Trouble

“I swear to God,” Liam expressed as we walked out of the movie theater, “that was the best freaking hamburger I’ve ever had in my life.”

“Yeah, the food there is pretty incredible,” I allowed humbly, as if the hamburger had been my accomplishment, not Paco’s staff’s.

“Pretty incredible doesn’t even cover it,” he sighed. “And those curly French fries…oh my God.”

I snickered a little as I stuck my hands in my pockets, a habit for when I walked anywhere. It gave the impression that I was nonchalant, without a care in the world. Almost as if I were asking for someone to check me and test just how indifferent I was.

“So am I going back to my hotel, or are we going back to your place?” he questioned conversationally, not letting a speck of preference leak into the statement. So I really didn’t know how he wanted me to answer.

“If you’re not busy, then I think Marisol and Claudia would love it if you came back to the house,” I replied honestly. “They’re kind of in love with you.”

“Oh, are they?” Liam chuckled. “That’s awkward, since the age difference is a bit big.”

“But little girls can dream. Plus, between you and Claudia, there’s only, like…eight years. That’s basically nothing.”

“For Harry, maybe,” he joked, but he shook his head when he saw my blank expression.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “Maybe I should read some stuff about you online so that I can start getting your references. This can’t be easy for you.”

“No, it’s okay. Call me crazy, but I kind of like that you just know…me. You don’t know what I’m like with the press, you don’t know what I’m like with the boys… You don’t even know the boys’ names. It’s kind of refreshing.”

I smiled at him. “Well, then I’m glad. But I figure I do a lot of things you’re not used to.”

“Oh, yes,” he agreed with a couple of emphatic nods. “Definitely. You’re not like anyone I’ve ever known.”

I didn’t know if he meant that in a good way or a bad way, so I just kept my eyes facing forward, watching the shadows and alleyways for any signs of movement. It was a habit, and having someone else with me just made me more vigilant about our surroundings.

“Will you tell me something seriously?” Liam asked, breaking through the thick silence that had settled between us.

“Depends.”

He seemed to have been taken aback by the fact that I wasn’t jumping on the opportunity to answer any question might have, but he recovered quickly enough. “Do you deal drugs?”

I figured that question would come up eventually. I’d spent a long time, right before I fell asleep at night, trying to think about how I’d answer it. Would I lie to cover my ass, or would I tell him the truth? If I lied, it was always possible that he would find out the truth anyway, and then he’d resent me for not telling him honestly. But if I told him the truth, then he could tell the police, and I could get into some serious shit.

“I don’t know if I trust you,” I told him instead, keeping my neutral ground.

But instead of getting offended, Liam just gave a small laugh. “That’s kind of sad,” he stated plainly. “Because I trust you.”

“You don’t know me,” I reminded him, my tone verging on irritated. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know some,” he argued. “I know how you are with your sisters, how much you love them and how important they are to you. I saw you playing with them, peacekeeping a little bit, before I walked up to your house that first time. I saw how, instead of keeping me standing there to get interrogated by the cops, you dragged me down next to that dumpster with you. I know you’re a protector, and I know that you’d never hurt anyone if you didn’t have to.”

“Well, don’t you just have me pegged?” I muttered hostilely under my breath. But I couldn’t shut him down, since everything he’d said had been true. I knew I was a maternal figure, that I only hurt people if I had to.

But he had no idea what I was capable of, what I’d sworn to do if the situation called for it. If he knew, he’d shiver and cower away from me in fear.

“I didn’t say I had you pegged. I said I knew enough about you to know that I can trust you.”

“Well, all I know about you is that you’re in a boy band, your name is Liam, and you’re a stalker.”

“I’m not a stalker!”

“Alejo told me how you found me.”

Liam’s face turned a violent shade of red as he looked down at the ground. “That doesn’t make me a stalker. I was just looking for you.”

“What makes me so interesting to you?” I gasped.

“I kind of said it earlier. You’re not like anyone else I’ve ever known.”

“You don’t want to be a part of my world, Liam. You don’t understand any of it. You’re naïve.”

“Not as naïve as you think,” he corrected. “Just because I’m in a boy band doesn’t mean that I don’t know anything.”

I kept my mouth shut, since I knew I was just going to end up chewing him out about how he could say that all he wanted, but he really didn’t know. And just because someone knew something didn’t mean they accepted it. I knew about all the kids dying of cancer, but it would never be real until I had to experience it myself. And that was exactly how Liam would be with the gang life, I knew it.

To him, gangs and drugs and prostitutes were things that happened to different people. Not him. To me, they were my reality, my living, my everything. I didn’t go to school, I didn’t have a degree higher than the slip of paper I received at the end of high school. I had my gang, my sisters, and myself. And I knew gangs weren’t glamorous like everyone thought they were. The “thug life” and all that shit.

“Did I make you angry with me?” Liam asked, cutting through my thoughts. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know that my trusting you would offend you.”

“It doesn’t offend me,” I replied slowly. “I guess I just…I don’t understand.”

“Then let me help you.”

I looked over at his dark, caring eyes, and I could feel my exterior wall slip the slightest bit before I regained it. “In my culture, people have to earn respect. I don’t trust everyone the second I lay eyes on them. They have to show me that they have my back. Maybe trust just means different things between the two cultures. Because trust, to me, means that I would take a bullet for you, and I would hope you’d do the same. That when I die, I’d depend on that person to care for my sisters so they became the women I hope they do.”

“When you die?” he whispered.

I swallowed, allowing him to think what he wanted.

“I understand where you’re coming from,” he allowed, pushing away the emotion that had slipped into his voice for a minute. “So let’s just meet in the middle. I trust you already, and it doesn’t bother me if you don’t feel the same. I’ll just have to earn it.”

“Let’s see if you can.”

It sounded mean, although I kept my tone as level as possible, and I knew it. But seriously, it wasn’t easy to gain my trust. If I was completely honest, the only person I felt fit my personal definition of trust was Alejo. I wouldn’t trust my mother to raise the girls, and I wouldn’t trust Esperanza to do either of those things. And anyone else in the gang would exploit them, God knew in what ways, even if they would take a bullet for me. Which most wouldn’t.

So, I had to say, if Liam somehow managed to weasel his way into my inner trust circle, then all the power to him.

But it wasn’t going to happen.