~5~

"Raf, I told you. You can't go for the car right away, you gotta stock up on ammo first or they'll catch you every God damned time....God! Why would you do that, man?" Enzo moaned into his headset. 

"Jesus, who shoved a stick up your skinny ass, Esé?" (homeboy) Raf teased, grunting a little at the game. Enzo tossed the controller aside when Rafael got himself caught and the game ended. 

"You suck at this," Enzo mumbled, glancing at the microwave clock in the kitchen. 10 minutes till 7... He still had some time. 

"I don't think I'm that bad..." 

Enzo started another game and gunshots filled his ears, blasting too loudly out of his chunky black headset. 

"Mierda, mierda, mierda! (Shit, shit, shit!) I'm caught," Rafael muttered only a minute after the game started. 

"I swear to God, Raf..." Enzo muttered, his thumbs flying over the controller as he tried desperately to win for their team. 

Enzo barely heard a faint knocking over the sound in his headphones, and he cursed. 

"Shit, Raf, I gotta go. We'll finish later, okay?" he said, scrambling to his feet and smoothing out his shorts. 

"Alright man. Hey, be safe, bueno?" (okay?) he said, suddenly in a serious tone. He reminded Enzo to be careful every time he was home alone with his Papa.

"I will. See you soon, Rafael," He tossed his headset on the coffee table and went to get the door for Aud, fixing his hair along the way. 

"I brought mace," Aud mentioned casually as soon as Enzo opened the door. 

"Always a good idea," he said bemusedly as she strolled past him into his cluttered, tiny living room. He was suddenly self conscious about the state of his home, and he began straightening up, tossing cans in corners and shirts over the back of the couch. 

"You can stop that. I've seen worse, trust me," Aud said, smiling. Enzo dropped the beer can he was holding back onto the floor, sending it spinning into the corner with his foot. 

"I figured you wouldn't care," Enzo said, relief showing on his face. "C'mon, your sweatshirt's upstairs."

Enzo passed by Papa's closed bedroom door, hoping he stayed asleep while Aud was here. He grasped the knob and glanced back at her, who was silently looking around the mustard colored lobby-like area upstairs. 

"I like your house," she said, following Enzo into his room. "The clutter is weirdly... comforting?" 

"If you say so," Enzo chuckled as he crossed the room to his closet where Aud's sweatshirt was hung on a wire hanger among all his other shirts. 

"Here," he said, handing it to her. "Sorry, I didn't think to wash it." 

Aud, shook her head and smiled, hugging it close to her chest. "I don't care." 

Enzo kicked a bunch of shirts that had fallen off their hangers back into the closet and closed the door, then made his way back to Aud. She was leaning in the doorway and squinting at the wall across the room. 

"How'd you get such a big hole in the wall?" she asked, squinting at the football sized hole underneath his tiny window. 

"Baseball bat. I hit it, like, three times," he said, glancing at it, then back at her. 

"Why?" 

A sharp pang of hurt sliced through his chest, and she must've seen it in his face that her question upset him. "Nevermind," she said quietly, averting her gaze from his face over to his dresser. 

"Is that you?" she asked, smiling a little bit and picking up a picture of him at seven years old, sitting cross legged in their front yard in all his gap-toothed glory. Enzo ran his hand through his hair nervously, feeling heat inching up towards his hairline. 

"Uhh, yeah," he said, going to join her at the dresser. She ran her finger over his face in the picture, smiling a little. "Aww," she chuckled as she put it down. 

"How about this?" she said, picking up a grainy picture of a young couple sitting on a picnic blanket at West Side park. The woman was leaning into the man, her head turned into his chest, laughing. The man had his arm slung over her shoulder, looking smug. He was holding a beer in the air with his other hand. Enzo's parents. 

Enzo took the other side of the frame so they were both holding it. He stared at it for a second, then shook his head, dropping it. She set it down quickly. 

"Do you want something to drink? I think we have orange juice," he said, quickly leaving his room and half-running down the stairs. 

"Actually, I kinda want to show you something I just found. Wanna come?" she asked, following him into the dimly lit, cluttered kitchen. Enzo turned around from his spot in front of the refrigerator, the single bulb inside the only light source in the room. She was peering out at him from behind the soft folds of her sweatshirt, inhaling deeply. He felt an irrational sense of pride that she'd noticed the bit of cologne he'd spritzed on it before she came. 

"How far is it?" he asked, leaning his backside against the fridge to close it. The room turned grey, almost dark. Aud shrugged, extracting her face from the sweatshirt. "Only like a mile or so. C'mon, it'll be fun!" 

Enzo glanced at the microwave. Papa wouldn't be up for another three or four hours. 

"Okay, fine. Just gimme a minute," Enzo said, grabbing a glass from a cabinet with no door and filling it with cool tap water. Aud leaned in the threshold between the kitchen and living room and watched as he shook three Asprin into his palm, almost methodically. Almost like this was a nightly routine. 

He grabbed the water and the pills and took them upstairs. Aud stood at the bottom of the staircase, her chin turned up towards the second floor. She watched Enzo stand in front of a closed door at the top of the steps. He paused for a second, then ducked into the room, his body taking on a new, sheltered looking state. 

Aud could hear muddled Spanish coming from someone in the room, then a more clear, rapid fire of it coming from Enzo. She liked how he sounded speaking Spanish. It was intense. He sounded angry. 

Enzo shouted something, then slammed the door and came down the stairs. She tried not to notice how tightly his jaw was clenched. 

"Okay, ready?" Enzo asked, wiping his hands on his pants, and Aud grinned. 

"Only if you are."