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“Good.”
“Elena!” Mamma J yelled from the kitchen.
“I gotta go.”
“I heard,” he chuckled. “Call us when you get home, okay?”
“It’ll be late, she warned.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“10-4.” The sound of chaos had her cutting things short. Whatever Ricky and Mamma J were up to in the kitchen sounded scary. “Gotta go. Bye.”
Spinning on her heel, Elena yelled, “IN!” before shoving the swinging door open.
“Where do you need me?”
“Onions!” Mamma J yelled over the sound of the frying food.
“Actually,” Ricky said as he jogged by with a hot skillet. “We need everything. We’ve already blown through peppers and more cilantro needs to be washed. Cut the onions first though. Once I get this order out, I need to run some out to the food truck.”
“Got it. Who’s working the truck tonight?” Elena asked as she moved to start slicing and dicing. The food truck they had stationed outside was normally manned by MJ, the eldest Medina brother, but one of his kids had picked up the flu and now everyone was sick. It was the reason she was working tonight instead of enjoying the date night her guys had planned.
“Dad,” he answered, zipping by with a stack of takeout containers emanating heat. “It was going to be Luis, but he started to feel bad after lunch. He wasn’t running a fever or anything, but he went home just in case.”
“Good,” she said with relief. When it came to handling food, it was always better to be safe than sorry. Not only did they want to keep their customers healthy, they also didn’t want to spread germs to each other. The family was so big it seemed like there was always at least one person sick, especially with the number of kids in the mix. She made a mental note to sanitize her hands more around her honorary nieces and nephews. They were awesome kids but also little ticking time bombs of germs.
“Tonight’s going to be busy, ‘Lena,” Mamma J warned as her son flew out the door. “We’re going to sell lots of tacos.”
“Heck yeah we are,” she agreed with a grunt as she slammed the veggie chopper closed, sending a chunk of diced onions into the prep bucket directly underneath.
“Ricky mentioned you had a date…” Mamma J probed without any sort of subtly at all.
“I did,” she said, unsure exactly how much she wanted to share. “They’d planned to take me to the Iron Seeds compound.”
“Iron Seeds?”Mamma J stopped stirring and looked at her with raised brows.
“Yeah,” she answered with a nervous nod, a little scared of the reaction her unusual relationship might bring. She pulled the lever in front of her with an oomph, letting the burn in her eyes distract her from the butterflies in her stomach. “They work at the garage.”
“How many?”
“Three,” she answered hesitantly. The pause wasn’t because she was ashamed of them or anything, it was because the Medinas were catholic.
Super-duper catholic.
“Hmmm,” Mamma J hummed as she went back to stirring.
Elena waited for a follow-up, just a bit more clarification so she didn’t feel like she was on the verge of puking—but nothing.
Nada.
Radio silence.
Mamma J just stirred the pot.
“Ummm”, Elena said, clearing her throat before sending another bin of onions through the dicer. “Is that a good ‘hmmm’ or a bad ‘hmmm’?”
Mamma J’s arm froze as she looked up. “Are they good men? Do they treat you right?”
