As soon as more people entered the house and joined the party, Carlos stood up to shake their hands.
He took Marguerite's hand last of all. She was too thin, with skin too pale and eyes too sad. "Hello, miss."
She took his hand politely, the hand of this too thick, too tan, man with eyes lost in another time. "Hello," she whispered, and decided she didn't want to know what his eyes looked at.
Marguerite left Carlos' company for the bawdy man with glinting red eyes. And that was alright, Carlos didn't mind too terribly. Although he had wanted to ask her why her eyes were so melancholic.
They met again purely by a coincidence of life, four months later. He stood behind her in the checkout line at a dollar store, and his cart hardly held anything at all, besides a baseball bat and a tub of icecream.
Marguerite remembered his name miraculously, while he struggled to pronounce hers. Her smile when he tried to say it was painfully fixed on her face.
She'd said to him, without thinking, "My brother likes baseball, too." As soon as her mouth had opened she knew she'd made a mistake.
"Really?" he asked, looking excited. It was too late to do anything but go along with it, so she jotted down Alfred's phone number and handed it to him with a shaky hand.
"I'm sure he'll be happy to meet you," she said.
And meet him he did, when Marguerite hadn't been home. She arrived from a hockey game to find a bruised and battered Carlos practically dragging himself out the door.
She did not ask any questions, and led Carlos back inside and onto the couch. The alcohol stung his cuts, probably from Alfred's nails, and she fixed him up as best as she knew how.
A fight, he told her, voice low and on edge. Marguerite stared at Carlos' eyes. They were burning with hatred. She had never met someone who hated her brother as much as she did, until now.
Despite not particularly liking him, he gained her respect. "Wait here, I'll go get the bandages."
Dating Gilbert had been a dumb thing to do. He made her feel uncomfortable almost every minute, even though he treated her decently. He was kind, inside, Marguerite had seen it.
But the man did not understand that "no" meant "NO!". He constantly dragged her around, introduced her to dozens of people, and not so obviously sent lovesick looks to a woman with glasses and a mole.
Marguerite supposed she was being used as a pawn to get the woman's attention. That was okay, she thought. No one would notice me if I wasn't Gilbert's girlfriend, anyways. Still.
She craved and feared attention.
So when Carlos, at another neighborhood party, asked her if she wanted to leave she said yes. Gilbert didn't notice the empty spot by his side, nor did he ever notice the entire night. He was talking to the woman again.
"Sorry," Carlos hesitantly apologized as they walked along the street in near darkness. "I just saw you looking so..." he thought for a moment, "...uncomfortable."
"I was." She stole a look at his face when they passed under a streetlight. "Thank you."
"I didn't plan this very well, actually. I mean, where do we go, right?" He laughed quietly.
"Certainly not my house," she replied. Carlos' hand flew up to brush his long ago healed scars.
"How about mine?"
As to why they'd suddenly stopped in front of the gate around his front yard, he explained, "My papá doesn't like people coming in. This is as far as you can go, even if you're with me."
It was strange, she thought. "You live with your father?"
It wasn't so much that he didn't leave home as his father wouldn't LET him. "It's like he wants me to suffocate."
Marguerite understood all too well.
The rest of night they'd spent talking, leaning on the gate and occasionally sitting down on the street curb. "You like icecream too?" she asked Carlos, anticipating his answer.
He awkwardly held his stomach flab in his hands. "Yes..." That was the first time he'd ever heard her laugh, and he wouldn't let it be the last.
"Why did you fight with my brother?"
"Irreconcilable differences," he replied, frowning.
Quietly, she slipped her hand over his and ducked down her head. Maybe she could ask him why his eyes seemed so far away.
He felt her hand over his, still pale and thin, and he wanted to ask her why her eyes seemed so sad.
It was nice, they realized, to slowly become someone's world.