2. Elías
TWO
ELíAS
Iblame the crop top.
Not myself.
Not even the heat. Or the fact that I apparently have the survival instincts of a raccoon eating aluminum foil behind a taquería.
His crop top.
No grown man should be allowed to show up to a family-friendly summer market wearing Dickies low on his hips, tiny silver hoops in his ears, and a faded black shirt cut high enough to expose the strip of stomach below his navel like it’s not a direct threat to public order.
Specifically, the happy trail.
That’s the problem.
I don’t even know why it’s called that. “Happy trail” sounds too cheerful. Too innocent, like something you’d see on a children’s cereal box with a smiling sun and a suspiciously enthusiastic cartoon bee.
There is nothing innocent about the dark line of hair disappearing beneath Fabián Salcedo’s Calvin Klein waistband while he stands behind our shared booth looking pissed off at the concept of shaved ice.
It’s not a happy trail.
It’s a crime scene.
A trespassing notice.
A little arrow made by Satan himself.
And I’m staring at it.
Again.
“Elías.” My mom snaps her fingers in front of my face.
I blink, and the cooler thumps onto the pavement six feet away. Fabián straightens from where he’s setting it down, rolls one shoulder, and the hem of his crop top lifts just a little higher.
My brain goes buuuuurrrrr, like a dying blender full of rocks.
“?Qué?” I ask too loudly.
My mom narrows her eyes at me and smirks. Fuck. She knows.
Mothers always know, which is unfair and should probably be illegal. They know when you’re lying, when you’re hungry, when you’re about to say something stupid, and apparently when you’re standing in a parking lot at noon on a Saturday having an emotional emergency over another man’s stomach.
She looks from me to Fabián, then back to me.
“El hielo,” she says slowly. “The ice, Elías. I asked you to check the ice.”
“Right. Yeah. Ice.”
“You were staring into space.” She tuts, setting her purse down inside the trailer.
“I was thinking.”
Her face scrunches. “That looked painful.”
“It was.”
Across the booth space, Fabián glances over because my mother speaks quietly until she wants to expose me.
Then suddenly she has theater-level projection.
His eyes meet mine for half a second, dark and flat under his scowl, like he came into this world disappointed and has spent twenty-eight years collecting reasons to hate everyone and everything.
I hate that face.
I do.
I’ve hated it for years.
I hated it when he got into that parking lot fight after the Chivas game and dented my cousin Ricky’s car with some guy’s back.
I hated it when he refused to apologize because, according to Fabián, “the dent was already there.” Or when he showed up to my sister’s baby shower with a gift, ate three plates of food, fixed my aunt’s car in the driveway, and still somehow looked like he was doing everyone a favor by existing.
I hate his little silver hoops.
I hate his shaved head and muscular arms that look like he could bench me no problem.
I hate the silly little crop tops and his happy trail. But my body apparently doesn’t understand hate as a concept and keeps filing it under “possible bad idea, please investigate.”
My mom snaps again. “Elías.”
“I said I got it.”
“You said ice, then stood there like Windows was updating.”
I point at her. “That was mean.”
Behind her, my sister Anita snorts into a cup of coffee.
I turn on her. “Don’t you have a child to parent?”
“I do,” she says. “But she’s with my husband because unlike some people, I make good choices.”
“You married Julio after he got your name tattooed on his arm spelled wrong.”
She shrugs. “He fixed it.”
“Riiight, keep telling yourself that’s what it is.”
She lifts her chin and jabs a finger in my side. “That’s between me and my illiterate man.”
I laugh despite myself, but it gets cut short when Fabián walks past me with another cooler.
Not close enough to touch. Close enough for me to smell the faint hint of motor oil, cologne, and sweat.
The smell should not do anything to me—it totally does something to me.
Something with no common sense. I turn away so fast my glasses slip down my nose. Anita notices, and her grin turns feral.
Nope. We aren’t doing this today.
I grab one of the many bags of ice from the back of the trailer and hoist it against my chest, letting the cold bite through my shirt, which should help.
It, in fact, does not.
Fabián chooses that exact moment to bend over the table in front of me to adjust the extension cord for the raspado machine.
His crop top rides up and his waistband dips.
The happy trail appears again, dark against brown skin, disappearing into charcoal Dickies that sit low enough to make me question every confident statement I have ever made about myself.
My mouth goes dry—which is impressive, considering I’m holding twenty pounds of ice.
I stare, and I know I’m staring. My eyes are attached to the view by cable ties.
There’s no escape. A tiny silver bar flashes through the armhole of his shirt when he moves, right where his nipple is.
