Mango Season

Temporada de Mangos

The mangoes were ripe when I arrived—sweet-smelling and golden, falling from the trees like nature's candy.

"¡Mija!" My abuela ran down the porch steps, embracing me like I hadn't just seen her at Christmas. "You're too skinny. Come, come, I made arroz con gandules."

"Abuela, I just got off a five-hour flight."

"And? You need to eat. And then you need to help with the harvest. Los Delgados next door lost their help this year—"

"The Delgados still live there?"

"Sí, sí. And their son is back too. You remember Rafael?"

I remembered Rafael—skinny, glasses, braces that caught the light when he laughed. We'd played together every summer until I was fifteen and he was seventeen and everything became awkward.

"He's different now," Abuela said with a knowing look. "Very different. Maybe you go say hello later, eh?"

"Abuela..."

"What? I'm just suggesting you be neighborly."

Rafael was in the mango grove when I went for a walk that evening.

But Abuela was right—he was different. The skinny boy had become broad-shouldered, bronze-skinned, with arms that suggested years of farm work. His glasses were gone. His smile, though, was exactly the same.

"Valentina?" He lowered the basket he was carrying. "No way. Little Valentina with the pigtails?"

"I haven't worn pigtails in fifteen years, Rafa."

"Could have fooled me." He walked closer, and I had to tilt my head back to look at him. When did he get so tall? "You're all grown up."

"So are you."

"Your abuela mentioned you were coming." He gestured to the trees. "Want to help? For old time's sake?"

"I'm wearing a dress."

"Never stopped you before." His grin was challenging. "Remember the summer you climbed that ceiba tree in your Easter dress? Your mother screamed so loud the roosters started crowing."

"I was eleven."

"And fearless." He handed me a basket. "Don't tell me New York made you soft."

"I'll show you soft."

We picked mangoes until the sun set, filling basket after basket while trading stories about the years we'd missed.

"So why come back now?" he asked, reaching for a high branch. His shirt rode up, and I very pointedly did not look.

"Burnout. Work stress. A broken engagement."

"Broken engagement?" He lowered his arm. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. He wasn't right." I focused on my own tree. "I think I knew it from the start. He didn't understand why I needed to come here every summer. Why this place matters."

"Anyone who doesn't understand that doesn't deserve you."

I met his eyes across the grove. The sunset painted everything gold—the trees, the fruit, his face.

"You always said the nicest things," I said softly.

"I meant them then. I mean them now." He set down his basket and walked toward me. "I had such a crush on you, you know. That last summer."

"I know." I smiled. "I had one on you too."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I was fifteen. I didn't know how."

"And now?" He was close now, close enough to touch. "Do you know how now?"

I answered by pulling him down to me.

He tasted like mangoes—sweet, ripe, intoxicating. His hands cradled my face like I was something precious, something he'd been waiting fifteen years to hold.

"Valentina," he breathed when we parted.

"Rafa."

"I've imagined this so many times."

"Is it as good as you imagined?"

"Better." He kissed me again. "So much better."

We made love in the old barn that night, on blankets that smelled of hay and summer. The crickets sang outside while he mapped my body with his hands.

"You're so beautiful," he murmured. "I used to dream about you. Every summer you didn't come back, I wondered where you were. Who you were with."

"I'm here now."

"For how long?"

"I don't know." I pulled him closer. "Maybe the whole season. Maybe longer."

"Stay," he said against my throat. "Stay as long as you want. I'll give you reasons every day."

I stayed the whole summer.

I stayed for the mango harvest and the coffee picking and the festivals in town. I stayed for moonlit walks and morning kisses and nights that blurred together like watercolors.

"Your abuela's going to figure it out," Rafael said one morning, sneaking out my window at dawn.

"She already knows. She's just pretending not to."

"How can you tell?"

"She's making enough food for two every time you supposedly 'stop by to help with the garden.'"

By August, I'd made a decision.

"I'm not going back to New York," I told him, wrapped in his arms on his family's porch. "I'm going to work remotely. Help Abuela. Help you."

"Are you sure? Your whole life is there."

"My whole life was there." I turned to face him. "But everything I want is here. The farm. My family. You."

"Me?"

"I love you, Rafael Delgado. I think I've loved you since I was fifteen years old and too scared to say it."

He kissed me until I forgot how to breathe.

"I love you too," he said. "I've loved you through every mango season, every empty summer, every day you weren't here."

"Then let's not waste any more seasons."

We didn't.

We built a life together in that mango grove—sweet as the fruit that surrounded us, ripe with possibility, golden as a Puerto Rican sunset.

Some loves are worth waiting fifteen years for.

Ours was one of them.