wanted at first,” Chuito started, making it obvious he was as suspicious as Marcos. “But I don’t think that’s it. She’s been wearing your jacket around town, and today I heard her tell Jules she’s been putting out messages to you on craigslist.”
“What kind of messages?” Marcos pulled his earphones out of his pocket. “Hold on, let me check it out.”
He plugged in his earphones, letting him look at his phone and talk to Chuito at the same time. He typed in craigslist on the search engine and waited for it to pull up.
“What did you two talk about that night?” Chuito asked, clearly trying to fill in the silence.
“I don’t remember,” Marcos lied, because he had relieved every moment of that night a million times in his head. He was still looking at his phone, now paging through the dozens of categories on craigslist. “Where do you think she would put the message?”
“Do I know?”
“She didn’t say?”
“No, she just told Jules she’s been posting messages on craigslist, and every weirdo in Miami has been messaging her. That’s got to mean personals or something, right?”
Marcos went to the personals. He was silent for a long while, and Chuito just let him search. His eyes got wide as he looked through them. “Have you seen the shit on here?”
“What did you say to her that night? Really. Try and remember.”
Marcos sighed, his gaze still on his phone, but he tried to sum up the conversation for his cousin. “I said sorry for running into her. She told me it wasn’t my fault. I told her I was probably getting a DUI. I thought it’d make her feel better knowing I was going to get screwed too, but she told me to leave. As if that would get me off. I’d already called 911. I was just keeping her company. It’s not like I was talking her up or anything.”
“Then I don’t get it.”
“What kind of messages do you think she’s posting to me? This can’t be the right place. Is there another section?” Marcos was having a very hard time wrapping his mind around the idea of a woman like Katie Foster being interested in him for anything more than maybe paying him to do work on her car. “It’s got to be money. She knows you’re rich. She probably thinks you’ll pay her off if she tries to sue.”
“I don’t think its money. I think she’s into you.”
He laughed in disbelief. “I wish.”
“Marc—”
“I’d definitely hit that,” Marcos confirmed without remorse, realizing just then that he was drunker than he thought for admitting out loud to Chuito something he didn’t even want to admit to himself.
He’d been trying to live an honest life for the past four months simply for the memory of a woman he’d spent five minutes with.
“You know she’s a high school teacher.”
Marcos’s smile grew devious. “Where were teachers like that when we were in school?”
Chuito grunted in disgust. “There’s something wrong with you.”
“I like the gringas.” Marcos’s smile grew wider, though it hadn’t been true before Katie had ran into him. He went back to looking at his phone rather than analyze how one pretty gringa could change his preference so completely. “I need help with this. Mia!”
“Who’s Mia?”
“Angel’s cousin.”
“You’re going to ask one woman to help you look up an ad another woman is posting to you on craigslist? What the hell?”
“It’s not like it’s that kind of message.”
There was no way he believed pretty Katie Foster, with those innocent eyes, was even remotely interested in him—but he was intrigued enough to ask Mia for help with craigslist.
Mia walked up with her eyebrows raised curiously.
“Okay.” Marcos turned to Mia and explained, “This gringa Katie Foster that I got into an accident with back in January is supposedly posting messages to me on craigslist. Do you know where to find them?”
Mia took his phone from him and stared at the craigslist postings on the screen. “What kind of
Learning to Kill: Stories