Xiarya's POV
The letter lived in my nightstand for a week like a small, sleeping animal. I didn't hide it because I was afraid the boys would find it—they already knew. I hid it because every time I unfolded the paper and saw the words positive match I had to relearn how to breathe.
I'd spent years being no one's. I'd gotten good at it. Good at being the girl who belonged to the home, to the bunk bed, to the guava tree and the rules we made for ourselves. Good at not wanting too much from a world that kept its spoons to itself.
But blood calls to blood, Uncle Hector said. I don't know about blood. I know about soup. Some days you only need hot water and salt. Some days you want a broth that reminds you you're alive. And some days someone puts a bowl in your hands you didn't ask for, and you cry because your mouth knows before your mind does: this is home.
The letter was a bowl. It kept being full even when I didn't touch it.
"Ready?" Gelo asked gently from my doorway.
I nodded. We were meeting Hector and Liza at a quiet café—no hotel ballrooms, no chandeliers. Neutral ground. Rules.
Monique made us write the rules on an index card anyway: No photos. No last names out loud. No surprise guests. No questions about Adra's whereabouts. If anyone approaches, we switch to English and pretend it's a business chat. She'd tapped the card on the table like a gavel. "Protect the secret. Protect the healing. Protect your heart," she added, looking at me over her glasses in a way that made me feel seen and scolded at the same time.
Gelo drove. He didn't fill the ride with talk. Sometimes silence is a gift: the kind that lets your ribs make space.
The Café
Hector and Liza chose a corner table by the window. For a second, if you squinted, we were just four people trying to order coffee without pronouncing the menu wrong.
Liza stood too quickly and then checked herself, as if remembering she was supposed to be ordinary now. "Xiarya," she said softly. Not Adra, not dear, not hija. My name. She rolled it like a pearl she didn't know she'd been keeping.
"Hi," I managed. The word was too small for everything my chest wanted to do.
Hector shook Gelo's hand and then mine, solemn as a vow. "Thank you for meeting us," he said. "And for trusting us even this much."
"Trust is rented," I said before I could stop myself. "We pay by the hour." I tried to smile so it wouldn't sting.
They didn't flinch.
Liza reached into her tote, paused, then placed a small velvet box on the table. "No pressure," she said quickly. "It's a thing that belonged to your—" She corrected herself. "To our side of the family. If you don't want it, I will keep it warm until you do."
I opened the lid. A narrow silver bracelet lay inside—old-fashioned, delicate, engraved with two letters so ornate the curves looked like vines: A T.
"Adrastea Torres," Liza said, barely above a whisper. "It belonged to the woman you were named after. We don't know if you were meant to have it, but—"
"Either way, I can give it back when I meet her," I said, pretending my voice didn't wobble. "When it's time." We were all pretending the same thing: that the future could be scheduled.
Gelo cleared his throat gently. "We need boundaries," he said to Hector and Liza, leader-voice softening corners. "If you want her in your life—and if she wants that too—this has to be a lane, not a highway."
Hector nodded. "No press," he said. "No public claims. We'll be the quietest family you've ever had."
Liza smiled through eyes that had cried out the salt years ago. "We cook on Sundays," she offered. "No cameras there."
I looked at Gelo. He didn't need to say okay out loud. It was in the tilt of his chin.
"Sunday," I said. "I'll come."
"And bring him," Liza added, glancing at Gelo. "Only if you want to," she rushed. "But... he feels like the kind of person you bring home."
Heat rose up my neck like a storm. Gelo coughed into his sleeve, which is how very steady people hide a blush.
We left with the bracelet in my pocket and a plan that felt like stepping stones instead of a cliff.
Campus, Still Loud
The world didn't pause for new family. It kept doing what it does best: being loud and ridiculous.
By Tuesday, the mall fan meet had been digested by the internet into a thousand screaming edits and wedding-cake memes. #AdraGelo still floated in the trending column like a balloon someone forgot to pop. Teen fans were convinced Adra (me) and Gelo had a forbidden romance brewing; the comments were a mixture of poetry and chaos.
"Let them," Gelo said when Mark groaned about it over fries. "Noise is a blanket."
Camille, now fully converted from skeptic to guard dog, side-eyed a couple of first-years whispering near our table. "If anyone posts a zoomed-in video of your elbows touching and calls it proof, I'm reporting them for bullying," she told me. Then she thought about it. "Actually, I'll just drown them with ten nicer edits."
"You're terrifying," Steve said, impressed.
She shrugged. "I'm useful."
Between classes, a barista wrote GELO + A on our cups with a heart for the plus sign. Steve took a selfie with them and posted it with the caption pls mind ur business but also ship responsibly. Monique texted DELETE, then after reconsidering, leave it—engagement is engagement.
I kept my head down, wore the jacket, practiced Adra's economy of movement. The mask fit better when my pockets had family tucked inside them.
Sunday Soup
Hector and Liza's house sat on a quiet street with old trees and new roofs. It didn't look like money. It looked like a decision to spend money on different things: extra chairs, good pans, heavy curtains that made rooms feel safe.
