Page 6 of Raspados & Regret

One space.

Two families.

One fucking nightmare of a summer.

I set the canopy down harder than necessary, and Elías comes up beside me, dragging a cooler that scrapes against the pavement, loud and ugly.

“You always this dramatic?” he asks.

“I dunno? You always this irritating?”

He gives me a playful smirk. “Only when I’m awake.”

“So all day,” I say, glancing over and immediately regretting it.

He has one hand on the cooler handle, shoulders flexed under that loose tee, shorts riding up a little higher from the pull. His thighs are brown and strong and right fucking there, because apparently fabric is expensive now.

I look away.

Fast.

But not nearly fast enough, because instantly his smile changes. It’s small, but so sharp it could cut ice. The kind of smile that makes me want to hit reverse and run myself over with my own truck.

“You good, Salcedo?”

I scoff. “Fine.”

“You don’t look fine. I’d say you look mad.”

This motherfucker. “I am mad.”

“At me?” He presses a hand to the center of his chest.

I roll my eyes; of course he’s so self-centered that he would think it’s all about him. “At the concept of you.”

He laughs, and the sound slides under my skin.

And I hate that.

I hate him and his stupid fucking shorts.

His mother and my tía show up to the booth area at the same time, both talking at once. In less than five minutes, they have decided where the tables are going, where the cooler goes, how the agua fresca will be lined up, where the raspado machine goes, and exactly how useless we are unless we lift things.

So we lift things, and for the next couple of hours, I carry tables, coolers, crates of fruit, a metal tub full of ice scoops, and three bins of God knows what. Elías carries just as much—I’ll give him that. The man doesn’t whine, but that doesn’t stop him from running his mouth the whole time.

But he works.

Hard.

Sweat beads at his hairline and slides down the side of his neck. He pushes his glasses up with the back of his wrist, leaving a wet smudge on the lens. When he bends to grab a case of syrup bottles, his shorts pull tight across his ass, and I almost drop a folding table on my foot from staring too hard.

“Careful,” he says without looking back.

“I’m fine,” I mutter, opening the table up and wiping my chin with the back of my hand.

Oh my God, that better be sweat. It’s not drool… I wouldn’t be drooling over Elías Cárdenas’s ass.

“Sure, papi.”