Her Passionate Hero

by Caitlyn O'Leary

  “Okay, enough of this happy horseshit. I don’t know what’s being said, but you crying isn’t acceptable.”

  “I’m liking him, Láska,” her grandmother switched to English. “Happy horseshit means you’re unhappy, yes?” she asked, turning to Hunter.

  “God save me,” He muttered. “Look Aliana, I’m sorry I said you were naïve. I’m sorry I got mad that you didn’t tell me you were attacked. I have a lot of stress right now. Would you like to hear about it?” Oh God, he was giving her a half smile. He was up to something. She remembered this from years ago.

  “Say what you need to say.” She crossed her arms.

  “I have my grandmother’s book club meeting on Saturday, and they want me there. Why? Because they will have checked their little old lady network to find out who might have set the bomb in your apartment. Then, I have your grandmother wanting me to educate her in all the ‘less than appropriate’ terms I’ve learned since being in the Navy. You gotta just let me help you. Come clean to me, I’m begging you.”

  His brown eyes sparkled. He used to do the same thing whenever she was close to tears or actually in tears back in school. He would do crazy things or make up wild stories to make her laugh. Anything so she would feel better.

  “Your Mamie doesn’t really have a book club, does she?” She hadn’t just asked that, had she? She wasn’t actually suckering in, was she?

  “Swear to God.” He held up three fingers like a boy scout would.

  “And they’re meeting on Saturday and invited you?”

  “Yep.”

  She narrowed her eyes. He had to be kidding her. “If this is true, I want to come.”

  “Thank you.” He reached down and cupped her cheeks. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. The way Mamie was talking up Velma’s German chocolate cake, I was worried she was trying to fix us up.”

  Aliana sputtered out a laugh. The man was outrageous. Out came the dimples. She tugged his hands, pulling them away from her cheeks. He held them clasped in his hands. She was aware of every moment they touched. She thought about the letter he wrote her when he left. Those words had touched so much more than just her body, they’d touched her soul.

  “Why are you frowning, have you changed your mind already, mi Cielieto?”

  Aliana rolled her eyes. “Just because I’m trying to take the high road and deal with our situation today in order to make sure Babička is okay doesn’t mean I’m going to fall for your bullshit every time you start peddling it, you got me?”

  They both laughed at her, and she knew she was doomed.

  Her grandmother turned to the counter and poured batter into the waffle iron.

  “Should I get the bacon out of the fridge?” Hunter asked her.

  “After you wash your hands,” her grandmother replied.

  Aliana watched as they cooked breakfast like a well-oiled machine. Her world was changing before her very eyes. Hunter just made himself at home, and she was allowing herself to like it. This had to stop. Twenty-four hours. It’s only been twenty-four hours.

  She got up and cleared off the table and set it. When she went to get the butter out of the fridge, Hunter was slipping by to get the cheese for the eggs. He gave her a lazy smile, making her tummy flip over. Must be the concussion, she assured herself.

  They all sat down to breakfast, her grandmother sat across from her, which left her sitting next to Hunter. He watched what she put on her plate. Then added two pieces of bacon.

  “I can’t eat all of that.”

  “Yes, you can,” he said.

  “You’re too slim,” her grandmother chimed in.

  “I am not. I’m in the weight range for my height.”

  “Bet you’re on the low side,” he said softly.

  She ignored him. He was right, but she maintained her weight now. She no longer let it fall to an unhealthy level. She took a bite of her jam smothered waffle, flavor bursting in her mouth. “This is to die for. Thank you.”

  “I know your favorites, Láska.”

  “What does Láska mean?” Hunter asked.

  “It means love,” her grandmother answered. “I used to call my Terez that all the time, remember, Honey?” she asked Aliana. She nodded. Her grandfather had been bigger than life. She remembered him working at the forge in the foundry. All that molten metal fascinated her as a little girl.

  When breakfast was over, Hunter said he needed to go back out to his car. “People need to see me, and I need to see what’s going on. Before I go, Aliana, can you come out to the parlor with me? I want to ask you a couple of questions about Mateo.”

