Oh, actually I would. But I don’t answer. I just stand and wait for his revelation.
“The soldier. The one, well, you know. He got out of a truck and then unlocked the door to one of those studio apartments downstairs and went inside. Lex, it looks like he’s moved into the building.”
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react. What response does Marco want? What does a dutiful girlfriend who has no feelings left for the other guy say and do? The fact that I’m having to think about this is not lost on me. Shouldn’t I know how I feel? Shouldn’t my reactions be automatic?
Instead, what pops out is, “I thought you said he rode a Harley?”
Marco gapes at me. “Seriously, Lex? This guy has moved into your building and all you’re worried about is what he drives?”
“Well, maybe it wasn’t him is what I’m saying. Maybe it was just someone who looks like him. I mean, since he was in a truck and all.” Good recovery. Damn, I’m a genius.
“The Harley was on a trailer parked next to the truck. How many tattooed jarheads are there walking around your apartment building, Lex? I’m sure it was him.”
Marco’s sarcasm is grating on my nerves. I want to say that Gabe was in the Army, not the Marines, but I hold my tongue. This whole thing is hard enough without having to figure out what will piss him off and what won’t. All I can think about are the talks he and my parents had with me after I got back from Afghanistan.
Marco was always there, acting like he was my older brother or something. The reality is, my actual older brother, Tomás, couldn’t have cared less who I was dating. He was busy finishing his MBA at the time, and when my mother forced him to come home and have a talk with me, he said, “So, this guy put his life on the line to protect you, and he loves you and wants to come to school with you? What’s the problem?”
But Marco always understood exactly what Mom and Dad did. He understood the psychological repercussions of being trapped by hostile forces in a war-torn country and how that might create a false sense of attachment between two people. He knew what Gabe and I had felt for one another wasn’t real. It was circumstances, nothing more. But I still hate that tone in his voice, the one that says I’m a child and don’t know what I need in life.
“Fine!” I throw my hands in the air and march toward the kitchen. “So it’s him, and it looks like he’s moved into the building. What exactly do you want me to do about it? I don’t own the property. I can’t control who lives here.”
Marco follows me. “I want you to stay the hell away from him and tell me if he approaches you again. He’s been in a warzone, Lex. He might be unbalanced, you know? I don’t trust him anywhere near you.”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Marc. He’s not unbalanced. In fact, he’s one of the sanest people I’ve ever known. You didn’t see him over there. He was totally in control of it. He knew the things that could mess with your head and he dealt with them better than anyone I saw.”
I put the electric kettle under the faucet and fill it then flip the switch to heat water for tea. I definitely need something soothing right now. I feel like I’m a door and Marco and Gabe are battering at me from both sides. The real question is who’s going to break me first.
Marco stands at the entrance to the kitchen, looking tenser than I’ve ever seen him.
“He might have seemed perfectly sane to you years ago, but you have no idea what’s happened to him since he got out. For all you know, he’s been in jail for the last two years.”
“Actually he’s been in college,” I mutter as I load dishes in the dishwasher.
“What?”
I straighten and turn to look him in the eye. “He’s been in college, not jail. College in Hawaii.” There. I said it.
“And how, exactly, do you know this?” he asks slowly.
“Letters. He wrote me. I never answered any of them. I didn’t lie to you. I wasn’t in touch with him, but he did try to get in touch with me, and I did read the letters.” And emails and Skype messages.
Marco stares at me as though I’ve grown a second head. “And you never thought to mention this to me until today? You never thought I’d be interested in the fact that the asshole who slept with my girlfriend was still in contact with her?”
“I didn’t want to have to deal with this, with you. I didn’t mention it because it didn’t matter. I wasn’t answering the letters. I never responded in any way. I told you it was over and it was. I couldn’t control what he did, and it didn’t matter.”
Marco shakes his head, and I can see the muscle in his jaw tick. “So he managed to tell you that he was going to college in Hawaii after he got out? How long did these letters of his keep coming? Three months, six months, a year? Did he write to tell you he was coming here?”
