody could see it.

"Mija? Are you okay in there?"

"Coming!"

I grabbed the covers and ripped them halfway down.

I punched the pillows.

I sat on the mattress and rolled across it once.

I threw the chocolate under the bed.

Behind me, very quietly, Mateo shut the connecting door and the deadbolt clicked on his side.

I turned mine.

I wrapped a towel around my head, and opened the door.

My father was standing in the hall in his Sunday guayabera on a Friday.

He was holding a pink bakery box and a cardboard tray of three coffees.

"Surprise," he said, and beamed. "I couldn't sleep. I thought, my kids won the biggest job of the year, I'm buying breakfast."

My kids.

He came in past me and put the box on the desk.

He looked around the room.

At the bed.

"You sleep like your mother," he said fondly. "Like a tornado went through."

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