"Friendship. You don't even know me. I could be a crazy person."
"Maybe I don't mind crazy," I said, shrugging. "I'm Che," I told her, offering my hand.
"Duh. I mean... everyone knows who you are. You're a legend," she said, shaking my hand quickly.
"So, you want to meet me over between Ocean and Cutler."
"Ocean and Cutler," she repeated, brows drawing together.
"It's between two police districts. If anyone ever calls on us, it will take them longer to show because they have to iron out those kinks. Gives us enough time to slip away."
"Smart. Okay. When?"
"Tomorrow night. Three a.m.," I told her, turning back toward my car.
"Che," she called, making me turn back.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. Really. I owe you," she told me.
"You don't owe me shit."
As it turned out, though, I would owe her more than I ever could have imagined at the time...
—
"Okay, Jesus Christ," Huck said, pulling me out of my memories. "Thanks for the trip down memory lane, but you haven't answered a fucking thing."
"I was getting there," I insisted.
"When? Five hours from now? I need to know how you ended up married. And how none of us knew about it."
"That's... it's complicated," I insisted.
"It's not that complicated," Saskia cut in, making everyone turn to find her leaning in the doorway, a mug of coffee between her hands. "We're married out of convenience, not love," she explained.
"There. Was that so hard?" Huck asked. "Sass, why don't you join us? It seems like we will get straighter answers from you."
Chapter Four
Saskia
I'd been starstruck when I'd met Che.
You didn't fangirl over the Miami street racing scene without knowing who he was.
There were only a few guys who stayed steadily at the top.
He was one of them.
The fact that he was willing to talk to me at all, let alone win me my car back, and offer to help me to learn, just completely floored me.
I made my way to that first meet-up sure he was going to stand me up. But by the time I got there, he was waiting. With donuts. I mean, what guy stopped on his way to teach a strange girl about racing to pick out a half dozen donuts?
Che, that's who.
What he'd offered me that first night was exactly what he had given me.
Friendship.
To a girl who really desperately needed it.
"Che and I are married in name only," I told his club, moving to sit down on the couch.
"Why would an eighteen-year-old girl do something like that?" Huck asked.
Honestly? Because I'd been infatuated with him.
It had been a silly, yet all-consuming girlish crush.
He was gorgeous, older, interesting, and giving me a little attention. Even if that attention was only friendly to him. Maybe even more of a mentor/mentee sort of thing.
He hadn't been interested in me like I'd been in him. He could have any woman he wanted. What would he want with unsure, inexperienced me?
Still, he gave me his time.
And I ate up every second of it.
Devoured it, in fact.
His presence, his attention, but also his knowledge.
He taught me more that summer than I could have learned by myself in a year, in five.
I went from a nobody to an up-and-coming star on the racing scene. I made money. I made more money per week than I could earn in a month at a normal job.
And on top of that, I got the respect, something I so desperately needed at the time.
Oh, who was I kidding? I still spent far too much of my time trying to earn more and more respect.
If I still attended those anger management therapy meetings that were court-appointed after I stabbed a guy with a broken bottle in a bar after he tried to cop a feel, the therapist would probably call it fancy words like "Imposter Syndrome."
I still always felt like I didn't quite belong, that no one gave me the respect others got.
But Che had never been like that. He'd always been able to see past whatever misogyny the others around us couldn't. He'd just seen a young person in need of guidance. He'd given it to me. And me, never having had someone who spent any time teaching me anything, ate up the knowledge, but also the attention.
What he got out of the whole thing back then was completely beyond me. I think he just liked sharing what he knew. He was one of those people who got to the mountain top and turned around to help the next person get there as well.
"See, things were getting rough in Miami for people like Che," I explained to his club. "Back then I don't think I even realized how much stress he was under about possible deportation. I mean, going back there was a terrifying thought to someone who didn't have any family there," I said, glancing over at Che, finding a mask down over his face. He'd never liked the topic. Even back then when it had been vital that we talk about it.
"So, you're saying he was worried about ICE."
"They were doing a lot of sweeps. Three guys Che worked with were rounded up. And then Eddie," I said, sighing. "It wasn't looking good."
"You married him, so he could stay," Harmon said, looking at me, eyes almost a little glassy. Pregnancy hormones, most likely.
"Why would you do that?" the man in the hat asked, shaking his head at me. "You were eighteen. You were signing away at least five years of your life to some guy you barely knew."
"I had no plans on getting married by the time I was twenty-four," I said, shrugging. I'd had other plans at the time. "It seemed like a small sacrifice."
"But why?" Huck asked.
"Why not? He'd been good to me. He helped me out when no one else wanted to."
"It's a huge fucking risk to fake that shit," Huck insisted.
It was. To be fair, I'd been a bit naive about the risks at the time. Or maybe just too headstrong to think they could ever impact me.
"I'd done the research on the process," I said, shrugging. "Beginning to end, it was about a year and a half. We'd figured out the questions for the interviews, went over all the information.
How many siblings does your spouse have? Che, none. Me, seven.
Have you met each other's families? Che didn't have any. I was estranged from my mother. Though he had met some of my siblings.
Do you spend a lot of time together? Every night after work.
Do you want to have children? Che, yes, absolutely. Me, probably. Eventually.
"Then we dug a little deeper than that just in case."
I'd devoured all those details, if I were being honest. The little pieces of his life that no one else got to know.
He'd told me how they'd all come here legally at first, on a work and spouse visa. But then his father had met another woman within a few months of landing in Miami, and had run off, never to be seen again. That left his devastated wife working three jobs to try to support them while Che did work whenever he could find it.
Then he'd told me about her sudden death, leaving him devastated and all alone in the world at nineteen, just one year after they made it to America. He thought, at the time, that his visa would still be valid, that he could stay until he was twenty-one, and then apply for a Green Card, try to become a permanent resident since he had nothing to go back to in Cuba.