“Hey, watch who you call pendejo, pendeja,” Julia cried, and they both dissolved into laughter. I stayed stuck on what they’d said. All my life I’d felt like I was born to fulfill a role in my parents’ vision for their own lives. My mother wanted to hold on to my father and my father wanted a legacy. When my dad married Cecilia, my mother’s hopes with my father ended and she left for the DR and never came back. My father loved me in his own way, but he also needed me to carry on what he’d made. My life in New York had been invented for me by other people. But here...here I could decide what that looked like.

When Dani finally yelled that the steaks were done, Salome and Julia got up, but I stayed behind, needing a moment to breathe through what that short conversation had done for me. I felt unlocked somehow. Like a door I didn’t know was closed had been opened for me. What if this place was what both Alba and I needed?

“How’s it going with the filming?” Rocco asked me as he cut into his steak.

“It’s going fine, but the showrunner is a pain in the ass.” Dani, Julia and Rocco all worked for the foundation and had had to deal with Chase a couple of times since he’d come on board. So they knew. And from Salome’s very sour expression I assumed she’d heard about him too.

“Chase sucks,” Dani concurred. “So what are you doing with the rest of your time? You running things in New York remotely?”

I lifted my hand and waved it in a “yes and no” gesture while I chewed. “I’m actually looking into the possibility of going in on a project here.”

“Oh.” Julia didn’t even pretend to be coy; she was very openly about to get all over my business. “Do say more.”

“I’ve been trying to get in on a program that’s going to build housing for veterans. Two pro players from the DR playing for local teams are doing it. We still haven’t been able to meet up though.” This was the first time I’d told anyone about my plan, and I wished Alba was here.

“That’s amazing!” Julia said, smiling wide. I wasn’t surprised the social worker in the group was all over the idea. “Wait.” She cocked her head in Dani’s direction. “Is that your friend Gio’s thing?”

Dani perked up at that, then nodded. “Yeah, Gio and Ivan are raising capital for a project like that.”

“You know them?” I asked, surprised. I could almost hear Cecilia in my head going See! That’s why you need friends!