Page 58 of Raspados & Regret

He snatches one of the bags from me and turns, talking to me from over his shoulder. “You always threaten men in parking lots before dinner?”

“Only the annoying ones.” I smirk, staying behind him a couple passes.

“Special treatment,” he calls back, whipping his whole body around to walk backward toward the little opening for the vendor tents. “I’m honored.”

My brain has gone completely mush, because instead of listening to him clap back at me, I’m lost in his thighs. Toned, with a light spattering of hair, all the way down to the little script tattoo at his ankle. It’s so tiny that I can’t read it.

Maybe I could if his leg was on my shoulder?

Elías’s voice drops. “You good, Fabián?”

My name in his mouth nearly folds me in half, and I lift my eyes back to his. “I’m fine.”

He smiles like he knows I’m not.

“Boys!” my tía calls from the booth. “If you’re done measuring each other with your eyes, come help.”

Elías chokes, and I roll my eyes.

Behind him, his mother says, “Consuelo!”

My tía answers, “What? They are.”

“I’m not measuring anything,” I snap.

Elías looks down at my body again, quick and filthy. “Shame. I would have guessed two hands.”

I take one step toward him, and he takes one step back, still smiling. That’s what makes me want to grab him, but instead of causing a scene, I walk past him toward the booth. He falls into step beside me with his shoulder close.

Too close.

Enough to make my skin notice.

“You gonna behave tonight?” he asks.

“Are you?” I snap.

“Nope.” He says it, popping the p.

“Then there’s your answer.”

He laughs softly, and the sound crawls under my shirt.

The first two hours are hell, and not the regular hell you would assume comes with over a hundred-degree heat. Not traffic-on-880 hell.

Special hell.

A personal hell, if you will.

Elías knows exactly what he’s doing, and the worst part is that I know he knows. He bends too much, reaches too far, and drinks from a straw while looking at me over the top of his glasses. He says, “Excuse me, papi,” every time he has to pass behind me, even though there is plenty of room and every mother in a five-mile radius probably feels disrespected.

I try not to react.

I fail—repeatedly.

At one point, he drops a stack of lids on purpose, and I know it’s on purpose because nobody loses control of plastic with that much eye contact.

He bends to pick them up.