“Oh,” Rico said, slinking over to me, hips rolling so obscenely. “Look at that blush.” He ran his hand through my hair, his thumb against my ear. “She pretty, papi?”
“There’s no girl.”
“Oh? A boy, then? We don’t discriminate here at the Casa de Gordo.”
I pushed him off and he laughed and laughed.
“Chris?” I asked.
“Seeing the moms,” Tanner said. “Stomach thing again.”
“She okay?”
Rico shrugged. “Maybe. Don’t know yet.”
“Ox!” Gordo shouted from the office. “Get your ass in here!”
“Oye,” Rico said with a small smile. “Careful there, papi. Someone’s in a mood today.”
And he sounded like it. Voice strained and harsh. I worried. Not for me. For him.
“He’s just pissed off because Ox needs the next week off for school,” Tanner muttered. “You know how he gets when Ox isn’t here.”
I felt awful. “Maybe I could—”
“You hush that mouth of yours,” Rico said, pressing his fingers against my lips. I could taste oil. “You need to focus on school and Gordo can just deal with it. Education is more important than his little bitch-fests. We clear?”
I nodded and he dropped his fingers.
“We’ll be fine,” Tanner said. “Just get through your tests and we’ll have the whole summer, okay?”
“Ox!”
Rico muttered something in Spanish that sounded like he was calling Gordo a fucking dickhead dictator. I’d learned I was adept at picking up curses in Spanish.
I walked to the back of the shop, where Gordo was sitting in his office. His brow was lined as he did his one-finger typing thing. Tanner called it his hunt-and-pecker. Gordo didn’t think that was funny.
“Close the door,” he said, without looking up at me.
I did and sat in the empty seat on the other side of his desk.
He didn’t say anything, so I figured it was up to me to start. Gordo was like that sometimes. “You okay?”
He scowled at the computer screen. “I’m fine.”
“Awfully twitchy for fine.”
“You’re not funny, Ox.”
I shrugged. That was okay. I knew that about myself.
He sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Sorry,” he muttered.
/> “Okay.”
He finally looked up at me. “I don’t want you here next week.”
I tried keeping the hurt from my face, but I don’t think I did very well. “Okay.”