You get the picture.

I do a great job keeping my distance, if I do say so myself. I politely greet her at the reception, my palm tingling when she reaches out to shake it for a formal introduction.

“Espinoza, this is my sister, True—True, this is José.”

“Actually, my name is Mateo,” I say, giving her petite palm a firm grip. “José is technically my middle name. I don’t know why José stuck.” And I don’t know what compels me to tell her that, why I care that she knows my actual name.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mateo. Buzz talks about you all the time.”

He does?

“Good things I hope,” I tell her, though what I want to say is, He failed to mention that you’re fucking adorable and you sound like a goddamn angel when you speak.

Thank goodness I don’t say it, because that would be weird. And Buzz Wallace would strangle me right here and now—the same way I would if he were messing with one of my sisters.

“Matty, are you listening?”

I jerk my head up to see another one of my sisters watching me, one brow arched quizzically.

Glory snickers. “He’s daydreaming about su amor.” His love.

Three of my sisters stare, and I curse my parents that I have so many of them.

Meddling. Bossy. Sisters.

“His what?” Camila is looking at me as if she can’t believe what Glory is saying.

“He is being ghosted.”

I turn on Gloria. “Glory, what the hell!”

Our mother hears me and shoots over a warning the way only a mother can, pasting a smile on her face when she glances away again, giving her attention to Aunt Zoila. But I’m on her radar now, and I know one of her ears will be open.

My sisters—who have now all congregated around my spot at the table, including Sophia, who normally hates gossip of any kind—chorus the word ghosted, repeating it incessantly until the tips of my ears turn red with embarrassment.

“What’s ghosted?” Mariana asks.

We all turn to stare at her. “Are you being serious right now?”

She scrunches up her face, irritated. “Are you all forgetting I’m forty-five and haven’t dated anyone in twenty years?”

Glory tips her head as if she’s the Queen of Spain, pardoning one of her subjects. “Fair enough, fair enough.”

“Ghosting is when you go on a date with someone, you think it was great, and then they disappear on you with no warning or explanation.”

“Disappear from the date?” Mariana asks. “Like, climbs out the bathroom window or something?”

Rosaria pointedly raises an eyebrow, a trait we all inherited from our mother. “No, Mari.” She sighs. “It’s when they just stop talking to you. Block you on social media. Make it impossible to get ahold of them. Ghosting—poof, gone.”

Mariana rolls her eyes. “And she’s doing that to you?”

I shrug.

“Why?”

“She must not have liked me.”

“What did you do to her?” Ana chimes in, biting down on a tomato she’s plucked from the salad in the center of the table.

“I didn’t do anything! What kind of question is that?” Jesus, give me some credit. “I’m a gentleman.”

“Well where did you take her on this date she didn’t like? Were you boring? Did you talk about yourself too much?”

Glory snorts. “Not even.”

They all look toward her.

“They didn’t go out on a date,” she informs them, excited to be the center of attention and keeper of knowledge.

“What does she mean you didn’t go on a date? How can she ghost you if you didn’t take her out?” Mariana wants to know.

“Maybe she just doesn’t like him,” Camila reasons. “That is possible you know—he’s not that irresistible.”

They all laugh.

“I did not spend half my life training him to be a good man only to have a woman ghost him,” Mariana scoffs. She’s a good fifteen years my senior. Of all the women in this family, Mari spent just as much time with me as our mother did, she and my gaggle of sisters riding my ass when I did something stupid. Bailing me out when I misbehaved so I wouldn’t end up getting arrested. Driving me to my first job, driving me to practice when my parents were at work.

Mariana and Camila helped me pick out my first condo, after I got drafted into the major league fresh out of college.

It doesn’t surprise me that they’d be invested in my romantic life.

It’s no wonder they all are.

“You should take her on a date,” Sophia says, as if it’s a no-brainer. “Do you have her phone number?”

No I don’t have her phone number. “Her brother won’t give it to me.”

“What does her brother have to do with anything?”

“He’s one of my teammates, and he doesn’t want me anywhere near his sister—I already asked him for her number.”

Sophia, an attorney, has a million other questions. “When was the last time you saw this woman?”

Sneaking out of the hotel room after we had sex. “Uh, at her brother’s wedding reception.”