“Hm?”
“I think it’s clean.” He took the dish I’d washed three times out of my hand and dried it. He tipped my chin up so I meet his gaze. “I probably should have confirmed that with you before I said anything.”
“What? No. I mean, no worries. I know that—that we’re… you know. Sure.”
“Well, you’re nervous rambling and you can’t even say the word ‘dating,’ so I think maybe it’s not fine.”
I shook my head and changed the subject, but things were awkward for the rest of the night and he hasn’t brought it up since. Of course, neither have I.
“YOU WANNA
watch the game with us?” Brian asks as work is winding down.
I search my memory, trying to remember if Rafe is going to come over tonight. Maybe we’ll go running….
“Dude, what is your
deal
lately? You never want to hang out anymore. You don’t come in on Saturdays, and you never stick around after work.” Brian’s looking at his feet and twisting his shoulders nervously like he did when he was a little kid. “You too cool for me now, bro?” He says it like a joke and slugs me on the shoulder, but he looks hurt.
And he’s right. Usually, I’d hang out here with Brian and Pop after work on Saturdays and a few nights a week. We’d get pizza, have some beers, and watch whatever games were on, arguing about players and stats, adding our bottle caps or beer tops to the jars where Brian and I have measured our rival victories for years, until Pop fell asleep in the permanently reclined recliner. But the last month I’ve barely seen them outside of work and I hardly even noticed.
“Well, I’m definitely too cool for you,” I say, throwing an arm around Brian’s shoulders. Brian gives a weak smile but shrugs me off. “Sorry, man. It’s not like that. Um, yeah, let’s watch the game. Pizza sounds good.”
“Yeah, well, we get it from a new place now,” Brian says, not quite ready to forgive.
“Okay, whatever you want.”
And Brian, incapable of holding a grudge for more than five seconds, grins and starts bouncing up and down on his toes, drumming on my shoulders.
“Sweet!” And he darts away.
It’s always been me, Pop, Brian, and Sam. Since Mom died, anyway. Hanging out with them always felt normal, easy. Now, though, the last repair done and the tools put away, following Brian into the living room feels strange. The house seems darker or something. And the smell of beer that starts in the kitchen and gets stronger in the living room seems sharper.
Pop comes in from his room looking like he just woke up, which is strange because I saw him in the shop an hour or two ago. Jesus, for the first time, when I look at Pop, I see an old man. He grunts when he sees me and settles heavily into his chair.
“Son,” he says, and he nods approvingly. Warmth washes through me. He immediately turns his attention to Brian.
“You order yet?”
“I’m about to.”
“Just not that crap place from the other day. Where’d you find that place, anyway? Pizza tasted like fuckin’ cardboard.”
Brian looks embarrassed. Guess they don’t have a new favorite after all.
As Brian and I walk to the corner to get the pizza and more beer, I ask, “So, what was that other pizza place you tried and how’d you live through Pop’s fury?”
Brian blushes. The only time I’ve ever seen Brian blush is when—
“Hey, did you go to a new place because one of the servers is in love with you?” That’s what Brian always says about any girl he thinks is cute: “she’s totally in love with me.” He’s a hundred percent cocky and only about 20 percent accurate when it comes to recognizing when someone’s actually flirting with him. But right now he’s practically tripping over his own feet to avoid looking up. I catch his shoulder.
“Dude. What’s up?”
Brian sighs like he’s been desperate for someone to ask. “Aw, man,” he says, shaking his head. “There’s this girl… I think…. Dude, I think she’s my soul mate.”
“Okay,” I say. Soul mate is a new one. “Who is she?”
“Callie,” he moans, like this is the end of the world. “I accidentally barfed on her cat and she was so cool about it, man.”
“You what?”
“I was drunk, right, and I kinda wandered into an alley, only it was more like a space between two houses, and there was this nice step and I sat down but then I didn’t feel well and I barfed. But I didn’t see that there was this cat on the porch—”
“You wandered into someone’s
backyard
and sat on their porch?”
“Well. Yeah. But I didn’t know that at the time.”
I shake my head.
“Anyway, the cat just
sat
there, man. It, like,
let
me barf on it. And then it started to try and lick it up. And this girl came out and saw me and I was like, ‘Dude, is this your cat, ’cause he’s messed up,’ and she was so nice and asked if I needed help, and she’s so pretty, bro, like, seriously, the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen.”
