“Does it happen a lot?”
“Every few weeks. They’re not so bad if you’re on base or in a vehicle, but out in the open it’s major suckage.”
She laughed at my understatement. “So I guess we’re stuck here until it’s over?”
“I’m afraid so, but a lot of times they’re quick, so don’t panic.”
She shifted a little, trying to find some way to get comfortable in our little prison. “I just hope I don’t have to pee or anything before it’s over.”
I chuckled. “I think you’ll be all right. One of the other guys and I were trapped in a cargo truck for six hours during one of these things, and amazingly, no one wet themselves.”
She rolled her eyes at me before she said suddenly, “Why’d you join the Army anyway?”
“Wow. Don’t bother with any preliminaries.”
She blushed and shifted her weight from one leg to another again, accidently brushing my chest with hers as she did.
“Sorry, my mom’s always saying I’m completely tactless.”
I smiled, secretly relishing that little chest-to-chest contact.
“It’s okay. Really. I enlisted for two reasons. The first was that my best friend from home, Nick, wanted to enlist, and well, I’ve always watched out for him. It’s sort of how we work. Although in the end even I couldn’t save him.”
She started at that, and her face fell, her eyes welling up. “Oh, God, he…I mean, he isn’t…”
“No, no, he’s alive and well in Sacramento. Or maybe not so well, but in one healthy piece physically and the rest I guess he’s working on.”
She sighed and I saw a single tear roll out of her eye and run down her cheek.
“Aw, hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how that sounded when I said it. I’ll tell you about what happened to Nick someday, but now’s not the time. He’ll be fine though. Back out there wandering around like a lost puppy before I can get home I’m sure.” I took my index finger and gently wiped the tear away.
She sniffed then blushed again and dropped her head down as she looked at our booted feet. “Sorry. I’m kind of an idiot sometimes. I used to cry over cheesy commercials even.”
My voice came out gruff when I answered her, and my throat felt thick and awkward. “You’re not an idiot, you care about people. Maybe too much sometimes, but that’s better than caring too little. The world needs people like you, Alexis. If they were all like me everyone would kill each other and civilization would end.”
She giggled and gave me a little push in the chest. My heart thumped – again, again, again.
“You know what I think?” she asked. “I think you’re a lot nicer guy than you let on.”
I shook my head at her, but I was smiling.
“You said there were two reasons you joined up. Nick was the first, so what was the second?”
I sighed, wishing I hadn’t started this. “Well, I’ve got a single mom. She’s the secretary for the Lieutenant Governor of California, so it’s a great job, but it’s still government pay and long hours. She really struggled while I was growing up, and as soon as I finished high school, I wanted to help her out. The military was the fastest way to get decent pay that I could send back home to her. I’ve got her putting most of it in an extra retirement account so she’ll be very comfortable when she can’t work anymore.”
Alexis looked at me with those sweet brown eyes, and the little freckles across her nose stood out in the weird tinted light that accompanied the sandstorm.
“That’s incredible,” she said to me with awe. “I can’t imagine being the one to support your parent at our age. I mean, I’ve got some loans for school, but I rely on my parents for almost everything. You are a way better guy than you let on.”
I felt that familiar ache in my midsection. Not this. Not the expectations. Expectations were my enemy because I knew I couldn’t meet them. My full-time job was killing those damn expectations in their infancy before they could take hold and ruin my fucking life.
“No, babe, I’m really not. I’m every bit the asshole you first thought I was, but even assholes have mothers.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Not buying it. Why do you work so hard at making everyone hate you?”
It took every bit of my willpower not to back out of that tiny space and head off into the sandstorm. This was the moment when I’d normally run far, far away. It’s what my dad had done, and I was one hundred percent his boy. But stuck in a situation where I couldn’t escape, I had to figure out a different way to deal.
I looked down at her beautiful face though, and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say except the truth. It poured out of me against my will, and the whole time some little part of my brain was screaming, This will ruin you.
“My dad. I was seven when he left me and my mom high and dry. I can hardly remember him, but I do remember that day. Him standing there next to his big pickup truck while my mom sobbed and hit him over and over. He took her by the arms and shoved her away and said, ‘You can cry all you want, darlin’, but I’m not coming back. I wasn’t meant for all this, and you can’t change who I am.’ He couldn’t be bothered to say even that much to me. No ‘Goodbye, kid,’ nothing. After that, it was weeks before my mom could leave the house again. By the time she got it together, child protective services was threatening to take me away and our house was in foreclosure.”
I heard Alexis suck in her breath, and her face turned pale as her eyes dropped away from mine. Good. Maybe this was the best way. Let her hear it all. Then she’d know who she was really dealing with.
“Years later, when I tracked him down, I found out he’d fathered two other kids with two other women after my mom, and he’d left all of them too. That’s who I come from. If you’re looking for a good time, give me a call. If you’re looking for a good guy, keep on walking.”
The small space we occupied seemed to become larger and larger as I felt Alexis withdraw, trying to get as far from me as she could. I didn’t blame her.
