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Under Locke(39)

By:Mariana Zapata




"Bull."



He cracked a little smile. "My innocent little Ris."



Innocent, maybe a little. But really, he knew as well as I did, that I just wasn't used to cussing. At least on his level, much less the rest of his friends’.



"Just tell me what happened," I insisted.



Sonny looked at me for a long moment, blowing air out of his mouth before letting his head drop back dramatically onto the couch. "Can we talk about it later?"



I poked him in the thigh. "I'd rather not."



He sighed again, still looking up at the ceiling.



His silence was killing me. The longer he went with hesitating to tell me, the worse it made me feel.



"Please?"



Sonny grunted. "Our sperm donor came by."



And... that was absolutely not what I was expecting to hear.



"Are you joking?" Of course he was serious, but I was an idiot and what he'd said seemed so ridiculous he wouldn't be making it up.



He kept his eyes trained on the ceiling. "Nope," was his brilliant, detailed response.



"Why?"



I don't know why I asked. What I was expecting. There couldn't be anything for me to expect. He'd known where yia-yia, Will, and I had lived for those years after Mom died. He'd always known where Sonny lived. And in almost ten years, neither one of us had seen him. Now all of a sudden—



"Money, kid." I looked up to see him scrub a hand down his face. "He drove all the way over here to ask for fucking money."



"Did you give it to him?" I asked the question slowly.



"Kid."



Maybe it was wrong of me to hope that Sonny hadn't because he was my dad after all, but I couldn't find it in me to be mature about it. "Son."



He tilted his head down, his lips drooped into a scowl. "Fuck no," he confirmed. "I know he asked Luther after I shot him down though."



"And he said yes?"



Sonny shrugged. "I don't know."



I narrowed my eyes at his face, taking in the cut that split this upper lip. "Oh.”



"Kid, I don't support a man that can't support himself. It's embarrassing that he crawls back here to mooch off other people—," I winced because hello. Hadn't I just done the same thing? Come crawling to my half-brother? I felt like a schmuck. Sonny must have read it on my face because he rolled his eyes. "Your situation is completely fucking different. Don't give me that face. You're not mooching off me. You got a job you don't like. You're trying to get yourself together and I've already offered to give you money. You didn't take it, Ris. You're not like that piece of shit in any way, you hear me?"



Crap, I loved this guy.



"I don't want anything to do with him," he stated with so much conviction in his tone.



I didn't either but apparently my brain wasn't working properly because I asked something I shouldn't have. "Did he ask about us?"



Sonny gave me a look I hadn't seen since I was nineteen and been told I needed to have another biopsy. It was filled with a dreadful kind of remorse.



And it projected the answer like a beacon in the sky.





Chapter Ten



“How long you been here now?”



I looked up to see my redheaded buddy, Slim, plopping onto the couch across from me. It was Tuesday, almost a month since I started at Pins and Needles and to be honest, it’d gone by really quickly and mostly painlessly.



I’d fallen into a comfortable routine. During the day, I'd hang out at Sonny's house, cleaning and cooking when I wasn't going to the rare job interview—the one and only one had taken place the week before but I hadn't heard back from them—and applying for places online. Occasionally, I'd let myself think about Dad coming into town to ask Sonny for money but it was rare. The man didn't deserve my annoyance. At night, I’d go home and half of the time Sonny would be up and we’d talk or watch television until he went to bed.



How he made it to work at nine in the morning was beyond me, but I didn’t ask.



The other half of the time, he was gone and I’d go to bed before he showed up again. In the days after he told me about our sperm donor coming into town, his mood had gradually improved so I didn’t ask where he went unless he told me. More often than not, he didn’t. But when Sonny was around, I always had a smile on my face though he was still acting a little strange since his unexpected visit. He was just like Will, whom I hadn’t heard back from yet either, but I didn’t let myself focus on that. I’d sent him weekly emails consisting of a short updates that confirmed I was alive, still with Sonny, still working at the tattoo parlor, and that I had a library card. No surprise there.