“Good. While you’re at it, why don’t you ask her to marry you. You obviously don’t want to marry me,” she says, then walks back to our house.

“Carlos, I love you, but you can be the biggest idiot sometimes,” Brittany pipes in, then follows after Kiara.

Nikki steps back, says, “I’m gonna go with the girls,” and jogs away from us.

Alex and I both look at Carlos.

Carlos holds up his hands. “What?” he asks defensively, completely oblivious.

“You just dissed Kiara in front of Destiny,” Alex says.

“I didn’t dis her.” He leans in and whispers, “I was makin’ sure she didn’t get a clue that I’m gonna propose to her.”

“You could’ve at least introduced her as your girlfriend.”

Carlos retrieves the discus and says, “Alex, the last thing she’d want to do is meet Destiny.”

“He doesn’t get it,” I murmur.

Alex braces his arms on Carlos’s shoulders. “Does Destiny think you have a girlfriend?”

“Why the hell would that matter?”

“Because, Carlos, she was flirtin’ with you big-time.”

“So what? Girls flirt with me all the time. That doesn’t mean I cheat on Kiara. She knows I wouldn’t fuck around on her.”

“Other girls aren’t your ex, dumbass,” Alex says. “Now go apologize to Kiara, and fix this. Beg, if you have to.”

“She thinks you don’t want to marry her,” I add.

“Shit,” Carlos says. “I asked you all to look for Mamá’s jewelry box ’cause she said if we finally found it I could give Kiara the ring Papá gave her. It’s at the jeweler bein’ cleaned. I was gonna take her to Ravinia tomorrow and propose durin’ intermission.” He rubs the back of his neck and lets out a long, slow breath. “I gotta figure this out.”

Back at the house, the girls are standing in the front yard. Kiara puts on a brave face, but it’s obvious she’s been crying.

“You told me you were over D-Destiny,” Kiara tells Carlos. “But that’s obviously not true. I’m g-g-going back to Colorado tonight. I’m tired of waiting around for s-s-something that’s never going to happen.”

“I was over Destiny the second you put those stupid cookie magnets in my locker in high school,” Carlos tells her.

“I d-don’t believe you.”

“I wanted to make it special for you, but what the hell … I might as well do it now.” Carlos takes a deep breath. “Marry me, Kiara,” he blurts out in front of everyone.

“Why?” she asks, challenging him.

“Because I love you,” he says, walking up to her and bending down on one knee while he takes her hand in his, “and I want to go to sleep with you every night and wake up seein’ your face every mornin’, I want you to be the mother of my children, I want to fix cars with you and eat your crappy tofu tacos that you think are Mexican. I want to climb mountains with you and be challenged by you, I want to argue with you just so we can have crazy hot makeup sex. Marry me, because without you I’d be six feet under … and because I love your family like they’re my own … and because you’re my best friend and I want to grow old with you.” He starts tearing up, and it’s shocking because I’ve never seen him cry. “Marry me, Kiara Westford, because when I got shot the only thing I was thinkin’ about was comin’ back here and makin’ you my wife. Say yes, chica.”

Kiara is crying now. “Yes!” she says.

We all give our congratulations and talk to a couple of neighbors across the street who witnessed the scene, but when I turn back around I notice that Nikki disappeared.

“Where’s Nik?” I ask Brittany.

Brittany points to the house. “I asked her to go in your closet and get me one of your zippered hoodies. I’m freezing.”

My closet? Oh, hell. I rush to my room and find Nikki searching for a hoodie hanging in my closet. If she sees the Glock …

“Hey,” I say, standing in front of her. I start closing the doors, blocking her from my suit. Is it in the same spot as I left it? Did she find it? What the hell am I gonna say if she asks me about it? I could play dumb, but I’ve never been able to pull that off successfully.

“Hey,” she says back. “Brittany told me to come in here and get a jacket for her.”

“I’ll get one,” I say, steering her away from my closet.

Nikki looks at me, confused. “What’s wrong?”

I’ve got a gun stashed in my closet. “Nothin’.”

“You sure? You look agitated.”

“I am.” I want to bang my head against the wall, because she’s onto me. “I wanted to tell you somethin’.”

“What?”

Now I’ve got to come up with something on the fly. “I’m fallin’ in love with you,” I blurt out.

Oh, shit. Did that really come out of my mouth? I’ve never said that to a girl before, and promised myself that I’d never say it if I didn’t mean it.

The scariest part is that I did.

34

Nikki

After Luis said the L word, I pretended that I heard Brittany calling my name and practically ran out of his room. I ignored the fact that he said it, and he hasn’t brought it up again.

On Wednesday, I decide to go to work with him because we kind of need to talk about Sunday. I don’t want to make a big deal about it, but I don’t want to throw around the L word like Marco and I did.

