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Chapter Nineteen
Malcolm
Planning a New Year’s party with a seven-year-old is chaotic—and pretty goddamn fun.
Teo becomes my wingman. Every morning between Christmas and New Year’s, one of the Rojas clan drops him off with me and we spend the day together. We’ve been to the arcade, gone swimming at the Y while Nala taught a class, practiced tricks on his skateboard, and built massive sand castles.
In the afternoons, we go to the skatepark and watch the other kids until Hunter meets us, so he can skate. The first night we stayed pretty anonymous but now, a crowd starts gathering around six each night, hoping we’ll be there again, asking me for selfies and autographs. I sign for a bit, and then Teo and I settle down to watch before Hunter takes him back to his grandparents’s house.
For the first time, I know exactly what it feels like to have a family—to be a big brother, to have someone trust me and look at me like I’m the person who is going to make their day better, and I don’t know if I can go back to living without this.
Leaving San Diego was something I had to do. At sixteen, when I placed and became a professional that was good enough not just to enter a tournament, but to make it on the podium, I knew my life would be chaotic, but I wanted it. Somehow, I understood that the road was a place I was supposed to be, a place where no one really had a family, just their board and the hope of another win.
I missed Nala something fierce, from the day I left to the day she picked me up at the airport less than a month ago—but I didn’t know how to come home. Now, I don’t know how to leave.
This family—my family—makes me feel bigger than who I was without them.
“My mom says I’m not allowed to stay up until midnight.”
The disgust in Teo’s voice makes my lips twitch. “We’ve got hours until midnight, shorty.”
He rolls his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest and standing next to me. “So? I want to watch the ball drop, and it doesn’t do that until midnight.”
“We’ll watch the East Coast celebration and you can see it drop at nine.”
“That’s cheating.”
“It’s improvising,” I correct, and tap the brim of his hat down. “Now watch your aunt and uncle for any weaknesses. I’ve been standing here for ten minutes and I haven’t seen them make a mistake once.”
“Javier is a builder—he won’t make a mistake.”
I watch the oldest Rojas and his wife high five each other after sneaking one of the bottom logs from the tower and placing it on the top. They are playing against Nala and her mother, and since Teo and I have a bye this round, I’ve been observing under the pretense of scoping out the competition. Really, I just like looking at Nala.
She’s wearing a midnight-blue dress that hits her feet, with thin straps that leave her shoulders bare. Her hair is down, billowing around her in a crazy halo, held in place by only a small braid in the front that sort of just disappears. The dress should be too big for her, like it’s too much material for her small frame. Instead, she looks like some water goddess, the blue of her eyes glowing when accented by the deeper blue of the dress.
Teo says something, but I don’t hear him because Nala laughs, and the sound washes over my skin and does something funny to my stomach.
It’s New Year’s Eve, and our party is finally here. Theme: The Urban Olympics. Everyone has a partner, a bracket is made, and depending on how they do in each category, their name gets moved up or down on the whiteboard. Everyone does each event once—pool, ping pong, air hockey, foosball, darts, giant Jenga—and the two teams in the championship flip, winner picks game to battle it out for the top.
Teo is my partner, Nala and her mother, Rose and Vanessa, Isa’s parents, her older brother, Javier, and his wife, Felipe and his date—not the girl from the phone, but one far more intriguing to look at—Hunter and Isa, and Valentina and some guy Teo introduced as his soccer coach. Since Valentina looked a little blindsided when Felipe showed up with him, I’m not sure that pairing them up as game partners is the only matchmaking Teo’s got going on.
“You got room to add another team to that board?”
I look over to see Brooks and Jordan standing in the doorway, the dark brute with his beefy arm around the petite fair-skinned lady. They’re as opposite as two people can be, but together like this, they’re a match.
“Well, good goddamn, it looks like the gang’s all here.”
Games stop and people swarm in to greet the new arrivals. Brooks makes his way to me, shaking his head when he clasps my hand, leaning in for the traditional bro-hug handshake. “Always got to do everything full throttle. One bone wasn’t enough?”
“You know me—you ain’t hurtin’, you ain’t tryin’.”
“Crazy bastard.” Brooks shakes his head. “What’s the timeframe?”
“Twelve to sixteen weeks. The screws should make the healing go faster. The pain’s gone for the most part, so that’s good.”
He nods. “And after that?” His eyes search the house and lock onto something over my shoulder. Then he looks back at me, and I know it’s Nala. “What then?”
I don’t look over my shoulder, mostly because I’m not about to lay my cards out on the table like some pussy. But I do look Brooks straight in the eye, because if Nala has a male figure in her life, he’s it. “Time will tell.”
