Chapter 6: The Taco Pact
The neon sign above the stand buzzed like an angry insect, casting everything in a sickly amber glow. I stood at the edge of the pavement, hands shoved in the pockets of my hoodie, watching the steam curl off the griddle where a man with tattooed forearms flipped tortillas with practiced ease. The evening air smelled of lime and charred meat, and for a moment I let myself pretend this was just a normal thing. Two guys, tacos, bullshit about class and homework.
I'd been early. Of course I'd been early. Jordan had asked where I was going, and I'd told her the truth for once, which felt like a small rebellion even if it was just street food with a near stranger. She'd smiled, said have fun, and the wrongness of that had followed me all the way across campus.
Andres appeared through the haze of exhaust and lamplight, and my stomach dropped before I even registered why. Because he wasn't alone.
Bianca walked half a step behind him, her chin-length black bob swinging with each stride, her arms crossed over that fitted gray cardigan she wore like armor. She was looking at her phone, or pretending to, and when she glanced up and saw me, her face went through three expressions in under a second. Surprise. Composure. And then, like a door slamming shut, cold dismissal.
"Daniel!" Andres's voice boomed across the lot. He clapped me on the shoulder with a hand that dwarfed mine, his grin wide and genuine. "You made it. Hope you don't mind, I brought company. Bianca was threatening to starve, and I told her this place has the best al pastor in the city."
"Rojas," Bianca said, flat. No warmth. No acknowledgment of anything that had ever passed between us. Her eyes raked over me, taking in the frayed cuffs of my hoodie, the slouch in my posture, and filing it all under the category of waste of space.
"Andres," I said, forcing my mouth into something resembling a smile. "Good to see you." The words scraped against my teeth. She knew exactly what I meant, and the flicker in her dark eyes told me she understood. “Four days,” that flicker said. “Four days since you were inside me, and now you're eating tacos with my boyfriend like it's nothing.”
Andres didn't notice. He was already ordering, rattling off combinations with the confidence of a man who'd grown up arguing with taqueros since he was old enough to reach the counter. I watched him, really watched him, and I understood why Bianca had chosen him. He was solid. Grounded. The kind of person who made plans and executed them, who never doubted the shape of his own life.
I was the shape of her doubt.
We took a table near the edge of the light, a wobbly plastic thing with a missing corner. Andres slid in across from me, Bianca beside him, and the geometry of it put us in a direct line of sight. She could avoid looking at me, but I could see everything. The way her fingers tapped against the side of her cup. The way she crossed and uncrossed her legs under the table. The tension in her jaw that had nothing to do with the food.
"So, Rojas." Andres tore into his first taco with unapologetic enthusiasm. "Tell me about this research project you and Bianca were on. She never talks about it. Gets all tight-lipped and mysterious."
"Does she?" I asked, and then, because I was a coward who couldn't help himself, I essayed a look at her. Bianca's nostrils flared. "It's not that interesting. Data analysis, mostly. Some survey coding. Bianca does the heavy lifting."
"Bullshit," Bianca said, and both Andres and I startled at the snap in her voice. "He does his share. More than most." She glanced at her boyfriend, and the contempt in her face melted into something softer, more practiced. "I'm just hard on him because he deserves it."
Andres laughed, oblivious, and reached over to squeeze her knee. "That's my girl. Never lets anyone coast." He turned back to me, mouth full of meat and cilantro. "She's like that with everyone. You get used to it. It means she cares."
I watched Bianca's hand cover his on her leg, and something cold and heavy settled in my chest. She cared, alright. Just not about the same things he thought she did.
"You first gen?" Andres asked, redirecting with the ease of a man who'd never met a conversation he couldn't steer. "You mentioned your folks didn't go to college. Same here. My dad drives a truck, my mom cleans offices. They think I'm some kind of genius for reading a textbook without crying."
"Mine thought I was wasting my time," I said, and the truth of it surprised me. "That I should've gone to trade school, gotten a real job."
