“Just warning her what we’re like,” I say with a shrug. “She should know we’re not the kind of guys she needs to fuck around with.”
“You wouldn’t fuck her?” Lennox asks skeptically.
“No,” I say. “She doesn’t belong in our world, and you know it.”
“Maybe she could,” he says, sitting up and swinging his legs off the side of the bed. “Not every girl wants the kind of guy who holds hands and watches the sunset with her.”
I snort. “Por supuesto, but she does. I’ll bet you fucking money that she’s sitting there writing your names together in a little heart in her notebook. She wants a boyfriend. Not… Us.”
“I could be her boyfriend,” Lennox says.
That gets a full laugh out of me. “Yeah. Sure.”
“I could,” Lennox insists.
“What happens when you have to fuck a crew girl in?”
He shrugs. “I’ll let her know up front I have those obligations. She’s not like those girls, anyway.”
“Exactly what I’m saying,” I point out, pushing the drawer closed with my hip. “There are crew girls, and there are girls like her. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with her, but you don’t fuck around with that type. Crew girls know what’s up. That girl doesn’t know shit.”
“I’m gonna ask her out.”
I shake my head. “She’s not going to go out with you.”
“You don’t think I could get her?”
“I think you’d break her in a week.”
He shrugs again. “What do you care?”
“I don’t,” I snap. “But she’s too smart to fall for your bullshit.”
Lennox’s eyes turn ferocious. “Wanna bet?”
“Nah,” I say, tucking my gun into the back of my jeans. “Go for it,parce. I don’t have time to mess with little girls. I got real shit to take care of. The crew’s driving by the Serpents’ Nest tonight.”
Lennox gets up and clasps my hand, pulling me in. “Be careful, brother.”
“You should be there,” I say. “We all ride together.”
“You know I’m better behind the scenes,” he says, squeezing the back of my neck.
He’s wrong about that. He’s more vicious than I am, though I’m working hard to remedy that. Time on the ground is what I need. He doesn’t have to come to these things to prove himself because he’s already where he needs to be. I need to toughen up.
“Sin duda,” I say, pulling his head into my neck and crushing him against me. “One of us should be here to take care of Mom, anyway. In case.”
For a moment, we just hold each other, and then we clap each other on the back before I leave, stepping out into the still, heavy darkness and letting it conceal the side of me I’m trying to erase.
seven
Rae West
I’m too embarrassed to turn away the first few guests who show up, both of them moms with kids hanging all over them and food to offer the party, looking harried and overwhelmed. Before I can muster up the heart to explain that this is all a misunderstanding, there are eight kids plunging into my pool with shrieks of pure joy. The mothers are both thanking me profusely and looking so grateful I wonder if Lennox told them I was babysitting all evening.
Probably guessing I’ll try to break up the party before it starts, Lennox hurries over the moment he hears kids in the pool, bringing Reggie, our neighbor from across the street with him. I try to hiss at Lennox, but he’s too busy charming the moms. He leads them to his house, and I panic that he really is leaving me to babysit eight kids whose names I don’t even know. But he comes back with the moms a minute later, carrying plastic folding tables through the hole in the fence.
I really need to fix that.