“What’s that?” I ask quietly into her hair.
“Did you come for me, Gabe?”
“Yeah, babe. I did.”
“Will you always come for me, Gabe?”
I kiss her softly on the forehead as I lay her on the sofa. “Yeah, Alexis. I’ll always come for you.” Fool that I am.
I straighten and turn to where Beth is watching me from the doorway.
“Thanks a lot,” she says, trying not to be obvious as she keeps darting glances to the parking lot.
“But Marco will be here soon,” I finish.
She nods sadly.
“See you around, Beth.” I pass by her and walk out of the apartment. Marco is just reaching the top of the stairs when I walk out. He stiffens as he sees me.
“She’s all yours,” I tell him and walk by, shoulder-checking him as I go.
“You need to stay away from her,” he says as I head down the stairs.
“And you need to watch your back, Marky Mark ‘cause I’m not done here. Not by a long shot.”
Alexis
Te deseo.
I want you
.
I’M having a delicious dream. Gabe, bare-chested, wearing only a pair of loose flannel pajama pants, is carrying me to bed. “I’ll always come for you, babe,” he tells me. He’s so warm and I can smell him, that special combination of guy and soap and motor oil. His muscles flex beneath my hands as he carries me. I run my fingers over the raised scar that snakes along his shoulder. I can almost feel the letters of my name that lies next to the puckered skin.
“Lex,” a voice calls to me. “Lex.”
I open my eyes, only to be blasted by pain shooting through my skull. I grimace, yelp, and shut my eyes again.
Marco chuckles. “Guess that answers the question of how you’re feeling.”
I almost cringe away from where Marco sits next to me on the bed. I immediately feel guilty. I’m pulling away from him not because he’s done anything wrong but because he isn’t Gabe. What is the matter with me?
I slowly open first one eye and then the other, blinking a couple of times as I try to breathe through the excruciating pain that rocks the inside my head.
Marco sits beside me, watching me thoughtfully. He reaches out and pushes my hair back off my face.
“Paying for your little bender last night, huh?”
I nod my head, not sure if I’m ready to use my voice or not.
“Beth took you home, and when I got here, you were on the sofa bawling your head off, something about someone coming to get you. Then Beth said you needed to eat. I thought she was nuts, but as soon as you had a piece of peanut butter toast, you perked right up. Then you passed out, of course.” He laughs again.
I try to sit up, groaning in pain as I do. He pulls a pillow up behind me and I sit back against it.
“I’m really sorry,” I say, humiliation washing over me.
He strokes my hair some more. “Don’t be. I didn’t realize how much stress this whole deal has been putting on you.”
“What whole deal?” I ask warily.
He sighs and looks down at his lap. “Having that guy here.”
“He has a name,” I answer quietly.
“Yeah, I know. Gabe. There. I said it. And I see that his being here is stressful for you. What I don’t know is if it’s stressful because he makes you nervous and reminds you of stuff you’d rather forget, or because you still have feelings for him.”
He looks up at me, and I see the pain in his eyes. Marco has loved me for a long time, and I love him too. I never want to hurt him, and this is.
“It’s not because I have feelings for him,” I lie. “But I know this is hurting you, and I don’t know how to fix it. I can’t make him move. I can’t force him to go back where he came from. I ignore him but he’s still here. How do I make this right, Marc?”
He reaches out and puts his palm along my cheek then gives me a sad smile. “I don’t think you can, Lex. We’ll just have to wait it out and hope it works for the best. He’s not going to leave, and when I look at you, I know why. No guy in his right mind would let you go unless he had to. I’ve been blessed with four years of your life, and I hope I get a whole lot more, but if I were him? I’d be doing the same damn thing. I’d be going after you, and I’d try to get you back.”
I feel a tear track down my cheek, and I lean my lips into his hand and plant a kiss on his palm.
