A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow

by Laura Taylor Namey

Mami never went to college, but she majored in drama, anyway, with a minor in extra.

Flour, butter, and sugar are only platforms for other flavors—spices and extracts, fruit and cream and chocolate. A pastry never needs to be overly sweet. It only needs to be memorable.

My brunette mane and her fine blond layers flowed under mortarboard caps tinted the dark color of deceit.

I don’t want his name. I want his blood sprinkled over Spencer’s topiary hedges for his indiscretion.

I live under crowing laughter and jibes in the panadería kitchen. Crashing waves and catcalling tourists. My landscape is thunder and the rustle of birds fighting over flowers, the everyday alarm clock of wild roosters. But now it’s just me and a river and wet grass and what’s left of my heart.

“A toast,” Orion says, holding up his bottle, “to friends who don’t listen when you say stay the bloody hell away, you meddling-arse muppets.”

short for Maximillian Evans Rothschild III.

ROTHSCHILD

Besides I’ve heard them before and their sound is like this cosmic mash-up of EDM, Adderall-infused K-pop, and a circus act.”

I fix him with an unwavering side-eye until I break and then we’re both laughing. After a heavy morning it tastes better than loaves of pan Cubano drenched in butter.

Hearts are not meant to be ripped in two, split between seas and skies.

“I needed to decide how I felt without unleashing my Reyes wrath.” His brow arches as he jerks his thumb sideways. “That wasn’t your wrath?” “It’s funny you thought that was my wrath.”