Before You

by Amber Hart

  Faith laughs at her friend. I pull my girl close, ignoring the school’s PDA policy. She gives me a quick kiss. It is a brush, a tease. I need more.

  “You want to go with me tonight, mami?” I ask in her ear.

  “Yeah. It’d be fun,” she replies.

  She’ll need to pick me up, since her father knows nothing about us yet. I can’t make an appearance at her house—not that I have a car. Not that I care. I am caught in currents of gladness, gliding, floating. No more hiding. No more wishing. No more lying. No more restraint.

  “Eight?” I ask.

  “Sure. I’ll meet you then.”

  Eight o’clock is celebrated by a minidress that shows off Faith’s long legs. I almost beg her to forget the concert.

  “Oye, muñeca. You look maravillosa.”

  We are standing by her Jeep outside my apartment.

  “You, too,” Faith replies. She pulls my head down for a kiss.

  “You sure you don’t want to stay?” I offer.

  She licks her lips.

  “Maybe for a second,” she says.

  I lean against the car and pull her to me. She parts my lips with her tongue and moves her hands to my back. My breathing is all wrong but I can’t control it. Faith steals my air and gives it back in hot breaths. I am this close, this close, this close to walking back upstairs. Faith engulfs me in flames that I want to burn in until we are melting, dripping, molding into one.

  “We need to go,” she says against my ear.

  I don’t want to go.

  She pulls away. I reluctantly hop in the car and watch her while she drives. I love the way she sees me for who I am, and likes me all the same.

  Outside the club, mis amigos and Melissa are waiting.

  “¿Que pasa?” Javier asks.

  “Nada,” I answer.

  Luis brought a girl I recognize from school. Esteban, Juan, and Rodolfo are checking out a group of ladies as they pass.

  A girl who looks a lot like Melissa approaches us.

  “Oye, mira eso. Esa chica es sexy,” Ramon says.

  She stops and smiles at Melissa and Faith. “Hey, girls,” she says.

  “Monica, this is Faith’s boyfriend, Diego, and some of his friends.” Melissa introduces everyone.

  Her sister leads us to a side door and gets us in for free. Gracias a Dios, because I don’t have extra money.

  The inside of the club is packed shoulder to shoulder. Loud music blares through speakers while everyone waits for the headlining musicians to take the stage. Faith’s body automatically moves to the music. Not dancing full-blown, but not standing still either. Like she has an involuntary switch that turns on whenever she hears good music.

  While we wait for the concert to start, I pull Faith against me.

  “Baila with me,” I say.

  I don’t have to ask her twice. She is eager to get on the floor, thirsty, drinking it in. Her moves are cautious, slowed by the boot on her foot, but she sways with my help, loving the music despite broken bones.

  Melissa and Javier join us just as the music dies. The crowd yells. Lights dim. When they flare back to life, musicians have taken the stage and the club turns into a madhouse. Girls on the dance floor reach for the guys onstage, who cup their microphones. People shove to get closer.

  Faith and I are pushed from all directions but I hold on to her, hoping no one steps on her injured foot. The clamor dies down after the first song as people get into the music. My body is a reckless thing. Pressing close to Faith. Her hips swing. My heart thuds. Our lips touch.

  This is how it all started.

  I remember our first night together in the club, the first time she kissed me.

  We enjoy the music for a long time—both on the floor and off—until the concert ends. I round up all my amigos. Esteban, Juan, Rodolfo, and Ramon hop in a car together, while Luis and the girl he brought get into his car. Faith and I walk with Melissa and Javier to the parking lot.

  It’s raining outside, the drops cooling our skin. Faith is feeling playful; she lets me lift her into my arms, soaking wet. I hold her close, loving the way the rain drenches her completely. Beads drip from her hair and lashes. The moment is crazy sexy. Our lips crash together, hungry. She tastes like rain and peppermint.