“It’s still you and me. It’ll always be you and me.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Lex. Just know I’m here too. And I’m not going anywhere either.” He stands up. “You able to eat anything?”
I clear my throat, overwhelmed by emotion. “Maybe.”
“Why don’t I make you some eggs and toast before I go hit the library?”
I nod. “You’re a great boyfriend, you know.” I smile at him.
“Just don’t forget it,” he says.
After Marco leaves for the library, I spend a long time in the shower trying to wash away the pain that has taken up residence inside my brain and my chest. My drinking binge didn’t rid me of my problems, but it did get the anger out. I’m too tired and hungover to be mad anymore.
Once I look like some semblance of a human again, I gather up all the filthy clothes from the week, grab a handful of quarters from the jar I keep in the kitchen, and head downstairs to the laundry room.
I’m sorting through everything, preparing to fill one washer with darks and one with lights when I hear the door to the laundry room open. I turn to look behind me and find myself face to face with Gabe.
“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I’ll come back later.” He starts to reverse course when I stop him.
“Wait. I mean, you don’t have to leave. If you need to do your laundry, come on in.”
He looks at me skeptically. “Is that the hangover talking or you really willing to be in the same room with me?”
I sigh. I didn’t throw up this morning, but now my stomach feels like it’s reconsidering.
“Look, I don’t remember everything about last night, but I know I said some pretty shitty things to you. I’m sorry, okay? It was the alcohol talking and I was out of line.”
He nods then walks to the washing machines on the opposite side of the room from me and starts pulling stuff out of his basket. He has his back to me so I watch him for a minute. The muscles in his shoulders and back flex as he reaches into the basket and stacks laundry on the counter, and I remember the way they felt in the dream I had last night – firm, smooth, warm, like a piece of metal in the sunshine.
I also can’t help but notice the set of his shoulders and the way he keeps his head lowered. I’ve never seen his body look so defeated. This is a man who has survived two tours of duty in Afghanistan and kept his pride, his cocky attitude, his confidence. Nothing takes Gabe Thompson down. Except me. I did this to him. I made him fall in love with me and now it’s slowly ruining him. Beth was right – I have to find a way to set him free. He is the most spectacular man I’ve ever known, strong, resourceful, brave, funny, and utterly beautiful. He deserves to be the man he’s destined to be. I can’t stand to be the one who interrupts that.
“Gabe?” I’m surprised at how tentative my voice sounds.
“Yeah?” he asks without turning around.
“Um, can we talk?”
He stops moving and stands, hands gripping the countertop for a minute before he slowly turns around to face me.
“So talk,” he says, both his voice and his face neutral.
I start to pace. I didn’t plan this, but I know something has to be said.
“I really am sorry about last night.”
He crosses his arms and leans back against the counter. “Yeah, I think you covered that.”
I stop pacing and look at him. Normally this is the point at which I’d start bickering with him for his snarkiness, but surprisingly I see no snark on his face, and the bicker is all drained out of me.
He looks at me for a minute. Then he turns his head slightly to gaze out the windows at the parking lot. The sun is shining outside and the rays filter through the dirty glass to pour over his perfect cut features, catching his blond hair and reflecting in tiny sparks of light. He is so beautiful it makes my whole being ache. And he is so much more than what most people see. He’s big and tattooed and rude, but he’s also sweet and funny and so fucking sexy it should be a crime. There aren’t many girls who could tell him no, and that knowledge makes what I’m doing so much harder.
He finally turns back to me and runs a hand through his short hair. “You never told me you loved me,” he says out of the blue.
I open my mouth to respond but clamp it shut again, speechless.
“When you left Afghanistan, I told you not to answer me. I told you we could talk about it when I got home. But well, we all know how that turned out. The bottom line is you never told me you loved me. I assumed you did, based on what we had, based on how I felt. I guess I came here thinking that you loved me and if we could be in the same place at the same time you’d remember and we’d work it out.”
