by J. A. Huss
Chapter Twenty
I have been babysitting on Saturdays ever since Jill died. Jason always works breakfast and lunch on the weekends and he leaves early in the morning. But Olivia woke up around three AM and didn’t stop crying. When I went into Jason’s room to see what the problem was, he wasn’t there. He never came home. Asshole. I’m so fucking pissed about that. Responsible people don’t stay out all night when they have a baby at home.
And she’s been cranky all day too. I’m just starting to wonder if I should take her temperature and see if she’s sick or something when at ten minutes to seven, Jason walks in looking like total shit.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
“Working,” he sneers, walking into the kitchen. “Foreign concept, I know.” He starts making Olivia a bottle.
“She already has a bottle, Jason. She might be sick.”
“You just make it wrong.”
“OK,” I say, grabbing my purse. “I’m out of here.” I go out the back way, like normal—I don’t like the thought of Jason watching me out the front window as I wait for Mateo. It creeps me out far more than anything that’s happened between me and my teacher. I walk back up the alley to the laundry building and slip through the passageway that leads back to the front.
“Hey, Shannon,” a woman says off to my left.
Shit, that cop chick. I nod and keep walking.
“How’s your niece?’”
“What?” I ask, stopping to turn.
“The baby. I heard her crying today. Is everything OK?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, letting out a sigh. “She was fussy all day. But Jason’s home now, he’ll get her to sleep. He’s good at it.” He is too. I have to reluctantly admit that.
“Good to hear,” she says. “See you around. Don’t get in any trouble tonight.”
“Right,” I say, just as Mateo’s car pulls up on the far side of the quad. It’s the red Camaro I saw in the garage and it’s rumbling like a monster. He gets out and walks around to the passenger side, opening my door for me. I take him in, I can’t help it. He’s wearing a black t-shirt, leather jacket, jeans and boots. Same old, same old. But for some reason, he looks different.
“Subtle,” I say, motioning to the loud-as-fuck car and slipping into the seat. I catch a smile as he closes the door and watch him under the streetlights as he walks around to his side and gets back in.
“Did you eat?” he asks.
“No.”
“Doesn’t that fuck feed you?”
I scoff. “Why would he?” And then I sigh again. Jesus, I’m in a bad mood. “He does give me money sometimes. But the only food he buys is formula for Olivia. I guess he eats at the restaurant.”
“What restaurant?” Mateo asks, pulling away from the curb and flipping a bitch to head back towards West Street.
“Oh, I don’t even know. I guess he works somewhere over by Disneyland. He’s a chef.”
“He’s a chef?” Mateo says with disbelief.
“Yeah, why?”
“Nothing. Just interesting.”
“Where are we going?” I ask, a few blocks later when he gets on the freeway.
“Crescent Bay in Laguna.”
“Why so far? We could just go to the fire pits at Huntington.”
“You can’t see the stars in Huntington. Even with a new moon.”
“You’re taking me to see the stars?” I have to look away to hide my smile.
“So you wanna eat before or after?”
“Dinner too?”
He laughs. “God, Shannon. You act like you’ve never been on a date before.”
“This is a date?”
“Isn’t it?” he asks, squinting at me. “I guess I wasn’t clear.”
I stay silent for a few seconds, mulling this over. I hadn’t really thought about it as a date. “Well, wow.”
“Wow what?”
“I just didn’t expect it, that’s all.”
“You thought I was a fuck-’em-and-forget-’em kind of guy? You don’t listen very well, do you?”
“I hear you, Mateo. I just don’t believe you.”
“Fair enough. Everyone’s got baggage. But you have to believe in someone eventually. It might as well be me.”
“You lied last night. You had me freaking out that you were in my bedroom touching me while I was sleeping.”
“It turned you on. You can admit it, you know.”
“It freaked me out, Mateo.”
“Sure did,” he says. “It freaked you out so much you got on my bike ten minutes later. It freaked you out so much you agreed to go on a date with me. So why did you do those things if you think I’m creepy?”
I can’t answer that.
“Do you really need me to state the obvious?”
“Yes,” I say back. “I really do.”
“You like me.”
“I think I’m afraid of you, Mateo.”
“Then why are you here?” he asks. It’s not a confrontational question, either. It comes off as sincere. Like he needs to know the answer as much as I do. “Why not just go out with Danny Alexander?”
I sigh heavily.
“I’m gonna make you admit it tonight, so go ahead, get it over with.”
“Maybe I just want to graduate high school and I need you to help me do that.”
“I’m pretty sure Bowman would find you another teacher if you told him what was going on.”
Another heavy sigh from me.
“Just say it,” he says softly. “I’m dying to hear the words, Shannon. And once you say them out loud, you’ll feel better.”
But I don’t say them. I know he wants me to admit that I like this. But I’m just not sure I do. He’s confusing me. He mixing up the school work with the sex, even though the other day he said they are not related. He’s making them related. He’s tying my need to finish this class in with his desire to control me.
