Luz comes to find him.
He's out back working on his car when she shows up. Marches her way to him, really, in her work uniform with her lipstick reapplied. He hates to remember how much fun he had mussing it, a few months ago. Never one to admit that, though, all he does is raise his eyebrows when she finally stops in front of him.
He says, "We got a date I forgot about, o qué?"
"Hijo de tu—" Luz starts, and cuts herself off. He feels a sense of déjà vu. She rubs a hand over her face, then fixes him with a severe look; it's familiar, comforting. "Rumor has it George Martin's dead."
"Mija," he says, feeling like his uncles back in Jalisco, calling their mistresses mija to differentiate from their viejas, "which of your cousins is fucking a King? Don't make sense, you knowing all this shit with Brumly when you live this close to Rogers."
"Mind your business," she snaps, but pink blooms over her face and she bites her lip.
Tim tries not to stare. Says, instead, finger in her face in the hopes of her reacting, "Is it Paulina? Be honest."
"Get outta my face," she says, scowling, but there's something almost gentle about how she pushes his hand away. Her touch lingers. "Leave my cousins outta this. I know you was running 'round with Bernal, and she's real buddy with Solis. If Martin's dead it's gotta be because of him."
"You tryna turn into some jefa?" Tim can't make sense of it. "Why's it matter what Solis gets up to? You friends with his wife now? It don't concern you." She opens her mouth, clearly furious, but he cuts her off, says, "I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean it really don't—you ain't gotta deal with me no more, and I know none of them brothers you got is running with any outfit in this city. I ain't take you for someone real invested in what kinda crimnals run this town."
"What, you think you do?"
"Nope," Tim says, and shuts the hood of his car. He remembers how mad she was that he bought it instead of a ring—part of him wants to go back and consider the decision more fully, not that he's sure he'd make a different one. He'd get the ring first, though.
Luz waits for him to continue, looking a little outraged when he doesn't. "It don't matter to you that Martin's dead? One less problem for you, huh?"
"Chiquis el mayor is dead." Tim fixes her with a carefully blank look, tries to pretend it doesn't sting to say out loud. "Mikey's still in the hospital. Funerals are expensive."
Luz's expression is horrified. He doesn't let her speak, though—feels like a jackass, but he has to drive the point home.
"I ain't fixing to do the same with Curly," he says, "and I ain't planning on doing this shit over and over until it's them or me. You ain't the only one who wants a future."
"This time last year you was fine slinging. Hell, six months ago, too."
Tim rubs his hand over his face. "You think I can't change?"
She blinks, hard. "You wanna?"
"Yeah." They look at each other for a long time. She shakes her head.
"I don't believe you," she says. Her voice is uncharacteristically soft. "How can you go from running 'round in Brumly to…not?"
Tim doesn't want to have this conversation. He doesn't want to do this all outside. He doesn't want to do it, period. But he's going to. He says, "Let's go inside," and with his hand over her lower back, follows Luz to the kitchen.
He's lucky no one's home right now, but that might be because it's early afternoon on a weekday and his siblings are prone to wandering. His ma he's not too interested in keeping tabs on. Maybe someone will come home while Luz is yelling at him or maybe they'll talk, quiet, until things make a little bit more sense. He ain't ever wanted her in his business, not because he thought she was too dumb for it but because all it did was make her vulnerable.
Men don't usually go after women like that, but he doesn't trust easy, these days, no matter what Solis might think.
Tim tries to say the truth, but it doesn't come out right. Luz watches him with disbelieving eyes, across from him at the shitty table bought before Frankie Shepard died. When he finishes she says, "So you're done?"
"I fucking hope so," Tim says, and she almost smiles. He rubs his hand over his face. Sometimes, not often, he dreams of that night over a year ago. The way Ochoa's expression went carefully frozen and then finally still, the way blood threatened to pool around Tim's feet as he dragged Solis away. He remembers the look in the older man's eye clearly. He doesn't want to get caught up in that, ally or no. He says, "I'm out of it."
"And if Solis calls you?"
"He won't," Tim says, and hopes he's telling the truth. He can't imagine raising another family under the weight of this life—bad enough he's got Angela and Curly to look after, half-wild as they are.
She swallows. Says, finally, "What did it?"
"What?"
"What did it," she repeats. "You've been slinging since you was fourteen, fifteen. You're a grown man now. What made you change your mind?"
Tim stares at her. It almost hurts to say—"It wasn't you." He can't make sense of her expression. He doesn't want to lie to her, either. Instead he continues, "What d'you wanna hear? That you leaving made me change my mind? There's worse things than being lonely, mija."
