Second Hand (Tucker Springs) (12 page)

Right now, I realized I wanted it to be real.

El pulled back from the spoon, but he still held my wrist loosely in his hand. He worked the ice cream in his mouth, watching me carefully as he did for some reason I couldn’t fathom. He smiled a bit, and finally, he swallowed.

“See?” I said, my voice shaking. “It’s good.”

“Not bad at all.” His grip became almost a caress, moving down my arm to my elbow.

I blushed, suddenly awkward. And panicked.

“Come on,” I said, pulling my arm free. “Let’s go get your coffee chaser.”

As he and Paul strolled back down the pedestrian mall with their coffees, El acknowledged he had a crush on Strawberry Shortcake. He’d been dancing around it, yes. Obviously that hadn’t worked, pretending he wasn’t forming a ridiculous attachment. Though he wasn’t sure being conscious about it would get him very far, either.

Part of him was obsessed with trying to get Paul to realize he was the object of El’s attraction, either so he would blow El off or be offended and horrified, therefore letting El get this nonsense out of his system. But a lot of that desire was also simply wicked curiosity, El wondering if his hand had to be down Paul’s pants before he would figure it out. Of course, that made El wonder if he could get his hand down Paul’s pants, which was a very dangerous line of thought.

The object of El’s affection continued to come in every day the rest of the week with oddball things to sell. Having apparently cleaned out his appliances, he moved on to back massagers and in-home gardening systems and all manner of QVC specials El was never in a lifetime going to unload.

These purchases didn’t go unnoticed by Rosa when she came in on Friday afternoon.

“Are you hard up or something? Why are you taking in so much junk?” She lifted the lid of the George Foreman grill and let it fall back down in distaste. “Some little old lady pull on your heartstrings?”

El made a mental note to get rid of Paul’s things before someone dangerous wandered into the shop, like Denver or Jase. “Something like that. What’s up, sis? If you’re in here looking for a babysitter, I sold the last one ten minutes ago.”

She gave her patented
yes, you’re funny, but not very much
smile. “No. I need you to come by the house tonight for dinner, though.”

“You’re making me dinner?” El smirked. “Your latest left you already, did he?”

If she’d had a knife in her hand, she’d no doubt have held it up against his throat. As it was, she made do with a glare that cut about as well. “Noah’s coming over after he gets off work. I already warned him he might meet my idiot brother who married a pawnshop.”

So the boyfriend was still in the picture.
Well, give him a few more minutes.
“He’s getting domestic, is he? Hot man doing an evening at home with the mama and her babies? Smart play.”

She rolled her eyes. “Noah isn’t my boyfriend. He’s this guy from work.”

This was new. “A guy who’s coming over to your house?”

Rosa flicked her finger hard in the center of El’s forehead, making him yelp. “
He
is the babysitter. Do you think you could let go of my love life for ten seconds so I could explain about Mom?”

That made El pause. “What about Mom?”

“When she found out I’d given Dante’s clothes to Goodwill when he outgrew them, she lost it and started inventorying the house. The kids woke up this morning freaked out because they heard something downstairs. It was Mom going through the cupboards in the garage. I pitched a fit, and she started crying.”

El reached for his cigarettes, suddenly tired. “You invited her to dinner too, didn’t you. You want me to talk to her.”

“Hell, yes, I want you to talk to her. She’s not turning my house into Abuela’s. I don’t give a damn what Uncle Mariano says.”

“You think she’s going to listen to me? She’s going to cry again, and then Uncle Mariano will yell at me, and it’ll be the same damn thing as always.”

Rosa’s jaw was rigid. “It has to stop, El. If Mariano wants to baby her, I’ll send all my trash to his house and she can sort through it in
his
garage. I need you there because she upsets the kids, and then I’m trying to yell at her and calm them down at the same time, and it’s shit.”

She was right. It was nothing but shit. “All right. I’ll be there at seven.”

“Six. I want her back home before Noah shows up. It’s too early for him to see our freaky side.” She turned to walk out, shaking her head at the row of appliances as she left. “You
really
fell for that grandma.”

She wasn’t kidding.

Dinner was spaghetti, meatballs, and baby spinach salad, the latter of which Rosa’s kids protested loudly, all but Gabi who happily painted her highchair tray with marinara using the leaves. Patti talked nonstop about pretty much everything under the sun, from who she’d seen at the bank that morning to what Abuela was having for supper, and of course, she told everyone about recent things she had found or bought.

“I found the cutest baby blanket. Absolutely precious,
handmade
. It has a green border and yellow cross-stitched flowers.”