"Slippers by the door," Liza announced, as if we'd been doing this for years. "Wash your hands. Aprons in the drawer."
She didn't ask for permission to mother me; she offered the choreography and let me decide if I knew the steps. I did. Orphanage kitchens are their own language; a sink is a sink anywhere; garlic is garlic on every continent.
Gelo tied his apron like he was suiting up for battle. Hector taught him to peel ginger with a spoon and he reacted like he'd been shown sorcery. "All these years," he whispered, devastated by the waste of knife-shaved flesh. "All these... years."
"Welcome to the diaspora," I said, laughing for real.
We chopped and stirred and learned the way people learn each other: by doing small things near the same stove. Liza told me about old recipes and older arguments. Hector told us half the feud story in the careful way of a man walking through a room full of glass. Their version matched the rumors in my bones: two branches, property, pride; a night at a hospital when anger did what anger always does when no one chooses to interrupt it—burned down the wrong room. A baby gone. A generation punished for ghosts they didn't make.
"We thought we'd find you and break the world open," Hector admitted, soup ladle hovering in the steam. "But when we saw... everything you're balancing—" He looked at me, then at Gelo. "We chose patience."
"You chose love," Liza corrected, bumping him gently with her hip. "Let's call things what they are."
We ate on mismatched bowls and I didn't mind the spoons being all the wrong sizes because nothing about it was wrong. Halfway through, Liza brought out a small stack of prints. "Only if you want," she said again, and slid them across.
A photo of a woman with my eyes. A boy with Adra's exact laugh frozen mid-flight on a bicycle. A girl with hair in a high ponytail holding a trophy bigger than her face. A messy couch. A clean Sunday.
I didn't cry. Or I did, but quietly, the way steam leaves a pot.
Gelo washed dishes after, sleeves rolled, hands in suds, humming under his breath. He belongs everywhere decent people stand quietly and do necessary things. He belongs in every room where anyone ever tries to build something.
"Picture?" Liza asked at the end, then corrected herself so fast I wanted to hug her for it. "No. Not yet. Sorry—I'm learning."
"Later," I said. "When it's time." We were all becoming fluent in the same future tense.
She packed leftovers; Hector gave Gelo the ginger spoon. We left wearing slippers we forgot to take off because our feet had decided they lived there.
In the car, Gelo drove in that way he has—steady like a vow that doesn't need fanfare. "You okay?" he asked.
"I'm full," I said. "Soup full."
His mouth tilted. "Good."
I wanted to say: You did that. You walked me into a house and made it not frightening. But I didn't. Words would have broken the spell. I watched the city go by and held my new bracelet in my pocket like a lighthouse that fit in my hand.
Rehearsal, Quiet
We prepped for a campus festival show the next week. Monique handed out run sheets and threat assessments like a general. "Weather: hot. Stage: slippery. Press: minimal. Security: trained to pretend they don't see BL signs," she said, side-eyeing me and Gelo.
"Not our fault," Steve protested. "Physics."
Mark raised a hand. "What kind of physics?"
"The kind where two objects gravitate," Steve said grandly.
Monique pinched the bridge of her nose. "Move on."
On stage, I tracked sightlines, learned where to stand so the cameras caught my good angles and not my nerves. Adra carries stillness like a currency; you forget to look away. I practiced that: stillness with edges. Gelo ran the timings, reminded us that fans scream loudest on beat four and will inhale on the downbeat if you give them room. He knew where the pyro would bang and where the bass would hit the floorboards like a second heart.
In a break, he stepped close enough that the crew probably thought we were talking tech. "How's Sunday soup sitting?"
"Like a spell," I said.
He nodded. "Good. Keep a portion for later. You'll need it."
"What happens later?"
"Life," he said simply, and jogged off to tell Steve to switch a chord voicing on the bridge so it didn't fight the lead. Watching his back was like watching someone steady a skyscraper by putting a hand on it. Ridiculous. True.
A Small Complication
It arrived, as complications do, disguised as a coincidence.
Liza texted midweek: Quick errand at the market near campus. Bringing you more soup. Five minutes at the north gate? No photos.
I shouldn't have said yes. But I did. Hunger makes you stupid; love makes you brave. The north gate has a little strip of shade where deliveries happen and where nobody with a ring light thinks to stand. I watched the crowd flow past—students, vendors, one reporter I pretended not to see—and there she was: Liza in jeans and a cap, carrying a tote that clinked faintly like glass.
"Hi, hi," she said, careful but bright. "No names. Two containers. One ginger, one chicken."
"You're going to make me cry in public," I warned.
"We can't have that," she said, already backing up. "Go. Before anyone sees."
And then someone saw.
Not press. Worse. A society friend with excellent memory and excellent nails. "Liza?" she trilled. "Is that you? It's been ages!—and oh! Adra!" She leaned toward me, eyes lighting with the thrill of being the first to have seen something that perhaps should not be seen.