I have no words. “Um, and she works at this pizza place?”
“What? No. She’s a hairstylist.”
“So…?”
“Oh, she recommended it to me. I gave her my phone number and we’ve been talking.”
“That’s great, Bri. I kind of can’t believe that some girl whose cat you puked on wanted anything to do with you. But that’s great.”
“Yeah, I haven’t seen her again, but we’ve talked, like, every night for the last three weeks. And when I said Pop and I got pizza a lot, she was like, ‘Do you ever go to Blackbird?’ It’s her favorite. So I got it for me and Pop the other day. And, um, yeah, it did taste like cardboard. She’s one of those whattaya call ’ems that doesn’t eat anything that comes from animals? So it was that kind of pizza.”
“Vegan?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Oh my god, you fed Pop vegan pizza? That’s hilarious, bro. Did he know what it was?”
“Nah. He liked the fake sausage part. But, uh, I thought it kinda tasted like feet.” A look of panic crosses his face. “Don’t tell Callie, though! If you meet her, I mean. I, uh, I sorta told her that I liked it.”
I laugh. “I won’t tell her,” I reassure him. “But you should probably be honest with her, or you’ll end up eating vegan pizza for the rest of your life.”
I’m joking, but Brian looks horrified.
“Oh shit, that’s no good. Thanks, bro.”
THE PHONE
ringing jolts me out of a dead sleep, and I almost break Rafe’s nose with my head as I jerk upright.
“Fuck, sorry!”
“Hello?” Rafe says, instantly alert. I look over at the clock. It’s two thirty in the morning.
“Uncle Rafe?” says the tinny voice on the other end of the call. “Can you come get me?”
“Calm down, Cam. Tell me what’s going on.”
Her explanation is garbled, but I hear something about a party and her mom being mad and something about a boy that makes Rafe’s whole body go rigid.
“Where are you, sweetheart? … Can you ask someone? … Okay, listen. It’s going to take me a little while to get there because I’m not at home. I want you to go back inside, okay? Then use the GPS on your phone and text me exactly where you are.” Rafe’s voice seems to relax Camille the same way it relaxes me.
“Stand by the front door so you can see out the window when I get there. Don’t take anything from anyone. Not even water. Not gum. Not a damn ChapStick, Camille, do you understand me? I’ll call you when I’m a minute away and then you come outside. Not before that. If someone tries to get you to move away from the front door, you tell them your uncle is coming and you’re scared of making him mad, okay?” Rafe is already up and searching around for his clothes in the dark as he hangs up the phone.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s stupid and dead, that’s what she is,” Rafe growls. “Sorry to wake you. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He leans in to kiss me briefly.
“Wait,” I say, climbing out of bed and pulling some jeans on. “I’ll drive. That way you can call Cam when we’re close and you can just jump out of the car.”
“I—okay. Thanks, Colin.”
I smile even though I know he can’t see in the dark. It feels good to be able to do something for Rafe for a change.
He gives me directions from his phone between muttering about how much trouble Camille’s going to be in. “She went to some damn rave with a bunch of college kids. Little idiots with credit cards, I swear. And then went back to a house party with them. I know she took fucking E at that damn rave. And now some boy—”
He breaks off, furious, shaking his head at the idea.
“Has this happened before?”
He nods. “She only calls me when she and Luz have been fighting. Luz isn’t off work yet.” Luz bartends at some club in her neighborhood.
After a few minutes of silence, he reaches over and runs a hand down my arm. “Hey, how was hanging out with your dad and Brian?”
“It was… okay, I guess. But, I don’t know, I didn’t feel totally comfortable there… which is strange, because I always used to.”
“Did you?”
“What? Yeah. Why?”
“Well, I just mean, are you sure you used to feel comfortable as opposed to just being used to feeling uncomfortable?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means, maybe spending more time not lying about who you are has made you aware of the ways you had gotten used to lying about it.” Rafe says this gently, hand on my arm, but it still packs a punch I can’t process right now. He squeezes my forearm and lets go, fumbling with his phone.
“Okay, Cam, come outside.” He points to a three-story brick house on the corner. At least the neighborhood doesn’t look as bad as Rafe seemed worried it would be when he told Camille to stay inside.