I feel the sting of tears coming to my eyes. I’m a crier. Always have been. Marco rolls his eyes and ignores it when I cry. Gabe said it means I’m a better person than him. I sure as hell don’t feel like the better person right now.
“I get it now – the flaw in my plan,” he continues. “You never told me you loved me. I assumed, and like with most assumptions – well, you get it.”
The first tears roll down my face. If he only knew how right his assumptions were. That I love him this very moment, that I have loved him since the first time he touched me, that I have never loved any man the way I love him.
I sniff, keeping my eyes on the dirty concrete floor beneath me. “Gabe. None of that matters. Don’t you see? You only knew one tiny part of me in Afghanistan. I’m from Floresville, Texas and my family is from Mexico. I’m not Alexis, the adventurous aid worker, not really. I’m Alexis, the good daughter of a Hispanic Catholic family. You could never understand what that means. They could never understand you. But Marco? He knows me, he knows where I come from, he knows my family, and they know him.”
I see his hands gripping the edge of the counter behind him. His knuckles are white.
His voice is quiet and strained when he replies. “I’d give anything to know your family and where you come from, Alexis. You’ve never given me the chance. But you’re wrong that I don’t know you. You aren’t some sort of file cabinet full of folders labeled ‘aid worker,’ ‘Hispanic daughter,’ ‘college student.’ You’re a woman – a whole, brilliant, soulful woman who happens to also be an aid worker and a Hispanic daughter and a college student. Those are outfits you don when you go out in the world. Underneath all that is the naked, pure, essential Alexis, and I know her, dammit. Better than anyone else in this world. I know you, Alexis.”
He turns back to his laundry and starts tossing items into the washing machine. Trying to see through the water streaming from my eyes, I shove all my shit in one machine, jam the quarters in, and flee the room, pursued by a truth I might never be able to outrun.
Gabe
Allá donde fueres, haz lo que vieres.
When in Rome, do as the Romans.
I spend the rest of my weekend dicking around with my bike and thinking about what Alexis told me. I know it’s more complicated than she said, but I also know she’s starting to let me in on what went wrong. She didn’t agree with me when I said she didn’t love me. She said I don’t know her, which is bullshit, but it’s bullshit I can deal with. As long is there is some sort of action I can take, I’ll stay in this fight. Without realizing it, she’s given me new ammo and I’m back in the ring.
My first stop Monday morning is Ramon.
“You’re here kinda early, guëro,” he says as I walk into the office with a box full of empañadas from the bakery down the street that I know he frequents.
“Brought you some breakfast, man.”
He eyes me suspiciously. “You’re not getting a raise,” he grumbles through a mouthful of apple and pastry dough.
I hold my hands up. “Not asking for one. Just some advice.”
He leans back in the reclining desk chair while I sit down on the folding metal bitch of a chair across from him.
“All right. What’s up?”
I scratch my head. I’m not really the type to ask for advice about women. Until Alexis, I knew what I needed to about chicks – how to get them in my bed and keep them out of my heart. After Alexis, I returned to that same storehouse of knowledge. But with Alexis? It’s a different event, and at this point, I’m barely treading water.
“There’s this girl,” I say.
Ramon sits up and leans his elbows on the desk. “Ha!” he bursts out. “Benji told me you’d met some girl from down here. I’ve been waiting for this day, amigo.” He grins and slaps the desk with his hand.
I shake my head. “Jesus, you’re as annoying as your cousin, you know that?”
“Just get to it, white boy. You need advice on how to handle your woman? I’m the man.”
“Yeah, this isn’t exactly the kind of woman you ‘handle.’ And for the record, I do just fine with the ladies. Better than fine. Ask Benji, I’m a fucking legend in certain parts of the Middle East.” I give him a big grin. Ramon snorts. “But this one is, well… She’s a special circumstance.”
He nods but keeps his ever-loving mouth shut for once.