  I lose my edge, something I almost never do. I don’t recognize the feeling inside, but it’s like I have been submerged in darkness and someone has finally turned on a light. It flares dimly, almost nonexistent. It is nothing bright. It is almost not worth mentioning. It is everything to me.

  What’s the name for that?

  I am too lost in Faith’s embrace to see the danger.

  The tone of Javier’s voice as he calls my name stops me. I look toward him.

  Figures huddle around Faith’s Jeep, their backs to us. Melissa is parked in the next spot over.

  I know before I see their faces. The air, the vibe, their stances tell me.

  It’s Wink.

  And five of his amigos.

  My stiff posture alerts Faith. I place her on her feet just as they look up.

  “Thought I recognized this car,” Wink says, taking a step toward me.

  Javier is at my side.

  “Go back to the club,” I say to Faith. “You and Melissa.”

  I took out a few of them alone last time. This time I think they’ll know to be more prepared. I need Javier’s help. He’s a good fighter. I would never want to involve him, but I don’t see any other way. Especially since two of them have now pulled guns.

  “Shit,” Melissa says, noticing the Glocks.

  “Now,” I say, never taking my eyes off their guns.

  “But I can’t leave you,” Faith pleads.

  “Now!” I say with such authority that this time she doesn’t question me. Faith and Melissa take off, Melissa helping Faith, like they fear for their lives. As they should. I concentrate all my attention on the MS-13s.

  “Nice gringas you got there,” Wink says menacingly. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to them. ’Specially now that we have her tag number and info.”

  “If you touch her, I swear to God—”

  “Well, that depends on whether you’ve reconsidered our offer. You know what we want,” he says.

  I’m about to lose it, about to unleash every ounce of my fury, when his next words stop me dead in my tracks.

  “Diego Alvarez.”

  My name. He knows my real name.

  “What? You thought we wouldn’t find out? No soy es-túpido, ” Wink says.

  Javier doesn’t leave my side. Without ever having to say a word, he has my back.

  “We don’t usually offer second chances, but your fighting would be an asset to us. You could become our amigo instead of our enemigo. Únete a nosotros.”

  I’m at a disadvantage. I’m not close enough to strike him, but I am close enough for a bullet to strike me. I only need to stall him long enough for Faith to send reinforcements. I would even welcome la policía at this point.

  “What makes you think I don’t belong to someone else?” I say.

  Wink’s gaze travels to my hand, to the cartel tattoo. “If you join us, we can make that disappear,” he says.

  I have a bad feeling, like maybe he does know whom I belong to. And although their gang is powerful, taking on MS-13s is like taking on kindergarteners compared to the cartel’s wrath.

  “Last chance,” Wink says.

  I can’t, won’t join them.

  “Fuck you,” I say.

  “Wrong choice,” Wink replies as he raises the gun.

  I run toward him. Faster than I’ve ever moved in my life.

  Hopeful, hopeful, hopeful.

  I need to make it in time. Every breath I draw, every beat of my heart, will be silenced if not.

  I kick his arm as the gun goes off. Javier yells in pain. If I want to live, I can’t look back. I must concentrate on the guys in front of me. But from the sound of it, Javier is hit.

  One of the MS-13s r
uns toward Javier while I take on the majority of them. A scuffle breaks out to my right, which means Javier is okay enough to fight back. For now.

  I knock the gun from Wink’s hand. I have exactly one second to grab it. I’m hit hard over the head. My chance is gone, evaporated like residual rain puddles on a scorching day.

  Now I’m wobbly, grasping for something in the blurry world around me. I blink back pain and try to stand. I land a few punches and kicks. Not on target, but effective nonetheless. Two guys go down, including the other one with the gun. His Glock slides across the pavement. I don’t have time to reach it. Another MS-13 makes the mistake of running at me and I slam his head into Faith’s metal bumper, knocking him out.

  Wink pulls out a knife now that his gun is somewhere under one of the cars. That’s when I hear sirens. Footsteps pound toward us like an oncoming freight train.

  Wink charges me. I dodge him. Land a solid punch in his face. He comes at me again.