“No, of course not! Right after he got out, when he moved to Hawaii, was the last one.” I still have that letter, in the back of my dresser drawer. I can recite it word for word.
Dear Alexis,
I’m not sure if you read these letters, and I guess it doesn’t really matter. This is the last one I’ll write. I got an honorable discharge last month. But you probably already know that since I sent you my flight plans back to the States. I spent some time in Sacramento with my mom. She’s doing well, has a new boyfriend who seems like a good guy. It was nice to see her happy. Gives me hope that maybe I can be someday too.
I told you I wanted to try college, so I’m in Hawaii. Hilo has some great surfing, and Nick is going to come out in a few months to go to school too. I’m not sure what I want to major in, but I guess there’s time to decide.
I hope your life is whatever you want it to be, Alexis. I’ll always wish you would have told me what went wrong with us, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Just know that everything I said to you, everything that happened between us, was the truth. I was never anything but honest with you. And I guess honesty means I have to say goodbye to you now. It’s about the last thing I want to do, but I can’t keep loving someone who doesn’t exist.
--Gabe.
I wonder what changed his mind since he wrote that letter? Why has he come all this way after all this time? Why can’t he leave well enough alone? Why can’t he leave me alone?
“Look,” I say, softening my tone and stepping over to Marco, “it doesn’t matter where he lives or how many times he talks to me. He’s not my boyfriend. You are. You’re the one I’ve been with since I was sixteen, you’re the one who’s part of my past and my present, and you’ll be part of my future. He’s just some guy, a mistake I made in a different time and a different place. He can’t hurt us.” I touch him lightly on the arm and then wind my fingers through his as I have so many other thousands of times over the last four years.
Marco sighs and shakes his hair out of his face then adjusts his glasses. He gingerly picks up my other hand. “You swear?” he asks. “Because this is scaring me, Lex. I can’t lose you.”
I lean forward and give him a kiss on the lips. “You won’t,” I promise.
For the first time in two days, he visibly relaxes, and I know I’ve said the right things. I’ve comforted him, been a good girlfriend. He believes me.
I only wish I believed myself.
Gabe
Lo que no mata, engorda.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
OVER the next few days, I spend most of my time at work. I might know my way around a basic engine, but I still have a lot to learn about the kind of work Ramon and Mike do at the shop. I enjoy it though. It’s a new challenge, and it keeps my mind occupied so I don’t obsess over Alexis.
At nights, when I’m home alone in my studio apartment, I can’t help but listen for sounds from outside – her coming or going, her footsteps, her voice, her breaths, her heart. It’s been two days since I moved in and I haven’t seen her around again. In a way, I’m grateful, because her remarks comparing our relationship to a one-night stand sliced me open and dumped my guts on the pavement. Time and time again
I’ve told myself she had to have felt everything I did. Time and time again, she’s told me in one way or another that she didn’t. The problem is I’m beginning to believe her just the tiniest bit.
I’m home after my third day of work. I’ve eaten some takeout from the burger joint down the street, and now I’m trying to get my first bills for the apartment sorted. I step out the front door to get my wallet from the truck. As I move across the small walkway to the parking space, I hear a soft murmur and then a giggle. My gaze flies up to the second floor of the U-shaped building, where I see two figures standing outside the door to Alexis’s apartment. I watch, knowing this is a moment that will wreck me for years to come but unable to stop from punishing myself in the worst way.
Marco stands, his hands on her hips, his face nuzzling her neck, that sweet, soft neck I buried my own face in dozens of times over the few days she and I were together. She has her head back, face awash with the light from the porch lantern. Her skin glows golden, and her hair flows around her shoulders like the softest, smoothest silk. She’s giggling at whatever Marco is saying or doing, her arms linked loosely around his neck. Every bend and curve of them speaks of two people who are as familiar with each other’s bodies as they are with their own.
