Mer sat up and looked down at Noah, her heart in her throat.
“Where would you go?”
He must have seen her dismay, because he sat up too, looping his arms around his knees and meeting her gaze. Reaching over, he rubbed out the scowl between her brows with his thumb.
“I don’t know yet,” he said softly. “Maybe I’ll join the army. Maybe the Air Force. You don’t have to actually fly planes to be in the Air Force. Did you know that? Maybe I’d be stationed at Hill Air Force Base, so I’d be close. Or maybe I’ll just go to Alaska and work on one of those commercial fishing boats for a few months. But I’m going. I have to.”
“I don’t like the sound of any of that.”
“How am I going to learn how to be a man if I spend all my time with women?” Noah asked.
“Helloooo up there!” Cora called, interrupting them. She was waving a flashlight, making a wide arc in the dusk. “Is that you? Why do you two always climb so high? I hate hiking in the dark.”
“Get up here!” Noah called. “It’s not even dark yet, you dork.”
“Yeah, but what if it was? How would I have found you?” Cora grumbled. She climbed the remaining distance and collapsed onto the blanket, wiggling into the small space between them even though there was sufficient room on either side. They laughed and parted for her, shoving at her long legs and arms that were sprawled across them. She rolled to her back and crossed her arms beneath her head, and Noah and Mercedes relaxed beside her, their eyes upward, their conversation forgotten.
“I brought beer,” Cora said, satisfaction ringing in her voice. “Cold. Delicious. Beer.”
“Beer is not delicious,” Mercedes retorted. “It smells terrible. But hand me one.”
Cora dug a cold can from her knapsack, popped the tab, and they passed it between the three of them, waiting for the show to start.
In ten minutes, they’d finished two cans and opened another. It tasted better the more they drank. Mercedes had never had the desire to drink before. Angel and Jose had shown up at the apartment once, completely wasted, and Angel had thrown up all over the living room carpet. It had taken a month of scrubbing to get the smell out. The smell of alcohol made Mercedes think of vomit. But she kept thinking of Noah saying he wanted to leave. Mercedes didn’t think she could survive if Noah left. Drinking the beer was a good distraction.
When the first colors lit the sky, cracking and shuddering, they’d worked their way through the six pack, and Mercedes began to see why people drank. She couldn’t feel her fear. One color bled into another, gold and green, red and blue, the smell of heat and smoke and summertime filling her senses as the beer dissolved her walls.
“De colores,” she sang softly. “Y por eso los grandes amores, de muchos colores me gustan a mí.”
Cora hummed along with her, unable to sing the words but recognizing the tune.
All the colors. All the colors. All the bright colors made her heart cry.
When they were finished, Cora started a new song, merging one song about colors into another.
“I see your true colors, shining through,” Cora crooned. Cora sang “True Colors” even better than Cyndi Lauper, and “De Colores” was forgotten as Noah joined her, his low voice a soft rumble, barely discernible beneath Cora’s full-bodied belting.
But Mercedes had stopped singing. Instead, she was crying. Her heart was crying too, just like the words to the song. It was the beer’s fault. She sat up and began feeling around for the flashlight. She needed to go home, and she didn’t want to walk in the dark.
“Mercedes,” Cora said. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m going home. I have to pee.” Suddenly she did. She had to pee so bad her teeth were floating.
“But you’re crying,” Cora protested.
“I’m crying because if I don’t cry, I’ll pee my pants. And Noah is leaving.”
“What?” Cora gasped.
“Ah, Mer. I’m not going anywhere yet,” Noah said.
Cora looked at Noah in horror, Mercedes’s tears forgotten.
“Where are you going, Noah?” Cora cried.
“Nowhere. I’m not going anywhere. Not yet. Mer’s just drunk. I don’t think someone so small should drink that much beer.”
Mercedes started walking, not caring that her friends would have to carry everything down without her. She heard them call her name and tell her to wait, but she didn’t stop. For once, they would have to get by without her.
* * *
Noah stared up at his ceiling in the dark. He’d read for a while after putting Gia to bed, his eyes continually rising to watch Mer as she played with Oscar, stroking him and whispering to him in Spanish—Noah understood about half of what she said—before she crawled over to Noah, dropped a kiss on his head, and bid him a sleepy goodnight. It was Sunday night, and she was staying in Noah’s guest room again—the way she did almost every Sunday night—so she could watch Gia the next day. She’d made it back to the salon on Thursday and Friday and even donned her heels for work on Saturday, just to prove she could. She’d limped around all Sunday because of it, and Noah had bit his tongue so he wouldn’t chastise her for her vanity.
She’d slept in his guest room that week more than she’d slept at home, and Noah wondered when they were going to admit to each other that their relationship had changed. The kiss they’d shared Monday night was just one of the indications. Of course, they hadn’t talked about it, and they hadn’t repeated it.
