“These are difficult times,” Pablo says, his gaze—like mine—on the boys. “So many of my friends graduated from university years ago and can’t find jobs. They’re frustrated, and they’re angry, and they’re scared for their future.” He turns from the boys, back to face me. “I took some time off from practicing law to focus on other things.”

The phrase “other things” dangles ominously between us. The winds of change coming from the former students of the University of Havana—who are now left without a place to study since Batista closed the university out of fear for their subversive activities—have already torn through my life once. This is one afternoon, one indulgence. I don’t need to know all his secrets; can pretend he is merely an attorney, nothing more.

“What about you?” Pablo asks.

“What about me?”

“You never really answered me before. What is life like on the other side of the gates?”

I laugh softly, relieved to be back on firmer ground. “Not as exciting as people seem to imagine.”

Pablo is silent for a moment, his gaze far more intense than an afternoon walk on the Malecón merits. Everything about him is intense—when he discusses politics, when he looks at me. It’s that intensity that has me gravitating toward him; it’s refreshing to be around someone who cares more about substance than frivolity. He reminds me so much of my brother—Alejandro has that same determined glint in his eyes, the same conviction underscoring each word.

Pablo grins. “So if you aren’t marching all over Havana, capturing hearts, what do you do in your free time?”

“I spend time with my sisters—I have three.” And a brother no one speaks of anymore. “I read; I go shopping. We like to ride horses, go to the beach.”

I don’t mention the social obligations. It all sounds so frivolous and tedious. And it is, this waiting around for a man to walk into our lives and marry us. A part of me envies Alejandro for his ability to cast off the weight and responsibility of being a Perez, the ease with which he is willing to risk everything for his beliefs. And at the same time, there’s an anger there I cannot erase. Loyalty is a complicated thing—where does family fit on the hierarchy? Above or below country? Above or below the natural order of things? Or are we above all else loyal to ourselves, to our hearts, our convictions, the internal voice that guides us?

I wish I knew.

“I’m surprised you’re not in school overseas somewhere.”

“My mother didn’t support us going to university. Beatriz lobbied the hardest for it—she would have made an excellent attorney—but in the end, it wasn’t worth the fight. My parents have a very traditional view of what it is to be a woman in Cuba, and no matter how much society might disagree with them, they weren’t going to change their opinions. A working Perez woman is a blight on the Perez name.”

He looks faintly outraged. “So you’re just what—supposed to wait around until one day you move from your parents’ home to your husband’s?”

“Yes.”

“What if you never marry?”

“Then I’ll stay in our house taking care of my mother until I grow old.”

I don’t find the idea any more appealing than he does, but I don’t know how to explain to him how few options are afforded to us. I suppose I could break from family tradition, go against my parents’ wishes, but the truth is there’s never been anything I’ve been passionate enough about to risk severing all ties with my family. I don’t possess secret dreams of being a doctor or lawyer. I’m nineteen, and I don’t know what my future looks like, harder still to predict when I’m surrounded by such uncertainty.

“And you’re happy with that?” he asks, his expression doubtful.

“No, of course not. But you speak as though there are limitless options available to me.”

“What if there could be?”

“I have no interest in politics,” I reply.

It is both warning and caution—I have no interest in revolution, in even a hint of it. Bombs aren’t the only things that go off in Havana; President Batista’s firing squads have been especially prolific lately, and no Cuban, regardless of their wealth, is above his notice. My own brother is proof of that. The best thing to do, the smart thing, the way to survive in Havana is to keep your head down and go about your daily life as though the world around you isn’t creeping into madness.

“You speak as though politics is its own separate entity,” he says. “As though it isn’t in the air around us, as though every single part of us isn’t political. How can you dismiss something that is so fundamental to the integrity of who we are as a people, as a country? How can you dismiss something that directly affects the lives of so many?”

“Very few can afford the luxury of being political in Cuba.”

“And no one can afford the luxury of not being political in Cuba,” he counters.

The fervor lingering in his words, the conviction with which he speaks them, transforms him before my eyes. His overlong hair blows in the breeze, his dark eyes flashing, and there’s something about the ferocity in his gaze that reminds me of the corsair on our wall at home. This is not the sort of man who waits for permission, but a man of action, a man of deep abiding passion.