Then without any warning, she stepped forward, bringing her into full contact with me, toe to chest. She was warm, and I felt her soft breasts give way against my chest as she stood on her tiptoes. She reached up and put her hand along my cheek, the stubble there making a rasping noise against her palm.
Her lips parted, and for a minute, I thought she was going to kiss me. I felt my breath hitch with the anticipation, and my hands automatically went to her hips. I looked down at her, trying to decipher what was going through her mind.
“Don’t do that to yourself,” she said fiercely as she rubbed her thumb across my lips. “Don’t make what he did your sin. You’re smart and healthy and young. You can be anyone you want. You could have been fathered by the devil himself and it wouldn’t matter. Be you, but be the best you, not some bad rendition of him.”
She licked her lips, and we froze for a moment that seemed to carry on for hours. Finally, she stepped back, taking her hand off my face, and it was like I’d surfaced from being underwater. The sounds around me rushed back in as if I’d been deaf and could now hear. The tightness of the space was overwhelming and I felt my heart pull inside my chest until it physically ached. I swallowed, trying to overcome the sensation, but it lodged there like a burning lump of coal.
I unconsciously put my fist up to my chest, wondering how I was supposed to do anything with that pain there. Alexis continued staring at me with her luminous eyes. All at once, I blinked, and she dropped her gaze.
I said, “I’d better check how everything looks at the street.” And I left.
Alexis and I tried to get back to being business-like over the next few days. I helped her as she took her turns with inventory and did more surveying. I walked her to and from all her meals and even played a few rounds of Monopoly with her and the other UN volunteers. Her b
uddy Steve kept me under his evil eye whenever he was around, but Alexis and I were so formal with each other he couldn’t find anything to tattle about.
The pain in my chest persisted though. Her words came to me at night when I was in my cot, trying unsuccessfully to go to sleep. Why this girl had gotten to me like that, had gotten me like that, I couldn’t figure out. She was a girl. An ordinary American girl. Only she wasn’t, and deep down I knew it.
At the end of the second week of the UN’s tour, Alexis and I were walking back to her tent after dinner when I decided I wanted to figure out who she really was. I needed to understand her.
“So, did you grow up in Austin?” I asked as we strolled slowly through camp in the dwindling light.
“No, a little town to the south called San Marcos.”
“And both your parents lived with you?” I watched her profile as we moved along side by side in an easy rhythm.
“Yeah. My parents were both born in Mexico but grew up in Texas. They’re still kind of old fashioned, you know? Catholic and all that. Family’s everything in that world.”
“Catholic. So you probably have a bunch of brothers and sisters?”
She laughed. “Four. But you know, I don’t believe for a second that my parents didn’t use any birth control all those years. I mean, really, only five kids? As much as it grosses me out to think about them having sex, I hope they were having it more than that.”
Somehow the word “sex” coming out of Alexis’s mouth was more than I’d bargained for with this conversation. I took a deep breath. trying to ease the images that popped into my head of her long, dark hair sweeping over my chest while she rode me hard. Fuck. Do. Not. Go there, Thompson.
I cleared my throat. “How’d you get to be such a liberal, do-gooder if you came from a conservative family? Does it piss your parents off?”
She stopped and looked at me thoughtfully. “Well, they’re conservative in their religion, but they always taught me to be kind to less fortunate people in the world. They’ve always felt like we were lucky to live where we do, but they didn’t want us to forget that we have relatives in other places who aren’t as lucky, and we have an obligation to help them.”
I motioned to one of the benches that were sometimes used when the unit gathered for an outdoor training session. We both walked over and sat. She crossed her legs primly, although I knew she wasn’t, so it was a cute gesture.
“And little Alexis grows up in a south Texas town, with her spitfire personality, ready to go off and save the world, huh?”
Her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed until she looked at me a little closer and saw I was yanking her chain. She snorted. “Yeah, something like that.”
“But seriously, you’re pretty driven for an eighteen year-old. I mean, most girls your age are running around campus, ditching classes, and wondering where the next party is, but you’ve volunteered for international aid work and you’re thousands of miles from home in a war zone. What makes you tick, Alexis Garcia?” I held out my hand like it had a microphone in it.
She adopted a beauty contestant voice, pitched higher than her normal husky tones. “Well, Gabe, I’ve always loved other people and children and puppies. And I really want to teach everyone about world peace and how to bake the perfect chocolate chip cookie.”
I busted up, knocking my shoulder against hers as I laughed. She bumped me back and then, as our laughter died, we sat there for a few minutes, looking at the moon that was rising over the tents.
Finally, when I thought we’d have to walk back to her tent without getting the answers I wanted, she spoke softly. “When I was fifteen I was in love.”
I sat still, not looking at her, afraid if I moved a muscle she’d stop.
“The guy was my older brother’s best friend. Juan was from Mexico and his mom had come over illegally. We went to a school that was really mixed. There were mostly Latinos, but some of them were second or third generation, and others had just made it across the border. My family didn’t care. We never asked about anyone’s immigration status even though my parents both had U.S. citizenship. We never thought much of it.”
She sighed then, and I took the chance to look at her. Her face was turned up to the moon, and even in the darkness I could see a single tear slowly rolling down her cheek. My hand fisted as I resisted the urge to reach out and brush the tiny drop away.
