Hugo walked Veda out with his hand on her arm, and the door banged shut, and I stood with her lighter still in my fist.
The metal was warm from her pocket, and I hated how much I liked that.
My knuckles were still white where I had held on, and the desk had a dent in it now that I would have to look at every day.
Aurelio: Hugo's sister.
I said it out loud to make it true.
The lighter clicked open and shut in my hand about fifty times before I put it in my pocket.
I told myself I would hand it to Hugo in the morning. I already knew I wouldn't.
Hugo came back around midnight and walked in without knocking, and his hoodie smelled like the dock bars.
Hugo: You going to stand there like a statue, or are we going to talk about it?
Aurelio: Sit down.
Hugo: I don't want to sit down.
Aurelio: Sit down, Hugo.
He sat, put his head in his hands, and for a minute neither of us said a word.
Hugo: She's all I got. You know that.
Hugo: Then how could you? On that table. My sister.
Aurelio: You want me to say it again so you can hit me?
Hugo: Yeah. Maybe.
I could have let him swing. It would have been a coward's way out and I wanted it.
Aurelio: I put my hands on her. It won't happen again.
It was the only promise I had that was worth anything.
Hugo: Why not? You don't do a thing you don't want to do. So why not?
Aurelio: Because she's yours. And because I don't take what isn't given.
It sounded cleaner out loud than it was.
Hugo: That's not the whole truth.
Aurelio: No.
Hugo: Say the rest.
I looked at the dent in the desk and I said the rest.
Aurelio: She's off limits. Not because you asked.
Aurelio: Because if I start, I won't stop. And I don't get to keep a thing that makes me stupid.
Aurelio: I can't afford her.
Hugo: I failed her.
Aurelio: How.
He talked into his hands, and his voice cracked on every other word.
Hugo: I borrowed from the wrong people and I let her watch me beg for it.
Hugo: She came to this place alone because I couldn't keep her out of it.
Hugo: I can't protect her. I'm the one they use to get to her.
Hugo: So you do it. Please. You protect her and I don't care what it costs me.
He was crying, and I had known him fifteen years and never once seen that.
Aurelio: Look at me.
Hugo: I can't.
Aurelio: You can. I'll protect her.
Hugo: Swear it.
Aurelio: I swear it.
Aurelio: But hear me. She doesn't come here again.
Aurelio: She doesn't sit in this room. She doesn't look at me like that.
Hugo: Like what?
Aurelio: Like I'm a door she wants to walk through.
Hugo left, and I sat in the dark with her lighter on the desk in front of me, and the rule sat there with it.
Both of them were mine to keep.
I put the lighter in my pocket and kept the rule in my teeth.
She could hate me from across the harbor and be alive at the same time. That was the only trade I could live with.
Aurelio: Off limits.
I said it to the empty room, and it sounded like a man talking himself out of a fire.