❝ hey. you... hungry? i got us some stuff. ❞
the phrase ‘some stuff’ from héctor might have led a person to think maybe they were getting a light snack; after all, it was barely 3pmーtoo late for lunch, yet too early for dinnerーand, on a normal day, they would be correct. yet this was not a normal day, so instead what was laid out on ernesto’s kitchen table was nothing short of a feast.
steaming bowls of pozole & menudo, a plate stacked high with barbacoa & cemitas, a tray of temalesーand, naturally, bottles & bottles of alcohol and non-alcoholic drinks alike to wash it all down. in all honesty, héctor seemed to have gone to every street food vendor he could find, and most likely shelled out quite a bit of money for it.
while it perhaps would have been suspicious had anyone else offered such a meal on such short notice, this wasn’t necessarily out of the ordinary for the pair. it was a custom they had. a tradition. food, to them, was used as an icebreaker.
more of a signal, really; a signal that they needed to have a talk. one friend who needed to have a heart-to-heart about something on their mindーany problem, from the banal to earth-shatteringーwould come bearing gifts of food & drinks to the other.
they considered it a sort of ‘payment’ for sitting there & putting up with what the other was about to say.
usually the size of the meal didn’t matterーthe last time they had an argument, ernesto only showed up with a loaf or two of concha, and that was perfectly fine with héctor. though, he supposed, the bigger the offering, the bigger the news, and this certainly was big news.
news he wasn’t sure ernesto would take well.
( @vivirmomento )