“I met Alexis in Afghanistan, and everything was great. But after we got back, she didn’t want anything to do with me, and now that I’m here, she’s telling me I don’t know the real her or some shit. She says that I don’t know her family and where she comes from, so we can’t be together.”
“Uh huh,” he says, looking at me shrewdly. “And what is this Alexis’s last name?”
I sigh. “Garcia.”
“Uh huh,” he says again, leaning back in his chair once more. “You really stepped in it, didn’t you, guëro?”
“I don’t know, man. We met during a war. It was me and her. It was great. She never said anything about her family being a problem. And she said she was going to…” I stop. Now I have to tell him she also has a boyfriend. I’m looking like the world’s biggest damn chump.
“Spill it all.” He chuckles, shaking his head.
“She had – has – a boyfriend. He’s from Floresville, and they grew up together. When I met her, she said she was done with him, but when I got here, I found out she’d come home and gone straight back to him.”
Ramon sighs and runs a hand over his face. “Oh, kid, what did you go and do?”
I sit and look at my lap. Fucking fell in love, that’s what.
“Okay. Here’s the deal. Her parents born here?”
“No, Mexico.”
“It gets better and better. Look, ese, you gotta realize that you’re dealing with the daughter of immigrants. They could have been here five years or twenty-five, but they were raised in Mexico. And now they’ve got the American daughter and they’re going to be holding on to her tight as hell because she’s about to drift away from what they know. She already speaks different, looks different, has different views. It’s fucking terrifying for some of those parents.”
“And her dating a white guy isn’t going to help, right?” I sum up.
He nods. “But it’s more than that. If it were just that, you could go meet them, give them some of your charm, and probably get by, but this is about preserving the culture. Your girl in school here?”
“Yeah, UT.”
“Shit. So you got a family who’s here to better themselves, but they’re trying to make su
re she remembers where the hell they come from. You got to understand, for Hispanics, family is everything, bro. Vecinos, the Catholic Church, that stuff is what’s most important in life. The way they cook Sunday dinner after Mass, the cousins who sleep over every Friday night, the Quinceañeras and Las Posadas at Christmas. No white kid could ever understand that, and he wouldn’t raise their grandkids in that world. That’s what her parents fear, man. Their daughter taking off with someone like you and forgetting who she is.”
I feel my heart sink in my chest. Suddenly it all sounds a lot more complicated than I imagined.
“So what do I do? I mean, I can’t become Hispanic, man. I grew up in Northern Cali, and there were plenty of Hispanics at my school, but my mom’s from Iowa and I haven’t been to church in ten fucking years. We never talked to our neighbors, and I’m an only child. I know nothing about being Hispanic in South Central Texas.”
“No shit.” He looks at me with one eyebrow raised.
I slide back in my chair. We have a bit of a stare down until finally I say, “So, you going to help me or what?”
“I can try, but goddamn, boy, you can’t expect a miracle. I mean, if it was just the family, but she’s got a boyfriend too?”
“It’s all part of the same fucking problem. I know she doesn’t love him. He’s who her parents picked for her and she won’t go against them.” I have to believe what I’m saying or I’ll never be able to survive seeing her and Marco together.
“You really don’t want to give this one up, huh?” he asks as he reaches for the phone on the desk and starts punching in numbers.
“It’s not even an option, man.”
“Well then, welcome to Latino 101, bro – Hey, baby,” he says into the phone. “I’m bringing somebody home for dinner. Make carnitas, yeah?”
Fuck.
After a hellish, long day at work and then my first of what I fear will be many family dinners at Ramon’s house, I pull up to the apartment building and take the Tupperware full of Tina’s carnitas out of the saddlebag on my Harley. I have to admit, being under Ramon’s thumb for twelve straight hours was almost worth it for his wife’s cooking. The leftovers will feed me breakfast and lunch tomorrow, and that makes for one happy mechanic.
Concealed - A Hiding From Love Novel #2 Page 6
