“Righteo,” he mutters, standing from the wheeled stool he was sitting on. “It doesn’t get any surer than that.”
Luke shuffles over when the ink technician begins his work, placing the tiara on my left pec, just above the nipple. Luke has just finished getting a fox placed on his right bicep. It’s not finished yet. The tattoo has been bandaged for him to return another day.
I wait for the smart comment about my chosen tattoo as he watches. He doesn’t disappoint. “Dude. You’re getting a crown?”
“It’s a tiara,” I correct.
“Same thing.”
“No it’s not.”
Laughter lights his eyes. “Is this part of your gender reassignment?”
“Bite me,” I mutter, ignoring the irritating little jabs of the needle.
Luke studies the image for a long moment before looking at me. “What happened? Some princess break your heart?”
I snort. “Nope.”
“Then what?”
There’s no explaining Mac in one simple sentence. I don’t even try. But I do correct his assumption. “She didn’t break my heart. She stole it. It belongs to her now.”
Leander rolls his eyes from where he sits on the counter behind us sucking on another cigarette. That shit he’d had to do earlier? A drug delivery. The heavy pounding of my pulse belonged to fear. I can be arrested for association. Not to mention being involved with drugs, or people who use them, isn’t my scene. I justify it by telling myself that I’m not involved; tagging along doesn’t make me a part of their world. Besides, I want that burger, and I want this tattoo more than anything.
“You’re what, fifteen?” Leander huffs. “You don’t even know love yet.”
“Get stuffed,” Luke tells him for the second time that afternoon. “Romero is almost sixteen, right?” He looks at me and I shrug in return. Sixteen is another five months away, but we can call that almost sixteen if he wants to. “You act like you’re all that, Lee, but being eighteen doesn’t make you the king of everything.”
“I never said I was,” Leander replies coolly, stubbing his cigarette out in the glass ashtray beside him, “but I do know that the girl Romero is getting crowned in ink for will be with someone else by the time he reaches his eighteenth birthday. Mark my words.”
Mac and I made no promises, but Leander’s cynical comment and the image it forms in my head has my fingers curling into fists. “You want to bet on that?”
His eyes spark with interest. “Sure.”
“A thousand bucks.” My self-assurance has just been rocked and now I have to fake it, but I’ve overshot the mark into reckless territory. I don’t even have a dollar to piss on.
“Hardly!” Leander pushes off from the counter and walks over. “Ten thousand.”
Luke folds his arms. “For fuck’s sake, Lee. Romero doesn’t have that kind of cash to throw around.” He looks at me. “Do you?”
Leander cocks his head. “Relax, Little Fox. If I can have that kind of cash, so can he. If he wants to.”
My nails dig into the foamy armrests of the chair. “You’re saying that like I’m destined to lose.”
“If I want you to lose, then you’ll lose.” Leander’s eyes take a dark turn. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“Well, he’s not eighteen yet,” Luke advises, waving his arms like he’s trying to disperse the crackling tension his older brother created. “He’s got two years to win.”
Leander’s brow arches with cynicism. “Or two years to lose.”
Or two years to get the hell out of dodge. Mac will have my balls if she ever finds out I’m betting hard cash on her affections.
Leander and Luke Fox deliver me home hours later. We pause for a collective beat of silence as they take in the worn timber cladding and sagging porch. The house is like a battered old work boot. The interior remains dark and as welcoming as a dip in the Arctic with a pod of killer whales. It’s no surprise to see my foster carers left the electric bill unpaid today. Assholes.
I open the back passenger door and step out.
“I’ll walk you in,” Luke says quickly and jumps out of the car alongside me.
“Hey!” Leander calls from his open window as we walk across the front yard. “Don’t forget you owe me one now, Romero.”
That sounds ominous. Owing Leander Fox isn’t one of the smartest things I’ve ever done, but I have a belly full of burgers and beer and I’m feeling magnanimous so I don’t have the heart to care. I wave him off. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you need.”
Luke stands on my left as I put the key in the lock of the front door. I don’t want him to see how I live, but he’s clearly curious. His eyes are focused on the darkened interior through the window. I pause. “You know, it’s not a prom date. You don’t have to walk me inside.”
His gaze shifts to me and he grins. “And here I was hoping you’d put out.”
“Pfft. In your dreams.”
With a faint laugh, Luke looks back through the window. “It’s dark inside. Folks not home?”
“Not my folks,” I mutter.
“Oh.” He nods as though he understands all about those three little words. “Fosters?”
“Yeah.”
Knowing I can’t stand here all night with the key in the lock, I twist it clockwise and shove the door open. Luke doesn’t waste time. He pushes his way past me and inside. His hand goes straight for the light switch in the entry. The sound of a click renders the air but nothing happens. He flicks it a few more times. “Power’s out.”
“Yeah,” I say a second time. “Must be an outage in the area.”
He’s nice enough not to mention the blinding lights coming from every other house in the street. “Well, I better go before Lee gets the shits and takes off without me.”
The tension in my shoulders loosens a fraction. “Good idea. Thanks for the invite today.”
“No worries.” Luke starts for the door and pauses, half-turning to look at me. His forehead creases with apparent anxiety. “See you at school, yeah?”
Air leaves my lungs in a whoosh and my eyes find my feet. “About that …”
An excruciatingly tense moment of silence fills the room.
“Christ!” he mutters. “Seriously?” Luke knows what I’m going to say before I say it. The words are either written on my face or he’s heard it all before. “Get off your high horse, Romero. It pays the fucking bills, don’t it?”
Luke flings the flyscreen door open and kicks it backward on his way out. It slaps angrily against the worn timber framework as he stalks outside.
“Fox! Wait!” I call, following him out.
“No, fuck it,” he calls back without turning around. He’s already jogging down the porch steps. His feet kick up dirt as he motors toward the car where Leander’s fingers tap an impatient rhythm against the steering wheel. “No one wants to be friends with the brother of the local drug dealer, do they?”