When dessert is set down—glistening chunks of fresh mango served with coconut sticky rice, Lizbet’s absolute favorite—she can only stare at it and think, Don’t say it. But she has held the topic at bay throughout dinner and the wine has done nothing but nourish her fears.
“You know what I was thinking?” Mario says. “You should add caramels to your s’mores kits. Take it up a notch.”
Don’t say it, she thinks.
“I don’t mean to overstep. I know the hotel amenities aren’t mine to tweak, but you have to admit, a caramel s’more? That sounds pretty damn good.”
“Mario?” she says. “Are you dating other people?”
Mario’s eyes jump up from the dessert plate to meet hers. “Why are you asking me that?”
She holds his gaze. Their relationship is still so new that she’s made a little dizzy by how attractive he is—those bedroom eyes, the sly smile—but she realizes she doesn’t know him well enough to tell if he’s been hiding something.
She shakes her head. “Never mind. I’m drunk, I think.”
“Okay,” Mario says. “I’ll get the check.” He turns around, the check appears; Lizbet tries to give him her credit card but he hands it back without saying anything. Is he upset? Has she ruined the evening? There’s no way Yolanda’s myriad daily visits to the kitchen and her presence with the Blue Bar staff on their day off is a coincidence. Something is going on. Hey, the text said, indicating a previous conversation, a context, can you help me with a thing later? The help is sexual, the thing is Yolanda’s desire for him, and later is after service at the restaurant. The smutty emoji speaks for itself. Why doesn’t Mario ever ask to come to Lizbet’s cottage after work? Because he’s dating Yolanda as well. He has Lizbet for lunch and Yolanda for a midnight snack. Why are you asking me that? That answer isn’t a firm no—it isn’t any kind of no. Lizbet wants to press him, but she’s not sure she’ll believe him if he says he’s not seeing anyone else and she won’t be able to bear it if he says yes, he is dating other people, because they never explicitly stated that they were exclusive.
Mario warned Lizbet to be careful but she dove headlong into a new relationship. As if her previous relationship hadn’t hurt her badly enough. She’s such an idiot. She hasn’t learned a thing. And she hasn’t changed.
Lizbet makes it out of the restaurant and down to Mario’s pickup. Once they’re both sitting in the dark truck, he looks at her. “What’s going on, Heartbreaker?”
“Don’t call me that,” she says, though she loves the nickname.
“Do you want to come back to my place so we can talk this through? Or would you like me to take you home?”
Lizbet stares into her lap. Talk this through. That seems to indicate there’s something to talk through. Of course there is. All Lizbet can see when she closes her eyes is Yolanda jumping into Mario’s arms at home plate, Yolanda kissing him right on the lips. And the blasted text: Hey, can you help me with a thing later? That hideous emoji face （it’s the emoji that bothers her the most）。 “Home, please.”
They drive in silence to Bear Street and Lizbet can feel the cab of the truck filling with his confusion, but he says nothing and she’s grateful. When they pull into her driveway, she knows she can still salvage things—invite him in, hope he stays the night. But instead she says, “I haven’t been careful. I let myself feel too much too soon. And because of what happened with JJ, I need to take a step back. It’s for my own mental well-being.”
Mario covers her hand with his. “I’m feeling a lot of things too, Lizbet.”
Lizbet shakes her head. “You’re not feeling the same things I’m feeling.”
Mario laughs. “You don’t know that. Why did you ask if I was seeing other people?”
Lizbet shrugs. She can’t say Yolanda’s name. “It’s just a sense I get.”
“Your sense is wrong.”
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, Lizbet thinks. “I can’t get hurt again, Mario.”
“Lizbet, come on. How about a little faith?”
She glares out the windshield at her tiny shingled cottage, a cottage she bought with someone else. She had faith once upon a time. It didn’t work out.
Mario sighs. “Is it okay if I walk you to the door?”
She doesn’t answer but he does it anyway, giving Lizbet one last chance to change course. Why can’t she just treat this relationship like an easygoing summer romance with great sex, water views, and delicious meals? It started out that way…but then there were the roses he brought her in the Tom and Jerry jelly jar and the lunch when he cried telling Lizbet about his cousin Hector who died of liver cancer. At another lunch, Lizbet was so tired that she skipped sex and skipped eating and just fell asleep on Mario’s bed, and she woke up an hour later to him kissing her eyelids, and he handed her a brown paper bag with a homemade pan bagnat for her to take back to the hotel. She thinks about how he called Christina “Tina” and how he never starts the car unless she has her seat belt fastened and how he holds her face when he kisses her, his fingertips always grazing her earlobes. All of these things accumulated and now, suddenly, Lizbet finds herself losing her grip on her good sense. Something secret is going on with Yolanda; maybe it’s unspoken or unpursued, but there’s a fondness, a flirtation, and Lizbet is both jealous and disappointed in herself for being jealous. She has to get out. Now.