Second Hand: A Tucker Springs Novel 2

humanity’ remark. You’re as much of an asshole as ever.”

    El had thought he was watching the kids because Rosa had to work, but when he showed up at her house at 6:30, he found her wearing tight black jeans and high-heeled boots and displaying a whole lot of cleavage. Not exactly the sort of thing she’d wear to wait tables, not even at Giuseppe’s.
“Christ, Rosa. Put on a sweater or something.”
    She hooked her hands under her breasts and lifted them a bit. “Fuck off, bro.”
“You didn’t tell me it was a date.”
“You didn’t ask.”
True enough. The fact was, the less El thought about what his sister got up to, the better. He was sure the feeling was mutual. “Who is he this time?”
She turned away to study her hair in the mirror. “Somebody I met.”
“No shit, Captain Obvious. Where at?”
“Out.”
He sighed and sat down on her couch. “You got three kids by three different dads, and not one of those sperm donors is worth a damn. When you gonna learn?”
“Just because you don’t date doesn’t mean I can’t.” She pinched her cheeks and reached for a tube of lipstick. “I ain’t cut out to be a nun.”
Which meant El was a monk. Which wasn’t entirely off the mark, which annoyed the hell out of him. “Do you ever stop to think about where you’re going and what you’re doing? Do you ever think of the future? Your kids’ future, maybe with a stable male role model in the picture?”
She bared her teeth at him in the mirror. “Oh, but sweetheart, if they need a male stick-in-the-mud, they can look to Uncle Emanuel.” She yelled down the hallway, “Let’s go, kids. I got places to be.”
“And men to do,” El said under his breath.
The only acknowledgement El received was a middle finger flipped his way.

    “What do you care that she’s on a date?” Denver asked El two hours later as they loaded clothes into side-by-side washing machines.
    El glanced around to make sure Rosa’s kids weren’t listening. They weren’t. They were running around the laundromat, playing hide-and-seek among the tables and chairs. The only other person around was a young woman wearing skin-tight sweatpants with Greek letters across her ass. She had on headphones and was handily ignoring the world.
    “It’s not that it’s a date,” El told Denver. “It’s that she’s being an idiot.”
Denver slammed the door to his washer and glanced sideways at El as he thumbed quarters into the machine. “You’re the most judgmental person I know.”
“It’s not my fault people are stupid.”
“Am I included in that assessment, Mr. Genius?”
El sighed and slammed his own washer shut. “Look. When she’s hurt and crying because another loser has left, she comes clean and tells me what she really wants. She says she wants a nice guy who’ll settle down with her. Take care of her and take care of the kids. Come to family dinners and help Abuela when she needs it. Somebody who’ll be part of the family.”
“Makes sense.” Denver shrugged and glanced down at the floor, his voice gruff as he added, “Nothing wrong with wanting that.”
“I’m not saying it’s wrong. But look at it this way: you work at Lights Out. Biggest, gayest club in town, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re standing here saying you wouldn’t mind finding somebody to settle down with, right?”
Denver’s jaw tensed and he took a step back. “I never said—”
“My point is, you have a couple hundred gay boys to pick from every night. But you don’t.”
Denver relaxed a bit, probably because he knew El wasn’t about to hound him on the settling down thing. “Club’s nothing but college boys looking to get laid.”
“Exactly.” El turned away to put his money into the slots. “Men in the straight clubs are no different. She meets these guys at the bar, takes them home within a week, then wonders why they turn out to be losers.”
“Where’s she supposed to meet them?”
“I don’t know. PTA meetings. Church. The grocery store.” El waved his hands to indicate the walls around them. “The fucking laundromat.”
Denver snorted. “I take it she don’t go to those places?”
“She does, actually, and guys ask her out, but you know what she says? She says they’re old or they’re fat. Or maybe they’re going bald. So she keeps choosing these drunken asshats at the bar, then wondering why they don’t turn out to be Mr. Right.”
“You think Mr. Right’s hanging out at Tucker Laund-ORama?”
Of