by L. D. Davis
Tears leaked down my cheeks and I swiped them away with the backs of my hands. I was angry with Rico. I was angry with myself. I was angry with Tack for being right about Rico. I was angry with Leslie because she wasn’t there with me and because these things didn’t happen to her. I was angry, scared, felt violated and betrayed, and I was stuck walking three and a half miles home in a snowstorm without a coat.
And I was angry with my mom and dad because they let me walk out of the house at eight o’clock at night without any question or comment, and they were most likely not waiting up for me.
When a vehicle pulled up beside me as I walked, I didn’t look over. If it weren’t Rico, it could have been someone worse. It really wasn’t safe for a fourteen-year-old girl to be walking the streets after midnight, especially in this part of town. My heart raced and flashes of my dead body being found in some field raced through my head.
“Tabitha!” My head snapped up when I heard Leo’s voice. He was behind the wheel of his dad’s truck.
“What are you doing?” I cried out as he climbed out of the truck. “You don’t have your license!” I looked around frantically, expecting a police car to materialize out of the snow.
“What are you doing out here in the snow without a…” he stopped speaking as his eyes raked over me.
I had momentarily forgotten about my torn shirt and missing buttons. As I pulled the parts of my shirt together and crossed my arms to hold it in place, I imagined that my hair was probably a wreck and makeup was most likely smeared across my face.
“What are you doing driving?” I asked, choosing to look at the truck instead of meeting his eyes. I shivered. I had not felt the chill of the air until then. I guess I was in some state of shock.
“What happened?” Leo asked in a soft voice. I could feel his eyes on me, but I could not look at him.
“I asked a question first,” I said harshly.
“I borrowed my dad’s truck so I could come to the party,” he said quickly and then asked again, “What happened?”
“People already think your family is in the mob, and now you’re committing grand theft auto.” I looked down at the space between us.
“Tabitha,” he said my name delicately. I felt his finger under my chin and he gingerly raised my head so that my eyes met his ocean hued orbs. “What. Happened?”
I shivered again and my breath came out in a shudder.
“Since you’re driving—albeit illegally—can you give me a ride home?” I asked instead of answering his question.
When his fingers wiped moisture off of my cheeks, I was surprised. I didn’t even know tears were falling from my eyes.
Leo’s face hardened into a furious mask, but his tone was low and in control when he pulled open the passenger side door and quietly commanded me to get in. He wasn’t exactly a person I wanted to see after what I had just gone through, but I was still a little drunk, cold, tired, achy, and my insides churned at the thought of what almost happened to me. Besides, it was still dangerous for me to be out alone. After a moment of hesitation, I climbed into the truck. Leo climbed behind the driver’s seat a moment later. Belatedly, I wondered how well of a driver Leo was, especially in the snow. Maybe, I would have been better off walking.
Leo jerked the wheel to the left and did a U-turn on the street and began to speed back in the direction I had come from.
“Where are you going?” I asked in alarm.
“To take care of something,” he answered darkly. “I should have known you would be hard-headed and sneak out anyway, of course, you would,” Leo said, shaking his head and gripping the steering wheel. “Rico is a senior and all of the girls who don’t know any better think he’s the shit. Of course, you were going.”
I was a little thrown that he was able to figure me out like that. Leslie didn’t even believe that I was capable of doing something so dopey. I didn’t understand his anger and I didn’t appreciate his words.
“I don’t think he’s the shit,” I angrily objected. “I never did. I just liked him as a person.”
He rolled his eyes in response. Moments later, he pulled into a spot a short distance from Rico’s house. Involuntarily, I tensed up and fiercely gripped the door handle. I tried swallowing the large lump that had formed in my throat, but it remained steadfast.
“Why are we back here?” I choked out, eyes wide and wild.
“If I don’t take care of this now, Rico will have the entire school believing something happened that didn’t,” he said harshly, but then he froze. He looked over at me, looking grim and unsettled. “What did happen, Tabitha?” he asked tentatively in a whisper. His eyes flickered down to my hands where they held my shirt together. “Was it…something you…wanted?”
“Did I want to drunkenly lose my virginity at a house party?” I snorted. I felt tears falling from my eyes once again. “No, that isn’t something I wanted, Pesciano.”
Leo’s eyes widened. He looked both shocked and pissed off at the same time. “You lost your vi—”
“No,” I said, cutting him off. “But…almost,” I whispered. “I guess. Maybe.”
I angrily wiped at my tears. I blamed the constant crying on the alcohol. I felt very sober, but I knew that biologically speaking, it was impossible.
Leo used the sleeve of his Mercury High Football sweatshirt to wipe tears off of my cheeks. I wanted to bat his hands away and snap at him for touching me, and give him the same bitter attitude I had been giving him for months, but I didn’t. I accepted the gentle gesture and said nothing about it.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him as he began to open his door.
“I’m going to convince him it is in his best interest to not start any rumors about you,” Leo growled.
He threw open his door and jumped out before I could object. I started to also get out, but he instructed me to stay in the truck.
