“The new owner is offering cheap as shit drinks to anybody who can show a current college ID,” he states, taking a sip of his beer. Benny isn’t much older than me—only by twelve years. His parents had an oopsie. But raking my gaze over his face as he watches the crowd, his age is showing a little more these days. At almost forty, he’s in pretty good shape, but his short beard is looking more salt than pepper lately.
He had to grow up a lot sooner than his siblings, my dad included. Being born to older parents, most would think he had it easy. Usually, the last born is the most spoiled, but that wasn’t the case. Myabuelitodied of a heart attack when Benny was a teenager, and after he died, myabuelitajust kind of gave up. They got married when they were barely teenagers, so they spent their entire lives together. He was her world, and without him, she didn’t know how to manage.
Benny was working on cars for cash by the time he was sixteen, and helping pay the bills shortly after that. My father helped where he could, but he was raising his own family by that point, and money’s always been tight where we come from. Benny openedBenito’s Garagewhen he was twenty, and it’s been his passion ever since.
I’ve always looked up to him. He’s been there for me through thick and thin; something I can’t really say for other people in my family.
“Is Miguel coming?” Benny asks before downing the rest of his beer.
Shaking my head, I say, “Nah. He’s got Izzy this weekend.” Guzzling down the rest of the contents in my bottle, I tip my chin toward his. “I’m going to get a refill. Want another?”
He nods. “You know it.”
Weaving my way through the bodies lining the area, I make it to the bar, then pull my phone out while I wait for the bartender to get to me.
“Well, look who it is.”
At the sound of the deep, gruff voice, my spine steels, veins filling with ice. Wearily glancing to my left, I already know who’s waiting for me, but it’s no less jarring to my nervous system when my gaze connects with a sinister pair of honey-brown eyes.
“Robbie,” I grit out, keeping my face void of any emotion.
He rakes his gaze over my frame before landing on my face, a sickly sweet smirk that most would fall for—me included at one point in my life—sliding into place on his lips. “You look good, Mateo.”
I don’t return the compliment or thank him. His ego doesn’t need that, nor is it my style to do so.
“Hey, guys, what can I get you?” the bartender asks, breaking our stare down.
“Two Coronas please,” I reply.
“Make that three,” Robbie interjects. “So, who are you here with?”
Dragging my narrowed gaze back to him, I say, “That’s really none of your fucking business, now is it?”
He chuckles, the sound like nails on a chalkboard. It takes everything in me to not outwardly wince. Robbie is a part of my past I don’t revisit… ever. He’s someone I dated during a period of my life when I was lost and angry and easily manipulated.
Robbie is also the reason I haven’t ever dated anyone since. He scarred me in ways I didn’t even know I could be. Not that I’d ever let him—or anybody else—know that.
Hands raised in mock innocence, he whistles, that obnoxiously cocky grin never leaving his face. “So touchy, Matty.”
My hand itches with the desire to clock him in the jaw for calling me that, and my skin crawls from being in his proximity.
The bartender comes back with our drinks, and I go to grab my wallet out of my back pocket to pay and get the fuck away from him, when he has the audacity to put a hand on my arm, stopping me.
“I got it,” he says smoothly.
“No, you don’t. I’ll pay for my own.”
He reaches over, handing his card to the bartender. “I insist.”
My heart is hammering in my chest, blood roaring in my ears. I shove my hands into my pockets to hide the fact that they’re trembling. Robbie is the only person I’ve ever met who gives me a reaction like this, and I fucking hate it.
Standing here beside him, all the memories of us come trudging back, causing bile to rise in my throat as my stomach churns. I didn’t even know he still lived in Desert Creek; it’s been years since I’ve seen him.
The woman behind the counter hands him back his card, sliding the three beers across to us, and I don’t think I’ve ever grabbed something so fast in my life.
Before I have a chance to walk away, though, he steps closer, lips right against the shell of my ear as he whispers, “I’ve missed you, Matty. What do you say we do somecatching up?”
Grinding down on my molars so hard, pain radiates through my jaw, I don’t bother looking back at him. “Fuck off, Robbie,” I growl, putting one foot in front of the other, making my way back to where Benny’s waiting for me.