Liza didn't look at me. She held her tote up like a shield and barged cheerfully through the conversation. "Fundraising, darling," she sang. "Campus donations—must dash. So lovely. Kiss kiss!"
She was gone before the woman could claim us with a selfie. The woman wobbled, then rallied, a predator whose prey had walked off the set. "Adra," she purred, shifting target. "You must come to our charity dinner next week."
"Schedule's full," Gelo said from behind me, voice courteous and final. I hadn't realized he'd followed. Of course he had.
The woman's gaze flicked between us, sensing a door and trying to decide whether to stick her foot in it. "You boys," she said, all perfume and plans. "Always so busy being legends."
"We try," Gelo said pleasantly. "Stay well."
We walked away exactly fast enough to look like we weren't fleeing.
At the corner, he lifted the tote. "Chicken or ginger?"
"Ginger," I said, and put my forehead briefly against his shoulder like a person pressing a fever to a tile. He didn't move. His shoulder stayed. The world did not end.
"Rule six," he said when I straightened.
"We only had five."
"Rule six," he repeated. "If we break a rule, we break it together."
I nodded. It was absurd how many rules he could fit under that one word.
Letters We Don't Send (Yet)
I wrote to Adra that night. Not an email—paper, an old-fashioned page with lines you can feel with your skin. Dear you, I began. Today I ate Sunday soup and it didn't make me sad. I think that means something has changed in me that will not change back. I didn't write about the bracelet or the tote or how Gelo looked at me when I told him I was full. I wrote about Kiko and the bridge plank and the guava tree that refused to be cut. I wrote about names as promises and promises as meals you show up for every week until they become the shape of your life.
I didn't send it. Not yet. Gelo was right: protect the healing first. But I put the letter in the nightstand with the DNA results. The drawer shut easily, the way things shut when you know you'll open them again soon.
Liza texted a photo of two hands holding soup containers over a tiled floor. The caption read: No photos means no faces. But hands are allowed. I laughed so hard I woke Steve, who yelled through the wall, "IF THIS IS BL DRAMA, KINDLY SAVE IT FOR DAYLIGHT," to which Mark added, "WE HAVE MATH IN THE MORNING."
"We don't," Gelo called back, amused.
"THEN WE HAVE SLEEP IN THE MORNING," Mark concluded, which was hard to argue with.
The Gallery
The next Sunday, Liza led me down a narrow hallway I hadn't seen on the first visit. Framed photos lined the walls—weddings, graduations, quiet days that someone decided to honor with a print. At the end, a cluster of hooks held empty frames.
"This is the private gallery," she said. "We put things here before we're ready to show the world."
She handed me a small frame and a print I recognized—the photo from my file at Saint Brigida, me at five, hair already a plan, that smile rehearsing ownership.
"Only if you want," she said again, her favorite phrase.
I looked at it for a long time. That girl had stood on the edge of a yard and learned how to be loud and quiet in the right proportions. She had practiced leaving before she had anywhere to go. She had waited for a bowl of soup she didn't know the name for.
"Okay," I said, and hung the frame at eye level. The picture fit like it had been measured for exactly that square of wall years ago.
Hector cleared his throat behind us. "It suits the house," he said, which is what you say when you mean it suits us.
We ate. We laughed. After, Gelo fixed a sticky cabinet hinge, because of course he did. Liza wrapped leftovers. Hector packed a jar of ginger that would last me two complicated weeks.
On the way out, I touched the frame like a bell you ring for luck, then slipped on the mask by the door—the jacket, the stillness, the half-lidded gaze. It felt less like a cage that day and more like a bridge I trusted to hold.
Gelo's POV
The trick, I've learned, is not to be dramatic about care. Drama draws eyes. Care draws breath.
I stand a little in front of her if the hallway narrows. I memorize exit routes and the APR of the gossip economy and the schedules of the trash collectors on our street because reporters like to lurk near bins. I keep a spare cap in the glove compartment and a thermos in the trunk and a white lie in my back pocket. I pretend I am not pretending.
On Sundays, I drive like a person without someplace to be, because sometimes the destination is supposed to take time. On stage, I stand close enough to catch whatever falls. Online, I do not read the comments—except sometimes I do, and I save the ones that say thank you for making space for yourself when the world tries to take it. I like to think those are for her even when they don't know her name.
I keep telling myself not to want anything that makes her mask heavy.
But then I watch her hang a five-year-old's photo in a hallway that was waiting for it, and I understand what wanting can be when it's done right: not weight, a rail.
We have miles before we get to say any of this out loud. For now, rule six. If we break a rule, we break it together.
She falls asleep on the ride back, bracelet warm in her palm. I ease us over a speed bump so gently even the street dogs don't notice.
The van hums. The city slips by. The future taps on the window and says soon but not yet.
"Soup full?" I ask when we pull up to the house.
She smiles without opening her eyes. "Full."
"Good," I say, because it is. And because for the first time in a long year, full doesn't feel like a lie.
We go inside. Monday is waiting with its lists and stage marks and jokes and the small, ordinary work of keeping a secret safe. We do it anyway. We do it together.