He reached out a leather-gloved hand and lay it next to hers, then he wrapped his fingers around her hand. Esmeralda caught her breath. She didn’t want him to think he could just grab her up after all these years…but she didn’t exactly want him to let go of her, either. His touch made him feel more real, and less like a dream.
Then Pedro’s Acura pulled into the parking lot.
“Shit!” Esmeralda pulled her hand away and took a few steps back from him.
“What is it?” the gray-eyed boy asked. He looked at the Acura pulling into the parking place beside them, and at Pedro in the driver’s seat. “Is he a friend of yours?”
“My boyfriend,” Esmeralda said.
The gray-eyed boy didn’t bother hiding his scowl.
Pedro got out of the car and stepped between the two of them.
“Esmeralda,” Pedro said. “Let’s go.”
Esmeralda hesitated, and Pedro noticed. He looked again at the gray-eyed boy. Esmeralda knew the boy was her own age, or younger, so Pedro had to be five or six years older than him. Pedro was shorter, but much bulkier.
“Who are you?” Pedro took a step toward him.
“I’m Tommy,” the boy said.
“Tommy. That’s cute, man. Maybe when you grow up, they’ll call you Tom. Or Thomas, no?”
“I hate Thomas,” Tommy said.
“Okay, Tommy,” Pedro said. “My name is Pedro Ortega Hernandez. And I want to know why the hell you’re talking to my girlfriend.”
“Pedro,” Esmeralda said. “It was nothing. Let’s go.”
“I was not talking to you, Esmeralda. You get in the car.” Pedro glared up at Tommy. “You. Why are you talking to her at her job? Why you trying to grab her hand?”
“I wanted to,” Tommy said. He didn’t look very scared by Pedro, but he had never seen Pedro angry.
“Well, I don’t want you to.” Pedro thumped Tommy in the chest. “I see you near her again, you’ll have to hire old Mr. Garcia to bury you. You understand?”
“Okay.” Tommy held up his hands defensively, but he was smirking. “Take her on home.”
“I’ll take her where the fuck I want to take her.”
“It’s been nice meeting you, Pedro,” Tommy said.
Pedro glared up at him a moment longer, then stalked back to his car. “Get in,” he said to Esmeralda.
Esmeralda looked at Tommy again, and he just folded his arms and winked at her.
“Get in the fucking car!” Pedro yelled.
Tommy didn’t say anything, so Esmeralda got in the fucking car.
Pedro drove in silence for a couple of miles.
As they passed the grocery store near her neighborhood, Esmeralda said, “I need to stop by la tienda for a couple things—”
“Who was he?” Pedro snapped.
“He was nobody.”
“It’s so good to know,” he said, “While I’m building houses for my uncle, and studying law at night, and fixing your mother’s plumbing because her landlord is lazy—it’s so good to know you’re out there making new friends.”
“He’s just someone I knew when I was a kid.”
“First he’s nobody, then he’s an old friend?”
“It’s not like that—”
“Then tell me what it’s like.”
“You missed the grocery store.”
“You can walk.” Pedro lit a Camel as he turned into Esmeralda’s apartment complex. “Or use your mother’s car.”
“I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much.”
“Good. Because I was hoping to take a little more shit from you today.” Pedro stopped in front of her apartment, but he left the engine running and didn’t park. “Maybe tomorrow your friend with the motorcycle can take you home from work.”
“Pedro, stop it!” She kicked open the car door.
He took her arm and pulled her close.
“Let me go!” she said.
“I just don’t like to see you with some other guy,” he said. “I love you, Esmeralda.”
“And I love you. Don’t be so jealous.”
“Look in my eyes and tell me he is nothing to you.”
Esmeralda looked Pedro in the eyes. “He is nothing,” she said, but her eyes blinked involuntarily when she said “nothing.”
He frowned at her. “I have to get to class. I’ll call you later.”
Esmeralda stepped into the two-room apartment she shared with her mother. Immediately the sound of a Telemundo soap opera, weeping confessions backed by sappy music, jangled her ears. Her mother sat on the couch, watching the TV.
“Hola, Mamà,” Esmeralda said.