“I’m not staying in the truck,” I snapped. I struggled with the door as Leo walked around the front of the vehicle. I was turned in my seat, prepared to climb out, but he blocked my exit. He suddenly seemed so much older and bigger than his fifteen years.
“Stay in the truck,” he said so harshly that I froze for a moment. A muscle in his neck bulged and his hand curled tightly on the inside door handle, centimeters from my own hand.
My tremoring voice dropped to a whisper. “You don’t have to go in there. It’s just me. I’m not worth whatever trouble you’re about to get into.”
Our eyes locked. It was a movie moment, for sure. If I didn’t dislike him only hours before and if my best friend was not his girlfriend, I would have leaned forward and kissed him. The compulsion was so intense that my fists balled in my lap. The hunger to press my lips to his both thrilled and frightened me at the same time. I remembered thinking about him as Rico kissed me and I was hit with regret and shame so deep that I could choke. Leo wasn’t mine to want to kiss, or to think about during my first kiss. He was Leslie’s, and I never coveted anything she had, nor was I about to start. Just thinking about his mouth was just as good as breaking the code.
“I don’t know why you would believe that you’re not worth it—” Leo’s soft voice washed over me as he firmly pushed me back into the truck, “—but you are. Just let me be your hero for the night. You can thank me later.”
He reached up and gently pushed loose strands of hair off of my cheek. I trembled slightly. Warmth spread down my spine as another shiver hit me when his fingers grazed down my face and onto my neck. I hated the way he was making me feel. I hated that I liked it. I hated that he was being so gallant and I hated how relieved I felt to have him on my side.
“Why are you doing this?” I repeated in a barely audible voice.
Surprisingly, a sly smile appeared on his face. “I’m the only one allowed to raise hell in your life. I don’t like to share that with anyone else.”
“You are really good at being a pain in the ass,” I agreed in a quavering whisper.
Leo’
s smile warmed as he again reached up and pushed hair behind my ear. The smile faded, and his expression turned serious.
“Stay in the truck, please,” he said quietly but with authority.
Silently, I nodded. He closed the door and left me alone to go avenge my honor.
Chapter Three
Leo had come out of Rico’s house looking so angry that his body appeared to be steaming as snow fell on him. There was blood on one corner of his mouth, a bruise forming under his eye, and his right fist was red and bloody. He had found Rico in his bedroom with another girl already. He convinced the girl to step out so he could talk to Rico, but it apparently had not gone well. Leo was too furious to continue speaking about it during the ride back to my house. I insisted that he come inside so I could tend to his injuries.
We walked into my house, unimpeded by my parents as I expected, and made our way downstairs to the finished basement. I snagged a t-shirt out of the dryer and changed out of my torn shirt before pulling Leo into the small bathroom.
“You’re a mess,” I said, wiping blood away from his mouth with a cloth. He winced but didn’t pull away.
The bathroom was so small that neither of us could move without brushing up against each other. We were close enough that I felt the vibration in his chest as he spoke.
“I look better than Rico does right now,” he said.
“You shouldn’t have gone in there,” I admonished as I rinsed the cloth under running water.
“I had to go avenge your honor.” His small smile made my breath catch.
I cleared my throat to hide it and said, “You didn’t have to do any such thing, Pesciano. I bet Rico will still have a lot to say.”
I gingerly took his injured hand and held it under the water. He grimaced but held still.
“Rico won’t be saying anything for a few weeks.”
“Yeah, right.” I glanced up at Leo’s face with doubt. He was absolutely serious. “Oh, my god, what did you do?”
“I punched his teeth out of his mouth,” he said so casually that he could have been speaking about schoolwork.
I stared up at him, frozen. “You’re serious?”
He looked back at me, his eyes roving over my face. “Yeah, I’m serious.”
My mouth was open again. I looked away from his face and looked at the blood on his shirt. I didn’t know if it was his or Rico’s. His act of violence was unsettling, a bit thrilling, but very unsettling.
“What if he calls the police?” I asked, looking at his face again. “What if they want to press charges? Leo, that was so stupid!”
“Oh, sweetheart, I didn’t know you cared,” he said and put his uninjured hand to his heart as he smiled down at me.
“Of course, I care.” I snapped and dropped his hand so that I could get the peroxide. “You could be in a lot of trouble for something you did for me that you shouldn’t have done. That was stupid. You shouldn’t have done it, especially for me.”
I grabbed his hand and held it over the sink.
“He’s not calling the cops. There’s enough drugs and alcohol in that house to—shit!” Leo shouted the expletive when I poured peroxide over his open wounds.
“Hold still,” I commanded.
“That shit burns!” Leo objected and started to pull his injured hand away.
“You should have kept your little man-boy fists to yourself,” I snapped and roughly pulled his hand back over the sink. “Stop being a baby.”
“He deserved losing a few teeth, and more,” Leo muttered and then hissed when I poured more peroxide over the broken skin along his knuckles. “I tried to just talk to him and he just kept spewing verbal fecal matter.”
I paused and looked at Leo with wide eyes. A corner of his mouth twitched until the cocky grin the girls go crazy for appeared.