As I gape, electrical anger sparks in my arms and legs and a clenching sensation crawls into my chest, settling there in a lump under my breastbone. His hands move around to smooth over her ass, and I see red. He shifts his head and bends toward her face. As she lifts her own lips and meets him halfway, I turn and walk back into my apartment, slamming the door like a petulant child, my errant wallet completely forgotten. I turn off the TV, switch off the lights, and lie on the sofa in my clothes. I knew this was going to be hard, but damn if I’d known it’d be this hard. I stare at the ceiling of my newest prison in silence. Tents, barracks, motels, apartments. They all feel like cages. Like the cage around my heart. The cage that can only be unlocked by her.
Friday finally rolls around, and the mood at the garage is chill. Mike asks me if I want to go to a bar after work, and Ramon is blasting Tejano music while he works on a buddy’s big green lowrider. I thought the country music we normally listened to was taxing my patience, but after a few hours of Tierra Tejano and Los Bad Apples, I need a moment in my truck with Arctic Monkeys or I’m going to go stark raving mad.
I eat my lunch in the truck, take my breaks in the truck, and finally, at 3:30, I’ve had all I can stand. I set down the wrench I’ve been using to loosen a bolt, march over to the iPod dock that Ramon has set up next to the office door, and yank the entire iPod out. Before Ramon can get more than, “Hey, guëro, what the –” out of his mouth, I stick my own iPod into the dock, scroll to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, and let it rip. As the opening beats to Thrift Shop start up, I hear Mike holler from the far bay, “Poppin’ taaags!” Ramon stands and looks at me, speechless, while I walk by him, handing off his iPod as I go, and proceed to my bay, where I pick the wrench up and go back to work.
An hour and a half later Ramon switches the music off, lifts my iPod out of the dock, and comes over to my bay. I stand up from under the hood of the car I’m working on, my hands covered in grease, and look him in the eye.
“You don’t like my music, huh, guëro?”
“I just thought maybe we needed a little variety,” I reply diplomatically.
“All right. All right.” He hands me my iPod. “But I get every day from 2-5 p.m. The rest of the time you and Mike can duke it out over the tunes.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Mike calls from the far bay as he locks away the tools. “I’ll listen to anything…except Taylor Swift. Damn that chick’s annoying.”
“It’s a deal, man. No Taylor Swift. And guapo here gets the afternoon shift,” I reply, jerking my thumb at Ramon.
“Damn straight I’m guapo, bro. Before Tina and me hooked up, all the girls in East Cesar were after this fine piece of ass. You young bucks coming in here thinking you’re so all that . . .” His voice fades as he walks off into the office, mumbling to himself.
Mike, who has made his way over to my middle bay, laughs and shakes his head. “Man, I don’t know how you do it, but you get away with shit no one else would. And you piss him right off at the same time.”
I chuckle. I like Ramon. He’s a good guy, devoted to his family and his friends. From what I can tell, he’s really well respected in his community too. I hope I can learn more about his business as time goes by. But in the meantime, I’ve managed to arrange some decent music.
“Pissing people off is a specialty of mine,” I tell Mike, and an image of Alexis’s face the last time I saw her brushes through my mind. I blink a couple of times as the shock of how sad she looked comes back to me. I’ve spent every night since wondering if my being here is the most selfish thing I’ve ever done, and that’s saying something, because I’m a selfish bastard much of the time.
“Yeah, well, come on over to Sixth Street with me and we’ll see how many drunk UT students you can piss off tonight.”
“You got my back when I do?” I look him up and down. He’s a big guy. I definitely want him on my side.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been in a real fight. No one ever gets pissed enough to hit me, I guess.”
I laugh at that. “Dude, they’re too scared to hit you, which is perfect. I’ll piss them off and then they’ll see you and take a pass. It’s like I’m getting a free ticket to be a dick for the night.”
“Yeah, just don’t be a dick to my cousin Carla ‘cause she’s meeting us at Margie’s, and I will kick your ass if you’re not nice to her.”
