“Anyway, we tried it again in middle school, and, God, that was even worse. I didn’t even last a week.” Taking a very deep breath, she braced herself before getting the next part out. “There was a boy who lived up the street from me named Danny. I used to watch him from my window as he and his friends walked to school. He was one of the only popular kids who was actually nice to me, and by nice, I mean he didn’t throw food at me or taunt me. He hung out with some of the kids that did, but he never joined them. And he even smiled at me a few times.”
Sitting this close to Hector, she noticed his body go stiff, and he gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “But he never stopped them from taunting you?”
She shook her head. “No, but silly me, just because he smiled at me, didn’t actually do the taunting, and, of course, because he was popular and cute, I made him out to be some kind of prince. For years as I watched him go by my house to school, I daydreamed of him and harbored this massive crush on him.”
He squeezed her leg, and she decided to spare him the details of all the doodling she did writing her and Danny’s name all over her notebooks and journals. “By the time I was old enough to go to high school, I tried again freshman year, and that was another disaster. Looking back, I realize it was me being too weak to fight back or stand up for myself. But I was so shy it was paralyzing.” She cleared her voice, realizing this is where the explanation about her behavior last night began. “As shy as I was, I was still your typical teenager with raging hormones. But as awkward as I was, I knew, or at least I believed very strongly, that I would probably never even be kissed much less experience anything more than just kissing. But as a young girl, I still daydreamed about it—a lot, especially every time I’d watch Danny walk by my house.”
Again he squeezed her leg, and she straightened up a little, feeling her face warm by what she was about to say next. “Like any normal teenage girl,” she turned to him, making sure he got this part, “because I’d been called a freak so often, I read up on it and looked it up on the internet. It was totally normal,” she waited until he nodded. “I started doing things—touching myself.”
He turned to her with a smirk.
“It’s not funny,” she said quickly.
“I’m not laughing,” he responded just as quick. “I’m just visualizing it.”
She nudged him, pressing her lips together. He’s seen you naked. You’ve made love to him. You rode him this very morning, and any badass cowgirl would’ve been proud. You can tell him this.
“Anyway, as the years passed, I graduated from just touching to doing other things.” She squeezed his leg now as he sat up, adjusting his pants. “Don’t you dare ask for details. Just use your imagination. You’ll probably be right.”
He stared straight ahead, smiling, pulling into the parking lot of a charbroiled burger joint, parked, and then leaned against his door. “Okay, I guarantee you my imagination is going nuts right now, but, please, go on.”
Charlee rolled her eyes, deciding not to further that part of her story until she had to. “So fast forward to senior year or rather the summer before I would’ve started my senior year in high school. The town I lived in was small, and everyone knew everyone else. I’d been labeled by all the kids as Charlee, the redheaded freak who couldn’t even deal with high school. Drew refused to admit it, but I knew what everyone thought of me, and I had long ago accepted it. At that point it didn’t matter. I hadn’t planned on ever going back to that school anyway.” She glanced down at his hand as he squeezed hers, hoping he wasn’t pitying her. “Drew was doing everything she could to convince me to enroll for senior year, and let me tell you that girl can be persuasive.”
He chuckled. “I don’t know her too well, but she seems as though she can make a pretty good argument. I still have to thank her for convincing you to move out here.”
Charlee smiled sideways, feeling bittersweet. “Danny had a hand in that decision too.”
Hector’s smile immediately went flat. “Fuck that. I ain’t thanking him.”
Soothing his suddenly tight upper thigh muscles with her hand, Charlee continued. “Now what I’m gonna share next stays strictly between you and me. It’s something very personal about Drew.” She paused until he nodded. “Right around that time, Drew’s parents separated. It was sort of this big local scandal. Her dad was always gone like he is now, and her mom started having an affair with her brother’s travel team baseball coach.” Charlee shook her head, remembering how devastated Drew had been. “The coach was also married, and his son was also on the team. All the other parents were appalled because apparently the coach’s wife was so very much involved with the team and well-liked that people took sides, and the team eventually fell apart. It was just a big mess. So only after having to see Drew go through all this did I begin to consider enrolling senior year. She said she needed me there for her. This happened during that summer, so she was dreading going back to school and have everyone talking about it.”
He watched her intently, and now she had to tell him why she was ready to run the moment she suspected he wasn’t being completely honest or that by chance he was secretly ashamed of her. “Since Danny lived up the street, we often ran into him at the local burger joint or convenience store up the street, and like he’d always been, he was nice to me: said hello, smiled, and was polite.” Even though Drew had been right about Hector, Charlee still couldn’t help roll her eyes having to explain the next part. “Drew’s always said she has this sixth sense about certain things, and she started to insist she was picking up on something from Danny when he looked at me and smiled at me. Of course, I didn’t buy it for a second. I was Charlee the Freak, and he was the popular good-looking jock in high school, but she insisted there was something about the way he looked at me. She said the same thing about you, by the way, when we first met you at the tournament.”
Hector lifted an eyebrow. “Did she now?”
“Yep,” Charlee nodded.
“And she picked up on the same thing from this guy?”
