Free Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa by MICOL OSTOW

José.
    I totally forgot that he even came home last night. What is it with this place? In such close quarters, you’d think you’d be on top of everyone’s coming and going, but instead it’s a crapshoot who’s even home. Crazy. He’s wearing a towel, clearly off to take a shower, and I’m mortified.
    â€œUh, hi,” I stammer. “Sorry.”
    â€œYou’re here,” he says, making it a statement rather than a question. I’m not sure how to respond; clearly he knows my mother and I are staying for the summer, right? And if he doesn’t, it’s definitely not my place to tell him.
    I nod. “Yeah.”
    â€œWhat do you do while everyone’s out?” he asks, as though the question has just occurred to him. Which, come to think of it, it probably has.
    â€œErrands,” I say. “We start dinner.”
    â€œThat takes you all day?” he asks incredulously.
    â€œNot really,” I admit. “I was going to read.”
    He shakes his head. “ Mira , I know your mother is sort of out of it these days”—understatement—“but you’re in Puerto Rico. I’m guessing folks back from your hometown come here for vacation, sí ? Fun in the sun?”
    â€œRight, but . . .” How to put this . . . “Things are pretty . . . messed up.”
    â€œYour mom hasn’t been here in years,” José points out. “She’s staying for a reason, and it isn’t just to help my mother with dinner.”
    I can hardly argue with that.
    He purses his lips, appears to be considering something very deeply. “I’m not working today.”
    José works? I have literally not a clue what the boy does with his days—or his nights, for that matter—and we’re technically living under the same roof.
    â€œHave you been to Old San Juan?” he asks.
    I shake my head. “I don’t know how to get there,” I say, as if that’s the only reason, or even the primary reason, that I’ve yet to visit.
    He laughs. “You’re missing the point. I do.”
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    Once José is dressed, he hunts my mother down in the backyard, where she is enjoying her first cigarette of the day. He breaks his brilliant plan to her without, I admiringly note, even a moment’s hesitation.
    I expect her to beg off, and at first it looks like she’s not too keen—kind of waving her hands in a wishy-washy way—but inexplicably he’s insistent and charming, and the next thing I know, we’re piled into his car, me sitting shotgun, off to Old San Juan with José as our tour guide.
    José has a car ?
    â€œI bought it myself with the money from my first job,” he says, slightly bragging but all in all very matter-of-fact. “I mean, a chunk of the paychecks go to the house, por supuesto , but I took on enough extra shifts because I knew I would need a car. The same with Lucy.”
    Por supuesto . How many T-shirts would I have to fold at the Gap in order to pay for my own car?
    â€œI haven’t seen it in the driveway,” I hedge.
    â€œI haven’t been home,” José agrees. But he doesn’t offer anything more as to where he spends his time, so I don’t ask. Now at least I know that he has a girlfriend (if only because Lucy has mentioned it in passing) and a job. That’s, like, two hundred percent more than I knew about him this time last week. A twenty-one-year-old boy with a job and a girlfriend might not be around that often, I guess.
    â€œYou’re at school at the local university?” my mom chimes in from the backseat. I’m flabbergasted; I guess this means she gets the scoop from Rosa? Not that that’s so strange; it’s just I’ve never felt so disconnected.
    It occurs to me that if there’s something I need to know, maybe I should just ask. What a novel concept.
    â€œTwo more years,” José confirms.