Love Therapy: The Reyes Family Romances, #5

By Fiona McGier

Miguel's first love, his high school sweetheart, was the woman he wanted to marry…because they belonged together.  But she had a different kind of future in mind and left for college, leaving him and his broken heart behind.  20 years later he saw her at their high school reunion.  Will he walk away this time?  Or is it still meant to be? And what will his family think?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781597051156

Book preview

One

Miguel Reyes groaned inwardly as he once again, sorted through the pile of mail that he had been shuffling from one place to another to avoid having to deal with it. Most of it was bills awaiting his next paycheck for him to pay them. But one was the invitation he was trying not to have to think about. He checked the date that was on it, telling what date he had to RSVP by, and saw that it was tomorrow. He sighed aloud...he hadn’t realized he had been putting this off for so long. He had to make a decision, and now, then return the damn thing and be done with it! The invitation was to the twentieth reunion of his high school class.

Who wants to go to these stupid things? He asked himself. After all, if you want to stay in touch with people, especially if you still live in the same state, you do. If you don’t, why would you even want to see them again?

He thought of his tenth reunion. He had not wanted to go to that one either. But he had gone, and had hooked up with one of the blond cheerleaders whom he had lusted after in a big way, back when they were in middle school and through their junior year of high school. Back then he was too insecure to even think about asking her out, despite their being in many classes together, for six years.

Later, when they were making getting dressed conversation, she had informed him that she had lusted after him too, but that her parents would never have allowed her to date a Hispanic, especially someone like him, from a large Mexican family. He was amused at her admission, and they had a few dates before he got bored with her vapid conversation and their lack of anything in common. They had parted as friends, and now he wondered if she would be there. He had no plans to attempt to connect with her ever again, but was amused thinking that since that had been the result of his last attendance at a reunion, who might he discover at this one?

Miguel thought of his current state of being. His favorite sister Catalina had gotten married last year, and was now pregnant with her first child with her psychologist husband. For years Miguel had dated women like her: free spirits who followed no rules but their own, and had their choice of men wherever they chose to look for them. He had been encouraged by her falling so hard for her husband, because he took that as a sign that it was possible that sooner or later, one of the women he pursued might decide that it was time for her to settle down. He wanted to be the man they chose to do it with.

While he was aware that only women were supposed to have biological clocks that made them get increasingly frantic to start a family before they turned forty, he was surprised to find himself often wondering what he was missing in his life. Being from a family of eight kids, he had always assumed that everyone got married and had families. Their oldest sister Rosa was married with kids, as was their sister Teresa, who was next in age after Catalina, who was two years younger than him. Their oldest brother Enrique was married with two kids of his own, but they didn’t see him often, since he had chosen to make his home in the small town in Mexico that their paternal grandfather had been from. Now that Catalina was pregnant, that made four of them married with kids, and four single and childless.

Resolutely, Miguel looked over the invitation again.

Well, I guess I’ll never know unless I go, what might happen, he mused. So I’ll say yes and that way I have the option of going, if nothing better turns up for me to do that night. If it does, I’ll just blow the whole thing off, and consider the eighty-five dollars as a donation to the class.

So he marked an X next to yes and wrote in one only, no guest, then he wrote a check, and put everything into the envelope and sealed it closed.

There, done, he said out loud, amused that he had agonized so long over such a trivial event. He went on to the other things that were in his pile, and he dealt with whatever didn’t require checks yet, then opened a bottle of beer, to relax in front of the television until he fell asleep during the Tonight Show monologue.

When he snored himself awake, he turned off the TV and went to bed, wryly reminding himself that this was the exciting life he had chosen for himself. And with that thought depressing him, he crawled under the covers and went back to sleep.

Two

The twentieth reunion for Miguel’s West Chicago Wildcat High School class was on a Saturday night in mid-September. The weather was pleasant enough. There was a chill to the air at night, after a moderate day that had started out rainy but ended with warm golden sunshine that made everyone glad that the heat of the summer had finally ended.

Since the invitation had indicated that business casual was the dress code, Miguel decided that the clothes he wore to work when he had to meet with clients, were what was called for. As a computer engineer, he usually wore jeans with polo shirts, or flannel shirts, depending on the weather. But when he had to meet with clients, he had to dress more professionally. So for the reunion, he chose a pair of khakis, a light brown short-sleeved shirt, and a tie that pulled the colors together. He also threw a dark brown jacket on over the shirt, in case the night got chilly during his drive home.

Miguel looked at himself in the mirror after he applied gel to make his short black hair stand up straight instead of curl on his forehead, the way it did when he was sweating...in fact, the way it had looked all summer.

He made a face at himself, saying ruefully, Not bad for a thirty-eight year old man. Let’s see how the rest of the class looks, after twenty years of living after high school.

