9. Fabián #2
My stomach drops and the photo gets taken. The girls leave giggling, and Elías steps away immediately.
I follow.
“Lalo.”
He grabs a bottle of chamoy. “Working.”
“I’m trying to talk to you.”
“No, you’re trying to flirt like a man who learned from a YouTube tutorial titled Aggressive Eye Contact for Beginners.”
My mouth opens and snaps shut.
Junior chokes on his horchata, and even my tía coughs.
Elías turns toward the customers, smile bright and false. “Who’s next?”
I stand there, stunned.
Then I laugh.
I really fucking shouldn’t.
But I do. One short, surprised laugh that slips out before I can stop it. Elías glances back at me, and for half a second, his face softens.
There you are, I think.
Then another customer steps up. A woman with curly hair, a phone in one hand and a five-dollar bill in the other. She looks between us with the kind of confidence only strangers and toddlers have.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all. “But are you two together? Like together-together?”
Elías answers first. Fast and easy. “No.”
The word is not cruel.
That is what makes it worse.
It is protective.
It is careful.
It is him doing exactly what I asked him to do without making me ask again.
No.
My body reacts before my brain signs anything.
“Yes,” I say.
Elías goes still, and the woman’s eyes widen. Junior drops his elote. My tía’s head snaps up, and Elías’s mother turns from the syrup bottles.
Everything stops. Okay, not everything… but it sure feels that way.
My heart punches my ribs like it wants out.
The customer looks between us again. “So… yes?”
My mouth is dry.
My ears are hot.
My hands are cold.
Elías is staring at me like I just threw a lit match into a gas station.
I look at the customer, then at the line behind her, then at the tablet.
“So what’s your order?” I ask, my voice rough.
Junior whispers, “No fucking way.”
My tía says, “Junior—”
“What? I whispered.”
Elías sets down the syrup bottle. Very carefully. Then he grabs my wrist.
Not hard.
But not gentle either.
“Trailer,” he says. “Now.”
I let him drag me because apparently some part of me has decided I take orders from Elías Cárdenas in public.
The line murmurs, and phones start lifting.
My tía says, “Elías.”
He calls back, “We’ll be right back.”
His mother mutters something in Spanish that sounds like a prayer or a threat.
Maybe both.
Elías pulls me around the booth, past the cooler, past Junior’s delighted little face, and toward the Cárdenas trailer.
He yanks the side door open and shoves me inside.
The trailer is dim and hot, syrup-sweet, and cramped.
Extra cups stacked along one wall. Cooler near the back.
Plastic bins under the counter. The tiny service window throws a slice of market light across the floor, but from outside, nobody can see us unless they come around to the door.
Elías steps in after me and shuts it. His eyes flash behind his glasses. “What the fuck was that?”
I rub my wrist, not because it hurts, but because I can still feel his fingers there.
“What?”
His laugh is sharp. “Don’t what me right now.”
“She asked.”
“And I answered,” he snaps.
“So did I.”
“You said yes.”
“Because it was the truth.”
His mouth opens, then closes. For once, I got him.
Then his eyes narrow. “You don’t get to do that.”
My temper sparks. “Do what?”
“You don’t get to tell me you’re not ready for people to know, then say yes in front of a line full of phones like you’re ordering extra lechera.”
“I didn’t plan it.” I shrug, shoulders going up to my ears.
“That makes it better?”
“I didn’t like you saying no.”
His face changes because it lands.
Elías’s voice drops. “I was protecting you.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“No, you asked for time.”
“And I’m starting to think I need less of it than I thought.”
He goes still, and the trailer hums around us. Generator noises and bass from the beer garden. The muffled roar of the market. Elías stares at me, and under the anger, I see it.
Hope.
Hurt.
Both.
My chest feels too tight for the small space. “You left me on read,” I say.
His eyebrows lift. “That’s what this is about?”
“No.”
“Yes.” He sighs.
“No.”
“Fabián.”
“I hated it.” The words come out before I can stop them, and they’re ugly and honest.
His face softens, but his jaw stays tight. “You asked for space.”
“I know.”
He stares at me. “I gave it to you.”
“I know that too.”
“And you hated it?”
“Yes.”
He laughs once. “Papi, that is not my problem.”
“It felt like my problem.”
“That’s because it is. You can’t stand there with a knife and then get mad when I stop standing close enough for you to cut me.”
The words hit so cleanly I almost step back.
I don’t.
Because he’s right. I hate that he’s right.
I have spent my whole life thinking control meant nobody could touch the parts of me that hurt, and now Elías is standing in a raspado trailer with red shorts and a mouth that’s ruined me, pointing at the wound.