They were good at that, being vulnerable and honest and real with each other except when it involved romance or their mutual attraction. Then they studiously ignored the fact that they were closer than most married couples. They religiously pretended the love they felt for each other was purely platonic. They fell back into comfortable patterns—bickering like siblings and donning their twelve-year-old selves so they wouldn’t have to face the fact that they were all grown up with very grown-up feelings. They relied on each other, took care of each other, freely admitted they loved each other, and whether Mercedes wanted to admit it or not, they weren’t simply best friends. To pretend otherwise was to lie, and like Mer said, he’d never been very good at pretending. He could be patient, but at some point, Mercedes was going to have to stop fighting the inevitable. And they were inevitable. He believed that.
He’d never forgotten what Abuela had told him before he left for basic training. She didn’t speak English very well, and their relationship had been more about hugs and unspoken understanding, more about shared affection than long conversation. But she’d told him, quite clearly, that just because something is meant to be, doesn’t mean it’s meant to be right now. He’d thought she was talking about his education, about his studies, about his life in general, but her words had come to mind more than once in the last year, and he’d begun to wonder if she hadn’t been talking about him and Mercedes all along. She’d been one of those people who just knew things, and he’d believed her then. He believed her now, and he was convinced the timing was finally right.
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, tried to think of something other than his complicated feelings and his stubborn best friend. He was just drifting off when the baby monitor on his nightstand began talking to him.
He groaned. Gia had an aggravating way of waking up just as he was falling asleep, and it was hell getting her back down. He heard her toss a little, and Noah held his breath, hoping she was just talking in her sleep.
“De kuh wo ways,” she said again, and he groaned, but he didn’t get up. It kind of sounded like she was singing. She babbled a few more words—words Noah couldn’t decipher—and a clear melody emerged. It was familiar, but not overly so, and Noah concentrated on her little voice, singing sleepily in the dark.
It was the cutest thing he’d ever heard.
He pushed back the blanket and grabbed the monitor, wanting to share it with Mer, hoping she wasn’t too deeply asleep to appreciate being serenaded by a two-year-old.
Her bedside lamp was still on, the burnished light so soft and low it wasn’t much brighter than a candle, but Mer’s eyes were closed, and Noah wondered briefly if she was still too afraid after Monday’s scare to be alone in the dark. He closed her door and padded to her bed, whispering her name. Her eyes fluttered open immediately.
“Mer, you need to hear something.”
“Is everything okay?” she said, sitting up, fully awake.
“Yeah. Yeah. Just . . . I want you to hear this,” he soothed. She sank back down on her pillow, and Noah sat down on the bed beside her and turned the monitor up as loud as it would go. For a moment there was simply charged silence, the purring sound of Gia breathing, and an occasional rustle of blankets and the squeak of crib springs. Then Gia started to hum, adding words here and there. Her small voice was like a trail of pearls as she moved through her song.
“She’s singing,” Noah whispered, as though speaking any louder would cause Gia to stop.
“Yeah. She is,” Mercedes responded, delighted.
“I don’t know the song. . . but it sounds familiar.”
“‘De Colores.’ She’s singing ‘De Colores.’” Mercedes looked as though she wanted to laugh, but wanted to listen more, and held the mirth in her chest, her hand pressed to her heart, her ears straining for the Spanish words that were more sounds and suggestions. But the tune, now that she’d identified it, was unmistakable.
“Canta el gallo, canta el gallo,” Mercedes sang, matching her voice to Gia’s. “Con el quiri, quiri, quiri, quiri, quiri.”
“What are the words?” Noah whispered.
“I taught her that verse because the sounds of the rooster, the hen, and the chicks repeat. La gallina, la gallina, con el cara, cara, cara, cara, cara. Los pollitos, los pollitos con el pío, pío, pío, pío, pí,” she sang.
“She’s right on tune,” Noah whispered. “Two years old, and she already has better pitch than I do.”
“I wish Cora could hear her,” Mercedes said softly, and Noah sighed. He wished Cora could hear her too. He wished Cora peace and rest and forgiveness. But he didn’t want to think about Cora.
“Maybe she can,” Mercedes mused. “If we believe in Moses . . . and crazy Cuddy, I suppose we have to believe that Cora still exists, somewhere.”
“I guess so,” Noah whispered, still listening. Gia was losing steam, her little voice quieting, her song slipping into silence. “I knew I remembered that song. I just couldn’t place it,” he added.
“It was another one of Papi’s favorites. I’ve been teaching it to Gia,” Mercedes smiled.
“I never heard him sing it. But I heard you sing it. Remember the night of the fireworks? You had too much beer and rolled down the hill behind The Three Amigos.”