She pulls on the ends of her hair that hang over one shoulder. “It wasn’t like that, really. All he said was he could tell I was serious about you if I was willing to risk my parents cutting me off.”
“Cutting you off?” My stomach roils. “You mean like not pay for your school anymore?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Marco’s mom told him my dad didn’t want to pay for anything if I was going to ruin my life. I guess my mom talked him down…for now.”
I stop walking, feeling like I’ve been sucker punched, making it hard to catch my breath. This is so much worse than she ever let on before. I thought we were looking at her parents not liking me, maybe being awkward when I was around or something. I had no idea it was a “lose him or lose us” deal. Fuck.
“You seem upset about this, but not necessarily surprised,” I say, watching her expressions carefully.
“It’s not the first time he’s threatened it,” she answers in a tiny voice.
“You mean when you came back from Afghanistan.” There is no question in my voice, only a statement of fact.
She nods.
Finally. All the pieces fall into place. Eighteen years old, all alone, faced not only with her parents’ disapproval but with the threat of them abandoning her, she’d cut me loose. And really, who could blame her? It makes me hate myself for not being there to protect and support her when her parents acted like such jerks.
I close the distance between us and trap her between me and the truck, placing both arms alongside her head as I lean in and kiss her softly on the lips.
“God, babe, I’m so sorry you had to face that all alone. I should have been there. I don’t blame you at all for the choices you made. You were only eighteen years old, you’d just spent a month in a warzone, and then your parents threatened you with that? You weren’t prepared for it. But you’re older now, and you’ve got me. You don’t need to worry. No matter what happens with your parents, I’m here, and we’ll figure it out. I’ve got a good job, and if we have to, we’ll get you some student loans and I’ll pay them off after you graduate.”
She sniffs and nods against my neck.
“Sweetheart?” I put my fingers underneath her chin so she’ll look me in the face. “This isn’t two years ago. We have each other and nothing’s going to change that. Okay?”
“Okay,” she whispers.
I kiss her until she melts into me and moans softly. Then I pull away. “I’ve got to go back to that job that’s going to take care of you from now on. You okay to drive?”
“Yeah,” she exhales, her eyes taking on that look they have when I get her really turned on.
“Hold that thought and I’ll see you in a few hours.” I lick her earlobe and step away.
“You’re evil, Gabe Thompson.”
I grin at her as she climbs back into my truck and drives away.
After she clears the parking lot, I stalk back to the garage, anger seeping into places inside me I didn’t even know existed. There is no way I’m going to stand by and let her parents do this to her. They haven’t met me yet, but they’re about to, and they’ll learn I’m not some pansy-ass college boy living off of his daddy’s money. If they won’t take care of their daughter, I will, and they’ll be the ones who miss out on the amazing woman she’s going to become.
It’s Friday night, and I’m covered in grease and sweat. I spent three out of the last four days working eleven or twelve hours a day. As soon as Alexis told me her parents might quit paying for stuff, I went straight to Ramon and asked about overtime. He said that if I could get jobs after hours he’d let me keep the garage open. I immediately started offering customers after-hours service and managed to get two weeks’ worth of jobs lined up immediately. It makes sense – people work during the day and it’s difficult to get to work without a car. After hours they can drop the car, have a friend or family member pick them up, go out to dinner, and come back to a car that’s ready to roll.
Ramon is stoked about the whole thing. The garage’s percent is more than the extra utilities to keep the place open at night, so it’s money he doesn’t even have to be there to earn. He says if it gets to a point where it’s cutting into our regular daily business he’ll make me stop, but in these first few weeks, it’s been all new appointments, so I’m hopeful for the future.
Alexis freaked when I told her what I was doing. She couldn’t believe I would work a sixty-hour week to make sure she could keep going to school.
“They haven’t done it yet. They probably won’t, Gabe. And even if they do, it’s not your responsibility. I can go get a job and some loans. It might mean it’ll take me a little longer to graduate, but that’s no big deal.”
“Babe. Anything to do with you is my responsibility from here on out. Plus, if your parents cut off your funds because you’re dating me, how can I not try to fix that?”
She fought me on it, but I wasn’t willing to budge, so she tries to compensate by coming and hanging out at the garage with me after Ramon and Mike go home for the night. She brings her books and studies in the office while I work. We eat dinner together and she takes care of the paperwork with the customers. By the end of the first couple of weeks, we have a whole routine, and I’ve decided the extra hours are completely worth it if I get to see her sitting there, nibbling on her pencil with those shiny lips.
It does mean we haven’t spent much time going out or socializing. When we hit Friday of the second week, I only schedule one after-hours repair and I have that banged out by seven p.m. After the customer leaves, I walk into the office where Alexis sits, pencil stuck in her hair to hold it in a bun, nose pressed to her laptop screen.
“You really do need to get a new pair of glasses,” I tell her as I laugh. “It can’t be good for your eyes to sit that close to the screen.”
She scowls at me.
“So I’m all done for the night.”
She looks up, surprised. “Really? Already?”
“Yeah, it’s Friday. Even I deserve a little time off.”
