by Krane, Kasey
* * *
“Judge?”
I heard my name and my head snapped up to see Carmen standing in the doorway, Turbo leaning against her legs. She had a concerned look on her face, and I realized that she may’ve been standing there for a while, calling my name.
“Sorry, Carmen, I was…thinking.” I looked down at the boards stacked in front of me and the bent, rusty nails in a coffee can beside me and realized I’d somehow finished the project on total auto-pilot.
“Let’s go into the house and take a look at your head,” I said, wiping my hands on my jeans. As we started to walk out of the garage, Carmen let out a strangled cry.
“Is that the couch?”
I looked where she was pointing and then began to chuckle.
“Maybe,” I said mischievously.
When I’d bought the rundown house, the real estate agent had offered to have the couch in the living room hauled off but I had turned him down. That couch - the couch - held a lot of really fantastic memories for me, and pretty much every other guy who attended Deming High School. I’d paid to have it professionally cleaned and then moved it into my garage, using it to complete my man cave in the corner. A small fridge with beers, a big screen TV, an Xbox, and the couch. It really didn’t get any better than that.
“Is that what it looks like with all of the dust and grime cleaned off it?” she said, laughing. “I have a lot of…fond memories of that couch. And you.” She winked at me and I grinned at her. Oh yeah, all of those times that we’d laid on that couch, her long, gorgeous legs wrapped around me, making out for what seemed like hours. I’d had to carry chapstick with me everywhere I went my senior year in high school, because she’d practically sucked my lips off.
Those truly were the good ol’ days.
My eyes dropped down to her lips and her breath caught as she stared back me, and then she bit her lip and I thought I was going to embarrass myself and sport a boner right there in my garage.
“We…uh…should go look at…your head,” I finally got out. It was hard to think and stare at Carmen at the same time. All of my blood was in…a different part of my body.
“Right, we should,” she said softly, and I knew she was remembering those epic make-out sessions too.
I walked out of the garage and into the house, trying to shift my bulge in my jeans without being too obvious about it. I headed into the bathroom and washed my hands thoroughly, getting under all of my fingernails and cuticles. I was not about rescue Carmen just to have her die of some dreaded disease because I couldn’t be bothered to wash my hands properly. She came into my master bath carrying the armload of bandages and gauze I’d dumped on the coffee table earlier and said, “I thought the light was better in here. I’ll sit on the toilet.” She put the gauze down on the bathroom counter and then sat on the closed lid of the toilet, facing away from me so I could get to her wound better.
I pulled her hair away from the wound carefully, swallowing hard as I looked at the reddened tissue on her head. Goddamn motherfucking Sangre. I’m gonna kill every last one of them for doing this to my Carmen. The wound was beginning to heal already, scarring over, but it wasn’t pretty. I wondered if the bullet went so deep that she’d never grow hair there again.
A visual reminder that you should never trust jackasses, no matter how much you love a club.
I smoothed some antiseptic into the wound and then placed the gauze lightly over the wound. “Can you hold this here?” I asked. She reached up and pressed it into place while I unwound some stretchy bandages and then began winding it back up again, this time around her head.
“I think my students would start calling me momia instead of Maestra Williams if they saw me in this,” Carmen joked.
“Momia?” I asked. High school Spanish was a long time ago.
“Spanish for ‘mummy,’” she said, and I sensed her smile, even with her face turned away from me.
She was fucking amazing. Carmen was a goddamn miracle, making jokes at a time like this. My heart clenched at the idea of her leaving me again.
“Well,” I said around the lump in my throat, “it’s done. I’m not sure it looks as good as what the nurse did, but I think it’ll do.” She patted at it lightly with her hand and then shrugged.
“It feels nice and tight, not like it’s going to fall off at any moment, but not so tight it hurts. I think you did good!” She stood up and turned around, smiling at me. “Maybe you should’ve gone to nursing school!” She leaned over impulsively and kissed me on the cheek as a thank-you, but I knew as soon as her lips touched my skin that she hadn’t meant to and didn’t know what the hell she was doing.
