“Why do I have to freaking take Spanish when I speak it, Tia? It’s sooooo stupid.”
“So you should be getting an A+ and not a C! What is that?” The volume of the debate in the kitchen slowly rose higher and higher as Daisy managed to shrink into the background, nearly finished peeling the charred chiles.
She pursed her lips, relieved that the attention of the room was on her high school cousins and not on her.
Daisy felt a nudge on her toe, and she looked up to see Imelda looking at her.
Her aunt smiled, her face creasing into soft, comforting seams. “They’ll figure it out,” she said softly.
“Figure what out?”
“You know.” Imelda winked and went back to scraping the sharp needles off the cactus leaves. “Remember, el corazón es lo que mueve el mundo.”
Daisy smiled. “I don’t think my heart is moving Mom and Dad’s plans, much less the world, Tia.”
“That’s because you haven’t found the thing that anchors it yet.” Imelda’s knife scraped along the cactus leaf, carefully shearing off the prickly spines. “But you will.”
Chapter 2
Spider’s alarm went off at eight thirty every morning no matter how late he’d worked the night before. He was an early riser by habit, but that didn’t line up with tattoo-shop hours. Most days he worked until midnight, often until one or two in the morning if the piece was complicated or a last-minute walk-in had cash.
He was still the new guy; he didn’t get to pick his hours.
Rubbing his eyes, Spider tried to figure out why he was so sleepy. He’d gotten over six hours of sleep the night before—that should have been more than enough.
He closed his eyes and immediately remembered.
A cloud of curly brown hair, hazel-brown eyes, bright red lipstick leaving trails of red smudges over his chest. Her sweet pink tongue peeking out from between her lips as she—
Fuuuuuck him. He rubbed his eyes. He was not allowed to have sex dreams about sweet, innocent Daisy Rivera, pride of Metlin and his own personal fantasy wrapped up in a red polka-dot dress.
Spider rolled out of bed and immediately went to splash water on his face. He pulled on a pair of grey sweats, ignoring the semi in his boxer briefs. He grabbed the pull-up bar from under his bed and hung it over the closet door in the small studio apartment over his boss’s garage.
There was an old radio sitting in the windowsill that had been there when he moved in. He flipped it on and was immediately greeted by the sounds of the morning show on the oldies station.
“—starting the morning out with 98.9, the best of claaaaassic rock and doo-wop filling your morning drive. Let’s start the morning with that eternal question: Why do those fools fall in love, Harry?”
“I don’t know, JJ, but they’re driving their parents craaaaazy.”
The morning-show hosts bantered back and forth as a familiar song filled the empty apartment, taking Spider back to the happiest memories he had of his childhood, sitting in the corner of the automotive-upholstery shop where his dad worked, listening to the radio and drawing in his sketch pad.
He counted out fifty pull-ups, five sets of ten, alternating with fifty push-ups, also in sets of ten. Then he grabbed the exercise bands he’d bought at the swap meet and worked on leg presses and sit-ups.
Spider didn’t like spending money on gyms, and he didn’t like showing his skin to anyone who might know what his ink meant. His arms weren’t too bad, but his chest revealed the violence of his teenage years. Plus a lot of it was just jacked-up work from shitty artists who didn’t know what they were doing.
Part of his pay at Misspent Youth was Ruby, his boss’s wife, doing cover work for some of the worst shit. He wasn’t enough of an idiot to tattoo himself, but he trusted Ruby.
He exercised for nearly an hour; then he took a shower and did not think about Daisy Rivera. Then he heated up a packet of plain oatmeal and didn’t think about the strawberry pie he’d seen at the café two days before.
I wish I was here to get a new read…
She’d said that in the bookshop the day before. She liked to read, which made sense because she was a smart girl. Yeah, that fit. Everyone talked about how well she did in school, how she’d be heading off to some fancy university soon.
Spider leaned against the small counter in the corner of the apartment and methodically finished off his oatmeal. He pictured Daisy in a pair of jeans like she’d been wearing the day before, a backpack on her shoulder, hanging with the smart people at a college somewhere. In his imagination, she was wearing glasses, which was stupid because she didn’t need them, but whatever. They looked cute on her.
Everything looked fucking cute on her.
He rinsed out his bowl, dried it, and set it back on the small shelf where he kept the few pieces of kitchen gear he owned. Most of them he’d gotten from Betsy or picked up at the swap meet, but they worked and if anyone stole them, he wouldn’t be mad.
After Spider cleaned the kitchen, he made his bed and tossed his clothes and his towel in the laundry basket in the corner. He had two more days before he needed to do laundry, so he made a mental note to get quarters at the bank when he deposited his paycheck.
He put on a clean pair of jeans, a crisp white T-shirt, and a clean blue-and-white-plaid flannel he’d ironed the night before. He might be a poor motherfucker with no useful education, but he wasn’t a slob. He brushed his teeth and straightened his collar in the small mirror over the sink.
Spider had a paycheck now, a real one. A social security card and something on file with the IRS. He had a license with the state board that said he was legally qualified to do the job he’d been doing since he was fourteen years old.
Those documents were all under his legal name—which no one in LA knew him by—but it was still stressing him out. He’d felt pretty anonymous when he’d been working under the table, but the last time he called south, Chino was still running his old neighborhood, and Chino had a long memory.
Legal documents. Public records. All that felt dangerous to a homeboy who’d been hiding for five years.
If he needed to pick up and leave Metlin, he could do it within an hour, and everything he valued would fit in the back of his dad’s 1970 El Camino, which was the one thing he’d brought from LA and the last piece of his father he owned. He’d sold his mom’s jewelry and his dad’s watch. He had his grandma’s gold medallion necklace with the Virgin on it, his dad’s car, and that was it.
Spider grabbed his keys and headed out the door, already thinking about seeing Daisy at Café Maya before he went to work. He wondered what she’d be wearing. Wondered if the red polka-dot shirt would make an appearance again.
Then he mentally kicked his own ass for wondering.
He had a job, his dad’s El Camino, and his grandmother’s medal. That was all he needed. All he could allow himself to need. Anything past that was way too dangerous.
“So glad Daisy was able to drop off the rent check on time.” Betsy was mixing a salad with two big forks, and Spider was watching what she put in it this time. The week before, she’d snuck some raisins in the salad, and that was not cool.
He registered what the old lady had said about Daisy. “She not turn the rent check in on time before?”