Sofia calls Jay

The next few days go by like any other. I’m starting to think maybe that’s it, maybe they’re working it out and she’s back to keeping the peace, when my phone buzzes late on a Tuesday, around 9:30. Picking it up, I see Sofia’s name on the screen.

I drop my video game controller and immediately answer the phone.

“What’s up?” I ask, sounding happy to see it’s her, then jokingly add, “I shouldn’t be expecting another call from Carlos, should I?”

“Hey,” she chuckles lightly. “No, not that I know of. Is this a bad time?”

“Nah, I’m just sitting at home. How are you?”

“Honestly? I’m okay,” she responds. “The house feels too big with the boys staying with Carlos tonight. My sister, Marisol, is in Mexico for another week, so I don’t even have her to talk to. I just… needed to hear a familiar voice, I guess.”

I kick back on the couch, settling in. “That sucks, but for what it’s worth, I’m glad you called. What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing. Everything? I don’t know,” she groans. “I know you don’t know me or my life, and you probably don’t want to hear any of it, but I keep replaying the last couple weeks in my head. I still feel bad about the way Carlos treated you in the restaurant, but especially about him calling you. He’s always been the jealous type, and it’s exhausting pretending everything’s fine when it’s not. I don’t have many people I can just… talk to anymore other than my sister, because he never liked me having close friends. Didn’t matter who it was, he’d always say they took time away from the family. So now it’s just me in the house, wondering how I got here.”

“That sounds lonely as hell,” I say quietly. “Everybody should be allowed to have friends, and not be isolated. How are the kids handling things?”

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “I’m starting to realize that and they’re fine. Too young to really understand any of it. Anyway… let’s talk about something else. What are you doing with your night off from deliveries?”

Understanding why she would want to change the subject, my voice perks up. “I’m living the high life, sitting around eating cold tacos on my couch. Real glamorous. But my birthday’s coming up in a couple weeks, though, so that’s cool, I guess. Turning the big twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one,” she repeats, and I can hear a smile in her voice. “That feels like a lifetime ago. You have to do something fun. That’s one of the birthdays that needs to be celebrated.”

“Yeah, I’ll probably just do the bar thing with my buddy Dan, and then ignore the fact that I’m supposed to be an adult.”

“The bar is fine, but you have to do more than that!” she insists. “You can do the bar anytime. And you probably will more than you should.”

“Meh,” I shrug it off, not knowing what else to do. “I’ve already got a fake ID, so it’ll be cool to not have to sweat it if anyone’s going to question if it’s real or not.”

“All the more reason to do something else,” she continues. “You’ve already done ‘the bar.’ But it’s your birthday. Whatever makes you happy.”

We talk for almost an hour, just shooting the shit. She tells me about Mateo’s latest obsession with building “car towers” by stacking as many as he can, and how the youngest one has started saying “vroom” like Mateo every time his older brother lets him play with his cars. I tell her about the worst delivery I’ve ever had, that happened the night before.

It was a guy running around in a G-string, and the front of it was like a Santa hat, but he seemed like he was tripping on something. After I handed him his food, he tried to tip me “extra” with random trash that was sitting on his coffee table. Every time he bent over to grab something else, I had to avert my so I didn’t see his asshole with this little band of elastic stretched over it. That story gets her genuinely laughing and joking that she guesses I’m not an ass guy then.

“Believe me, I can appreciate a nice ass,” I laugh. “But I can’t say that this thirty-something-year-old tweaker’s, bony hairy asshole really qualifies as nice.”

“Good to know,” she manages to get out after my long and extremely detailed rendition of the encounter.

When she finally yawns, she sounds much better than when she first called. “I should let you go. Thank you for talking to me, Jay. I didn’t realize how much I needed somebody to just make me laugh.”

“Anytime,” I tell her with a big smile on my face. “Seriously, you’re more than welcome to call me whenever you want.”

“I might,” she says softly. “Good night.”

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