And maybe I was going to go straight to hell for taking advantage of a patient with a head wound but I couldn’t make myself care anymore. I couldn’t be the good guy any longer. I turned my head just a fraction of an inch and pressed my lips against hers and pulled her close to me, making sure, even in the haze of lust swirling around me, not to shove my hands into her hair like I so desperately wanted to.
But I could plunge my tongue into her warm and inviting mouth and she moaned and I forgot who I was or where I was and then Turbo whined, scratching against the closed bathroom door.
Son-of-a-bitch, I’m gonna kill him! I thought as Carmen pulled away, blushing, to open up the bathroom door. Turbo was sitting outside the door, wagging his tail and whining with delight at having found Carmen again.
I couldn’t hate my dog then, not really, because I felt the same way. I’d found Carmen again, and I too was never going to let her out of my sight.
But I could glare at Turbo because really, I wasn’t above glaring at my traitorous pet - horrible wingman - as we left the bathroom.
“I was thinking that we should go out to eat at La Casita tonight,” I suggested. “I figured you haven’t been there in a while.”
“Oh, I love their salsa!” Carmen said excitedly. “Let me throw on some shoes.”
As I sat out in the living room, petting my traitorous wingman, I made a vow to myself that this time, I wouldn’t fuck up.
This time, I wouldn’t lose Carmen.
13
Carmen
As we pulled up in front of La Casita, my stomach rumbled as I smelled the scent of frying meats and veggies waft out of the restaurant.
I’d been too exhausted and grimy to think about eating but now that I’d taken a shower, my body was screaming for something more substantial than the Jell-O they’d fed me at the hospital. Truly, who gets full on Jell-O anyway?
As we walked into the restaurant, our old classmate, Javier, greeted us. “Carmen!” he exclaimed, giving me a flamboyant hug. “It’s so good to see you! After all of the stories on the news about you, I was worried that you’d been hurt or something. Oh, but you still have a bandage on your head!” He pulled back and patted the bandage, luckily not on the injured side of my head, and I could only grin at him. It was hard to be a gay Mexican man in a small town, but somehow, Javier was well-loved by all, even those who looked down their bigoted noses at the lifestyle he lived.
“I heard about your encounter with a guy who pulled a gun on you when he thought you’d overcharged him?”
“Yeah, that wasn’t a very good night,” Javier said, “but would you believe, our business spiked after that? Everyone in town wanted to support us and so they all came out to eat here. Asshole. I have a restraining order against him now. He doesn’t get to enjoy my famous chips and salsa anymore, which I think is fair punishment. And anyway, he was never a very good tipper.” He winked at us.
“Now! I’ll put you two over here, in the corner. That plant makes a nice shield from prying eyes.” He led us over to a table that was partially shielded from the rest of the restaurant, and left, promising to return with chips and salsa.
I glanced up at the TV hanging in the corner and my eyes widened when I saw myself on TV, eyes closed and unconscious in the hospital. A red banner was scrolling across the bottom, “Gang member found
in hospital - attempt on Carmen Williams’s life,” over and over again.
“That’s the picture I saw yesterday when I first heard about you being hurt,” Judge said softly, interrupting my thoughts. I turned to look at him, surprised. Seeing myself like that was…freaky. Scary.
“It was terrifying to see that,” he said, echoing my thoughts. “I couldn’t think of anything except driving to El Paso to protect you. I was on my bike within minutes of that first news story.”
Judge looked at me, eyes haunted with the pain and panic of that day. “I thought you were going to be dead by time I got there, Carmen. I drove and all I could think about was how we’d met at your dad’s wedding. Do you remember us sneaking off back into the garden, and how I sat you down on that wall?”
Javier placed chips and salsa in front of us but left again without saying a word, discreet as always. I barely registered his presence.
