hips and look around the kitchen with what I hope is professional interest. “Very impressive.”
“Hang on a sec. I need to get out of this shirt, it’s a disaster.” Luis goes behind a tall, freestanding rack of metal shelves and grabs something white out of a duffel bag. Before I can fully register what he’s doing, he’s pulled his T-shirt over his head and put on a clean one. I get a flash of shoulder muscles and then he’s done, stuffing the old shirt into his bag and replacing it on the shelf.
I wish I’d known that was about to happen so I could’ve paid better attention.
Luis crosses to an industrial-sized refrigerator and pulls open the door. “Let’s see…oh yeah, we’re all set. We have chicken and potatoes already prepped for tomorrow. Not the right kind of potato, but it’ll do. No corn, but I can make that quick.” He starts pulling ingredients out and laying them across the counter, then selects a knife from a rack on the wall and hands it to me. “Can you chop some scallions?”
“Sure.” I take the knife gingerly. It’s the smallest one in the rack, but I’ve never handled anything quite so deadly-looking.
“There’s a cutting board below the counter.”
There are several. I shuffle through them, wondering if plastic or wood is better, but since Luis didn’t specify I end up just grabbing the one on top. I lay the scallions across it and turn them a few different ways, trying to figure out the best angle for cutting. By the time I’m halfway through the bunch, Luis looks like he’s been in the kitchen for hours. Pots are steaming, garlic is sautéing, and the chicken and potatoes are chopped into small, neat pieces. Luis puts down his knife, wipes the back of his hand across his forehead, then glances my way and grins.
“Take your time with that.”
I laugh for the first time all day. “I’m the worst prep assistant ever.”
“You haven’t seen Manny in here.” Luis adjusts a knob on a burner, and I speed up the rest of my chopping so I can finish and watch him work. He moves around the kitchen like he does on a baseball diamond: fluid and confident, as though he’s thinking ten steps ahead and knows exactly where he needs to be at all times. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
He reaches for a pair of tongs and glances my way, catching me staring. Busted. My cheeks flame as his crease in a smile. “What’s going on with you today?” he asks. “You were hunched over your computer for hours out there.”
“I…” I hesitate. There’s no way I can tell him the whole story. “I had a bad day. Knox and I had a fight. And, um, I think it’s my fault. Scratch that. I know it’s my fault.”
I watch his reaction carefully, because Luis still has friends at Bayview High. It’s possible he knows exactly what I’m talking about. Though, if he does, he hides it well. “Did you tell him that?” he asks.
“I tried. He’s not talking to me right now.”
Luis takes my cutting board full of scallions and dumps them into a bubbling pot. It smells amazing. I’m not sure how it’s going to be stew in ten minutes, but I won’t question his methods. “That sucks. You have to give people a chance to apologize.”
“It’s not his fault,” I say. “He’s just hurt. Stuff got out that shouldn’t have, and now everyone is gossiping and it’s a giant mess.”
Luis grimaces. “Man, I do not miss that school. It’s fucking toxic there.”
“I feel like I’m the one who’s toxic.” The words slip out of me before I think, and as soon as I say them my eyes start stinging. Damn it. I take the cutting board to the sink and rinse it so I can keep my head down.
Luis leans against the counter. “You’re not toxic. I don’t know what happened, but I do know that. Look, everybody does stuff they shouldn’t. I was an ass at Bayview a lot of the time. Then that whole situation with Jake and Addy and Cooper started getting bad, and things changed.” He’s cleaning the station in front of him now, as quickly as he did the prep work. “I used to talk to Pa about what was happening at school and he’d say, ‘Who do you want to be? The guy who goes along or the guy who stands up? This is