I started watching Raul sell at school and envied the ease of it before I understood the cost. One morning I caught him before first period and told him I wanted in. I needed to help cover bills.
Ma found out three weeks later. She grabbed me by the ear, yanked me down to her level, and said, in that accent that only comes out fully when she's furious,are you fucking stupid?Then she went after Ernie for the same thing and didn't speak to him for two months. She's always said Ernie has stressed her out since the day he was born. She meant it as an insult. Coming from her, it's also a form of love.
I told her I'd lied about my age to get a server job at a burger place nearby. After that, whenever I came home with cash or groceries she assumed it was tips. I hated lying to her. That's what eventually pushed me out. Raul and Ernie arranged the two hits my sophomore year to give me something to land on when I was ready to walk, and I took the money and tried to figure out what a normal life looked like for someone like me.
Then the kid seized in the cafeteria at the start of junior year, and I was done. No more deliberating.
Quitting felt like exhaling for the first time in years. Then came the financial pressure of actually living without it. The hit Raul and I had lined up senior year, the one that fell through, would have covered our bills for more than a year. I think about that sometimes, what the timing would have meant, because Ma had her accident three months after graduation and the money would have changed everything about how we navigated that.
But it fell through. So here we are.
Raul's first stop is a side street off a block I know well. Two guys approach as he leans against a bench with his hands in his pockets, completely at ease. Basketball shorts two sizes big, one in a hoodie, one sleeveless. Could be fifteen, could be thirty.The exchange is over before I've fully clocked it happening, a handshake that wasn't a handshake, and then Raul is jogging back to the truck.
We run several more. I watch each one with the detached attention of someone cataloguing information rather than participating.
This is second nature to him. I can't imagine getting that comfortable again. I don't want to.
We finish the last stop and end up near Bayfront Park, which is either luck or Raul's idea of a reward. I parallel park on a side street, streetlights scattered and dim, and he immediately lights another joint and hands me a stack of cash.
I count it. $215 for driving.
He passes the joint. I take a long drag and let it out slow,Straighteninrattling low through the speakers, the city quiet around us in the particular way it gets at this hour, not peaceful exactly, just paused.
CHAPTER 12
HARVEE
"Five green tea shots, please!" Mel slaps her card on the bar before any of us can argue.
The bartender winks and turns away to make them. Mel leans toward my ear. "Is he cute or am I already drunk? I genuinely cannot tell."
The bar is doing a nineties R&B throwback night, which nobody warned us about. I don't mind. Mel's aesthetic and his are clearly cut from the same cloth — gold hoop through the eyebrow, one through the nostril, dark hair spiked up, broad shoulders filling out a plain black t-shirt in a way that suggests he knows exactly what he's doing.
"He looks like exactly your type," I tell her. "Shoot your shot."
"I plan to." She straightens up and smiles at the bar like she already owns it.
The rest of the girls filter over for the shots. They've all been wonderful to me tonight, which I didn't expect and needed more than I'd realized. Mel's friends are the kind of people who make you feel like you've known them longer than you have.
Delilah, Dee to everyone, is a curvy Latina with dark eyes and thick dark hair that falls to her waist and a single dimple on her right cheek that has single-handedly procured us a significantamount of free drinks tonight. Staci stands almost as tall as me, red curls and green eyes and pale freckled skin, a thin frame that barely contains what is very clearly a recent and expensive purchase, her two-year-old son smiling up from her lock screen every time she checks her phone. And Meghan, the quietest of the group, blonde and blue-eyed with a curvy build and a way of observing a room that makes me think she notices more than she lets on. They all grew up together, elementary school through everything, and the ease between them shows.
Mel is deep into negotiating her way through a conversation with the bartender — Nico, apparently — when a voice comes from directly behind me.
"Damn. Sorry to eavesdrop, but that was actually going to be my opener. Are you from Tennessee? Because you're the only ten I see."
I turn around. Broad chest, immediately too close. I take a step back and look up.
Tall. Six-three, maybe. Tousled blonde hair, bright green eyes tracking me with an interest that doesn't bother to be subtle.
"I've never heard that one before," I say.
"I know. It was bad. I'm sorry." He grins like he isn't sorry at all. "I'm James."
"Harvee."
"Let me buy you a drink?"
Mel catches my eye across the bar. I give her a shrug and a thumbs up and she turns back to Nico, satisfied.