My cheeks flushed. “Oh yeah, I remember that. Even as drunk as I was, I’d never forget that. I’d never had a guy do that before, and you literally made my world explode that night.”
Sparks arced between us and I tried to catch my breath. Judge was so damn sexy, it was hard to think straight. His gorgeous dark blue eyes were searching mine, and…I didn’t know what they were hoping to find. What he was hoping to get out of this.
Judge reached out to hold my hand and I deftly grabbed a tortilla chip with it instead. Dipping it into the salsa, I said a little too enthusiastically, “I’ve eaten a lot of Mexican food, but the chips and salsa here is the best!”
Judge’s eyes became guarded, hooded, and he pulled back, relaxing casually in his seat as if he didn’t have a care in the world. As if he hadn’t just tried to make a move on me and had it rebuffed. Cool as ever.
“Are you ready to order?” Javier reappeared, rescuing me from having to figure out how to patch things over, without making promises I couldn’t keep.
“Hi, yes!” I said brightly. I really did sound like an idiot but I apparently couldn’t help it. “I’ll have the veggie fajita, please. Corn tortillas.”
Judge ordered a double enchilada, and as Javier was walking away, he cocked an eyebrow at me. “Still a vegetarian?” he asked.
In high school, I’d gone through a virulent vegetarian stage, where I refused to eat anything even cooked in animal fats, and my dad had humored me, having the cook only prepare vegetarian meals when I was there.
“Eh,” I said, shrugging. “There have been a lot of places around the world that I’ve gone that being a vegetarian simply wasn’t a lifestyle choice I could make. Especially Mexico - good luck being a vegetarian there!” I chuckled at the thought. “But I do like meals with lots of veggies and when I am in a place to eat that way, well, why not, right?”
We chatted then, about stupid, inconsequential things, as Judge caught me up on what all of our classmates had been doing since high school graduation. We ate our way through too many platters of food, and laughed, and everything was light and superficial. Just as it should be.
Finally, we left; I gave Javier a hug on the way out. Judge thoughtfully suggested a stop at a local Walgreens for me to pick up some toiletries. I was too exhausted to go clothes shopping that evening - that was an ordeal that required all of my energy on a good day. It wasn’t easy to find cute clothes in the Tall section that fit my non-supermodel hips and ass, but toiletries…those sounded heavenly.
As I browsed for makeup and hair products, Judge casually wandered off, giving me plenty of space and time to find what I needed. He really was the perfect boyfriend.
My hand stopped, hovering over mascara. Judge? Boyfriend? Since when was he my boyfriend??
I couldn’t let myself even contemplate such a thought for even a moment.
A bird may love a fish, but where will they live? One of my favorite lines from my favorite rom-com movie in high school, Ever After, flashed through my mind, unbidden.
I quickly stuffed the rest of my items into my basket and walked up to the front. Judge met me at the cash register as I paid and then we left.
Silence hovered over us, smothering us.
I didn’t know what to say. What to do.
What the hell had I gotten myself into? We got into Judge’s truck and drove home, without a word spoken. I was lost in my thoughts, in the never-ending doubts pounding at me.
Then I realized we were in the house and I looked around, surprised. There was Turbo, nudging my hand, whining, tail wagging, delighted to have me home, and Judge was walking back from the bedroom. I looked at him, bewildered. Was I starting to sleep walk? Was I that deep in my thoughts? I was so tired…
“Come on,” he said gently, holding out his hand for mine. I took his hand, warm, calloused from years of work, and he walked us over to the couch. He sat down on the couch and pulled me up against him.
“I think you need to just relax for a bit,” he said, quietly, gently, like he would talk to a spooked horse. Why was he talking to me like that? I felt weird. Disconnected. Cottony.
And then it was the opening scenes of Princess Bride splashing across the TV and I smiled. And as the movie progressed, I laughed, belly laughed, like I hadn’t done in what felt like years. And at the end, as they were riding off into the sunset and Fred Savage was begging his grandfather to come back the next day to read it again, I was asleep, curled against Judge.
