To: Michelle Amato
From: Fabian Charles
Subject: Marketing campaign inquiry
Ms. Amato,
I’m contacting you in regard to the Victory Fitness campaign you spearheaded with Rosen and Anders a few years ago. My name is Fabian Charles, and I am writing on behalf of myself and Gabriel Aguilar in our capacity as co-owners of Agility Gym in Los Angeles to see if you are available to consult on the campaign for our upcoming expansion to New York City. I’m attaching a document with further information. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.
Fabian Charles
Co-owner of Agility Gym, Los Angeles
he/him/his
To: Michelle Amato
From: Gabriel Aguilar
Subject: Fwd: Marketing campaign inquiry
Hi Mich. It’s Gabe.
It’s been a long time.
I didn’t know Fabian had reached out to you, and we’ll understand if you pass on this.
I’ve missed you.
—G
Gabriel Aguilar
Co-owner of Agility Gym, Los Angeles
Pronouns: he/him
Michelle Amato struggled for breath as she reread the emails that had landed in her inbox only moments before.
No. No no no no.How could he do this? Crash into her life again like the goddamn Kool-Aid Man, like he hadn’t completely wrecked her when he’d left? Fuck him.
And with this? With ajob offer? The motherfucker wanted tohire her?
“Everything okay?” Ava asked from over by the stove.
Michelle glanced up from the phone and tried to control her facial expression. She was babysitting her sister Monica’s threechildren for the day, and her cousin Ava Rodriguez had come over to help. It was summer break, so Ava, a middle school teacher, was off, and Michelle, as a freelancer, made her own schedule. Ava was cooking a big pot of arroz con gandules for lunch, and Michelle was supposed to be slicing plantains to be made into tostones.
Thank god Ava was there, because after these emails, Michelle needed a minute alone. The kids—eleven-year-old Phoebe, nine-year-old Danica, and six-year-old Henry—were busy in the living room with screens of various sizes, but they’d each been in and out of the kitchen three times in the last hour.
“Work email,” Michelle said, holding up the phone. Technically, that wasn’t a lie. “I’ll be right back.”
Michelle opened the basement door and jogged down the steps, intending to sit at the desk her father had put down there. They were in her parents’ house in the Bronx, the house Michelle had grown up in. Mom and Dad were currently in Florida at their beach house, and Michelle was staying here while her one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan underwent a bathroom renovation.
If she’d been thinking clearly, the basement was the last place she would have gone to process an email fromGabe, of all people. She stopped short halfway to the desk, glancing down at the carpet under her chancletas.
Back to the scene of the crime, she thought. Or at least, the moment when everything had changed between them.
It had been a hot summer day, barely a week after high school graduation, and this basement had been Michelle’s bedroom then. Gabe had come over to smoke up while her parents wereat work. They’d huddled together in the backyard, just on the other side of the sliding glass doors, and gotten super fucking high. Afterward, they’d retreated inside to watch some nineties action movie on TV, giggling and making the kind of commentary only very high teenagers do. Michelle had been sprawled out on the floor right here, propped up by colorful throw pillows, and Gabe had been sitting on the edge of her bed.