  This time I feel the knife blade pierce my side, slicing into bloody velvet.

  I hit pavement. I don’t have to look down to know that the puncture is deep. Too deep.

  I focus on Wink. I commit his mocking smile to memory. One day he will pay. For a moment I think he’s going to stab me again, but before the cops can catch him, he runs off.

  Leaving his knife buried in me.

  45

  faith

  Ten hours forty-three minutes. Thirty-eight thousand five hundred eighty seconds appear and disappear like a cruel magic show that no one cares to see. I want to bottle up time and chuck it into the ocean and watch it sink to the murky depths where it will wait in darkness. The same kind of darkness it leaves me in.

  Ten hours forty-three minutes.

  That is how long it takes for Diego to open his eyes.

  “Diego,” I say, clutching his hand. My voice is emotion bleeding out, hemorrhaging at every syllable.

  He grunts. Blinks. I wait for him to say something.

  “What? Where?” His voice is gruff.

  I remember how much it hurt for me to talk when I was lying in a hospital bed after surgery, just like him. I explain everything.

  “You were stabbed.” I try not to choke up. I swallow hundreds of tears. Still nothing will dislodge the panic that has taken residence in my throat. “The ambulance rushed you here as fast as possible, took you to surgery right away. Oh God. Diego, I should’ve come sooner. Maybe if I’d called the police quicker. I don’t know.”

  Diego reaches for my hand. “Not your fault,” he whispers.

  I wipe a tear. “The blade pierced your spleen. They had to remove part of the organ. You almost bled to death, Diego.”

  I break down then, bury my head in his sheets. They look like roughly tossed waves.

  Diego runs his fingers through my hair. “Almost doesn’t count,” he says.

  I laugh through tears, attempt to wipe my face and look up at him.

  “Where is Javier?” he asks.

  “He’s okay,” I say. “Better than you. The bullet hit his arm but missed the bone and major blood vessels.”

  A white drape like whipped cream separates the room. I pull it back. Javier lies still, a blanket covering him up to his stomach.

  “They made Javier my roommate?” Diego laughs, and winces from the exertion.

  “Yes,” I answer. “They gave him something powerful. Morphine, I think. Knocked him out so he can sleep through the pain. He was up most of the night with me, worrying about you. So was your dad. He went home to shower and change. He’ll be back soon. You should probably know that the police have been here, Diego. They want to talk to you.”

  The fight wasn’t his fault. But cops have a funny way of looking at things. I don’t want him going to jail.

  Diego watches me silently. “What?” I ask. “Why are you quiet? Are you in pain?”

  “No,” he answers. “I mean, yeah, but that’s not why I’m quiet. Faith, please tell me they caught Wink.”

  I wish I could tell him that. “He got away. I’m sorry.”

  Diego curses.

  “Do you remember anything?” I ask.

  His lips are dry, cracking even. I want to wet them and suck them and make everything better and never let him go.

  “Not anything past the stabbing. I blacked out,” he answers. “Faith, I think you might be in danger.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I say. I can’t be concerned with that now.

  “Escúchame. Wink has your personal information. Do not go outside at night. Lock all your doors and windows. Do you have a house alarm?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Good. Engage it at all times. Keep your cell on you, too,” he instructs. “Don’t answer the door if you don’t recognize the person, okay? Especially don’t answer deliveries or people posing as repair guys.”

  I think of Grace. I can’t let anything happen to her.

  “Promise me,” he says.

  “I promise.”

  He sighs. “This is my fault. Maybe it would be better for you to stay away from me.”

  “No. Absolutely not. Don’t even go there, Diego. You’re not pushing me away again. I belong with you.”

  I lean over and kiss his lips.

  “I belong with you,” I repeat.

  He nods, agreeing. “I can’t push you away. I just don’t know what to do. I’m desperate to keep you safe.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I say as I kiss him again. “We’ll find a way.”

  “Would you two get a room?”

  I break from Diego to see Javier smiling at us.

