The Bad Boy with a Heart of Gold

✖ Chapter 3 ✖

You didn't drop a bombshell like that expecting nothing to change. Because everything changed. That was the moment when Toni stopped being the golden girl in our parents' eyes. The fact that she'd been a role model to daughters of the world for her near 20 years of life seemed to have been chucked out the window.

And then, something I'd wanted all along finally happened. My parents turned their eyes to me.

I had to backtrack though, back to the moment where my sister fell from grace. Don't get me wrong, I was not celebrating that. I was just as stumped for words as papa and mama, everything I'd known about Toni colliding with that single sentence—and I used the word sentence in the full sense. It felt like she'd put handcuffs around her wrists all by herself.

Not that she got into that predicament all alone. There was a father.

Dear God, my sister, who was only a year and a half older than me, was going to be a mother. I was going to be an aunt. What the heck was going on?

I realized when my legs gave out under me that I'd shot up to my feet at the sudden news. I looked at Toni's stoic expression. If she'd done any crying about it, it had already come and gone. Then I looked at mama, and even though she looked like the Angel Falls were about to burst out of her eyes any time, I also had the impression this was not entirely news to her.

And then I dared to look at papa. He could never be accused of being talkative. Words were never necessary for a man whose entire thought process was always written on his face. And right now what was on it scared me.

"Qué?"

He exploded.

"Qué acabas de decir, Antonieta Lucia?"

I did feel really bad for her, but I also needed to hear it again. I just couldn't believe it.

Toni lifted her chin and her eyes blazed as she repeated, "Estoy embarazada."

I sucked in a deep breath. If the entire conversation was going to carry on in Spanish, I did not want to be here for it. This only happened when tempers were so hot that papa's brain melted down and couldn't process any English. I desperately wanted to leave the office, but all of them were standing between the door and I. I sank down into papa's chair.

"Cómo pudo haber pasado esto?" papa screamed, throwing the receipts in his hand to the floor with so much force that had they not been made of paper, they would've broken the floor tile.

It wasn't Toni who answered the question, though. It was mama.

"She slept with a boy from college."

My head swam. Although this should have been obvious, given the result, this was the first time I realized that Toni was not just mama and papa's daughter, or my sister. She was a woman. One who made mistakes because of her libido.

Papa gritted his teeth so hard that we heard a crunch. He yanked the door open and left the three of us standing there, watching him as he traversed the shop floor stomping all the way outside. The silence he left behind was broken by a sob that turned out to be mama's. She dropped herself on the chair papa had vacated, folding her arms on the table so that she could cry into them.

That was it. I couldn't take this anymore. I stood up and grabbed my sister's arm. The outside noise hit our eardrums like a hammer, but it was a welcome change to our mother's hiccups and sobs. Manny, who'd had a bit of a crush on Toni since forever, stopped at the sight of her with a wrench against his heart like some sort of mechanic salute. Someone appeared in front of us carrying a gigantic part by himself, and as we dodged I saw that it was Sawyer. I kept going until we were outside and saw that papa's car was gone. That, or the fresh air, finally helped Toni take in a deep breath.