Mariana Zapata

“My schnecke. My little snail, do you know that’s what it means? It’s a term of affection in my country. My love. My snail. I don’t want to waste more time. I have nothing to hide and neither do you.”

He was the cutest little boy I’d ever seen—in the daylight—but somehow he didn’t understand that staring at someone while they were sleeping was pretty damn creepy. Really creepy.

“Whose turn is it to help me with dinner?”
All the silence needed was crickets in the background.
Mac barked from inside the house like he was volunteering.
I ruffled their hair. “Both of you are going to help? It’s my lucky day.”

The thing with being an adult sometimes, was that it sucked.

“I think a bug flew into my mouth, Goo. I’m all right.”
He winced. “I hate it when they do that. They don’t taste like chicken.”
What the hell?

In my head, I added “fucker” to the end of that. In reality, I did not. Sometimes I even amazed myself.

“We’re good,” he announced to the world, steadily.
Like I wanted to be friends with him by that point.

“Can my friends spend the night?”
My initial thought was no, please, Jesus Christ, no.
I didn’t even have to try and pull the memories of the last time his “friends” had slept over. Friends? More like demons from the ninth circle of hell.

“These are spicy. Can you handle it?”
I could only blame myself for the shit that came out of Louie’s mouth next. I really could. Because I said the same thing in front of him a dozen times in the past. “I’m Mexican. Yeah.”

“I’m going to tell you the same thing I tell Josh: when you ask a really stupid question, you’re not getting an answer.”