Read Maldeamores (Lovesick) (Heightsbound #0.5) for Free Online Page B

until dinnertime and Yari is at the dentist. Usually I’d go find Luciano but I’m scared to see him. He’ll say something about what happened and then I’ll die of embarrassment. But it’s hot in the apartment and my skin is itching to leave. Maybe I’ll just go sit on the stoop for a little bit and people-watch. See if anybody is out there.
    I check my hair once more and then I fly down the stairs. I can smell all of the neighbors’ dinners starting to cook and the odors fill the stairwell. Mami will bring something home with her because on the nights she works late she has to cook for the old man she takes care of. She’ll fix extra and then bring it home for us. His has to go into the blender because he has no teeth left to chew with.
    Mami wears turquoise scrubs to work and she takes care of two different people who can’t take care of themselves. She says she’s got practice already from my dad and then laughs like it’s the funniest joke. My dad hasn’t been around at all, he left when I was one. Luciano’s dad left too, and now he’s the only boy in our family if you don’t count Hemi’s boys, and believe me, nobody does.
    But I got my eyes from my dad and my mom says all of my skinny bones came from him too.
    She says, “Look at my hips!” when we stand side by side in the mirror, and she’s right, my hips don’t look like hers.
    Luciano looks like his dad—that’s where he got freckles and his smile. His hair was even blondish when he was little, but it’s gone dark now like mine. Luciano looks strong and muscular and he also looks tough. Guys don’t mess with him much on the street because word got around that Luciano isn’t scared to fuck anybody up. But at home we can’t talk like that or even act like we’re street. Our moms would have our heads on sticks and feed us our own two feet for dinner if they knew how differently we acted outside of the house, especially Luciano. Titi would send Luciano to military school and to DR for the summer. It’s like at home he’s still a son and on the corner he’s a man. And not just a regular man, but a man who gets whatever he wants. Luciano wants to be just like Jaylee. I’m not dumb; I know what he does.
    I plop my butt down on the top of the stoop; I like to steer clear of the last stairs. That way I can pop up quick and run inside if anything bad happens. Not like people are getting shot on the sidewalk every day, but it happens enough for me to always keep my guard up.
    The sun is hot and sticky even though I’m wearing a halter top. I wander over to the bodega and buy myself an orange soda. The guy behind the counter hands me a straw and a bag, bypassing the line of people waiting to purchase lottery tickets or beer and loose cigarettes.
    “Hey, Belén, how are you?”
    I put two quarters down on the little counter in front of the Plexiglas window. I smile and say thank you and he hands me a pack of gum. I always get stuff for free at my corner deli. I think the guy has a crush on Mami. I can kind of tell from the way that he looks at her. I blow the paper off my straw and stick it in the can, but I keep the bag around it just because that’s the way Luciano does it.
    He’s standing on the corner with friends when I head back to the stoop. I look down at the ground so I can pretend I didn’t see him and that I don’t care what he’s doing. They are speaking mostly in Spanish. There are a lot of FOBs around here, or hicks, like we call them. They don’t know how to ride the subway when they get here or even which way is downtown. Luciano and I both speak English better than Spanish. But Luciano is pretty good at talking to other people in either language.
    We look up at the same time and our eyes meet. I look down quickly and I can feel my face turn red. Maybe I shouldn’t be embarrassed—he’s the one who kissed me. But I really wanted it, and when he had me against the refrigerator I was begging for the kiss. When he was