Page 32 of Raspados & Regret

I hate myself when I go back to Elías’s profile and tell myself I’m doing it because I need to understand the problem. I can’t fix a problem I don’t understand.

This is diagnostics.

Research.

Like checking a fault code.

The fault code is you wanna put your hands on him, then bend him over the folding table and take his sassy little ass to pound town.

I rub both palms over my face, and my nipple piercings drag against the inside of my shirt. Today’s crop top is faded gray, cut from an old shop shirt, the hem sitting just above my navel. Grease mark on one side. My black Dickies are unbuttoned at the top because the shop is too hot, and the button digs in every time I adjust on the creeper.

I think of Elías looking at me and the way he stares at my stomach. The way his eyes get all caught up on the patch of hair under my navel. The way his voice changed when he called my crop top slutty. My dick gets hard so fast it feels offensive, and I grip the edge of the workbench for support.

Nah… not here.

Not at work.

Not because of him.

The shop is quiet except for the old fan rattling overhead, a car passing loudly outside, and my tío talking to someone in the front office. The bay doors are half-open. Sunlight cuts across the concrete in bright rectangles. The Altima sits there, hood up, judging me.

I adjust myself and immediately regret touching anything because as soon as I make contact, a hot pulse goes through me. My body doesn’t give a fuck that this is a place of business.

My body doesn’t give two shits that my tío’s twenty feet away arguing with a parts supplier or the fact that I’ve spent thirteen years being, at the very least, deeply confident in what usually gets me hard. But apparently my body has received new management because Elías is now definitely a part of that list.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

This is not sustainable. I can’t spend the whole day walking around the shop with a hard-on because Elías Cárdenas owns swim trunks and a fucking tongue ring.

One that my dick’s decided it needs a test run of.

I need to handle it.

Quickly—like an adult. A stupid one, but still. I look toward the front office. My tío’s voice carries faintly on the phone with a parts supplier, which means I have at least ten minutes of him saying, “No, the other one,” in increasingly disappointed Spanish.

I grab my phone and walk to the back restroom and lock the door. Then lock it again, because I have severe trust issues. The restroom’s small and clean enough, with a cracked mirror, a sink, a toilet, and a paper towel dispenser that sounds like a raccoon being murdered every time someone uses it. There’s a tiny window near the ceiling letting in a thin strip of daylight.

This is so not romantic.

Good. Romance isn’t the point.

The point is relief and getting Elías out of my system.

I lean back against the sink and open his Instagram again. My thumb already knows where to go. The shirtless picture and I zoom in.

“Fuck my life,” I mutter.

He looks good. Too good.

Water on his skin, his smile wide, there are even a few drops of water on his glasses. His silver chain sparkles against his chest, his stomach tight above that perfect V, his shorts clinging in all the right places.

Fuck me… He looks like summer turned into a person and decided to run its mouth. My dick throbs behind my zipper, and I look over my shoulder at myself in the mirror.

This is insane—and maybe a health code violation… at the very least.

I’m sweaty, with grease on my jaw. Crop top sticking to my chest. A grown man about to jerk off in his family’s shop bathroom because his enemy has a public Instagram and four-inch inseam shorts on.

“I’m not doing this,” I tell my reflection.