Rosa gave El a hard look, and he had to suppress a sigh.
Here we go
.

“Who’s having a baby?” he asked.

Patti, unsurprisingly, only shrugged and dug into her spaghetti. “Somebody will have a baby, and then I’ll have a present.”

“No, you won’t, because it’ll get buried under your pile of crap,” Rosa muttered.

Had she been closer, El would have kicked her under the table. “Mami, we’ve talked about this.”

She was very fixated on her plate now, swirling the noodles in a circle. “It’s a blanket. Don’t make such a big deal out of it.”

“It’s a blanket, and a picnic set, and a croquet mallet, and a set of dishes, and that’s just the stuff you’ve told us about. I bet I could go out to your car right now and find all kinds of bags with receipts from today.”

Her eyes filled with angry tears. “You shouldn’t treat your mother like this.”

“And you shouldn’t treat your family like this, making us deal with all your trash.” Rosa flung her napkin onto the table, ignoring her children’s worried glances at each other, except for the baby who was still spinach-painting. “Five-thirty in the morning, Mami. My neighbors saw you going through my stuff.”

“Way to let me handle it,” El murmured.

Patti was rigid now. “You threw out the baby’s things. What else are you going to toss into the trash? My grandbabies’ treasures! Someday”—her tears were flowing now—“someday they will thank me for saving their memories.”

Rosa started swearing, the kids started whimpering, and the baby, with tomato sauce in her eye, started screaming. Already mentally lighting up a cigarette and drinking a whiskey, El pushed his chair back, herded the kids into their bedroom, and turned on the TV. After cleaning up Gabi, El positioned her in front of
Dora the Explorer
with the others and went back to the argument in the kitchen. Both women were shouting and pointing fingers and, to varying degrees, sobbing, Rosa mostly in fury, Patti largely in hurt. He broke them apart, sending Patti to sit with the kids while he helped Rosa with the dishes, teasing and distracting her until she calmed down.

Patti was still there when Noah showed up, and El liked him on the spot. It was a shame he was the babysitter, not the boyfriend. A little young, but super-sweet and great with the kids, who came running out when they heard his voice, their faces bright and eager. The guy was good: he had a bag of popcorn, three boxes of candy, and a Disney movie in his hand.

“Good to meet you, El,” he said when Rosa introduced him, enclosing El’s hand in his grip. He was slight, mocha-skinned, and drop-dead gorgeous. Not El’s team, though, from the longing looks he cast at Rosa.

El wanted to bang his head on the wall as he realized Rosa had no idea those looks were coming her way.

Noah was gracious to Patti too, giving her the line about seeing where Rosa came by her beauty, which of course El’s mom ate up with a spoon. It was all going so well, neither Rosa nor El saw the disaster coming.

“You’ll have to come by my house next weekend. We always have a Fourth of July party, and we’d love to have you,” Patti said to Noah.

Noah beamed, clearly touched to have been invited. “That’d be great. Usually I get together with my family, but my brother’s deployed and my parents have a wedding out of town.” He glanced at Rosa. “That okay?”

Rosa said nothing, only stared at El like she wanted him to whip out a gun and put her out of her misery.

“Hey, that sounds great,” El said, his mind working overtime, “but the thing is, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Mom. We should have the party here at Rosa’s house. So much more room, and more for the kids to do.”

Now Rosa looked like she wanted to kill him. Her house had just enough room to squeeze the kids into it, and that was all.

“Don’t be silly. We always have it at Abuela’s house,” Patti chided.

“Yes, but your projects have gotten very large, haven’t they?” It sounded lame, but El couldn’t very well say
your hoard
. “With extra people, we’ll want room to move around.”

It was as if the peace accord hadn’t happened. Patti bristled. “One more person isn’t too much trouble.”

El’s head spun as it tried to keep up with his mouth. “Rosa wants to host it, Mami. Besides, I’m bringing someone too.”

Rosa and Patti both turned to him, stunned into silence. El was right there with them. What the
fuck
had he said that for? Who the hell was he bringing to Fourth of July?

Paul. You want to bring Paul.

“I don’t want to get in the way,” Noah objected.

Rosa, thank God, finally came to life. “No—no. It’s fine. I want you to come. I was going to ask you myself”—like hell—“but El’s right, I wanted to talk about hosting it before I offered. I can’t
wait
to have thirty people in my house and backyard. And El can’t wait to help me clean up and get ready for it.”

Everyone laughed at that, but inside, El was groaning and imagining his very own orphanage again.