As Long as You Love Me (Previously Kiss and Tell)

Chapter 5 ♔ Not Perfect

Kiss and Tell will be published as a paperback and e-book from W by Wattpad Books under the new name "As Long As You Love Me". The book is available for pre-order now: https://a.co/d/bV1ARdt

***

Taylor and I left the machine shop together, heading to the cafeteria. I must've been really out of shape because a half hour of welding, tops, had rendered me exhausted. And sweaty to the point where I could detect my own stench. When I finally grabbed hold of a cold bottle of juice, I chugged it bottoms up like it was alcohol and I was determined to lose my consciousness.

My friend whistled as she watched me. "How did you learn to do that? Because it was really hot and I wasn't the only one who noticed."

"Drink like a sailor?" I asked, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The question made her snort.

"No." She jerked a thumb in the direction we came from. "Weld like a pro."

Technically I was, at least by the amount of hours I'd spent being part of papi's labor over weekends. I shrugged and chucked the bottle in the trash bin. "My dad back home owns a metalwork company and he provides welding services to the industries around."

Her eyebrows went up. "And you just picked it up?"

That made me laugh because this wasn't like watching mami make mandocas and knowing how to replicate the recipe thereafter. Cora and I had learned because we liked what papi and his employees did and we wanted to be a part of that. In contrast, Carlos couldn't care less about machines. He leaned more towards mami's educational background, the human sciences. He'd wanted to be a journalist.

I remembered being a kid and hearing my parents whisper about how their kids had their roles switched around. All along papi had wanted Carlos to take over the company after he retired. Instead his twin daughters were metalheads, in the non musical sense. In our last year of high school, Cora and I had decided to go into mechanical engineering together and work at papi's company after graduating, starting from the bottom until we learned the business inside and out. Until we were worthy successors of our papi.

That was basically the only thing we agreed on. We didn't like the same music genres, Cora was into ballads and anything that played on the radio whereas I'd used foreign hard rock as a tool to practice my English and escape from the world around me. She liked dressing up in the latest fashion, have makeup enhance the very same features I didn't care about and going to the gym regularly. But most of all, she liked her political activist boyfriend.

I didn't.

Not only did ballads make me gag, I had no time to focus on my appearance when I was too busy trying to secure myself a future of my own away from there. And I certainly had no time to dedicate to any stupid boys that would distract me from that goal.

"Of course not," I said, bringing my focus back to my friend. I shuffled my feet after her towards the door. "I learned from my dad since I was a tween."

"Gee, all I learned from mine was how to drive."

I elbowed her side. "And barely."

She winced and color rushed up her cheeks. If ever there was a car in America that looked like it belonged to my hometown was hers. She'd put more dents in it than should be legal.

"Yeah, well. Sometimes the roads get tight," she said with a chuckle. And then her arm lashed out, bringing me to a dead stop. "Oh shit, what do I do?"

"What?" I asked, craning my neck to catch what had caused the reaction. And then I saw her ex walking towards us, headphones in place as she listened to music. Amber was engrossed watching the screen of her phone and didn't seem to have caught sight of us yet. "Okay, what do you want me to do? I can shove you into the bushes, or I can pretend to be your girlfriend to make her jealous."