Annette shook her head and jogged to catch up to her teammates. There was no time for anything but basketball. Annette had been the first person in her family to go to college and she wasn’t going to screw it up for some guy, even a sweetheart who had somehow custom-ordered a jersey with her number on it.
Louis came to every game of the season, screamed every time she made a basket, began sending roses to her dorm room on Saturdays. Every bouquet had the same card: “Mars, 8 p.m., tonight?”
After the season ended, the roses kept coming, but Annette drove her beat-up Honda Pilot to Laredo every weekend to help in her father’s boot shop. One weekend, she intercepted the floral delivery guy on her way to the parking lot, so she brought the roses with her, dumping them on her parents’ kitchen counter when she got home late at night.
Her mother was waiting for her in the morning with a fresh cup of coffee and a hundred questions. Perhaps Annette had known when she brought the flowers home that she needed guidance. “He sends them every week!” she told her mother, as Maya arranged the bouquet in a ceramic vase.
Annette’s childhood home was large—her father made beautiful boots and had done well financially. He’d bought the house on Bordeaux Drive with cash, adding on every time he had two cents to rub together. Her uncles and later her brothers helped out with the construction; Annette’s mother was a gifted decorator who loved nothing more than a day spent shopping across the border or at her favorite store, Vega’s Interiores Mejicanos. The house was filled with hand-carved tables and chairs （the dining room table was inlaid with horses） and Mexican hanging lamps and chandeliers that cast beautiful patterns on the orange and raspberry sherbet–colored walls.
Annette had not had to work. She’d just played basketball, and her family’s financial success allowed her to train with the best coaches and attend all the pricey summer camps the white girls did.
Some of her friends had been born in Laredo and some had come over from Mexico as babies or young kids. Many students at her high school spoke Spanish at home and English at school. The border was porous in the nineties and early two thousands—Mexicans came over to work for the day or see family, and Americans swarmed from Laredo into Nuevo Laredo to go to bullfights, booze it up, and shop for pottery, vanilla, and diet pills. The bridge over the Rio Grande was a busy one in both directions.
Annette’s parents, Maya and Roberto, wanted their family to perfect their English, so didn’t allow Spanish at home. Annette’s grandmother spoke little English.
When she’d visited a tiny, elite college in Massachusetts, Annette had definitely felt her skin color. On her student tour, she’d been the only nonwhite teenager. The blasé, appraising expressions on the other kids’ faces gave her the creeps. The basketball coach had been kind, but the town had seemed like a cold and forbidding place; Annette had breathed a sigh of relief as she landed back home. Before she’d even seen her offer from UT, Annette had made her decision to stay. （A full ride, thank goodness, because without citizenship, she would have been charged out-of-state tuition.）
* * *
—
MAYA FINISHED ARRANGING THE roses. Her kitchen was stunning: the floor was created from square orange tiles and the counters were tiled in deep blue. A custom mural had been created as a backsplash behind her modern range. Thirty-six hand-painted tiles depicted a yellow-eyed coyote hidden behind a colorful spray of flowers. Maya had told Annette that in the Oaxacan village she was from, she could hear coyotes howling in the hills at night. “I should have been afraid, but the sounds helped me sleep,” she said. “I felt like they were watching over me, keeping me safe.”
Maya gestured to the roses and raised an eyebrow. “Mars, eight p.m., tonight?” she said. “Is this a code or something?”
Annette smiled shyly. “It’s a boy from Midland,” she said.
Maya whistled. Everyone knew that Midland was oil country, the epicenter of the Permian Basin, which had been gushing crude since the 1920s. An oil boom in the 1980s had created multimillionaires, and photos of private jets, a new Rolls-Royce dealership, and giant McMansions had fostered the image of Midland as the city of gaudy opulence.
（Annette would find this stereotype to be absolutely true, at least as far as her in-laws were concerned. Louis had grown up on a street called Charismatic Drive in a seven-thousand-square-foot home with a full basement bar and bowling alley; a pool modeled after a Dallas Marriott resort; a sunken living room with sprawling leather sectionals, a movie screen, and a popcorn machine; an art gallery with recessed lighting, a full-time guard in uniform, a small Monet; and a garage full of giant boats Louis’s family had to drive at least a hundred miles to put into a body of water.）
“Yes, he’s probably rich,” said Annette to her mother, before she’d had any idea how wealthy Louis’s family was. （And what kind of wealthy: they donated only to pro-life causes, choosing to use most of their money to show up their neighbors. For example, Louis’s mother had a lighting specialist on retainer for holiday light shows and Halloween lawn theatrics.）
“What’s he like?” said Maya. “Besides rich.”
Annette laughed. “I have no idea,” she said. “I’ve never gone. To Mars at eight. It’s a restaurant.”
“How long has he been asking you?”
“Since…months now. But I’m always here on Saturdays. Dad needs me at the register.”
“You’re fired,” said Maya.
Annette smiled, looked down, and traced a tile with her fingertip.
“I mean it,” said Maya. “We’re not paying for that Jester dorm room so you can be here, taking up space every weekend. Dad can hire someone else.”
Annette was quiet. She opened the cereal cabinet, closed it.
“It’s time,” said Maya.
“OK,” said Annette. “OK.”
The roses arrived on schedule the following Saturday. Annette’s roommate went with her to Buffalo Exchange to find a vintage outfit for her date. “Mars is so romantic,” said Annette’s roommate. Annette chose a black minidress.
At eight-fifteen, Annette approached the small, historic house where Mars was located. She climbed the stairs to the wide front porch and opened the door. Candles lit a red dining room, and Annette’s eyes adjusted to the light, her shoulders falling as she heard soft jazz. At a corner table, Louis was reading a book, a plate of cheese and crackers and a Scotch in front of him. When Annette neared, he looked up.
“Hi,” she said.
His eyes widened. “Is it really you?” he said, breaking into a grin. Annette nodded. When she saw Louis scramble to pull out her chair before she could sit, happiness coursed through her. Annette had never been the beautiful one. It felt so good to be admired—she didn’t want the feeling to end.
When, months later, he first unbuttoned her shirt, the care he took with the buttons and the way he trailed his fingertips so slowly over her skin, awestruck, thrilled her. She was used to hard work, grit, determination, and pain—the price of success. Wonder—inspiring wonder—was new, and Annette luxuriated in the feeling.
Later, she would question what life might have been like with someone who saw her as more than a gleaming trophy—a prize who began to lose her luster the moment she was won.