He tries not to shrink underneath her gaze. Her eyes are steely, a fight there like it always is. Her uniform is a little dirty—not filthy, but like some flour might have smeared over the fabric while she leaned over the counter for something. She's serious as she ever is, but different, too, he thinks. When she dumped him it was frantic—all that anger and disbelief coiling together in both of them. Now it's deceptively calm. There's something like acceptance on her face. If he were a more positive man, he'd think it might lead to something good.
He says, his voice almost surprisingly clear, "I got too much to do to get caught up with Solis, savvy?" and then, at her still-suspicious expression, softer, "I can't leave the kids, Luz. I'm all they've fucking got."
"Tim," she says. Her eyes look sad. She's spent years taking care of her own brothers. She reaches out, puts her hand over his. "They ain't that young, either."
He shakes his head. "Yeah, they are." He was about Curly's age when he started dating her. Too young to know what he was doing in this world and forced to figure it out anyway. If he's lucky enough to stop it, Curly won't have to deal with that shit at all.
Luz takes a deep breath. She's silent, wrestling with something clearly, when she finally says, "So what's it mean?"
"I'm done," he says. And then Tim just looks at her for a long moment. If it were anyone else they'd squirm. Good thing it's Luz.
She says, "I said I didn't wanna see you die."
"I ain't dying."
"I know," she says, and curls her fingers over his. "So what's it mean?"
Tim swallows. He can't believe he's nervous—years he's spent with her, and months he's been wanting her back. Her gaze is knowing, brown eyes bright. He missed her so bad it's a physical ache. He's just not sure he's offering anything new. Maybe even less, now that the drug money's run dry. He says, "Nena. I still don't have a real job."
She says, "Tim, you're so stupid," and then puts her arms around him like she did the other night in his car, kissing him just as fiercely as she did then. He puts both hands at her waist and just holds onto her, inhaling the scent of her perfume and feeling at peace like he hasn't since the start of summer.
He's breathless when they pull apart. Luz finds enough air to say, "Who all's home?"
He'll blame oxygen deprivation for his initial confusion. "What? No one. I told you."
"When'll they be back," she says, eyes not leaving his, and he feels her hands slip down his chest, feels his mouth go a little dry at what he thinks she's suggesting.
"Later," he says, though he's not one-hundred percent sure. She wavers, pink lipstick smudged, but her eyelashes flutter when he leans in to kiss the corner of her mouth, her jaw. She turns her head like she wants more and somehow stops herself. He's always admired her stubbornness.
"Are you sure?" she says.
Tim's honest, at least. "No."
It makes her grin and then stop herself, teeth against her lower lip, looking like the best thing Tim's ever seen. "Goddamn it, Tim," she says, but kisses him again anyway, and says, after, still close enough that their lips brush when she speaks, "Take me downstairs," and Tim ain't stupid, alright? He knows better than to argue with her by now.
His mother might kick up a fuss when she comes home to find the two of them half-dressed and eating the last of the leftovers in the form of tacos de frijol, but she at least doesn't say anything to Luz about being able to do better. No doubt she'll wake him up early tomorrow and set him to scrubbing her house down; Tim's got more pressing things to do, like drag Luz back to bed and count all the new freckles he's missed since they split.
Afterwards, though, he can't get one of the questions she asked him out of his head. What happens if Solis comes calling? Tim said he's done but does that really matter to the men in this city, who shoot each other down during lunch meetings and laugh about it on the frenzied drive home? Tim doesn't know too many people who've stayed in the life forever—eventually men grow old and start families and lose sons to the life, too.
Isaiah's different, though. He's got the wife and baby and mother taken care of real pretty in that nice house of his, no matter that it's in Brumly and that he clearly just kicked a coke habit. He has eggs and beers for breakfast and then drags his men to the brink of war. Tim doesn't want that anymore, but suddenly he's afraid that because he agreed once—maybe even twice—Solis might come calling if things get a little rough.
Power doesn't always pass peacefully. Tim's taken to carrying a heater on him just in case someone changes their minds about what he did to survive. But Tim's out of the game, now. There's no one he can turn to and ask about what happens after.
But then he remembers who he spent half the summer screwing and decides it's worth the risk of some malcriada catching him and setting the rumor mill spinning again. He'll deal with that if it happens. In the meantime, he heads out towards Hale, to the little diner across the street where itty bitty Bernal works, a waitress just like his girl and maybe just the first of many things they have in common.
She doesn't look too impressed to see him. It's early, a Tuesday towards the end of August. There's a teen couple who look hungover, and she raises an eyebrow when the bell over the door alerts the place to his arrival.
She says, "Mornin', Shepard. Booth or counter?" and leads him to a table in the corner, where he can sit with his back to the wall and just watch. She pours him coffee, expression betraying no emotion.
He says, "You hear the news?"