  She blanched. The cat was out of the bag. Babička would love that saying, she thought. But she would probably end up saying the dog was out of the bag. Since he knew who Mateo was, he was going to find the connection to Nicolas soon enough, wouldn’t he? She bit her lip, then hissed. She needed to stop doing that, it was a bad habit even when she wasn’t injured.

  She got up and they went and sat down on the couch in the parlor.

  “Ernie told me you needed stitches. Was it Mateo, who cut you?”

  Ping. Ping. Ping. Her buttons hit the cement.

  Strong hands cradled hers. Warmed them.

  “Alia, stay with me. You’re safe. Tell me what happened.”

  She shook her head. She’d tell him about Mateo, but she didn’t want to relive her attack. Her braid whipped around and hit her face. He tugged it away and brushed it back over her shoulder.

  “You can tell me anything. Don’t you remember? You told me what those girls did to you in the bathroom. I took care of it. Remember?”

  “I hated telling you. It was so hard,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “Ah, mi Cielieto, my heart was breaking. I looked all over for you. When I found you huddled up under the bleachers, there was no way I was letting you get away with not telling me.”

  She remembered that. He was looking at her the same way now, wanting to know about Mateo.

  “Alia, please stop crying.”

  “Go away, Hunter.” She grabbed her knees tighter, making sure her legs were covered by her skirt. It was the only practical thought she’d had since Lupita, Heather, and Theresa slammed open her bathroom stall.

  “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Go away.”

  “Is it those bitches? What did they do?”

  He knew that they had been calling her a fat, ugly foreigner. He knew they passed notes and crude drawings of her around the classroom. Stuff like this had been going on all through elementary school, but Hunter had been able to intervene. Seventh and eighth grade, she’d had to go through it alone. Heather and Lupita were vicious, she had the bruises and the bad grades to prove it. But sometimes Hunter would be waiting to walk her home. Those were the best days.

  Ninth grade things escalated and brought Theresa into the group. Hunter being a Junior was able to see it first hand, and he got involved almost every day. But he couldn’t help now, there was no way she could ever tell anyone about this humiliation.

  “You have to tell me.”

  She kept her face shoved against her folded arms. That was when he did something that hadn’t happened since elementary school, he put his arm around her and started to rock her. It made her cry harder.

  “Shhhh, it’s going to be all right.”

  But it wasn’t. It would never be all right again. She shuddered against him. She was so cold, and he was so warm. She shivered some more and tried to pull away. God, if he ever found out, he’d be disgusted just like the girls were. She needed to get her crying under control. She needed to get home somehow. She couldn’t walk home. It was windy. She needed her father to come drive her home because he had their only car, but he didn’t get off work until an hour after school got out. She’d just hide here until then.

  “Please, go away.”

  “If I go away, I’m going to go find Lupita and Heather and demand to know what went down.”

  Her head jerked up.
“No! You can’t!” They’d show him. Then he wouldn’t be her friend anymore. “Promise me you won’t.”

  “Then, Alia, you have to tell me what happened.” Sometimes he used his grown-up voice. Since she came to high school, she noticed he did it now and again. It must have happened when he got the tattoos. She liked them, and she didn’t like them. She knew it meant he was involved with a gang. She didn’t like that, but he was still her gentle Hunter. Her protector.

  “Please don’t make me,” she said in a last-ditch effort to stop the inevitable.

  “I’m just going to go ask the bitches.” He sounded so different. So harsh.

  Maybe if she spoke in Spanish, it wouldn’t seem as real. It would be as if it happened to someone else. “

  I went to the girl’s restroom after the lunch period was done. I waited until it had cleared out. I always wait until everybody is pretty much gone.”

  “Why?” he asked in Spanish.

  “I don’t like being in there with the other girls.” She didn’t want to tell him why.

  “Why?” he persisted.

  “Because,” she burst out,” they always call me fat. They make fun of my clothes. All right?”