“Yes, but she was totally wrong about him. Only I’ve mentioned how persuasive she can be, right?” He smiled but it was strangely strained. “She kept insisting that every time we ran into him he stared at me a little too long or was a little too smiley or whatever. Finally, she asked him straight out when she ran into him at the library one day, and he said he thought I was cute and there was something special about me, so she gave him my number! Next thing you know he’s texting me and calling me, and Drew’s all full of herself.” Charlee couldn’t help laugh, but there was no humor in it. “I knew it! I called it! I knew he was into you and then . . .” She paused, unbelievably still feeling the hurt seep in. “After several long, very deep conversations with him where I really thought I began to feel a connection and he was so damn sweet, he asked me to a party.”
She didn’t even realize she’d fallen deep into her thoughts until he interrupted them.
“Charlee?” Glancing up at him, there was no missing how undeniably hard his expression had gone. “You said you’re over this guy, right?”
“Yes,” she nodded, but she was sure she wasn’t convincing. She hadn’t allowed herself to relive this in so long she was certain he saw the hurt she was feeling from scraping old wounds open and not understanding why it still hurt so bad.
“Are you sure?”
She stared straight ahead, nodding, realizing her eyes were now flooding quickly with tears and Hector wasn’t buying it for a second, but she couldn’t help it. After all this time, she still couldn’t believe Danny had done that to her. He’d been so sincere, so sweet. He called her Tangerine, damn it, because it was the name of his sister’s orange cat, which he always pretended to hate but secretly liked holding and petting when no one was around. That should’ve been clue number one: when no one else was around. He said it was because of her hair and the cat was orange and sweet, but she knew better now.
“Are you crying for this guy right now?�
� Hector straightened up so abruptly his elbow hit the horn, and he raised his voice just a notch, but Charlee caught the anger loud and clear. “Is that what I’m sitting here watching and listening to?” The anger changed suddenly, and there was suspicion now—severe suspicion. “Did you and him—”
“It was dog party, Hector. Ever heard of them? You were probably on the other end of them, not on mine: a party by his football friends where they compete to bring the worst date, and he invited me.”
He stared at her, his hardened expression looking more confused now. “What?”
“I was the dog, the schmuck, the fucking freak! And guess what? He won.” The tears were really coming now, and she hated that it still hurt this bad even after all this time. But she continued even through the tears. “He won for having the biggest, freakiest, schmuckiest date! That was why he befriended me. This was why he was so sweet and spent all that time with me on the phone. I was special all right, but not the way he made it sound. And I went out and bought a dress and did my hair and did all the things excited high-school girls do when they’re invited to a party by the boy of their dreams.” She wiped her face with both her hands, angry that she could still get so worked up over this. “For once I felt normal, like I actually belonged with the crowd my age. Drew swore she knew he liked me all along: that she’d seen it in his face, heard it in his voice when he talked to me and about me. But it was all a lie.”
Hector shook his head, his face still full of disbelief. “How the fuck did you win?”
“Because he coaxed Charlee the Freak out of her cave and got her to come to a high-school party where everyone could laugh and watch me turn beet red at the drop of dime. The worst thing was I didn’t even know. I was actually proud that I’d gone through with it, and it wasn’t until he took me home and refused to kiss me because he said he didn’t deserve to that I knew something was wrong. Drew was there before he even left.”
“How did you find out?” he asked, wiping more of her tears away.
“Drew,” she said simply. “It was all over Facebook already, and she was there to warn me. She told me not to look, that I didn’t want to. But I had to. Danny had been so sweet and so sincere the entire time I talked to him that I just couldn’t believe he’d do that to me.” She stared at the floor, a bit calmer now, but the memories she’d worked so hard to let go of all came flooding back so vividly. “They’d tagged me and him in all these congratulatory pictures of dogs in dresses and tiaras. It was mostly the guys from the party, but there were a lot from other random people in my neighborhood.”
“Did he ever apologize or explain himself?” Hector cupped her hand in his, caressing it.
She shook her head. “I shut down my Facebook page and blocked him from being able to text me or call me. He did relay a message through Drew not too long after to say he was sorry, but I cut Drew short. I didn’t even wanna hear his explanation. What more was there to say? The rules were simple: bring the most pathetic freak you can think of, and he chose me.”
Taking a deep breath and glad that the tears were over, she decided she was done with this subject. She actually preferred to go back and talk about the more uncomfortable side of her being a freak now than this. “So as you can imagine after that, there was no way I was enrolling in school for senior year. Drew didn’t even try to convince me anymore. She knew it wasn’t happening after that. And the very idea that I’d ever show my face at any parties or anywhere in that town to socialize was completely buried. Drew dropped that as well. I was afraid to run into Danny, so I hardly left the house after that. I was certain that I was doomed to be a lonely hermit forever.” She bit her lip and glanced at him quickly then looked away. “But I still had urges, strong ones now, and I really began to feel like the freak everyone made me out to be because I was doing it more often.”
She wouldn’t look at him now. How could she admit the next part?
