“No, fuck that game. I did nothing but play that for days on end, I had to delete it.” She looks over her shoulder at him and offers a soft smile. It’s cold outside but she’s managed to sneak away for a few moments of silence and isn’t too upset by the unexpected company. He joins her at the patio table and lights up a cigarette as he sits across from her and silence fills the air between them. He’s always been the cousin she’s felt closest too but she’s drawn away from the family since her return from New York several years ago.

“How’s LA?” She asks him quietly.

“It’s a fucking trip, man. Talk about a culture shock after living in Arizona.”

“Christ, you must have stuck out like a sore thumb out there.” Yolanda replies with a laugh as she looks up at him. He hasn’t changed since her childhood and she still feels every bit as close to him even before she left Denver. “Your mom was telling me you finally got a place to live.”

“Yeah, I was crashing at my buddy’s place for a few weeks before I got this place in Korea town.” He exhales the smoke from his lungs and starts laughing as he leans forward to ash the cigarette. “I was actually just asking your brother how many handjobs it would take to qualify me as a homosexual.”

She starts to laugh and shakes her head while sticking her hands into her jacket pockets. “Handjobs for a place to sleep?”

“Fuck Yol, it got to a point where I was on Craigslist looking for a roommate because I couldn’t find anything. There’s a lot of fucking creeps out there. You don’t know how many ads I saw for nudists looking for a personal assistant and roommate, the only requirement being that you had to work nude.”

“And you thought about it?”

“In the theoretical sense, I mean yeah. I give myself a handjob all the time. What’s the difference between giving myself one and someone else?”

“Yeah, what’s the difference until you actually have to do it?” She starts laughing a little harder at the thought of Randy giving out sexual favors to sleep on a couch. It’s been too long since she’s been able to laugh this hard and can’t stop the tears that are forming in her eyes.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, Yol.” His sarcasm lingers between the two and she tries to stifle her laughter.

“Thanks but no thanks, I don’t think I’ll be swapping sexual favors for a place to sleep.”

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