I chuckled and Julia rolled her eyes. “This is why I don’t take these fools anywhere,” she said with feigned annoyance and though I wanted to keep talking about Alba, I also knew Julia was probably not going to say much more. If I wanted the secrets of the woman for whom I’d come to Dallas, I would have to earn a right to them.

“So you all really like it down here?” I mused, as I took in their comfortable smiles.

“I really do,” Salome said, the surprise in her voice making me laugh. She sat up and brought her knees up to her chest, her wineglass dangling from her hand. She was dressed in cutoffs and a tank top that said “Economist: someone who gets excited about things no one cares about.” Her hair was short on the side and long on the top and it was a shade of light blue; with her tattoo sleeves she looked very much like a New Yorker, but she seemed at ease here.

“I mean the politics aren’t great,” she demurred to which Julia concurred with a hearty amen. “The summer is so hot I literally feel like my soul is leaving my body just from walking from my car to the door of my building on campus. But I don’t know.” She lifted a shoulder, brows furrowed, like she still hadn’t figured out how her life had turned out the way it had but she was okay with it. “I sort of made my own rules here for how I wanted my life to be.” She put down her glass and picked up the sunblock from the table then sprayed some on herself as she thought things over. And Julia spoke up.

“It’s the same for me in a way. In New York it almost felt like everything was laid out, you know? That I had to fulfill some script that had already been written for me. How Dominican girls from ‘good families’ do.” Salome nodded at the air quotes. “Here I say what stays on this master plan and mostly I make it up as I go along. But there aren’t any gossips on the block looking out for when I get home or don’t. Or to point out that this is not what ‘we do’ or how ‘we live.’”

“And these pendejos are fun to be around,” Salome added as she waved a hand toward Rocco and Dani and then to Julia.