Trouble

“Hey,” a familiar English voice called out to me. In the middle of one of my deals. The baggie of drugs was passing between my hand and the junkie’s as I worked on shoving the roll of bills into my pocket.

“Lo siento,” I muttered to the guy in front of me, one that I knew fairly well from his frequent visits.

He glared at the boy behind me before whispering in my ear, “You’d do better if you didn’t bring your boyfriend along on your jobs.”

Before I could defend myself, he hurried off down the pier, hiding the drugs away into the inside pocket of his jacket. I could almost see the thoughts running through his head, how he desperately hoped that the boy hadn’t gotten a good look at his face, wondering where he could run and hide if the cops came after him.

“I knew it,” Liam continued, pride seeping through his voice. “I knew you were a drug dealer.”

I turned around and shoved his shoulder. “¿Qué mierda?” I snapped at him.

“What?”

I took a deep breath and switched over to English mode. “What the fuck?! What are you doing here? And how the fuck did you find out where I work?”

“Alejo told me.”

Oh, shit. Now he was using the nickname that Alejo only let close friends and members of the gang use. So as far as Alejo was concerned, Liam was a part of the inner circle.

I knew he wanted me to have sex with Liam, but he was just getting ridiculous.

“Don’t call him that,” I hissed. “And I don’t care if Alejo told you or not. You’re not allowed to be here while I’m working. It’s not safe. Do you understand me?”

Liam took a step back, his face colored with offense. “Hey, I’m not a child. Don’t treat me like one.”

“You might as well be a child with how much you understand about my situation. God forbid a drug deal went wrong, and you were shot. Do you know how much trouble that would get me in? I’d ruin my squeaky clean record, and I’d get arrested for putting you in a dangerous situation you aren’t equipped to deal with.”

He stared at me. “If this is so dangerous, then why do you do it?”

“You wouldn’t understand.” Before he could say anything else, I checked the time. “Alright, my shift’s over. You want to come hang at my house, or no?”

“Depends. Are you going to keep treating me like I’m Marisol?”

“Maybe.” No use lying to the guy. He may have been a year older than me, but I was decades wiser than he was. He was just trapped in his little rich bubble, where nothing bad ever happened, where everything came to him easily, where he could just skate through life, getting everything he wanted without needing to lift a finger.

I started to walk away, and it only took Liam a second to catch up with me.

He ran a hand through his short hair before letting out a loud breath. “Look, I didn’t know that you were working. I saw Alejo on the street, and I recognized him, so I asked where you were, since I was just heading to your house anyway. And he said you were on the pier before directing me where to go. I just thought you were sitting and having a cigarette or something. Trying to clear your head. He didn’t mention anything about working.”

“Typical,” I mumbled, shoving my hands into my pockets. “Did he tell you to call him Alejo?”

“Yeah. I kind of just said, ‘Hey’ a lot until he turned around.”

I chuckled and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “God, he’s trying too hard.”

“Trying too hard to do what?”

“Nothing.”

There was a long, awkward silence before Liam spoke again. “Okay, I don’t mean to sound teen movie or anything, but I keep thinking about how you said the other night that you really don’t know anything about me.”

“I don’t.”

“I was bullied,” he stated plainly. “All throughout school, kids teased me mercilessly. I’ve gotten jumped, had the shit beat out of me.” He stopped and took a breath, as if he were letting the news sink in for me. “After a while, I got sick of it and learned how to box. It only took one time of me fighting back for the bullies to steer clear of me.”

“Is this supposed to inspire me?” I asked, my tone a little harsher than I’d intended.

“Not really. I’m just telling you for backstory. And it’s kind of proof that I know how to take care of myself.”

I snickered and cut in front of him so he had no choice but to stop in his tracks. Without thinking, I put my hands on his shoulders and got close to his face. His breathing hitched, and I knew that he was entirely conflicted about my proximity to him. “Fighting is all well and good, muñeco, but what would you do if someone came at you with a knife? A piece of lead pipe? A gun? Your punches aren’t going to do much. So I don’t care if you can box. I don’t care if you’re fucking Mohammad Ali. You still can’t defend yourself on these streets without me, so don’t try it.”

He stared down at me. “You know what I see when I look at you?”

I took a step back and breathed deeply as I waited for the follow-up.

“I know that you think you’re hardcore, that you’re a badass, whatever. But when I look at you, I see a sad little girl who had to grow up way too fast. Someone who never got a proper childhood, who never had any fun. How old were you when you started in the gang?”

“Don’t try to get deep with me, pretty boy.”

“When’s the last time you’ve been deep with anyone? Are you always just a closed shell?”

“Yeah, and that’s the way I like it.”

“You don’t have to trust me, Soledad, but just give me something. It’s frustrating me more than it should that I only know the things about you that I can observe. Can’t I know anything about your past?”

“Liam, butt out.” I hadn’t meant to yell, but that was the direction my voice decided to take, whether I wanted to or not. “My childhood sucked, okay? And I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Were you bullied, too?”

“I wish I were bullied.” God, I would have given anything to have had someone torment me day after day, to shove me into lockers and leave me there for hours while I had to pee.

“What’s worse than bullying?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you not understand the meaning of ‘butt out’? I swear to God, I’m going to pull out my gun and shoot you if you ask me one more personal question.”

“I’m just trying to get to know you better,” he muttered, knowing that I would never actually shoot him. Too messy. “Are you really carrying a gun right now?”

“You bet. Can’t afford to go anywhere without one.” I’d never tell him, but I hadn’t actually fired the thing. I’d had to flash it a few times, drew it once, but that was it. I’d been lucky, considering.

“That’s really sad.”

“Don’t pity me.” I walked up to the front door and went to throw it open. My words in greeting were resting on the tip of my tongue, but Liam cut me off, reaching forward and grabbing my hand.

“I don’t pity you,” he insisted. “And whether you want me to or not, I’m going to get you to open up to me. Even if it means I have to tell you my whole life story.”

“Good luck with that,” I responded nonchalantly. “Now let go of my hand before I think you’re trying to put the moves on me.”

Liam took his sweet time taking his hand back, keeping his eyes locked on mine the entire time. At first, I was able to keep up my stony look, but as I turned away, I felt something that I hadn’t thought I was capable of.

It was short, fleeting, but it definitely happened. A little hiccup in my heartbeat, a lone butterfly spiraling in my stomach.

I swallowed back the feeling and threw the door open. “Marisol! Claudia! Someone’s here to see you.”

“LIAM!” they squealed, running from the hallway toward the boy standing next to me.

He immediately crouched down, wrapping his long arms around them as they crashed into his body, burying their faces into his shoulders.

They loved him, trusted him. In a short month, they’d started to adopt him as a brother they’d never had, someone to look up to. Although he’d been so at first, he was no longer famous in their eyes.

It may not have been as easy for me to allow people into my lives as it was to the girls, but even I couldn’t lie to myself and say that the boy wasn’t growing on me. Like some demented, rabid fungus that absolutely refused to die.