He got into his car for the drive to the same banquet hall where their prom had been held. As he got out of the car in the parking lot, he lit a cigarette, and stood leaning against his car for a long moment. Memories began to flood his mind...since the woman he had taken to the prom was a memory he did not want to revisit, he had to force himself to think about other things, in order to get his mind ready to go in and make small talk with the rest of the people who were arriving and entering the place. He shook his head to physically clear his mind before he resolutely walked up to the front door, stubbed out his cigarette in the convenient ashtray there, and entered the building.

Immediately, the sound of music from twenty years ago, blasted its way into his consciousness. He smiled briefly, having not missed most of it in the ensuing years. Yes, there were some songs that he still would listen to, once in a great while...but most of it was the kind of pabulum that passed as popular on the hit radio stations, and most of it deserved to be forgotten. He heard his name called and was pulled into conversation with people he had not thought about in at least ten years, since their last reunion.

Much small talk ensued, and the topics included the issues of the day, sports, entertainment figures, more sports, and the pain of raising children. Of special interest to most was the issue of how to deal with teenagers, and how much better behaved they remembered being when they were the teenagers. Miguel had nothing to add when the conversation turned to child-rearing. He was amused when the women clucked over how sad it was that he was not married with kids, at the same time as the men who were married and fathers, gave him jealous looks, and asked what it was like to still be single at their age.

The biggest surprise for him was how much older many of his classmates looked, than he thought that he did. He was still trim, but then he worked damn hard at his health club in order for that to be true. He had no grey in his hair, but his father had not gone grey until he had gotten well into his fifties. Hispanic people seemed to age slower than white people, if that was possible. He smiled, musing that maybe that was because Hispanics usually had to work longer and harder, so they had to be more long-lived than the average.

He was trying to pay attention to an argument involving the age that teenagers should be allowed to get their license to drive, when he felt her presence, then turned his head and saw her standing close by, chatting with some other women. At once angry at himself, that his body was still so attuned to where she was in relation to himself, and surprised that she was here, since she had not been at the last reunion, he none-the-less studied her with interest while she talked to others, unaware of his attention.

Alicia Torres was still a strikingly beautiful woman. She had been so in high school, despite her worries about her acne and her height. She had grown taller than most of the other girls, and when she finally stopped growing, was dismayed to find that she was within a few inches of being six feet tall. She was still one of the tallest women in the place, but she was also still thin, though a bit curvier than he remembered her from the last time that he had seen her. Her dark brown hair, which had always been long and kept in a pony tail, was now short, and the curls which had not been allowed to rule in the past, were now encouraged to frame her face, while a couple of gold clips held the wisps out of her face. She had a few extra piercings in her ears, which held gold hoop earrings that reflected the light when she nodded, or shook her head. She laughed easily at what was being said to her, and then turned her head to search the room, as if she sensed she was being watched.

Miguel suddenly decided that he needed a cigarette. Since smoking was no longer allowed in public places, he excused himself and made his way to the back of the hall, and out of the French doors that led out to the patio. And once he was out there, he lost all control over his memories, and they flooded back into his conscious brain with the force of a tsunami.

ALICIA TORRES HAD BEEN in many of the classes that Miguel was in during their senior year of high school. He didn’t remember seeing her before that year, so was not surprised to learn later that her family had moved from Aurora to West Chicago the summer after her junior year of high school. Her parents were trying to keep her and her five younger siblings away from the gangs that over-ran the neighborhood that they had lived in, and the high school they had previously attended. All he knew was that the instant he saw her...saw her walk into the classroom...saw her smile at him when she was moved by the teacher to a seat closer to him, he was in love. Totally, wonderfully, and inexorably in love. He was so smitten with her that he lost his normal ability to make small talk. He found himself unable to make any words come out of his mouth. It was as if all he could do around her was admire her, adore her, and hope that was enough for her to notice him.

It was. To his great surprise, Alicia told him later that she had felt the same way about him, when she first saw him. She saw past his cocky, arrogant attitude...saw past his teen-aged boy tendencies toward guttural language, worse in Spanish than in English...saw beyond even his rudeness to realize that he was a thoughtful and caring boy developing into a man, but not sure what kind of man he was going to become.

She had asked him out on their first date. They had been assigned to work together on a speech class project, and she asked him if he wanted to pick her up from her after-school job, and get some dinner while they talked about ideas for the project. Miguel had eagerly agreed, and from that point on, they were inseparable.

They went to the Homecoming Dance together, after they had held hands and cheered for their school at the afternoon game. Alicia’s brother was playing on the junior varsity team, so they had sat very close to each other through both games.

They had spent as much time as possible together over Christmas break, but the fact that they both were working left them little time to celebrate that they had no classes. If anything, since Alicia’s job was in a retail store, she was busier, working even more hours than they were ever in school.