Luis now works for his cousin. Enrique’s Auto Body is located on the south side of Fairfield, on the corner of Washington Street and Main Street. It’s on an intersection where gang members used to hang out. This particular part of Fairfield was famous for weekly drive-by shootings when I was in grade school. Even though there was a front-page article in the local newspaper a while back about the absence of gang activity in recent years, I get an eerie feeling just being here.

“This is it,” Luis says when we pull up to one of the three parking spaces out front.

My eyes zero in on the old, random bullet hole marks on the side of the building as Luis leads me inside.

A guy with tattoos running up and down his arms is bent over a car’s engine. He’s wearing a dirty T-shirt and pants that need a good washing. “Hey, ese,” the guy says.

Luis motions to me. “This is Nikki.”

“Encantado de conocerte, Nikki. Soy Enrique, el primo de Luis.”

“She doesn’t speak Spanish, Enrique,” Luis tells him.

Enrique laughs. “Sorry. You look Mexican.”

“Not all Mexicans speak Spanish,” I counter.

“All the Mexicans I know do,” he says. “Hell, a majority of Mexicans I know don’t even speak English.”

“My dad thought it was more important to perfect his English. We don’t speak Spanish at home.”

Enrique shakes his head, as if my dad’s theory doesn’t sit well with him. “To each his own.”

Luis walks over and looks under the hood of the car Enrique was just working on. “Got a leaky gasket?” he asks Enrique.

“Sí. It needs a tune-up and—”

Enrique freezes when a girl walks in the shop. She looks like she’s in her twenties, and she obviously knows Luis, because she runs up and gives him a big hug the second she sees him.

“You look like a man, Luis,” she says, then rubs the stubble on his face. “The last time I saw you, this was peach fuzz.”

Luis brushes her hand away. “Thanks for embarrassin’ me in front of mi novia, Isa.”

“Alex didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend,” she says. She looks surprised to see me standing a few feet away from him. “Oh, I didn’t see you there. I’m Isabel, an old friend of Luis’s brother.”

I smile back. “Nice to meet you.”

Enrique, who’s been silent since Isa walked in, wipes his hands on his pants. I see him swallowing a few times, as if he’s nervous. “Hi, Isa,” he says with a big grin on his face. “I’m glad you’re here. Really. I hardly ever see you.”

“I’ve been busy working,” she tells him.

“I know. I wish you came by more.”

Isa bites her lip nervously. “My car has been revving when I press on the gas, as if it doesn’t want to go. I thought you could check it out.”

“Absolutely,” Enrique says enthusiastically. “Give me your keys. I’ll take a look at it right now. Luis, head out to the back lot. I lined up cars that need oil changes.”

Luis tells me to wait for him while he changes into his work coveralls. I chat with Isabel for a few minutes, until Luis comes back.

“That’s definitely a fashion statement,” I joke, taking in his oversized blue coveralls covering him from neck to ankle.

He points his thumb toward the back room. “You want to wear one? If you like ’em so much, I’ve got a spare in the back.”

“No, thanks.”

He pulls a toolbox off one of the shelves and motions for me to follow him. The sun is shining bright in the sky, and today it’s warm, although with the fall Chicago weather, you never know what each day will be like. I sit on the ground in front of the car Luis is working on and lift my face to the sun.

“Is Enrique in a gang?” I ask so only he can hear. “I saw his tattoos.”

“He’s an OG—an Original Gangster … not too active anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

He shrugs. “It means he’s an old-timer, not a foot soldier. OGs like Enrique only get called on when there’s somethin’ big goin’ down. He stays pretty much to himself, but … you know … loyalty runs deep.”

“He likes Isabel,” I tell him.

“I know.” He sits on one of those rolling dollies and pulls out tools from the toolbox. “But he said she’s turned him down every time he asks her out. She’s kind of hopelessly pining for the guy she was in love with in high school.”

A pang of regret that I spent so much time hopelessly mourning my doomed relationship with Marco settles inside me. It was a waste, and I can never get that time back. “Was it a bad breakup?”

He stills. “They didn’t actually break up. He died.”

“That’s so awful.”

Luis doesn’t look at me. “He was Alex’s best friend.”

“How did he die?”

“He got shot.”

Questions start swirling through my head. “By a rival gang?”

“No. By his own gang.” He looks sad as he sits on the wooden dolly and stares at the ground.

“I don’t get it, Luis. Why would someone even join a gang?”

“Some people don’t have a choice,” he says before lying down on the dolly and rolling his upper body under the car.

I tap his leg.

He slides back out and looks up at me.

“There’s always a choice. You didn’t join a gang even though your brothers did.” I lean down and kiss him. “You didn’t take the easy way out. I love you for that.”