So I keep quiet and he turns some music on—Cage the Elephant, by some stupid twist of fate—and I just stare out at the other cars on the freeway. It takes a good half hour to get to Laguna and the town is bustling with people out for the evening. We park the car and get out, Mateo grabbing a backpack stuffed with things and slinging it over his shoulder as he takes my hand.
Takes. My. Hand.
I look down at it.
“You don’t like the hand-holding?” he asks, as we walk through the small grassy area towards the steps that will take us down to the beach.
“I just don’t understand the hand-holding.”
“It’s a pretty basic display of affection, Shannon. Not real complicated.”
“Ummm. It’s very complicated when you’re fucking your teacher who is ten years older than you.”
He lets go of my hand. “OK.”
I sigh. Jesus Christ. Why did I even come out with him tonight? Why the hell am I even talking to this creep? He’s probably a serial killer. He probably likes weird sex with butt plugs and whips.
“Do you know what the new moon is?”
I roll my eyes. “I might only be eighteen but I’m not an idiot.”
“I have never thought you were an idiot, Shannon Drake. Ever. So do you know what it is?” he repeats.
“There’s no moon on the new moon.”
“But you probably don’t know why, right? Most people don’t understand the movement of the moon, and that’s cool, because it’s sorta complicated. That’s all I’m asking, Shannon. Why do you get so defensive?”
“Why do you make me feel so stupid?”
“Do I?” he asks. “It’s not one of my goals with you, so take that any way you want.”
I say nothing after that. I’m too busy noticing how fucking dark and empty of people it is down here on the beach. It’s winter, for one. And cold in a SoCal kind of way. Regardless of what people think, the beach isn’t somewhere people go on winter nights.
We walk out to the middle of the beach and he unpacks a blanket and throws it down on the s
and. “Come on,” he says, lowering himself down. I just stand there as he takes his shoes off.
“Are you going to fuck me out here?”
He laughs. “I wasn’t planning on it, but hey, I won’t turn you down if you insist.”
I lower myself to my knees and sit back on my butt.
“Take off your shoes, for fuck’s sake. It’s the beach.”
I reposition myself and take off my Chucks, and then stretch out my legs next to his as he lies back and puts his hands behind his neck. I follow along, doing the same.
“So that orange star right there,” he says, pointing up at the sky, “is Aldebaran. It’s in the constellation Taurus.”
“Hmmm,” I say, trying to find which of the many points of light he’s talking about. “I can’t tell which one is which.”
“Look at that row of stars right there.” He points. “Those three that are bright and close together, that’s Orion’s Belt.”
“OK, I see those.”
“Go up and to the right, that bright orange one is Aldebaran.”
“Got it.”
“And if you drop down to the left again, right below Orion’s Belt, that’s Rigel. And if you go over to the left even more, that bright blue one is Sirius. Have you heard of any of these?” he asks.
“Sirius. And Orion’s Belt, of course. But I’ve never looked up and seen them in person before.”
“Aldebaran is sixty-five point two three light years away from Earth. Sirius is eight point six eleven. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky because it’s one of the closest stars to Earth. It would be easy to conclude that Sirius is the closest star to Earth, since it’s the brightest. But you can’t rely on brightness to prove distance, because not all stars are the same size, and of course, size does matter.”
I chuckle with him over the sex joke.
“The purpose of trig is to find distances by using the sides of a triangle, which are based on circles. So in astronomy we use a certain form of it to find distances between stars, or how far away a star is from the Sun or some other celestial object.”
“Are you really talking about math right now?”
“Why not? You seem to be fixated on my role as your teacher. I’m a good teacher, Shannon. You should give me a chance.”
“I totally give up, Mateo. You officially win. Because I just don’t understand you.” I look over at him and he’s smiling so big I have to shake my head and laugh. “What?”
“I wore you down?”
“Just—fuck. You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met before. You are seriously the strangest person ever.”
“Anyway,” he says with a chuckle. “Trig is about circles and triangles. And they are related by drawing lines that originate from the center.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” I say. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s all I hear when you say things like circle and triangles. Blah, blah, blah. I know you people think I’m smart for some reason—”
“Which is funny, since you just accused me of making you feel dumb.”
“—but I officially cheated my way through those classes.”
“I get that. But I’m not letting you cheat your way through this one. So shut up and listen. Because you say you want me to teach you how to work the problems out so you get the right answer, but you don’t want to understand the answer or how you got it. Right?”
“Right. It’s just easier.”
“Well, of course it’s fucking easier, but it’s meaningless, Shannon. Don’t you get it yet?”
“No.” I laugh. “I don’t.”
“I know,” he says, turning towards me, leaning on his elbow and propping his head up with his hand. “I’m confusing you, right? You don’t understand my intentions. You don’t know what I’m doing. Why are we having sex?”
“I don’t know.” I laugh again. “I really don’t.”
“That’s because you’re trying to get the answer without trying to understand the process of how to find it.”
I just look at him. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Are you seriously trying to say you’re confusing me with sex to teach me a lesson in math?”
