Page 24 of Raspados & Regret

His gaze drops to my lips and stays there. My tongue ring presses behind my teeth. I should be the one to step back.

I don’t.

“Because,” he says, voice low, “you keep saying shit like you want me to do something about it.”

Everything in me locks. My skin goes hot under my shirt, and my pulse jumps in my throat. The whole empty market seems to hush around us, like even the asphalt wants to hear what I’m going to say.

“Maybe you’re too scared.”

Fabián goes very still and then—he smiles.

Just one corner of his mouth.

Terrible.

Fucking devastatingly beautiful.

A warning with perfectly straight teeth.

“Yeah?” he asks.

My voice comes out quieter than I expect.

“Yeah.”

For one second, I think he’s going to kiss me.

Right here, behind the folded table, under the parking lot light, with syrup under my nails and my mom fifty yards away loading cups into the truck. His hand flexes at his side, and mine does too. The space between us shrinks without either of us moving.

Then a car horn honks and we both flinch.

My mom yells, “Elías! Vámonos!”

Fabián steps back first, and he grabs the table and folds it with one angry motion. “Go.”

I lick my lips. “You dismissing me?”

“I’m saving myself from a headache.”

“Thought I was the coward.”

His eyes snap to mine, and there it is again.

Heat.

Want, maybe.

I’m not ready to call it that, but I’m not dumb enough to pretend I didn’t feel it. Fabián lifts the folded table and rests it against his hip.

His voice drops. “You are.”

Then he walks away, and I stand there with my heart beating too fast and my whole body buzzing like I stuck my finger in an outlet.

My mother honks again, and I flip her truck off without looking. She yells my full name—I know I’m gonna be getting smacked upside the head for that one.

I grab the last bag of cups and head toward her, but I look back once. Fabián is loading the table into his truck, jaw tight, shoulders tense, crop top clinging to his back for dear life.

He thinks I don’t notice when he glances over, but I do.