"What news." He's surprised she doesn't snap any gum at him. She's got a worse attitude than Luz, the difference being that underneath it Luz is soft like toffee, face open with joy when he picked her up for their last date, bouquet of flowers in his hand like it was a special occasion. Tim'll buy her flowers every week for the rest of their lives if it means seeing her smile like that again.
He tears open a packet of sugar, says casually, "River Kings don't have a man, no more. Rumor has it they're scrambling to keep it together."
"Didn't take you as the type to listen to rumors," she says. Her hair is pulled back, a long braid over her shoulder blades. The pink of her uniform doesn't suit her—she seems tough all the way through, no matter that he remembers how she talked about Randle, all those weeks ago. He's almost jealous of how little her face gives away. "Martin's been dead weeks. Everyone who's anyone knows that." She leans in close. "I heard it from the source."
"Fucking Solis," Tim says, unthinking, and only then does Bernal crack a grin. "What else he say, huh?"
"I don't talk," she says, shrugging. She glances over her shoulder, the only other customers still absorbed in themselves and their plates of greasy foods. "You come in to eat or chat?"
"Yeah," he says, "get me a burger, doll. I tip real well."
"Not sure I want that from you," she says, even as she pulls a small notebook from the apron tied around her waist, "I had some girls come by the other day, laughin' like I was a joke while they was talkin' 'bout that girl of yours. You finally get her back?"
"Yeah," he says, a little surprised but pleased. Figures that Luz's cousins are in the know already. Bunch of chismosas in the worst and maybe best ways—he likes the thought of everyone knowing that Luz is his again.
"Good for you," she says, and then, "how d'you like your burgers?"
When she comes back with his plate she tells him she's on break now and sits across from him with an orange she digs into, nails piercing the peel and making him flinch. He can't say he's afraid of some five-foot-nothing broad, but. Bernal is something else.
"You came by for a reason," she says, not looking up from her snack, "and I know it ain't 'cause you wanna be friends. What d'you care about me knowin' what Isaiah did?"
"He tell you I'm done?"
She looks up at him, eyebrows raised. "He mentioned somethin', sure."
Tim can't even bring himself to bite into the burger he's ordered, no matter how good it smells. He says, "He the type to let go?"
She tilts her head. "What d'you mean?"
"You run around with him a lot, don't you," Tim says, and before she can raise her hackles, continues, "you just like the company or do you owe someone something?"
"I don't do shit I don't want," she says, curt. He can smell orange even from across the table. "How much he tell you, huh? Was it about Tommy, or my tío Juan?" When she smiles it's cunning and familiar. She's the type to eat a man alive, and for a second Tim feels lucky that it wasn't him. "Lemme guess. You wanna know if Solis will keep his promise."
Tim doesn't like that she seems to know more than he realized. He wonders how it is that she's got eyes everywhere. Or maybe just one set, the same ones Tim handed his territory to in the hopes of getting out of it.
She looks at him, considering, eyelashes dark against her cheekbones. Her eyes on his feel like a threat. She says, "You think I helped Isaiah 'cause it was easy? Be honest."
He says, because he hates the answer he can guess, Lisa sixteen or seventeen years old with a steady she couldn't shake and a tío she could convince to give her the world, "How worried do I oughta be?"
She shrugs. Continues to eat her orange section by section. "'S long as whatever deal you cut stays true, you don't gotta," Bernal says, but there's a far off look in eye, "it's just real easy, gettin' caught up with Isaiah. He's real charmin' that way."
Tim's a little concerned. "How caught up are you?"
"I'm just some girl," she says, and her eyes clear. "You're the type to think this is men's work, right? That works fine by me."
He says, "Lisa," maybe the first time he's said her name, and she just shakes her head.
"I trust him," she says, "but that don't mean he's not dangerous. Unless he thinks he's got a price on his head, Isaiah won't come callin'. And if you're lucky, not even then." She gets up then. "You need anythin' else? My shift ends soon."
"No." Tim's not sure where this leaves him. He tries not to quash the hope in his lungs with this larger worry, of getting dragged back in despite himself. He wants to focus on the bigger picture—save up to get himself out of the house as soon as possible, even if it means dragging the kids with him. Buy a ring and maybe a house and start a real family. This has to be the end of it.
Bernal says, "Good luck," and starts to turn, pauses, looks back at him. That maneater smile's almost enough to make his skin crawl. "You're real smart, y'know that? Askin' me instead of any of his crew."
When he says nothing she laughs.
"Tell your girl I said congratulations," she says, "glad to hear she's a happy girl," and leaves him with his face burning, trying to figure out how to feel.
He leaves a good tip anyway. If he's lucky, this is the last he'll see of Bernal for a long while.