Their one big date was New Year’s Eve. They had gone out to dinner, then had driven out to a local forest preserve to sit in Miguel’s car and talk while they drank the six-pack of beer that one of his brothers had thoughtfully provided for them.

They had spent quite a few hours there, steaming up the windows of his car, so it was difficult for Miguel to reign himself in when Alicia firmly told him, No!

But why not? He had asked in an aggrieved tone, desperate for any way to relieve the pressure of his engorged and insistent organ.

Because I’m not ready for that, she said in a calm voice. I don’t know when I will be, but I’m certainly not going to get stuck in the same trap that my Mom got caught in, when she got pregnant while she was still in high school.

But I’ll use a condom!

She patted his face gently, I’ll think about it. But for now, you need to get me home. Before my dad and my brothers come looking for us with a shotgun!

At that, he had obeyed her and driven her home. He had taken a very long shower once he was home, taking care of matters himself.

They had gone to the Turn-About Dance also, since of course Alicia asked him to be her date. They had a lot of fun, since the DJ for the night was from Aurora, someone Alicia knew from when she went to school there. She had gotten on the planning committee, so she made sure that there would be the kind of salsa music played that many of the students in their school had learned to dance to as babies, even before they had learned to walk! They had danced until they were exhausted.

But after the dance, once again Alicia had told him No, and Miguel had to deal himself with being totally aroused by the woman with whom he had been doing the dancing that was so much a part of their culture, that it had created the stereotype of hot Latin dancing, done by a fiery people who were ruled by their emotions.

When he complained to Alicia the next day on the phone about how it was a part of her plan to torture him to death, she laughed.

You’re a seventeen-year-old man, Miguel. According to my brothers, and my cousins, that’s about all you think about anyway! Don’t go blaming me for that!

He had grumbled at her, but grudgingly agreed with her. They had continued dating, with their relationship growing ever more physical, but always stopping short of what would be referred to as sex by anyone, including them.

By the time spring break arrived in late March, Miguel was positive that if he had to he would marry Alicia, because there was no way he was going to allow any other man to possess her. Since his birthday was during break, Alicia hinted around to him for weeks ahead of time, that she was planning something special for him. By the time they got off of school that Friday afternoon, she was positively glowing with excitement. Miguel, who found it almost impossible to keep his hands off of her during normal moments, was in agony from the desire he felt for this vibrant, exciting woman whose body he was becoming increasingly familiar with, but never allowed to touch the way he wanted to.

When he picked her up after her job on Friday night, she told him that he needed to get her home soon, because she had promised her parents that she would be home early. Worried because her father did not really seem to approve of their dating, Miguel had asked her why.

She gave him a guarded look, Because I have set them up to think that you and I are having a fight, and that I will be spending tomorrow night at Laura’s house.

He looked at her in surprise.

But Laura said that she was leaving today after school with her family, for Florida...they are heading down to see her grandparents.

She nodded, and smiled secretively at him.

That’s right. But my parents don’t know that!

Confused, he just looked at her.

Don’t you get it?

She touched the back of his hand that was on her thigh, trembling from the control he had to use to keep it still.

Laura gave me her house key. I’m going over there tomorrow afternoon, and you are going to meet me there, when I call you and tell you everything is ready.

He swallowed hard.

Ready for what?

She smiled at him again, this time with a passion in her eyes that he had only seen aroused once or twice.

For me to give you your birthday present.

He thought he was going to explode out of his pants, as what she was telling him finally registered with his blood-starved brain.

He looked at her with longing, and she nodded.

It’s time. I’m ready. And I want my first time to be with you.

With that, she leaned over and kissed him, and her hand lightly stroked the front of his pants where the bulge was visibly twitching. That was all it took, and Miguel groaned as he leaned back, embarrassed, yet relieved of the immense pressure that had been making him unable to even talk.

Alicia giggled softly, It won’t matter if it’s that quick tomorrow, since we will have all night to do it over and over again.

He wound his hand into her hair and tilted her head back to kiss her deeply, his tongue exploring her entire mouth, then dueling with hers.

Many sweaty moments later she gently pushed him back, saying, But you have to get me home now. I have to make it look like we really had a fight.

He nodded, and started his car.

Do you think you will be able to stay out all night? She asked him as he drove.

He shrugged.

I’m not sure. But I will talk to Catalina, and see what she thinks will work.

She smiled at the thought of his favorite sister.

Why her?

He smiled back at her, Because she’s been good at planning how to get time alone with her boyfriends ever since she got asked out on her first date. Maybe she can come up with an idea, for how I can do this. If not, I’ll just stay out and deal with the consequences the next day.

He had stopped at a stoplight, and he wound his hand into her hair again, saying brusquely, You are worth any price I might have to pay.

She smiled at him.

"But we can’t kiss goodnight out front of my house. You need to just stop the car, and