Seeds of Tomorrow

53

Gladys' passing hadn't been unexpected but it was hard for Victor nonetheless. It was one more person cut from his life. First Raquel, then his son, and now his abuela. Well, maybe it wasn't that his son was gone but he may as well have been because it sure the fuck felt that way.

None of it certainly helped with his loneliness or his drinking.

"Man, you worse than Frankie with that shit," Pops had told him the Sunday afternoon, "Shit, it barely fuckin' noon and you already drinking, fool."

Victor groaned, "It's my day off, the fuck off me with that shit," he muttered, pouring tequila over some ice.

"You gonna kill your fuckin' liver, fool," Pops snapped.

Like all the fuckin' dope his old man had put in his body had been so much better? Shit, he was one to talk but then again Pops thought he was better than everyone because he got his shit together as a middle-aged adult.

He'd been a few drinks in when she showed up with Sergio. Things had been bad with that new fool and she felt bad about what had happened to Gladys.

No matter what Raquel had done to him, Victor couldn't bring himself to hate her. And the more lonely he felt, the bitterness began to be replaced by a longing for her.

It was nearly eight that night, he'd ordered them Chinese food through the door dash, and were sitting in the dining room together, eating alone. It felt like old times. Good times, before she'd been driven into the arms of that skinny fucking fool. Though, it was more like driven onto the cock of him but potatoes, potahtoes. She'd picked the fool over him.

What a shitty fucking thought. That the man who had nothing to offer was more appealing than the man who she swore she wanted to spend forever with.

Fucking bitch.

But he missed her and was so low he would have believed anything she told him. And when she told him that she missed him and their family, it was what he wanted to hear.

Pops's nosey ass occasionally wheeled into the dining area, giving disapproving looks before acting as if he were doing something beyond snooping and judging.

Once Sergio began acting tired, he suggested that the little boy go lie down in Serafin's bedroom. They'd put bunk beds in the room for when Sergio got to stay the night finally. Victor really just wanted to be alone with Raquel and she'd taken the hint.

"Are you fucking slow, fool?" Pops asked the second he caught Victor alone.

For a fool in a wheelchair, dude was fucking everywhere. Mother fucker picked up right where Gladys left off with the not minding his own business.

Victor clicked his tongue at his father without saying a word and disappeared into his bedroom.

Raquel was lying on his swap-meet blanket, the kind everybody and their momma had. It was plush black with a huge tiger printed on it. Maybe a little tacky but that shit was comfortable as a mother fucker.

She looked damn good too.

"You want me to put something on the TV?" He asked, handing her a drink before joining her on the bed.

"Shit, go for it," she said, slurring her words a little.

Victor flicked on the Roku, finding some true crime show on Investigation Discovery because he knew she loved that stuff.

"Do you hate me?" she asked him, flipping her thick burgundy hair over her shoulder, exposing the coffee milk-colored skin of her neck.

He clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth and took a sip of his tequila, "I never hated you," he admitted, "That don't mean that you didn't...fucking...that you didn't rip the heart out my chest though."