The door opens and a pretty girl comes out, walking unsteadily, clutching her phone. As Rafe opens his door and gets out, a guy runs out after Cam.
“Come on, Karen,” he calls, laughing, clearly wasted. “We were having fun, right?”
She whirls around to face him and screams, “It’s
Cam
, not
Karen
, you
asshole
!”
Rafe catches her upper arms and moves her behind him, nudging her toward the car.
“You.” Rafe stabs a finger at the guy, and I can tell the moment that he notices how huge Rafe is through the haze of intoxication. Rafe stalks up to him, radiating murderous fury.
“That girl is fifteen years old, you piece of shit,” he snarls. “You fucking touch her, that’s statutory rape. You know what they do to rapists in prison, you little prep school fuck?”
The guy is curled up in a ball in the face of Rafe’s fury. It looks like Rafe’s about to beat the crap out of him. Totally deserved, too. But he smiles instead and it’s chilling.
“The next time you see a pretty girl, I want you to remember me. Remember this moment and think about what happens when you mess with shit you shouldn’t.” He gets right in the guy’s face. “Got it?”
The guy nods convulsively, his hands up in a pathetic don’t-hit-me pose, desperate to get away from Rafe. Rafe spits at his feet and then comes back to the car, shaking his hands like he can dispel his anger that way instead of through a punch.
“These entitled white boys see you as a hot Mexican girl they can take something from,” he says to Cam. His voice is fierce. Poisonous. “Okay? You can’t trust them. I’m sorry.” She nods and buries her face in his chest. He puts her in the backseat and gets in with her. “This is my friend Colin.”
“Hi,” says Camille miserably. “I’m sorry, Uncle Rafe! I just didn’t know—”
He shushes her and pulls her against him as he gives me directions. The roads deteriorate as we get closer to Cam and Luz’s, the space between streetlights measured in blocks rather than feet.
In the rearview mirror, Rafe looks intensely relieved, his hand running absently through Cam’s long curls. I pull up where he tells me. It’s not a street I’d ever stop on in the middle of the night if I could help it, and I make a mental note to lock the car doors behind them.
“Come inside for a minute, okay?” Rafe says. “I don’t want you sitting out here by yourself.”
Yeah, that’s not humiliating in front of his niece or anything.
“Uh, I’ll be fine, man.”
Camille says something in Spanish under her breath, and Rafe gives her a warning look.
“Please,” he says, and he gives me that look. I roll my eyes because it’s a combination that basically makes me incapable of not doing whatever he says.
The building is run-down and smells like mold as we trek up the stairs to Cam and Luz’s third-floor apartment. Cam stops at the door, turning a pleading look on Rafe. She bats her eyelashes.
“Thank you
so
much, Uncle Rafe. You’re a lifesaver. Maybe I should just go in by myself, though. Mom’ll be tired when she gets home from work and she probably won’t want a lot of people around, you know?”
She smiles a brilliant smile. It’s a valiant effort and I can tell Rafe’s the tiniest bit amused by her antics. Before he has a chance to say anything, though, the door bursts open.
“Camille!” the woman who must be Luz yells, then claps a hand over her mouth, like she’s just now realizing how late it is. She looks terrified as she grabs Cam and hugs her roughly. Over Cam’s shoulder, she looks up at Rafe worshipfully.
She lets go of her daughter and hugs Rafe.
“Thank you,” she says over and over, wiping tears on Rafe’s shirt.
When she pulls back, she notices me for the first time.
“Hi,” she says, giving me a wobbly smile. Her voice is friendly, though, and she shakes my hand. “I’m Luz.”
She’s just gotten off work, she’s clearly been worried about her daughter, and it’s nearly four in the morning, but Luz is beautiful. She looks a lot like Rafe. She’s tall and has the same strong, clean cheekbones and chin, and the same charmingly crowded teeth.
“Colin,” I say, feeling awkward as hell.
Her expression changes and she looks at me more carefully. “Well, aren’t you handsome,” she says, and I’d think she was flirting with me if she didn’t turn to Rafe and wink at him. Rafe snorts and I feel my face heat up.
Rafe’s expression turns immediately serious, and he focuses back on Cam, who is currently trying to tiptoe through the open apartment door while the adults are all distracted with each other. She freezes when she feels Rafe’s eyes on her and tries a smile.