"Yeah? 'An Jus' who do you think you are?"

"I think that I'm the guy who just told you to knock it off. You'd be smart to listen."

"Back off, you illegal."

Rico let go of my arm and stepped in front of me so he was chest to chest with this guy. He was obviously not pleased with his comment. I took hold of his arm and tried to pull him away but he wasn't moving anywhere. He wanted blood.

He gets that from Homero.

"It's time to go."

"It's not. It won't be until I teach this guy a lesson."

Rico hand took hold of his shirt and I pulled on him harder. A small whimper played in the back of my mind and I turned to see Rose standing there, her blue eyes wide and her hands shaking. She's never dealt with violence well. Especially not towards people she cares about.

She gets that from Fiona.

"Rico, Rose."

He turned to look at her, his eyes that were so hard went soft, almost fearful. How does such a small girl have such a huge effect?

He let go of the opposing man roughly, shoving him back against the counter as if it were a punctuation to his unspoken sentence; I'm backing off, but I'll still kick your ass. We all left the place together, long forgetting the bottle of water as the still silence of the jeep took over. 

Not even the radio could make it loud in there.

The house was quieter when we got home, like all the joy of playing soccer in a muddy field had gone with us and died at the bar. Rose, slightly shaken by what she'd seen, went directly to her room at my house, leaving Rico and I in the living room together. He leaned against the television stand with his head down and arms crossed. 

I took my stance in front of him, but he didn't look up.

"What was that about?"

"Why did you reach for your gun?"

"Instinct," I replied, brushing off his question to repeat my own," What was that about?"

"Instinct."

My mouth opened a bit, almost confused at his words. Instinct? It was kind. Gentlemanly. Careful. Impulsive. These aren't common Hernandez traits. How was that instinct?

"It was an instinct to protect you."

I just stared at him.

"Don't look like that, you know damn well that I wasn't raised by my father," something in my face must have given me away because his eyes widened and he straightened," You didn't know that?"

I shook my head.

"He brought me into his house when I was 10. I thought everyone who knew I was a bastard knew that."

The rumor is that he was put into boarding school, I simply assumed it to be true. Never did I really believe that Homero would allow someone else to raise his son. Someone who could ruin them forever and make them soft and weak.

"Who were you with until then? Where were you?"

"I was with my abuela. She took care of me after my mother died."

"I don't..."

"Of course you don't, my father didn't want anyone to know that I spent the first years of my life hiding away from him. 'What kind of a man hides? What kind of a man turns away from his problems? What kind of a man fears his own father?' I've heard it all before."

"You didn't choose to hide away, though. It was your mother and grandmother. They kept you from your father those years, not the other way around."

"But he doesn't see it like that. He sees an 6 year old boy kicking a ball around on a dusty street with kids that can't even afford shoes. He sees a 9 year old running errands for the old man next door. He sees his son acting like a commoner."

"That doesn't sound so bad, being normal."

He looked up at me, studying me for a second before walking toward me. Rico stood there for a few seconds, just looking at me before suddenly he kissed my cheek and brushed past me. 

I was frozen in my spot. He had kissed my cheek the night he came here but only briefly before he went to lower places, it was nothing like that. This one was full of meaning beyond pleasure. It meant he was glad he told me. It meant he was more open with me.

It meant I was so much closer to getting Eduardo.