What would it be like to have such a man be mine?

“Aren’t you tired of keeping your head down and praying for invisibility?” he asks, his voice soft.

His question tugs at me, the undeniable fact that I am both attracted to and repelled by this zeal within him. How many hours have I spent having these very conversations with my brother, and in the end, where did it leave us? I didn’t lie—I have no interest in revolution, in armed revolt, in killing. There are women who fight this battle for Cuba’s future, but I have no desire to join their ranks, for my presence to be excised from our family as Alejandro’s has been. But the freedom Pablo speaks of? The love for his country that infuses each word that falls from his lips? There is beauty behind that sentiment and a devotion that is admirable.

Batista’s policies aren’t about Cuba or what’s best for the Cuban people. They’re designed to serve Batista, to increase his wealth, his power, to keep his stranglehold on the island forever.

Do we all dare to hope for more?

Of course.

But it’s hard to hope when all you’ve known is corruption, when your reality is rigged elections and the possibility of more of the same.

I admire his hope; I envy it. And even more, I fear it.

Pablo shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t speak of such things.”

A rueful smile settles on my lips. “You don’t strike me as the sort of man who worries about ‘should.’”

“That’s true,” he concedes, his mouth quirking.

We walk side by side, the sun shining down on us, close but not touching. His lean, tall frame shields me from the view of onlookers. My hair blows in the breeze with the faintest gust of wind, and he inclines his head, watching the strands in the light, his expression softening. My cheeks heat again.

I’m not normally this serious, not normally this shy, but everything about this feels different, important somehow. There are a finite number of minutes left in this one afternoon I’ve granted myself, and I’m torn between hoarding them, feasting on every look, every word, and making the most of them, filling the spaces in our conversation with words I’ve yet to seize.

The rose is almost unbearably soft in my hands.

“Have you read Montesquieu?” Pablo asks, the question catching me off guard.

“I haven’t.”

“You should. His words never seem more true to me than when I am in Havana.” He turns away from me, his gaze sweeping over the buildings on the other side of the Malecón. “Montesquieu said that an empire born in war must maintain itself by war.”

“Cuba is hardly an empire,” I interject.

“True. The spirit is similar, though. When have we ever not been at war? With others—Spain and the United States? With ourselves?”

“Are we to be forever at war, then?” I counter.

Why do men always think war is the answer? Alejandro was eager to take up arms against Batista, to spill Cuban blood, and for what? Batista remains in power, and all it earned Alejandro was exile from Havana. Officially, my parents have told their friends he is studying in Europe, traveling the world. There are whispers, of course, but no one has the temerity to challenge my father or mother, to ask if the rumors are true—my brother, Beatriz’s twin, is a radical.

“Bombs are exploding in movie theaters,” I argue. “Dead bodies litter our streets. Are those not Cuban lives being taken? Innocents caught in the middle of a fight that is not their own? You speak as though all Cubans should take up arms, but what if we don’t want the same things? Then what?”

“And what of those who stand by and do nothing while a tyrant runs our country into the ground, slaughtering our countrymen because they speak out against his injustices? What is the cost of inaction, of turning away when atrocities are committed in the name of Batista? There is a disconnect between those in the city who yearn for change and those who pretend everything is grand. The industries we rely on as a nation—sugar, tobacco, coffee, tourism—enslave us as a nation, as a people who serve others in the fields, in the casinos and hotels run by American scoundrels.”

I flinch as the word “sugar” falls from his lips. What must he think of my family? Of me? He is here, walking beside me, and yet, I can’t help but wonder if he doesn’t see my father as part of the problem. Alejandro certainly did.

“The Americans control so much of our industry, our economy, and who benefits from that largesse? Batista,” he continues. “The rich are extravagantly rich, and the poor are so desperately poor.”

Everything disappears, the roar of the Malecón, the noise from the road. I can’t tear my gaze away from him, the conviction in his voice mesmerizing. With each word that falls from his lips, he’s transformed. The serious man I met at the party last night has been replaced by someone else entirely.