"But you didn't." Andres nodded, approving. "That's the thing, right? We make our own way. Nobody hands us a map."
"Nobody hands us anything," Bianca murmured, and I caught the twist in her voice. The bitterness she wore like a second skin. When I looked at her, she was looking at Andres with something I couldn't name. Not love, exactly. Recognition. The acknowledgment that they were the same species, and I was not.
Andres stood suddenly, brushing crumbs off his pressed shirt. "Another round. You want anything, babe?"
"I'm fine," she said.
"I'll take a horchata," I said, and he nodded before disappearing toward the counter, his broad back cutting through the crowd of students.
The silence that followed was its own kind of violence.
Bianca leaned forward, elbows on the table, voice low and sharp as a blade. "What are you doing?"
"Eating tacos," I said, and I kept my voice flat. "Your boyfriend invited me."
"Don't," she bit out, and for a flicker of a second I saw the woman from the park bench, the one who'd trembled in my arms and said “you make me feel valued.” The mask slipped, and beneath it was pure, raw fear. "Don't you fucking do this, Daniel. Don't use him."
"Use him?" I laughed, and it came out broken. "I'm not the one who brought him here. I'm not the one pretending we never happened."
Her hand slammed against the table, and the plastic shuddered. "We *didn't* happen. I told you. It's over."
"Then why are you shaking?"
She looked down at her hands, and I saw the tremor I'd already noticed. When she looked up, her eyes were wet, and the sight of it was worse than her contempt. "Because I'm not the girl who cheats on her boyfriend. But I'm sitting here, and I did. So tell me what that makes me."
The words hung between us, heavy as smoke.
Andres returned with a paper cup in each hand, grinning at whatever the guy at the counter had said to him. He set the horchata in front of me and dropped a kiss on top of Bianca's head. She blinked, smiled, became herself again.
"Everything good?" he asked, looking between us.
"Fine," she said, and she reached for his hand.
"Great conversation," I said, lifting my cup, and I drank the sweet cold liquid and felt it sit like ice in my stomach.
He'd pulled me into the center of the lie without even knowing it. I was sitting across from the man whose life I'd helped shatter, sharing food with him while his girlfriend's eyes flashed between loathing and longing. And the worst part, the part I couldn't shake as Andres launched into a story about his advisor and Bianca laughed at exactly the right moment, the dutiful girlfriend, the perfect partner?
I didn't want to leave.
Andres laughed at something I didn't catch, and I nodded along like a puppet, my mind still snagged on what Bianca had said. What that makes me. I didn't have an answer for her. I wasn't sure I had one for myself.
"So what's your deal, Rojas?" Andres leaned back, tipping his cup toward me. "You seeing anyone? It’s Jordan right? Or are you married to the research grind like Bianca was before I showed up?"
The question landed like a stone in still water. Bianca's fingers tightened around her cup, and I watched her throat move as she swallowed.
"Uh." I bought myself a second with the horchata. "Yeah, I'm seeing Jordan. She's... we moved in together a few weeks ago."
"No shit, congrats, man." Andres's grin was genuine. "That's a big step. What's she like?"
What's she like. The question sat in my chest, and I could feel Bianca's eyes on me, sharp and watchful, waiting to see what I'd say. And for once, I wanted to tell the truth. The real truth, the one I'd been choking on for months.
"Honestly?" I set the cup down. "It's been weird lately."
"Weird how?" Andres leaned in, and his openness was almost painful. A guy who listened because he actually gave a shit.
I rubbed the back of my neck, deciding where to start. "She's been... different. She used to ride me about everything. My grades, my habits, the way I left my shoes by the door. Constant criticism, like I couldn't do anything right."
Bianca's jaw tightened, but she didn't look away.
"And now she's switched it up. All sweet, all 'I'm sorry, I was scared, I'll do better.'" I let out a breath. "It's like she's reading from a script. One day she's tearing me down, the next she's making me breakfast and telling me I'm her whole world. I can't tell which one is real."
Andres frowned. "That's rough, man. Sounds like she's playing games."