“I’m trying,” I say.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.” His voice rises, then drops immediately because we are still surrounded by people and his mother is outside.
“I do know. That’s the problem. I know you’re trying.
I know you don’t mean to make me feel like a secret you’re negotiating with yourself over.
I know you’re scared. I know you’re not ready. I know all of that.”
He steps closer. “And I’m still hurt.”
My throat works.
The trailer feels smaller.
Hotter, like the air has syrup in it.
“I don’t want you to be a secret,” I whisper.
His eyes search mine.
“Then what do you want?”
“You.” The word is easier to say now.
That scares me more than saying yes in front of a customer.
Elías’s lips part, and I keep going before I lose my nerve.
“I want you. I want this. I don’t know how to do it, and I’m going to fuck it up because apparently that’s a skill I fucking have down to a science, but when she asked and you said no, it’s like a piece of me died.”
His face twists with something closer to agony.
“You told me you needed time,” he says.
“I know.”
“I respected that. Then you said yes in front of strangers.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
My hands curl.
I should say, “I wanted to choose you before I lost the nerve.”
Because I wanted the word out where I couldn’t shove it back in.
Because you said no, and I realized I would rather panic in public than watch you protect yourself from me like I already broke something.
“I didn’t want you to think I was ashamed of you.”
The fight leaves his face, not all at once.
Slowly.
Like a flame going lower but not out.
His shoulders drop. “Fabián.”
“I’m not ready for everything,” I say fast, because I need him to understand the shape of it. “But I’m not ashamed of you. I’m not. I know I made it sound like that. I know I made you feel like that. But I’m not.”
He looks down, then back up. His eyes are bright.
Dangerous.
“Then don’t make me say no for you again.”
The words land low, and I nod. “Okay.”
“No.” He steps closer. “Say it.”
Of course. Always with the saying things out loud.
I breathe once. “Don’t say no for me.”
His eyes hold mine.
“And?”
I swallow. “And I won’t make you feel like you have to.”
He stares at me for another second. Then he pushes me, hard enough that my back hits the trailer wall and the stacked cups rattle. His mouth crashes into mine, and it is not sweet.
It is not forgiving.
It is a collision of tongue and teeth, and anger still hot in the middle. His hands fist in my crop top, yanking me down. Mine grab his hips. He bites my lower lip hard enough to make me hiss, then kisses the sound out of me.
I pull back half an inch. “Wait, are we still fighting?”
“Yes,” he says.
Then drops to his knees, and my entire soul exits my body.
“What are you doing?”
His eyes lift to mine, and they’re dark. Then he wets his lips and says, “Winning.”
“Elías.”
“Shhhh, papi—”
My dick pulses so hard it hurts, and when he grabs my waistband, I catch his wrist.
His eyes narrow.
“This a no?” he asks.
“No.”
“Then hands off unless I tell you.”
My brain stutters and tries to reboot like AOL. My hands lift, and he smiles.
“There’s my good listener.”
Fuck.
My head knocks back against the trailer wall.
Outside, the market lives ten feet away. Voices. Music. Orders. Someone laughing. My tía probably pretending not to know exactly why we disappeared.
Inside, Elías Cárdenas is on his knees in red shorts, pissed off and beautiful, undoing my pants like he has a grudge against fabric.
“Lalo,” I whisper.
He looks up. “Too much?”
No hesitation.
No joke, he asks it like he means it.
My chest squeezes. “No.”
His mouth curves. “Good.”
Then he pulls my dick out, and the air hits wet skin and silver, and his gaze drops. Every time he sees the piercing, he looks offended in the best way. Like I personally hid treasure from him and deserve punishment.
“You and this thing,” he mutters.
“It’s done nothing to you.”
“It has done plenty to me.”
My stomach tightens. “Elías.”
He leans in and licks the metal. Barely.
A small touch, and the trailer wall becomes the only thing keeping me upright. “Jesus.”
He looks up through his lashes. “You’re gonna need him. So if I were you, I’d start praying.”
Then his mouth closes around me, and my palm hits the wall.
Hard.
The stacked cups rattle again.
Elías pulls back immediately, glaring. “Quiet.”
“Yeah, okay.” I roll my eyes. “You’re just gonna suck me off, and I’m supposed to be quiet.”
“And you have to be normal about it.”
“I have never been less normal in my life.”
His eyes flash, then he takes me in his mouth again.
Deeper.
Hot.
Wet.
Silver and tongue and the soft scrape of his mouth around the piercing. My whole body goes rigid because nothing in my life prepared me for this. Not women. Not hands. Not the internet. Not my own imagination in a shop bathroom with his Instagram open and shame sweating down my back.
None of it.
I have had blowjobs before.
Good ones.
Bad ones.