  “Do they touch you?”

  “They used to pull on my hair. That’s why I wear it in a bun now.”

  He nodded like he wasn’t surprised.

  “So you went to the bathroom. Then what happened?”

  “I heard Heather outside my stall telling someone to keep watch. I was still…you know… I tried to hurry. But then I thought I didn’t want to go out there.”

  He looked at her, he was angry, but at the same time, he was soothing as he kept his arm around her shoulders. She appreciated the fact that he didn’t prod her along, he waited for her to tell him at her own speed. She remembered the crash of the stall door banging open, the metal door hitting the inside wall. She was still sitting on the toilet. She squeezed her legs together, her panties around her ankles, she had her long skirt covering herself.

  “I screamed at them to get out. It was Theresa and Heather who crowded in with me, Lupita was outside the stall, laughing.”

  Even when the dirt had suffocated her back in the first grade, she’d never been so scared. The two girls loomed over her. She stared up, grateful she had stopped peeing. She needed to wipe.

  “Fatty’s going to cry,” Heather said in a singsong voice.

  “Who cares. Look, it’s just like you said. Look at those ugly undies.” Heather bent down and yanked her panties over her shoes. She held them up by the tips of her fingers.

  “Look, they have holes. I told you she would have the ugliest undies in school. Smelly too.”

  Aliana stared at them in horrified disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. Her panties didn’t smell. She was in charge of laundry at home. But it was true, they had holes in them.

  “They’re granny panties. Look at how big they are. They’re ugly as fuck,” Heather crowed.

  “Wait ’til we show the others. We’ll win for sure.”

  This couldn’t be real. Say it wasn’t happening.

  “Thanks, Alley Fat, we’ve won the bet. We’re going to win for finding the Ugly Undies for sure,” Lupita smirked.

  “Come on, let’s show everybody our prize.”

  As soon as she heard them leave, she jumped up and tried to lock the door. The lock was broken. She did the best she could to clean up while holding the door shut. Trembling and shaking, she left the stall and went to wash her hands. She couldn’t look at herself in the mirror.

  She was halfway to the door when her stomach rebelled. She ran to another stall and bent over and everything she’d eaten for lunch came bubbling up and out. Again and again, she heaved. Snot came out her nose, her eyes watered. When she was done, she went to the sink and tried to clean up again, this time forced to look in the mirror. They were right, she was Alley Fat. She was pathetic. She needed a place to hide. Everybody was in class. She knew where to go.

  “Jesus, I’ll kill them.”

  “You would never hit a girl, Hunter.”

  “I’ll make an exception.” She had never seen him so angry. “Come on, I’m driving you home. Don’t come to school for the rest of the week. It’ll be taken care of by Monday.”

  Her eyes got wide. “But you don’t hurt girls, not ever.”

  “I’m not. But those bitches are going down.”

  “Others will take their place. Mama and Papa won’t let me dress like the other kids. I still talk funny. I try not to talk with an accent, but they only let me speak Czech at home. And I’m fat. It doesn’t matter what you do.”

  “You’re not fat. There’s a lot of girls in this school who weigh as much as you do and people don’t call them fat.”

  “That’s because they’re popular. They don’t dress funny. I’m always going to be the funny dressing, funny talking, fat girl.”

  “Stop talking like that! You’re special, Alia. You’ve always been special.”

  She felt like crying again. He was so wrong. But maybe if someone like Hunter thought she was special, then maybe she might be close to normal.

  “So, do we have a deal?”

  “Huh?”

  “I drive you home. You call in sick. I take care of things.”

  She bit her lip. What choice did she have? If she told a teacher or the principal, it would just get worse. She nodded. Hunter squeezed her shoulder.

  “You’re brave Alia. You’re special and brave.”

  “You need glasses.”

  ***

  “You were remembering, weren’t you?”

  She looked up and saw the grown-up Hunter. Somehow, she didn’t remember it happening, she was crushed up beside him. He hadn’t moved, but his arm was around her, and he was stroking her shoulder. She nodded her head.

