Chapter 6: The Market

For two weeks we lived in a house where every door was a rule and every rule was broken by four in the morning.

By the third Saturday I had stopped pretending I wanted to be anywhere he wasn't.

He asked if I wanted to see the market at the Pearl, and I said I had never been to the Pearl on a Saturday.

That was a lie.

I went because he asked.

The old brewery grounds were full of tents and strollers, dogs and pecans and warm tortillas.

The sun was still hot in October, and the crowd pushed us together.

He put his hand flat against my back to steer me through it.

The heat of that palm went straight through my shirt.

I bought a bag of pan dulce and ate half a concha on the walk.

He bought two breakfast tacos and ate both in four bites.

"You're a vacuum," I said.

"I'm a growing boy," he said.

"You're thirty."

"I'm tall."

At a stand under a red awning, I bought a mango paleta with chili on it.

He watched me lick it and went very quiet.

A drop of juice ran down my chin.

He lifted his thumb and wiped it off, slowly, with the pad of it dragging across my lower lip.

I opened my mouth a little.

His eyes went black.

"Not here," he said, low.

"Then stop looking at me."

"I can't."

In the crowd, with a hundred people at our elbows, I slid my hand into his back pocket and squeezed.

He made a sound in his throat that no one else could have heard.

"Saldana."

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