“Charlee, babe,” he said, kissing her hand. “I know it’s embarrassing for you to admit, but not only are sexual urges normal sex in general is huge. Let me assure you, you are not the only one with urges. It’s what marketing and advertisers bank on. They use sex to sell everything because that’s how powerful it is. It goes all the way back. Why do you think all those famous sculptors who are hailed most for their tastefully artistic sculptures happen to be the ones who sculpted naked people? Artistic my ass, it’s the sex appeal that everyone is drawn to. As freaky as it may’ve made you feel or think you were, it’s perfectly normal.”
She didn’t want to argue, but he didn’t know the half of it, and she had to explain last night. The look in his eye earlier when he thought she was crying because she might not be over Danny was telling of what he still might be wondering about her behavior last night. “I bought toys, Hector. At seventeen, I ordered stuff on the internet all on my own. No one encouraged me or told me about these toys. I looked them up all by myself, bought prepaid credit cards, and I purchased sex toys—more than one.”
He seemed stunned for a moment but then regrouped looking almost relieved, not disgusted, and nodded. “And there you go. The adult toy and porn industry—huge. And why is that? Because sex sells. And why does it sell so much? Because it feels damn good. You’re far from being alone on this, Charlee.” Suddenly his face soured. “I just found out a few months ago my mom went to some party with her girlfriends and my aunts.” He shuddered, pretending to gag with his hand at his neck. “She told us it was a sort of Tupperware party with margaritas and shit, and Abel and I found the flyer a few days later. It was an adult toy party. My mom!” He shook his head, looking absolutely disgusted. “As much as it makes my skin crawl, it’s normal for everyone to be in touch with that side of themselves.”
Amazingly, Charlee actually felt better now. She was even smiling and felt on the verge of laughing. “Well, it’s why I was the way I was last night. I may never have been with any guy, and you are the very first person to touch me that way, but I had experienced certain things most virgins haven’t, and I just assumed I was probably the only freak on the planet had done that to themselves.”
“Are you kidding me?” Hector laughed. “Every guy in the history of man has been going at it long before they get any real action. And seriously? You really think you’re the only girl who’s done this?”
She shrugged, still unable to believe she’d actually told someone about this, and not just someone, Hector. He pulled her to him and kissed her forehead. “I don’t think you’re a freak at all, not like you’re thinking anyway, but I do like that you’re freaky.” He slid his hand up her thigh, making her breath catch suddenly. “In fact, up until I brought my mom into the conversation and totally killed it, I don’t remember ever being so damn turned on just listening to someone talk.”
He kissed the side of her face, moving down her jaw. “In my defense,” she said, feeling the shivers already from his soft kisses moving down her neck. As much as she wanted him to keep going, she needed to explain and make this very clear. “Until I moved out here, I really believed I’d never have a boyfriend and, therefore, no sexual encounters or pleasure aside from . . .”
“I get it, Charlee. I do,” he assured her, pulling away to look at her, and lifted an eyebrow. “So what changed when you moved out here?”
She smiled softly. “That was the whole point of moving so far. So I could start over. Drew wanted to move away from her mom and the ongoing scandal, because after her parents separated, her brother’s coach ended up leaving his wife for her mom. They’re now engaged, and we both knew as long as I lived in that small town I’d continue to be the anti-social hermit I’d become, forever. So she convinced me to straighten my hair, get a new wardrobe, do my makeup so that my freckles weren’t so blinding—”
“I like your freckles.” Hector said very seriously.
“I know,” she smiled. “That’s why I’m not covering them anymore. My point is Drew is very good about getting things together once she has a plan.” Hector nodde
d, smiling now. “So she convinced me to agree that once we were out here with this new transformation and fresh start because no one knew anything about me, I’d be open-minded about socializing.”
He went in for her neck again, his tongue making her tremble. Moving his hand between her legs now, he bit down on her neck. “Are you really hungry right now?” he asked against her neck.
“Not for food,” she said with a smile.
“You think Drew’s home already?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Her breath caught as he licked then sucked just below her ear. “My bedroom door locks.”
Pulling away from her suddenly, he stared at her. “You serious? She won’t mind?”
“Nope,” she smiled, feeling wickedly aroused already. “Knowing her, she’ll be thrilled that I’m finally acting like a normal college girl.”
Sticking the key in the ignition immediately, he turned on the truck and backed it up. Brimming with an unexpected feeling of inner tranquility, Charlee hadn’t realized how good it would feel to finally tell someone her deepest secret. She was also glad to tell him about the incident in her life that that nearly broke her. She didn’t think it possible, but having everything out in the open like this with Hector might make for even better sex. Squeezing his inner thigh and making him squirm, she leaned against his shoulder, the anticipation already intensifying.
Chapter 29
The rest of the week, Hector had to help with the move to the new house. He actually went a few days without seeing Charlee. Thursday was one of them. The one day he got out of moving duties early so he could surprise her at the chess lab when he’d already told her he wouldn’t be there, he got a text from her just as he hurried through the campus.
Since you weren’t going to be there anyway, I decided to skip the lab today. Drew and I are shopping for some last minute things I need for this weekend’s trip. I hate that we didn’t get to see each other today, but I can hardly wait to spend the entire weekend with you. ;)
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