“Did I shock you with my vocabulary?” he asked.
“Yes, yes you did,” I admitted. I refocused on my task and proceeded to wipe that grin right off his face. “I didn’t think you were capable of stringing so many intelligible words together into a complete sentence.”
“Thanks a lot.”
We fell silent as I bandaged his hand. I paid close attention to what I was doing, but I could feel Leo staring at me. His eyes were burning a hole in my skin. I felt his breath on the side of my face and my neck, and for every breath he released, his chest brushed against my arm. It felt as if there was an electric current blasting through the bathroom, swirling around us and through us. I had never felt anything like it in my life.
As soon as I was finished, I left the first aid supplies on the vanity and hurried out of the tight space I was sharing with Leo. He hesitated and looked out at me in the small hallway for a moment before following me out.
“So, what did he say?” I asked him when he stepped out. Once again, he was very close to me. I started to move away, but he gently grabbed a hold of my forearm. I started to object, but his fingers skimmed over a dark blue mark just above my elbow I hadn’t even noticed before.
“Did he do that?” Leo asked, his voice quiet and tight. His fingers carefully pushed up the sleeve of my shirt and danced across the skin there. “And this one?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said softly as I watched his fingers move over my flesh. His touch was voltaic, full of energy and red-hot. My skin felt gloriously singed wherever his fingers touched it. I dared to look at his face. I wanted to know if he felt it, too. His eyes met mine and I knew instantly that he felt the same thing.
I wondered if Leslie felt it when he touched her, and then I pulled away from Leo.
“What did he say?” I asked again as I moved out of the little hallway and in to the open space.
“I don’t even want to repeat most of it,” Leo said on a sigh. “But he was talking his shit and I was trying to remain calm, but when I looked down at the bed, I saw buttons that had to have come from your shirt. They were on the bed and on the floor and Rico kept talking about what a good lay you were and how good you sucked…”
He stopped suddenly, and I saw a hint of the fury that I had seen on his face when he came out of the party. I was absolutely mortified by what he claimed Rico was saying. Of course, none of it was true, but I felt humiliated anyway, especially since Leo was the one relaying the story to me.
“He said a lot of shit, like I said,” Leo said quickly as he averted his eyes. “But when I saw your buttons all over the damn place, I was done listening to him. It doesn’t matter what he said now, because he won’t be saying it again. I’m sure some rumors will fly, but it won’t be as bad as it could have been.”
I was horrified that Leo, a boy of almost sixteen, had turned into a lethal animal and broken a boy of nearly nineteen, who was almost twice his size. I was stupefied that he had done so for me. I had not been kind to him since the first time I laid eyes on him, and I had been especially nasty after he started dating Leslie, but he did this thing for me and I could not figure out why.
“Why did you do this for me?” I asked quietly.
He shrugged and tried to feign indifference, but he couldn’t quite pull it off.
“Despite everything, I think of you as my friend,” he said casually. “I would have done it for any girl I know.”
Why did I feel disappointment at his answer? I should have been satisfied and relieved with it, but I wasn’t.
“It was stupid,” I said. “But…thank you.”
I let out a long breath and dropped onto the couch. I rested my elbows on my knees and put my head in my arms. I was exhausted and had a nasty headache forming. The night had been unbelievable. I had been terribly wrong about Rico and I felt fury and embarrassment for allowing myself to be so easily misled. The night could have ended so differently if I had not taken that opportunity to knock Rico’s balls into his skull. Still giving him the benefit of the doubt, I wondered if he would have really taken it too far, if he really would have pushed me into something I didn’t want to do.
My brother was r
ight. I was too young for this shit, and Leo was too young for this shit. He shouldn’t have been driving for one, but he shouldn’t have had to go into Rico’s house and fight him like a man. We were all just kids, even Rico. We were only kids.
“You’re shaking.”
I jumped, almost completely off of the couch when I felt Leo’s hand touch my back. I didn’t even notice when he sat down beside me.
“You’re shaking really bad,” Leo said worriedly. “Maybe I should wake up your mom.”
“No!” I cried out, gripping his sweatshirt in my fingers and looking at him with wild eyes. “She’s the last person I want. She won’t even care, anyway.”
Since he had started dating Leslie, he had been in my house with her frequently. He had seen firsthand what my relationship—or lack of relationship—with my parents was really like, but Leo still had his doubts. He had a loving, caring mother, so of course, it was hard to believe that mothers like mine existed.
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“I do know, Leo,” I said, pushing a shaky hand through my hair. “Just leave it alone, okay?”
“Well, what would your brother do? I feel like I should be doing something more than sitting here like a dumbass.”
I stared at a picture of me and my brother after one of his championship football games. He was all sweaty and stinky in his gear, but I didn’t care. I had my arms wrapped around him as we grinned at the camera.
“Tack would have yelled at me for going and then he would have gone and knocked Rico’s teeth out,” I said with a cynical smile. I looked back at Leo. “You’ve already done all of that.”
“What else would he do?” Leo asked, watching me carefully.