“Your question,” he says, ignoring that statement, “is something along the lines of, what am I doing? But that’s the wrong question. Your real question is, why am I doing it?”
“You’ve been fucking with me on purpose.”
“And the answer you’re so desperate to find is, because Mateo likes me. You want that to be the answer so bad, you stick around, letting me do all these things, with the hope that I’ll eventually say it.”
“You did say it. A few times, at least.”
“But you didn’t believe me.”
“Why should I? You were lying.”
“How do you know I was lying?”
“You told me you made that story up yesterday.”
“So maybe the question is, why did I make that story up?”
“To come in front of me? Put me off my guard? Get off? I don’t know.”
“Do you really think I just go around making up fantasies with every girl I meet so I can come in front of them?”
He stares at me. Those green eyes looking into me. Searching inside of me. Seeing through me like I’m a gaping hole.
“Why are you doing it, Mateo?”
“Tell me why I’m doing it, Shannon.”
I could fight it out with him. Point out all the ways that he’s being an asshole. How he’s confusing me and making things difficult. But there’s only one real answer to that question, and it’s very simple. “You like me.”
“And?” he prods. “That’s not all. I can show you I like you a million different ways. I could just rescue you from the rain or feed you lasagna if all I wanted to do was show you I like you.”
I give up. He really does win. Maybe he’s an evil genius and he pulled this plan out of his ass after the fact. He is some kind of physicist, right? He’s probably capable. But he was there the morning I lost my shit with Bowman and confessed that I was half-assing my way through school. He started the inappropriate touching the first time we met by stretching his legs out under the table. He fucked me in the classroom the very next day. He had me off my half-assing game from the moment he plunked that folder down on Bowman’s desk to this very second. And he did it all with an end in mind.
“I can’t understand the answer to my problem unless I understand the process of working it out. Are you my problem, Mateo? Or my answer?”
“Which do you want me to be?”
“Both.”
“Fuck,” he yells, lying back on the blanket and holding his hands out towards the sky like he’s giving thanks. “Holy fuck.” And then he laughs. “Finally.”
“You are the biggest asshole ever.”
“Thank you,” he says, still laughing.
“I think I hate you right now.”
“I don’t care,” he says, turning over on his stomach and resting his head in his hands so he can see my face. ”You’ll love me in the end.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Do you want to hear the real story of how I first saw you?”
We’ve been lying here in silence for a few minutes. I’ve been looking up at the stars and he’s been looking at me. I guess he figured I needed a little time to wrap my head around his methods. “Yes,” I say, still lost in thought.
“I was sitting on my porch, rebuilding the carburetor for the Camaro. This was last month.”
I turn over on my stomach and rest my cheek on my hands so I can watch him as he talks.
“And I saw this girl come out of the gate from the apartments across Broadway. She was wearing a black leather jacket that screamed chick and don’t fuck with me at the same time. I haven’t seen you wear it again, but I dig the belt.”
“It’s too hot here,” I say. “I’m used to the cold.”
“And she had on some ripped jeans and black Chucks
,” he says, picking up one of my shoes and waving it for a second. “Her long brown hair was fanning out behind her, blowing in the wind. And she was walking across the bridge over the 5 like she was the boss of the world.”
I chuckle at that image.
“Like she was daring it to come mess with her, she had a lesson to teach it. You told me you felt invisible when that girl spoke to you in Spanish, right? Like she talked to you before, but she never saw you. And that day it was all too much. She missed it. She missed everything that made you you. But she didn’t talk to you in Spanish because she missed you, Shannon. You’re an unmissable girl. You’re a fucking explosion in a bottle waiting to happen. People talk to you because they can’t help but see you.”
“You’re stupid.”
“Anyway, back to my story about that girl. I swear to God, I got up off my porch and I followed her. She didn’t go far, just over the bridge to the burger place. And I know Jose, so I went over and by the time I got there, she was sitting at a table in the back, waiting for her food. I ordered a burger too, and sat near the front, facing her, so I could get a better look. And I noticed that she dropped her bossy attitude with Jose when he came with her meal. She liked him, I could tell. He’s married, has a pot belly and was covered in grease, so I figured that she considered him a friend and was not interested in fucking him on the table.”
“Jesus, Mateo. Please. I don’t need that visual.”
“And I thought to myself, I need to be her friend. I never missed you, Shannon. I saw you immediately and I wanted to be your friend.”
I smile at that. So much better than I need to fuck her in a classroom.
“She ate, walked home. I followed behind, watched her go back into the apartment. So I went through the gate and saw her exit on the other side of the pool where the alley was. And when I got to the alley, she was gone. Just poof, disappeared.”
“I was already on my patio.”
“Right. And then I got this call from Bowman the next day asking me did I want a job teaching trig to a student who needed to make up a credit in order to graduate. He told me the whole credit situation and I was like, shit, I dunno. I have this dissertation to write. I don’t think I have time. But he said just stop by school on January fourth and I could meet you. He told me you needed help. Like, really needed help. He told me about your sister and Jason. The kid, all of it.”
