Page 30 of Raspados & Regret

Public. Of course this annoying motherfucker has a public account.

Elías Cárdenas lives out loud online like the world deserves access to his nonsense. His profile picture is him in those black glasses, head tilted, tongue out just enough to show the silver ball, middle finger lifted near his cheek. Silver chain. Crooked grin.

Bio: East Bay. Raspados. Problemático pero bonito. Don’t ask me for less chamoy.

I stare at it.

Problemático pero bonito.

He literally wrote that about himself.

Cocky asshole.

My thumb scrolls to his first pinned post, and it’s him at the raspado trailer, holding two cups, grinning. The second is a mirror selfie in a bathroom, wearing a white tank, a silver chain, shorts low on his hips, and glasses pushed up into his hair. Next is him at a family barbecue, mouth open mid-laugh, holding a beer, someone’s arm around his shoulders, and the last is a close-up of his hand holding a peeled mango on a stick, with chamoy dripping down his fingers.

This is stupid.

This is extremely stupid.

It’s just Instagram.

People post pictures.

People have bodies.

Men. Have. Bodies.

I have one; I see mine every day. I wash it and put clothes on it. I have piercings in places that make airport security pat-downs more personal than I’d like. None of that means anything. Elías’s fifth post is from last summer. He is in one of his many cousins’ backyard pools. Shirtless in short black swim trunks, with his hair all messy. Tongue caught between his teeth while he laughs at something off-camera.

My brain stops.

Silence.

A bad kind of silence. It’s like all the workers in my head dropped their tools and walked off the job. His chest is leaner than mine but defined. Brown skin, water on his shoulders, a little trail of hair below his navel, not as dark as mine but there. His shorts cling to one thigh. His hand is lifted, fingers curled around a plastic cup.

He looks happy.

Open.

Mouthy even in a still picture and hot.

The word lands in my head before I can dodge it.

Hot.

Elías Cárdenas is hot.

Not annoyingly or objectively attractive. Not “I can see why other people would.”

Fucking Hot. To me. A man who’s spent thirteen years treating that part of himself like a check engine light he could ignore if the car still ran.

I lock the phone and chuck it onto the workbench. Then I stand there staring at it like it might attack.

“Get your shit together,” I whisper.

The Altima waits in bay two, and when I get back to it, I work for approximately eleven minutes.

Eleven whole minutes.