By 3pm Hayley and I were finished for the day and we walked down the busy central London streets whilst the January wind blew through us, making me tighten my scarf around my neck.

“What are your plans for the rest of today?” Hayley asked me as we walked briskly to the tube station.

“I’m going to see Ario and some of the guys,” I said to her.

Hayley smiled, “How’s your Spanish coming along?”

“Pretty poor,” I admitted with a sheepish smile. “I basically only know insults. That’s all the boys are good at teaching me, except for Carlos and sometimes Ario and Paulo when they’re in the mood for real teaching.”

Hayley laughed, “Typical of teenage boys.”

“Does nineteen still count as a teenager?” I asked her as we descended the steps down to the London Underground.

“Well, kind of,” she shrugged tucking her bag underneath her arm as we made our way down. “I forgot that you’re basically a year older than me even though we’re in the same year at Uni.”

“Yeah,” I smiled. “What are you doing for the rest of the day?”

“My sketches. What else?” Hayley said with a guilty smile that had me cracking up again.

***

The two of us got onto the packed tube and after several stops we were in the part of the city that we called home. I spotted Ario Santiago waiting for me outside the station with a glum look on his face which automatically made a smile grow on mine. I just found that expression of his so funny.

“Hola,” he smiled when he saw me coming.

“Hola to you too,” I replied with a grin. “Have you been waiting long?”

“No, not long,” Ario shook his head and then nodded politely at Hayley who sent him a little smile back.

The two didn’t really talk much and that was probably because of the things that had happened in the past. Also, not to mention, Eli hated Ario just as much as he hated the rest of the Santiagos, and vice versa. I was just glad Hayley and Ario were civil with each other.

“I’ll see you later, Coral,” Hayley gave me a hug.

“Later,” I smiled back before she started making her way home.

“Are you hungry?” my cousin asked me as we walked through the crowded streets of the centre of our borough.

“Not really,” I answered. “Why? Are you?”

“Nah,” he shook his head, pushing his hands deep into his pockets and walking with his blue eyed gaze low. “Just checking. We can eat dinner at home.”

“Yeah,” I agreed and then noticed the nice looking watch on his wrist. “I like your watch. Is it new?”

Ario smirked, “You could say that.”

I looked at him warily, “What do you mean?”

“I took it from someone who didn’t need it much anymore,” Ario shrugged. “He was quite cooperative. I didn’t even need to get a knife out.”

“Ario,” I hissed at him as people passed by us. “You can’t do that!”

“He’ll keep his mouth shut,” Ario only said. “Otherwise the boys and I will pay him another visit.”

I shook my head at him. By he and ‘the boys’ Ario meant his brothers Miguel and Manuel and his older cousin Diego. Carlos and Paulo rarely ever did their things like that when it came to normal people who weren’t involved in crime at all. Well, I wasn’t completely sure about Carlos as he never spoke about gang matters with me, but as for sixteen year old Paulo, I could say that he wasn’t one for terrorising civilians...only if his brothers pressured him.

“Are you pissed at me?” Ario poked my side through my coat.

“Pretty much,” I answered. “You shouldn’t do things like that to people. You have money, you could buy a watch like that yourself.”

Ario sighed, probably not expecting me to have taken it all so seriously.

“We caught him harassing a girl and Diego of all people was the most angered by it,” Ario mumbled an explanation. “So we figured we’d teach him a lesson. We beat him up a little and took some of the stuff he’d already stolen from other people. There was no way a low life like that could afford such an expensive watch. We were the heroes, Coral.”

I thought about it with a little smile on my face when he called themselves heroes, “Well I guess in a way, yeah.”

Ario glanced down at me with his bright blue eyes. Satisfied that I wasn’t as annoyed at him anymore, he smiled.

“So how do you feel about arepas for dinner?” he asked me in his low tone.

“Oh, the sandwich things?” I widened my eyes and grinned. “I love them.”

“Yeah. The sandwich things,” Ario repeated my words with an amused look. “Paulo is the best at making the dough mixture but I can do the filling.”

“That sounds good to me,” I replied.

“Say that in Spanish,” he said.

“Um...” I had to think about it. “Me parece bueno.”

“Close,” he said with a half smile. “It’s me parece bien.”

“Thanks,” I murmured.

“You’re getting there,” he said with encouragement.

“It’s been over a year,” I said with a sarcastic tone.

“Well we haven’t been teaching you consistently,” he admitted.

“You mean, you haven’t,” I corrected him with a grin. “Carlos does whenever he has the time.”

Ario rolled his eyes, “Well...you know what I mean.”

“You’ve been busy with other things?” I teased him. “Like what?”

Ario had already quit school when he was only sixteen, like Landon had.

“Football,” Ario said. “You already know that.”

“Yeah but I didn’t think you were on a team or anything,” I replied. “I thought you were just playing friendly matches like once a week.”

“Ouch,” Ario put a hand to the left side of his chest. “Your little faith in me hurts, hermana. I’ve actually joined the local club so I’m training a lot. They might put me on the team soon.”

“That’s great,” I laughed. “Do you enjoy it a lot then?”

“Yeah,” Ario nodded. “I do. You should come and watch another match when I make it. A real one against an actual team this time, not just one of our inside matches.”

“Me parece bien,” I said. “I’ll be sure to come if I can.”

Ario laughed at my basic Spanish and ruffled my hair, “That was a pretty good accent.”

“Then why did you laugh?” I was grinning at him.

He unsuccessfully tried to stop smiling so widely, “Nothing.”

“Say it,” I gripped his sleeve with a challenging look, stopping him from running away from me like he usually did when he was caught in situations like this one.

“You should make a ‘th’ sound for the ‘c’ in parece,” Ario explained.

“Don’t be a baby,” he chuckled at me when I sighed. “Anyways, how was art school?”

We spent the rest of the journey deep into East side territory talking about my classes and my design ideas. My current project was inspired by the Venezuelan culture. There was a lot of red, yellow and blue. It was Paulo who’d told me so much about it even though he was only three years old when he left his home. As a child, Paulo had asked so many questions about their country of origin and his older brothers and cousins had told him all the traditional myths and childhood stories over and over. The boys had never even been back since they’d left their country thirteen years ago.