ONE
Diego
“Are you up in there, or do I need Trevor to turn on the speakers and—”
“I’m up,” Diego threw at his closed bedroom door. Behind it, he heard his older sister, Rose, laugh under her breath. Jesus. She knew how much he hated her husband’s country music. How a big city lawyer like Trevor could stand to listen to that shit, Diego would never understand. Then again, there was a lot about his sister’s husband that he couldn’t relate to.
Nah, that wasn’t it.
More like Rose and Renzo—his siblings—raised Diego after their addict mother drugged and drank her way into a pauper’s grave somewhere. Their father … or rather, his siblings’ father? Who knew? Somethings were just better left alone.
Then, when Ren couldn’t look after Diego, Rose stepped up alone to do it. For a long time, it was just him and his sister.
Until she got married.
Trevor wasn’t a bad guy.
Mostly.
He did, however, seem to have a hard nut for the fact he thought it was also his responsibility to fill some role in Diego’s life that he believed was missing. Like a father. At first, it was little things but the closer he came to turning eighteen—not long now—the more Trevor thought he needed to be the dad Diego didn’t have.
Listen …
Diego didn’t want a dad.
He’d done fine without one for this long; he wasn’t trying to be an asshole to Rose’s husband or anything. He simply wasn’t interested in the kind of bond Trevor was trying to make. Did it cause some issues?
Sometimes.
It didn’t matter to him.
Diego wasn’t letting someone else into his life just for them to fuck off like most everybody else had already done at one point or another. Other than his siblings, that was. He loved Ren and Rose to the ends of the earth and back for it, too. Well, and Lucia, Ren’s wife. Not to mention their kid, Lorenzo. Honestly, that was enough for him. His life wasn’t open to new people he had to make time for.
What was so hard to understand about that? Diego thought it was pretty clear.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes before you miss the—”
“Got it,” Diego said over his shoulder while he shoved all the shit he needed from his desk into the black backpack on the chair. The patches he’d sewn onto the bag to make it more custom and his style had taken years to collect. After he threw in his kit—extra parts for his skateboard so long as he didn’t break the board itself—and his wallet, his phone went in last. Under his phone was a sleek, gold business card with white lettering in the middle that caught the lamplight from his desk when he picked it up.
He twisted the business card over and over in his fingers, eyeing the name on the front while his foot tapped a fast beat to the floor. Sucking air through his teeth, he read the name again just to be sure he was seeing it right.
Marty Lorde, Manager
Los Angeles, CA
The man’s cell number—Diego had a good idea how rare it was to get one of these cards, especially after he did a quick check of the guy’s socials—stared back at him, winking in the light. Taunting him almost.
Was he too chickenshit to call?
To say fuck it—be great.
Skateboarding had been Diego’s thing since he was eleven. That and photography. And one day he realized he could do both and put it on the internet for other people to see things the way he did. When he was younger, he had a hard time fitting in with other kids. Sometimes, he found trouble just to belong.
When he found skateboarding and learned to share it with the world … Diego realized he didn’t need to make friends when people would just find him. His main social where he shared the majority of his photos and videos—and where he was most active—had just crawled over two-hundred thousand followers.
His sister didn’t like it. Trevor said it was dangerous. Ren thought it was kinda cool.
And up until the moment Diego met Marty Lorde at the skatepark two blocks away from his private high school—where he should have been in class—he never realized he could make a career out of being on the fucking internet. Or doing what he did on the internet, for that matter.
Marty said shit Diego didn’t understand. And some he did.
Sponsorships. Product placement. Representation. Maybe some modeling. Definitely brand deals. Contacts are everything; you need to come out to LA.
“Are you even listening to me?” Rose called.
Her voice brought him back to the present all at once. Responsibilities. Decisions. The exam he was supposed to write during fourth period, and the graduation he probably wouldn’t attend if he decided to chase the dream that had just been placed into his hands.
Adulting was for the fucking birds.
It wasn’t even the whole turning eighteen part of the growing up business that Diego thought was stupid as fuck. It was the expectations that followed him because he was turning eighteen and what people thought he should be doing with his life because of that fact.
Like college.
Choosing a career.
Doing something … normal. Expected. And entirely fucking boring. All things Diego had no interest in whatsoever. Mostly because he never bothered to sit down and think about it at all. The things his sister wanted him to look forward to and work toward as an adult weren’t the kinds of things he’d ever considered for his own life. Not when he’d been too busy learning how far he could fly on a skateboard while filming it for others to see, too. He did the school thing. Like they told him to.
Wasn’t that enough?
“What is up with you lately?” his sister asked through the bedroom door. “It’s not like you, you know? You can’t miss the exam today, Diego. Don’t skip again, all right?”
Diego turned to head for the bedroom door and shoved the card into his bag before zipping it up and tossing it over his shoulder. He had more questions about the LA thing that wouldn’t leave the back of his mind, and since Marty was only going to be in the city today, he didn’t have a choice but to miss the exam his sister was currently bitching about.
Pulling the bedroom door open, he already had a smile waiting for Rose. She worried about him enough. Her entire life seemed to revolve around making sure he was doing what he needed to do. Diego understood why that was … but he wished she would just let him grow up the way he wanted to now.
Her eyes widened, and the hand she’d raised to knock again on the wood lowered back to her side. His grin had her softening a bit. Last year, his height shot right up and now he stood six inches taller than her at six feet. She shook her head as she looked up at him.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was just late this morning.”
“Ace that exam. You need the grade.”
Right.
For college.
“And I got an email today,” Rose added, “about the open house at UNR. I mean, you’re going to see Ren for a week in a couple of days, why not check out the university while you’re there?”
The text he received that morning from Marty in reply to asking if the man could meet up burned a hole in the bag hanging off his shoulder. So did the exam and grade. His sister.
“I’m not sure I want to go to school. I was thinking I might move out to LA and—”