  “Some of us are tryin’ to sleep, you know,” he jokes. His words are a little slow, as if the medicine has stretched them out, slowing their exit from his mouth.

  Diego grins. His face is richness and color and memories surfacing.

  “Good to see you’re alive,” Javier says. His arm is bandaged, the rest of him intact.

  “You, too, man,” Diego replies. “Lo siento, cuz. Didn’t mean to drag you into this.”

  They both look like someone took a marker to them: black and purple with tinges of green.

  “That’s what familia is for. I got your back,” Javier says. “Though mi mama is another story. She said you’re in trouble as soon as you feel better.”

  “Aw, man,” Diego replies. “I hope it’s not as bad as that time I broke her favorite vase.”

  They laugh and wince from the effort. I watch their interactions with love. They are family in the truest sense. They are family dealt a hard fate.

  “It’s a tough life,” I mumble to myself. Though I’m glad to see them laughing about it now.

  “What?” Diego asks.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  Sitting on Diego’s bed, my feet dangle toward the ground, the booted one feeling heavier. I contemplate lying back with him.

  “Did you just say ‘it’s a tough life’?” he asks.

  “Yes. Why?”

  He grins. “No reason.”

  As Diego and his cousin talk, I decide on a chair between them. Diego holds my almost healed hand like he never wants to let me go. I hope he doesn’t. He taught me to stop running from my heart. Because of him, I think as I gaze at Diego.

  It’s all because of him.

  46

  diego

  One good thing about being stabbed is that it has given me more time in the last three weeks with Faith. She comes over nearly every day. She even told her dad that we’re dating. He doesn’t know that I’m Latino or that I have tattoos and scars. But he’ll find out today.

  “Are you sure you want to do this? Maybe we should put it off a little longer,” Faith says for what I swear is the hundredth time.

  I grab her hands so she’ll stop fidgeting with her shirt. She pulls away.

  “Dad already knows I’m benched from the dance team, and he’s dealing with my wardrobe changes surprisingly well. He even supports my decision not to be with Jason, but I swear that any
moment it’ll all crumble and he’ll change his mind,” Faith says. She’s talking fast. Too fast.

  “Faith,” I say, trying to get her attention. She won’t look at me.

  “What if he makes a scene?” she says. “He’s done it before. Ninth grade, for example. Right before I met Jason, he caught Melissa and me out past curfew with boys. We only went to the bowling rink, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the boys weren’t Caucasian. And they didn’t attend our church.”

  She’s pacing around my apartment like a caged mouse, looking for a way out of life’s problems.

  “Dad and one of his church friends found us there, in public, and humiliated me, told me to get in the car and warned the boys off. I wonder if he would have acted the same if he didn’t have that church member to impress.”

  “Faith,” I say again.

  “He made a scene at the fair a couple years ago, too, when a nice guy hit on me. Sure, I was with Jason, and I planned on telling the guy that I was taken, but Dad beat me to it by telling him to back off.”

  It’s unsettling for sure, but Faith is eighteen. Hopefully by now her father will allow his daughter to make decisions on her own. People need to fall sometimes to know how it feels to pick themselves up.

  “He only tolerates Jason because he attends our church and his parents volunteer.”

  Maybe he can learn to tolerate me, too.

  “I mean, it’s a real possibility, him freaking out. It’s my sister’s sixth birthday. I don’t want to ruin her party. There’ll be people from church there. Not that I really care. It’s my father’s reputation I’m worried about. I just thought that this would be the best day to break the news. At least today he’ll be happy and there will be distractions so he can’t get too mad. This is a special day for Grace, though. I wasn’t thinking about that. What if I cause problems on her special day?”

  “Mami,” I say.

  She’s still not hearing me.

  “What will we do if my dad starts yelling? If he kicks you out, do I go with you? I love him and I’m crazy about you, Diego. What if I have to choose between you? I can’t do that.”

  “Faith!” I yell.

  She finally looks at me. I get off the couch and walk to her.