“So, Juan was older than me and barely knew I was alive. But I loved him—like really loved him, you know?” She turned to face me as if it was crucial I understood what she was saying. The conviction in her voice was strong.
“You can love someone who doesn’t love you back. Love doesn’t have to be returned for it to be real, and I loved him.”
I finally gave in to the need to touch her and reached out, gently taking her soft, little fingers in mine. She didn’t draw away, and I nodded at her to be encouraging.
She took a deep breath and let it out shakily. “I don’t know all the details about Juan’s family and his life, but I know that when you’re illegal in the U.S. it can be scary—tough to make a living, tough to get an education. It was just Juan and his mom, and I think they struggled a lot. All she could do to earn money was clean houses, and he wanted to go to college, but he couldn’t because he didn’t have a social security number.”
I watched her face as she became lost in the memories, and my thumb moved over the soft skin on her hand.
“I was there the day the INS came and took Juan’s mom away. It was so horrible, Gabe. I’d gone with my brother to pick up Juan so he could come to dinner at our house.
“When we pulled up in front, we saw the agents. They had guns and everything. Juan was yelling at one in the front yard and his mom was in cuffs being dragged along by the other one. She was crying and screaming. Juan was getting more and more agitated.
“My brother told me to stay in the car and he got out to help Juan, but before he could get to him, Juan took a swing at the INS guy. It just went downhill from there. The guy took out his gun and everyone freaked out. Juan’s mom was sobbing and pulling to get to him. Juan was so scared that he was standing in the middle of the yard, frozen. The INS guy with the gun was waving it everywhere, swinging it between Juan and my brother. I thought for sure one of them was going to get shot.”
“So what happened?” I asked, admittedly riveted by the drama. “Did they take his mom in?”
She looked at me finally and gave me a small smile. My heart clenched and I swallowed the feeling down as she continued.
“Yeah, they took her, and it was heartbreaking. She was crying so hard I thought she was going to pass out in the yard. After the guy pulled the gun, Juan went cold. He stopped fighting, stopped yelling—he just stopped.
“We took Juan in for a few weeks while his mom was in detention, but eventually, when his mom got deported and the INS started an investigation to get him deported as well, he left. Vanished in the middle of the night. I was destroyed. I asked every single day if my brother had seen him or heard from him, and he always told me he hadn’t. “
I stroked her hand and tried to imagine what it would be like as a teen to lose everything you had in your life. Your only family, your home, and the only country you really knew. Somehow it made my dad’s absence seem minor in comparison.
“About six months later,” she continued, “I was at the mall with some friends and there was a group of gang bangers hanging out in the food court. They were really scary guys—Latin King Nation, one of the worst gangs we had in San Marcos.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about those guys from Benji. They’re big in South Central L.A. too.”
“They’re so scary, Gabe. In high school, if you saw one of those guys in the hall, you moved to the other side no matter what. Even the teachers wouldn’t touch them. That day, I realized one of the meaner look
ing guys seemed familiar. He had on the bandana over his eyes, you know, and tattoos all up and down his arms. He had a gun tucked in the back waistband of his pants, too, in broad daylight like he couldn’t care less who saw it.
“When he turned and looked my way, I realized it was Juan. He had LKN tattooed across the top of his back, and worse than that, he had stars tatted on his shoulders.”
While I wasn’t too familiar with Latino gang culture, I’d spent enough time listening to Benji to know that meant you were a Captain in the gang. It was a huge badge of honor to those guys. I breathed out in surprise. “Man, that’s really rough,” I told her in sympathy.
She squeezed my hand a little. “He stood there and looked at me for a minute and then…” She stopped briefly, seeming to gather up the memory so she could lay it out and expose it to me.
“Then he reached down and grabbed his crotch while he kept looking at me and yelled, ‘Chupamela!’ It means . . . well, trust me, it means something pretty disgusting. When his friends heard, they all started laughing and calling me names in Spanish. I was so humiliated. I wanted to die. To have this guy that I’d loved for so long finally notice me and that’s what he did. I never saw him again, but last year I heard that he’d been sent to Huntsville, the State Pen. He killed a girl in a drive-by that went wrong.”
“Damn. That’s hardcore, Alexis.” I shook my head, trying to absorb it all.
“I know for a fact that he wasn’t that kind of guy. This was the boy who’d eaten my mom’s tamales and played Scrabble with us on Thursday nights. He’d helped my dad with the yard work and had a 3.8 GPA. I saw so much good in him when we were growing up together. But when they took away his only family, he was lost. He turned angry and bitter, and he became a different person.”
She shivered even though it was mild out, and I once again fought the impulse to touch her more, hold her, comfort her.
“When you ask why I would come over here and volunteer, that’s why. If I can help even one person avoid a life like Juan’s, then it’s worth it. Everyone deserves to have a country where they can live in peace and safety and have food and shelter. No one should have to fear they’ll be taken from their homes in the middle of the night by soldiers, federal agents, or religious zealots.”
Camouflaged (Hiding From Love #0.5) Page 4
