THEY NEVER came inside my house. I never asked and neither did they. I never really thought about it.
“YOU STILL cutting out early today?” Gordo asked me one humid day toward the end of August.
I looked up from the alternator repair I was doing. “Yeah. Registration. Already.” I’d brought a change of clothes so I didn’t go stinking of metal and oil.
“Your ma’s working?”
“Yeah.”
“You want me to go with?”
I shook my head. “I got this.”
“Junior year. It’s tough.”
I rolled my eyes. “Shut up, Gordo.”
“You going to take that pretty boy with you, papi?” Rico shouted from across the shop.
I flushed, even though it was nothing.
Gordo’s eyes narrowed. “What pretty boy?”
“Our big boy has got himself some prime real estate,” Rico said. “Tanner saw them out a couple of nights ago.”
I groaned. “That’s just Carter.”
“Carter,” Tanner sighed, his voice all breathy.
“Carter?” Gordo asked. “Who is he? I want to meet him. In my office so I can scare the shit out of him. Goddammit, Ox. You better be using fucking condoms.”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “Make sure you get the fucking condoms instead of the regular ones. They’re better. For the fucking.”
“Ba-zing!” Rico cried.
“I hate all of you,” I muttered.
“That’s a lie right there,” Tanner said. “You love us. We bring you joy and happiness.”
“So you’re fucking him, then?” Gordo said with a scowl.
“Jesus, Gordo. No. We were getting pizza to take back to his little brothers. We’re friends. They just moved here. I’m not into him like that.” Though I didn’t think it would be that hard to be. I did have eyes, after all.
“How’d you meet him?”
Nosy bastard. “They moved into the old house next to ours. Or back into the house. I don’t know quite which yet. The Bennetts. Heard of them?”
And then a funny thing happened. I’d seen Gordo pissed off. I’d seen him laugh so hard he pissed himself a little. I’d seen him upset. I’d seen him sad.
I’d never seen him scared. Of anything.
Gordo didn’t get scared. Never once since I’d first met him when my daddy took me to the shop one day and Gordo had said, “Hey, guy, heard a lot about you, what say you and me go get a pop out of the machine.” Never once. If asked, I would have said Gordo didn’t get scared at all, even if I knew how ridiculous that sounded.
But Gordo was scared now. Eyes wide, blood draining from his face. It lasted ten seconds. Maybe fifteen or twenty. And then it was gone like it’d never been there at all.
But I’d seen it.
“Gordo—”