  “I can help you now like I did back then.” His voice was rich and gentle.

  “You have girl gang members you can sic on the bitches in my life?” She hiccoughed a wet laugh. “As I remember it, Rita was pretty darn vicious.”

  When she got back to school that following Monday, Lupita and Theresa showed up wearing scarves over their heads, and they refused to look at her. It wasn’t until Tuesday that Heather arrived in a wig which somewhat imitated her blonde hair. That was when everyone caught on that all three of the girls were bald. It was confirmed when Jose Garmin tugged off Heather’s bad blonde wig in first period and Lupita’s scarf during lunch. The ‘Alley Fat’ days ended for a while, and instead ‘Bald Bitches’, ‘Shaved Skanks’ and ‘Hairless Whores’ were the butt of all the jokes.

  Hunter laughed outright. “God Aliana, you were always braver than you knew. I love that you can laugh about that now.”

  “What are you talking about? I hid behind you.”

  “Laughter through tears, right? I’ve been there, got the T-shirt.”

  “You cry?” She couldn’t picture it.

  He got a faraway look in his eye. “I cried for you that day.”

  She stared at him stunned. Finally, she got her voice. “But not since you grew up, right?”

  He frowned. Then ever so gently, he brushed a stray tear from her cheek. “What kind of man would that make me if I hadn’t felt strongly enough about things to cry about them?”

  He was remembering something really bad. She could see the sorrow in his eyes. She hated it. She reached out and for the first time, she touched him. Cupping the side of his face, she gave him a soft smile.

  “Thank you for being there for me. You made a difference in my life. I couldn’t have survived without you, Hunter.”

  “You got it wrong, I couldn’t have survived without you.”

  He made her feel like a heroine from a novel. How was that possible?

  He cleared his throat. “You have to tell me about Mateo. I need to know what happened.”

  She bowed her head. He was right.

  “I guess it’s no different, you know almost all
the ugly parts of my life.”

  “Chaquita, one day you’ll learn you can tell me all the ugly, and it won’t matter.”

  How she wished that were true.

  “Mateo and three of his friends jumped me in the parking lot outside of my townhome. The security cameras had been vandalized two days before. I couldn’t help but wonder that it might have been planned.” She was proud how even her voice sounded. Now if she could just keep it that way.

  “Four men?”

  “Not men, exactly, more like boys. Students.”

  “Really? Mateo is twenty-one, isn’t he? That qualifies as a man in my book,” Hunter said harshly.

  “Anyway, before I could get to the pepper spray in my purse, one of them came up behind me and jerked both up my arms up behind my back. I was worried he was going to dislocate my shoulders.”

  Still calm. She could do this.

  “Fucker.”

  “Mateo pulled out a knife. He put it against my throat. I knew he wasn’t going to kill me.” Damn, she heard her voice shake just a little. “He made a lot of noise about how I needed to stop encouraging Nicolas.”

  “Let me guess, you argued.” Hunter’s eyes glittered down at her.

  She didn’t respond, she knew better. “For some reason, Mateo escalated.”

  “Goddamn it, Alia, you’re the reason he escalated. You should have just agreed with him.” Hunter reached out and touched the small bandage on her throat. “Then what happened. How did he escalate?”

  “He… He…”

  Hunter tugged her close, then tipped up her chin. “Tell me Cariña.”

  “He told me exactly where my mom lived. He threatened to kill her. He knew the facility and even what room she was in. Then he cut off my shirt and bra. The end.” There, she got it out without breaking down. Her lips tilted up in a semblance of a smile.

  “Try that again, Alia.” Hunter looked exactly like he had under the bleachers. She could feel the rage pouring off him.

  “The details don’t matter.”

  “They matter. Tell me.”

  She rubbed her chest and winced. He pulled her hand away and pulled her into his arms, just like she’d asked him to at the start.

  “Please tell me, mi Cielieto,” he coaxed. “You have no idea what I’m imagining.”