I put my hands up in the air like he’s holding a gun on me. “No pissing off the cousin. I gotcha loud and clear.”
He smirks at me. “All right. Let’s saddle up and ride on out of here then. Since you brought your truck, you can be my DD.”
I roll my eyes as I get to work cleaning up my hands and gathering my stuff. “Fine, I’ll drive your lazy ass, but we’re going to my place first so I can change out of this sweaty work shirt.”
“You’re such a pretty boy, Gabe.”
“Whatever, man. Whatever.”
Alexis
Al hombre osado la fortuna le da la mano.
Fortune favors the bold.
AUSTIN, Texas, is famous for a lot of things – the University, Longhorn football, live music, tree-huggers, Tex-Mex food, and Sixth Street. The bars and restaurants along the downtown street are known worldwide for the nonstop parties and live music. On any given night of any given week, you can stroll down Sixth Street and find bands playing country western, punk, ska, blues, jazz, and good old rock and roll. For students at UT, it’s a goldmine. Blocks and blocks of alcohol, music, and hot young things wearing little clothing.
Marco has a view on partying. It’s good– in its place. Friday nights are our nights to go out. That way we have Saturday mornings to recover and then hit the books for the remainder of the weekend. Plus, he says that after a whole week of classes, everyone deserves to have a few drinks on Friday nights.
That doesn’t mean we party every Friday, but more often than not we hit Sixth Street with his roommates and my sister in tow. My sister is two years older and conveniently looks a lot like me, so she’s provided me with her “lost” Texas driver’s license for a fake ID. If we go into a place and stay separated by a few people, the doormen never notice we have the same name. The one time someone said something like, “Hey, didn’t you just come through here?” I answered, “No, that was my sister. We look a lot alike.” Worked like a charm.
I haven’t seen Gabe the whole week and I’m finally starting to relax, thinking maybe he really will start a life here that doesn’t interfere with mine. I come home after class on Friday feeling a sense of calm I haven’t felt for days. Once I get inside, I hop in the shower, doing a full-on cleanup session with the requisite shaving, plucking, scrubbing, and polishing. The last week has been tough, and I want to try to start fresh with Marco. I�
��ll get a few drinks in that boy, loosen him up, and maybe pounce on him when we get home.
Beth is coming to my place and then we’re going to meet Marco and his roommates downtown a little later. She shows up thirty minutes early of course, so I’m still getting dressed.
“Huh uh,” she mutters at me as she flips through a magazine while sitting cross-legged on my bed.
I stop midway to pulling up the jeans I’m donning. “What?”
She looks up, assessing me from head to toe. “You can’t wear that.”
“Why?” I ask, looking down at the turquoise peasant blouse and dark blue jeans.
“Uh, because it’s totally boring, and we’re not going to Tia Alva’s for dinner, but to a bar full of hot guys and bitchy girls we need to outshine.”
I stand up straight, letting the jeans slide back down to pool around my ankles. “You’re kidding, right? Since when do you care if I’m dressed boring?”
“Since always. I just decided to mention it tonight is all.” She goes back to flipping through the magazine.
“Um, who are you and what have you done with my feminist sister? Hot guys? Bitchy girls? What the heck, Beth?”
She sighs, tosses the magazine on the floor next to the bed, and stands up. “When’s the last time you and Marc had sex, baby sister?”
“Oh my – I can’t believe – I’m just –” I sputter to a stop.
She smirks at me. “That’s what I figured. Just because you have a boyfriend doesn’t mean you give up on how you look, Lex. If you’re going to be with him, maybe a new sexy you will jumpstart things, huh? Jesus, you’re not even twenty-one yet. You should be having sex like all the time. You two act like you’re forty. Live a little. Show some skin, hang on your boyfriend at the bar, lick his neck, and grab his dick under the table. You’re going to kill each other from boredom before you hit your thirties.”
Concealed - A Hiding From Love Novel #2 Page 3
