He breaks off, furious, shaking his head at the idea.
“Has this happened before?”
He nods. “She only calls me when she and Luz have been fighting. Luz isn’t off work yet.” Luz bartends at some club in her neighborhood.
After a few minutes of silence, he reaches over and runs a hand down my arm. “Hey, how was hanging out with your dad and Brian?”
“It was… okay, I guess. But, I don’t know, I didn’t feel totally comfortable there… which is strange, because I always used to.”
“Did you?”
“What? Yeah. Why?”
“Well, I just mean, are you sure you used to feel comfortable as opposed to just being used to feeling uncomfortable?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means, maybe spending more time not lying about who you are has made you aware of the ways you had gotten used to lying about it.” Rafe says this gently, hand on my arm, but it still packs a punch I can’t process right now. He squeezes my forearm and lets go, fumbling with his phone.
“Okay, Cam, come outside.” He points to a three-story brick house on the corner. At least the neighborhood doesn’t look as bad as Rafe seemed worried it would be when he told Camille to stay inside.
The door opens and a pretty girl comes out, walking unsteadily, clutching her phone. As Rafe opens his door and gets out, a guy runs out after Cam.
“Come on, Karen,” he calls, laughing, clearly wasted. “We were having fun, right?”
She whirls around to face him and screams, “It’s Cam, not Karen, you asshole!”
Rafe catches her upper arms and moves her behind him, nudging her toward the car.
“You.” Rafe stabs a finger at the guy, and I can tell the moment that he notices how huge Rafe is through the haze of intoxication. Rafe stalks up to him, radiating murderous fury.
“That girl is fifteen years old, you piece of shit,” he snarls. “You fucking touch her, that’s statutory rape. You know what they do to rapists in prison, you little prep school fuck?”
The guy is curled up in a ball in the face of Rafe’s fury. It looks like Rafe’s about to beat the crap out of him. Totally deserved, too. But he smiles instead and it’s chilling.
“The next time you see a pretty girl, I want you to remember me. Remember this moment and think about what happens when you mess with shit you shouldn’t.” He gets right in the guy’s face. “Got it?”
The guy nods convulsively, his hands up in a pathetic don’t-hit-me pose, desperate to get away from Rafe. Rafe spits at his feet and then comes back to the car, shaking his hands like he can dispel his anger that way instead of through a punch.
“These entitled white boys see you as a hot Mexican girl they can take something from,” he says to Cam. His voice is fierce. Poisonous. “Okay? You can’t trust them. I’m sorry.” She nods and buries her face in his chest. He puts her in the backseat and gets in with her. “This is my friend Colin.”
“Hi,” says Camille miserably. “I’m sorry, Uncle Rafe! I just didn’t know—”
He shushes her and pulls her against him as he gives me directions. The roads deteriorate as we get closer to Cam and Luz’s, the space between streetlights measured in blocks rather than feet.
In the rearview mirror, Rafe looks intensely relieved, his hand running absently through Cam’s long curls. I pull up where he tells me. It’s not a street I’d ever stop on in the middle of the night if I could help it, and I make a mental note to lock the car doors behind them.
“Come inside for a minute, okay?” Rafe says. “I don’t want you sitting out here by yourself.”
Yeah, that’s not humiliating in front of his niece or anything.
“Uh, I’ll be fine, man.”
Camille says something in Spanish under her breath, and Rafe gives her a warning look.
“Please,” he says, and he gives me that look. I roll my eyes because it’s a combination that basically makes me incapable of not doing whatever he says.
The building is run-down and smells like mold as we trek up the stairs to Cam and Luz’s third-floor apartment. Cam stops at the door, turning a pleading look on Rafe. She bats her eyelashes.
“Thank you so much, Uncle Rafe. You’re a lifesaver. Maybe I should just go in by myself, though. Mom’ll be tired when she gets home from work and she probably won’t want a lot of people around, you know?”
She smiles a brilliant smile. It’s a valiant effort and I can tell Rafe’s the tiniest bit amused by her antics. Before he has a chance to say anything, though, the door bursts open.
“Camille!” the woman who must be Luz yells, then claps a hand over her mouth, like she’s just now realizing how late it is. She looks terrified as she grabs Cam and hugs her roughly. Over Cam’s shoulder, she looks up at Rafe worshipfully.