Finally safe.
14
Judge
I pulled Carmen tighter up against me, looking down at her, eyes closed, lashes lying in a perfect, dark fan on her lightly freckled cheeks. I hit the power button on the TV, shrouding the room in darkness. Turbo, on the other side of Carmen, curled up on her side, lifted his gray speckled head, looking around the living room in disinterest at the sudden light change, and then settled back down, happy to go back to sleep.
I stared ahead blindly and thought back to the restaurant. When I’d attempted to take her hand and she’d not-so-subtly dodged it by grabbing a chip instead.
I couldn’t push her. She wasn’t ready, and really, could I blame her? Just yesterday, she was in the hospital, just coming out of a coma. Today had been a damn long day - days usually were when they started at three in the morning - but it was still just one day. She’d been gone for 13 years. We couldn’t just pick up where we’d left off, no matter how much I wanted that.
Carefully sliding out from underneath Carmen’s weight, I twisted and scooped her up in my arms, sliding her out from beneath Turbo’s weight. Turbo whined at the disturbance to his sleep, but padded along behind me as I carried Carmen to the bedroom.
Trying to juggle Carmen and the covers, I finally got her into the bed, and pulled the light blanket back over her. She slept through it all, exhausted. I should’ve insisted that she go to sleep as soon as we had gotten home from the store, but I’d known she needed some time to just laugh and relax. As I pulled blankets out of the linen closet to make my bed on the floor next to her, I thought about how weird she’d gone on me. In the car, I’d tried to talk to her, but she didn’t even seem to hear me, let alone respond to me. She was stone quiet, staring off into the distance, and I’d thought that if I had snapped my fingers in front of her face, she wouldn’t have blinked.
I’d gotten her inside of the house and had thought about just leading her to bed then, but there was something about her that was just screaming out for joy. For fun. For something to take her mind off what was happening to her and who was after her.
Something to bring a smile to her gorgeous face.
As I wiggled around on the floor, trying to find a comfortable spot, I made a mental note to buy a twin bed for the guest bedroom. Soon. I’d held off, saving that money for other projects around the house, but if I was going to give away my bed every night, I had to replace it with something a little more…cushiony.
Or maybe a rollaway cot. That way I could stay here and watch over Carmen but be more comfortable. The Sangre could find me and despite the men outside, they still
could attack.
And then I joined Carmen in dreamland, a place where Turbo had gotten to long before, happily snuggled up at Carmen’s feet.
15
Carmen
I slowly opened my eyes and stretched, a giant, amazing stretch that felt so damn good, I wanted to do it again and again. I hadn’t felt this good in days! It’s remarkable what a good night’s sleep will do for a person. I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, just narrowly missing Judge’s head as I put my feet down.
“Oh!!” I yelped.
“What?!” Judge said, jackknifing up into a sitting position, looking bleary-eyed around the room and then up at me.
“Oh hi! Good morning,” he said, his voice rough with sleep. With tousled hair and sleepy eyes, he looked good enough to devour.
Not.
Getting.
Involved.
“Hi,” I said, and couldn’t help but grin down at him down on the floor. “Were you going to protect me from Sangre from down there?” I asked teasingly.
“Well, you’re on the only bed in the house, and I didn’t figure you’d appreciate waking up next to me,” he replied.
I ran my eyes down the length of him, from his chiseled chest down to his gym shorts that were…sporting morning wood.
My eyes darted back up to his. It was safer up there.
“Yeah, ummm…I’m gonna go use the bathroom.” It was hard to be coherent around a sleepily sexy man like Judge. We’d never spent the night together during high school, and waking up with Judge even in the same room was a delicious treat.
After my morning ablutions, I walked into the kitchen to find Judge still wearing his low-slung gym shorts but this time, had a kitchen towel slung over his shoulder as he cooked. I gulped.
Not.
Getting.
Involved.
