“Everybody’s been staring at me like I’m some loser or something,” she hisses, pulling back and holding me at arm’s length.
She eyes me up and down like it’s been years since we’ve seen each other when it’s only been a little over a month.
“You look…” her voice trails off and she tilts her head. “Happy.”
Her eyes jump from my face to my side where Slim stands next to me, gripping her clutch. I drop my hand on top of her head, smoothing back her wild baby hair that she brushed down on the way here while she vented to Yesenia on the phone about this very moment.
Her and Arnez stare at each other awkwardly until Slim clears her throat. “Sorry we’re late. It was my fault.”
Arnez shrugs. “It’s cool. Better late than never, I guess.”
We all shuffle to our table where our menus are already sitting upright around a lit candle. Me and Slim sit on one side and Arnez sits on the other.
Our waiter rounds the table with a glass of water and pours it into the empty glasses next to our menus. He smiles big when his eyes roll from Arnez to Slim.
“Ahhh.So they made it?” he asks in some sharp accent I can’t put my finger on.
“Mhmm,” Arnez replies, opening her menu and eyeing it. “I told you I had people, while you was tryna play me.”
He laughs, tilting his lanky body to the side and looking down at us. “Welcome to Del Frisco’s, Arnez’speople. I’m Shaya.”
I nod my head at him because I still ain’t gotten used to overly friendly waiters and hostesses in places like this, but Slim said even if I never get used to it, it’s okay. She said she’ll just cook more at home.
“What can I get you all to drink? Cocktails?” he asks.
Slim slides her hand under the table and squeezes my thigh. “I’ll take a French 75 and he’ll have a Jack Daniel’s neat.”
He nods without writing anything down, then raises his bushy eyebrow at Arnez. “And you, beautiful?”
“I’m good with water.” She rolls her eyes, cocking her head toward me. “And that’s my baby brother right there. He boxes. So chill with all that ‘beautiful’ shit.”
Shaya laughs at first until I blink at him with a straight face, then his eyes get big.
He holds his hands up. “I meant no disrespect, my guy. She’s gorgeous and I just?—”
“Should probably go get our drinks,” I finish for him.
Slim squeezes my thigh harder than the last time.
“Yes, sir. Right away.”
After he scurries off, me and Arnez look at each other and bust out laughing. It feels good—feels like we’re little again andsome boy at school is going around talking about he likes her until he finds out I’m her brother.
My shoulders bounce up and down, and I look into her eyes and see the love in them I thought was gone forever at one point.
Then her eyes flutter over to Slim, and she tilts her head to the side as her laughter tapers off. “So why’d you have my brother late?”
That awkwardness settles between us again while Slim bites down on her lip to keep ahold of whatever smartass comment she has to say.
She unclasps her clutch, digging inside it, pulling out a handful of banana Laffy Taffys and dumping them in the middle of the table. “There’s only one gas station in a ten-mile radius that sells banana Laffy Taffys. Rich told me to just forget about it and that we’ll get them for you tomorrow, but I have a feeling I probably won’t see you tomorrow or at all during this week you’re here visiting so I just wanted to get you a little something to say, ‘Thanks for being my pain in the ass sister. I love you even if you haven’t learned to love me yet.’ I’m being patient, though.”
I think I count six different expressions on Arnez’s face in the span of a few seconds, but the one that sticks makes my chest ache in a good way. Her eyes light up and her shoulders hike up to her ears until she lets out the ugliest sob I’ve seen her let out since she cried in my truck outside of Jazzy’s.
LOVIE
In our first week of training, we’ve spent seven hours a day at De La Torre Boxing Gym with Roberto and his team becauseRoberto says it’s important I stay with Rich.
So that’s forty-two hours in a hot gym full of sweaty men and rumba music—twelve hours of bag work, eight hours of pad work, ten hours of cardio, and twelve hours of weightlifting. Every day I watch Rich float around the gym while I fill out my second FIT application, and every day Roberto teaches me something new about training a boxer because for some reason he’s just as interested in me as he is Rich, but Yessenia says that’s normal.
