And Then There Was Victor

Chapter 34

I always laugh at the non-Puerto Ricans' first time flying into the island. Because of their faces when the plane full of Boricuas erupts into loud clapping the moment the plane lands in San Juan. That's how Victor and I woke, startled, finding ourselves in quite an intimate sleeping position with his arm around me, my head on his chest and his own head on top of mine. I think I had drooled on his shirt. He didn't notice or pretended not to notice.

"I've never slept an entire flight," Victor said as we stood and he pulled my bag from the overhead and handed it to me.

We fought our way out of the plane, waited for my luggage as Victor called his uncle and let him know we had arrived. Around us, the cacophony of rapid Spanish hit my ears.

I was home.

Involuntarily, I smiled. There was a sense of homecoming after floating in a sea of a place that never belongs to you, you come home to people who look like you, talk like you, and embrace you even if they've just met you.

"I know we wanted to go straight to the hotel but how about a stop at Piñones?" He said as we stood outside waiting for his uncle to arrive. The muggy humidity had instantly hit me.

"You want alcapurrias," I smiled.

"And a cold Medalla," he said.

I understood perfectly fine. This is part of what the diaspora did the moment they arrive to San Juan. You drive straight to Piñones and delight in the fried food and ice-cold Medalla waiting for you. Alcapurrias stuffed with crab meat, bacalaitos, cod fritters the size of your face, fresh coconut cut by a machete, empanadas filled with your choice of beef, crab, shrimp, or cheese! It was a rite of passage as if we had to fill our belly with island food for our insides to recognize where we were.

Victor's Uncle Tony arrived late, and he parked the black jeep in front of us. He got out with a loud excited whoop at seeing Victor, he was short and dark, made even darker by the sun. The mark of his sunglasses was evident on his face. When Uncle Tony turned to me, I just knew he was the creepy uncle when he grasped my hand lecherously.

"Y esta belleza? What's your name, mi amor?"

Victor rolled his eyes and took my hand out of his. "This is Becka, don't even try it."

His uncle looked hilariously offended but apologized. "Ay, I'm sorry, I was being nice!"

Victor gave him a look and his uncle offered him a winning smile. The exchange of keys was made, Uncle Tony piled into a corvette which his office assistant had driven behind him. He winked at me from the driver's side.

"You should come to the house, I'll have beers, we'll dance, have a good time," he said but his eyes were on me despite my scowl.

"I'll let you know," Victor placed himself between his uncle's eyes and me as he drove off. "I'm sorry, he's always been like that. His last girlfriend was nineteen."

"Ew."

We pilled in our luggage and before I knew it, Victor was expertly braving into the psychotic traffic. Weaving in and out lanes, the breeze was in my face and I was hit by a pang of desire. To move back to the island, to let it wrap me within its palms.

"I always want to move here when I come," Victor's black hair danced in the wind and I stared at him. My hair instantly noticed that I had arrived, it curled into a halo of brown, curving itself into its natural state despite the hours spent straightening it.

He'd never lived on the island; he was a mainland baby. Half Puerto Rican. Still, his mother had ensured that he replaced the R with the L like a proper Boricua. It was incredible to me that I knew so much of him, we had not gone through that awkwardness of getting to know one another. He'd orbited my solar system since childhood and now he was the center point, the flaming sun.