"Yeah." I met his eyes, then let mine drift to Bianca. "And I think she's lying to me about something. I just can't figure out what."
The flicker of reaction was almost imperceptible. Bianca's expression didn't change, but something in her eyes hardened, a wall going up. Like I'd said something that struck too close to home.
"She did something yesterday morning," I said, and I let the words come, fueled by the horchata and the strange intimacy of this plastic table. "I woke up and she was already dressed, standing over me with this look on her face. Said our night together made her feel alive. Like we'd done something profound instead of just..." I trailed off, shrugged. "You know."
Andres's eyebrows rose, but he didn't interrupt.
"She had a trash bag. She'd gone through my stuff while I was still sleeping and bagged up my grandmother's cookbook. My old jacket. A picture of my parents that's cracked down the middle. My notebooks, all the drafts of my thesis chapters." I heard my voice flatten, going cold. "She was going to toss it all. Never asked. Just decided my history was garbage."
"Shit." Andres's face had gone serious, the easy grin long gone. "That's not okay, man."
"No," I agreed. "It's not."
"What'd you do?" Bianca's voice cut in, sharp and almost accusatory. "You just let her?"
The challenge in her tone was a dare. So I stepped into it.
"I confronted her," I said, and I let them see the edge in my eyes. "I told her she'd lost control, and it wasn't going to happen again. That I wasn't going to sit there and let her treat me like a project she could fix or discard at her convenience."
Andres nodded slowly, but Bianca's breath had gone short. Her knuckles were white around her cup.
"Then I took her on the kitchen counter," I said, and I let my voice drop. "I didn't ask. I didn't give her room to twist the conversation. I just put my hand on the back of her neck and showed her exactly who was in charge. She fought at first, the way she likes to, but I didn't let up. I held her down, made her understand that the games ended with me. She didn't get to decide what was important to me. She didn't get to throw away pieces of my life like they were nothing. And by the end of it, she was the one on her knees, apologizing with her mouth full, and when she looked up at me, there wasn't a hint of that smug control left."
The table went quiet. A car honked somewhere in the distance, and the taquero's griddle hissed.
Bianca's eyes were dark, unreadable, and her lips were parted just slightly. I watched her swallow. Watched the way her chest rose and fell a little too fast. Jealousy. Or something like it. The thought of another woman on her knees for me had hit a nerve she couldn't hide.
"That's..." Andres started, then stopped. He blinked, shaking his head. "I mean, damn, man. That's a lot."
"It's fine." I shrugged, reaching for my cup. "We're all adults. I don't mind talking about it. It's not like I need a witness, but it helps to say it out loud."
Andres let out a low whistle. "Yeah, fair enough. You gotta get that shit off your chest sometimes." He glanced at Bianca, and I saw his brow furrow. "Babe? You okay? You look like you swallowed a lemon."
Bianca's face snapped back into its usual composure, but it was a beat too slow. "I'm fine," she said, too quickly. "Just. Surprised." Her voice was clipped, controlled. "Didn't expect dinner conversation to go this direction."
Andres laughed, a little nervous now, and I saw him register the tension in the air. He reached over and put a hand on her shoulder, which she accepted like it was an obligation. "Yeah, man," he said, and his tone had shifted, the easy confidence dimmed to something more measured. "Maybe less details."
I smiled, and I let it be a calm, steady thing. "Sure. My bad."
I took another sip of horchata, and over the rim of the cup, I watched Bianca look anywhere but at me. The heat between us was a living thing, crackling under the table, and Andres sat in the middle of it, oblivious to the storm he'd wandered into.
The funny thing was, he'd invited me into this. He'd brought me here, into the center of his life, and I'd walked right in and told him exactly what I'd done to the woman who'd tried to break me. And Bianca had heard it. She'd heard every word, and she'd felt something shift in her chest, something she couldn't control.
That was the worst part of all.
I didn't want to leave. But I was starting to understand why Bianca was afraid of me. Because we both knew, now, that this wasn't over. Not by a long shot.