It catches on the cotton, then disappears.
Wait. Wait. Wait.
No.
Is his nipple pierced? Both of them?
Fabián Salcedo, angry mechanic, human thundercloud, and man who once told me my haircut looked like “a cry for help with gel in it,” has pierced nipples.
I need to sit down. Strike that, I need to lie down and stop looking before I embarrass my ancestors.
“You good, Lalo?”
I jolt so hard the bag of ice slips, but I catch it against my stomach with an ugly grunt. Fabián is still bent over the table, but his head is turned, eyes now on me. His expression is the same as always, annoyed and guarded.
But his mouth twitches.
Damn him.
“I’m good,” I say. “Never been better.”
His eyes drop to the ice smashed against my chest. “You sure about that?”
“Worried about me now, Salcedo?” I raise my brow.
“No.”
What a fucking liar. “You asked?”
“You looked like you were losing a fight with frozen water.” He mumbles while he zip-ties the cords together.
“I was checking its quality,” I huff.
“By hugging it?” He snaps his back around and gives me a blank stare.
“Call it customer service.”
His mouth twitches again. No, that’s not a smile… Fabián doesn’t smile.
Fabián looks like he thinks smiling is how the government tracks you. Still, that little almost-smile hits me harder than it should. It turns his whole face into something way more dangerous. Less “I’ll ruin your day” and more “I’ll ruin your standards.”
This summer is going to suck balls.
I drop the ice into the cooler and pretend the cold shock against my hands is enough to fix my entire personality.
It isn’t.
Today is day two of sharing booth space, and somehow, because life has a personal vendetta against me, our families are already acting like this arrangement is normal.
They’re not even mad anymore, and that’s the suspicious part.
Yesterday, we sold more raspados and aguas frescas than we expected, mostly because the market was packed and partly because people like watching two men argue while one of them wears shorts and the other one dresses like a mechanic in a thirst trap calendar.
I know this because I saw the comments all over social media this morning. Lord knows I shouldn’t have looked, but I did. Some lady posted a video of me and Fabián bickering over the cash box, and now strangers on the internet think they have rights.
“The crop top one and the glasses one need to kiss already.”
“Are they fighting or flirting?”
“This is the most bisexual raspado stand I’ve ever seen.”
“Need him to argue with me over condensed milk next.”
“The tall one is angry because he’s in love.”
I threw my phone onto my bed and screamed into my pillow before I got up and chose shorter shorts out of spite.
Not because of Fabián.
For airflow. That’s my story.
When five p.m. hits, the sun is rude as hell, and the parking lot has turned into a frying pan with vendor permits.
The place is a madhouse with late vendors, and someone’s uncle has been trying to reverse a trailer into a spot for twenty minutes while seven men give him seven different sets of directions.
Fabián is working under the canopy frame, arms raised to clip the corner into place.
When he lifts his arms, his crop top rises.
Not a little—a lot.
And I swear it has me muttering the Hail Mary under my breath more times than I want to admit.
His stomach pulls tight. Sweat shines over the hard lines of muscle.
The sexy little line of hair makes its evil little appearance again, vanishing under the waistband of his Dickies, which are hanging even lower today because apparently belts are optional during heat advisories.
I stand there holding a stack of cups. Staring—more like contemplating what he looks like completely naked.
Bad Lalo.
I smack my cheek, and my tongue ring clicks against my teeth.
Anita materializes beside me like a demon summoned by thirst.
“You’re pathetic,” she says.
I nearly drop the cups. “Shut. Up.”
“I didn’t even say what you’re pathetic about.” She hums, wiggling her eyebrows at me.
“You were going to,” I mumble, shoving the cups at her. “Take these.”
“Yeah—” She purses her lips. “That’s gonna be a no.”
“Then leave,” I groan.
“No.”
Fabián reaches for the other side of the canopy, and his shirt lifts higher. A silver bar through his nipple appears, and there’s no mistaking it this time.
I make a sound, and absolutely nothing about it is manly.
Anita’s head whips toward me, and my whole life flashes before my eyes.
News flash: It’s not a great movie.
“Did you… just squeak?” she whispers.
“I-I—” I fumble for more words, but nothing comes out.
“Elías.” She hisses in delight.
“I cleared my throat.”
She doesn’t buy that for a single second. “You squeaked.”
“I have allergies.”
“To nipples?” she snickers.
I turn so fast my glasses slide crooked. “Do. Not.”
Her eyes go wide. “Oh my Goooood.”
“Anita,” I whine softly. “Please don’t.”
“Oh my God.”