Her face immediately melts into a mask of sympathy. She folds the laptop shut and sets it aside. “Aw, you’re right, you poor thing. You’ve been working so hard. I don’t deserve you. You realize that, right?”
I sit down in Ramon’s big desk chair, swiveling so I’m turned toward her. “Come here,” I say in a low voice as I wiggle my index finger her direction.
She raises an eyebrow at me.
“Seriously. Get over here or you’ll regret it.”
She snorts and then examines her cuticles as if I haven’t been talking to her at all.
“Alexis,” I warn. I see her shiver a little at that, and I can’t help smiling.
I spring from the chair and she shrieks, jumping from her seat too late. I grab her around the waist, and she squeals again as I swing her around before setting her down on Ramon’s desk, planting myself between her legs. I put my arms on either side of her hips, boxing her in and placing my face right in front of hers. She quits giggling suddenly and the temperature in the room goes up about ten degrees.
“You,” I say as I brush my lips along her jawline, “deserve the best of everything in the world. Always. Don’t ever doubt that. I will work sixty hours a week every week for the next fifty years for you.”
I pull back as I hear her protests beginning.
“Uh, uh.” I lean in and kiss her softly on the lips, reveling in the scent and taste of her fruity lip gloss. “I know you can take care of yourself. That’s never been in doubt, not for one second. But I want to do this. I want to make sure you’re able to get the degree you’ve been working so hard for. I want you to have whatever you dream about, and if I can make it easier on you, why not? Why should you kill yourself doing it all alone when I’m here? I like working on cars. I’d be doing it anyway. Why not do it a few more hours?”
She sighs and smiles gently at me. “What will you do with all the extra money if my parents don’t cut me loose?”
I scratch my chin and make a big p
roduction of looking up at the ceiling. “Hmm…”
She chuckles. “Wait, let me guess. Another Harley?”
I shake my head. “The only way I’m getting another Harley is if I buy one for you, but then you wouldn’t be riding behind me with your long arms wrapped around me and all this” – I gesture at her chest – “pressed against my back.”
She makes a little humming noise then pushes her breasts against me. “Like that?” she whispers.
I clear my throat, feeling that familiar compulsion to flatten her against the nearest hard surface and commence gaining entry any way I can.
“Uh, yeah, babe. Just like that.” My voice is rough, and I feel my breath coming in pants.
She moves one leg up to hitch it around my hip. In response, I pull her closer until her core is up against me, rock hard as I am. This woman does it for me like no other I’ve ever known. How can she possibly wonder why I want to take care of her? I’m not sure I can even wake up in the morning without her anymore.
While my intentions in finishing early Friday were to take Alexis out, we end up spending some more time at the garage Christening Ramon’s desk. Yeah, I’ll skip telling him about that part.
Later, as I help Alexis get her shirt back on and her skirt adjusted – okay, well, I start off trying to help, but according to her, my help is sort of counterproductive – I suggest we give her sister and Mike a call and head down to Sixth Street.
“Really?” she asks with surprise in her voice. “You want to go out now?”
“Why not? I do know how to do something besides work, you know.”
“Yeah, let’s see… Work, sex, work, sex, sleep, eat, sex…”
I drape an arm around her neck as we walk out to the truck. “Well, now you can add ‘sex, drink, sex’ to the list.”
She huffs out a little breath. “So you think you’ll get lucky again after the drinking, huh?”
“Oh, babe, you have no idea.” I lean over and rub my nose up the side of her neck. She giggles and we hop in the truck to go pick up her sister.
Beth, Alexis, Mike, and I go straight to Margie’s, deciding we want to skip the lines we’d have to stand in at the other bars. It’s nice to see Alexis relaxed after the stress she’s been under at school and with her parents. I figure she isn’t telling me everything her parents are saying, so I know it’s probably worse than even what I know about.
That’s what propels me to get Beth alone for a few minutes. I ask Mike to take Alexis out on the dance floor so I can ask Beth some hard questions.
“So how’ve you been? I’m never around when you’re over at Alexis’s,” I ask to break the ice.
She takes a swig of the hard cider she’s drinking. I never will understand how girls drink that sugary shit. “It’s all good. I’ve only got two classes this semester, but I’m teaching one too, so that plus my thesis is a lot of work.”
“And it’s Women’s Studies, right?”
“Yes, and don’t start with the lesbian jokes, Gabe. You know I’m not.”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” I quip, referencing an old Seinfeld show. Beth is a smart girl and also apparently watched nearly as much TV as I did as a kid because she laughs, nearly shooting her drink out of her nose in the process.
After she recovers, I lean in a little closer so she can hear me clearly. “Tell me the truth, Beth. Are your parents going to cut Alexis off?”
She blushes, and I can see by the nervous tapping of her fingers on the table she’s agitated. She pushes her bangs out of her face for a moment before she looks me in the eye.
“When she came home from Afghanistan and told my parents about you, they told her she was suffering some sort of emotional breakdown.”
I feel my temperature rise and my hand grips my beer mug tensely.
“You have to understand, Gabe. They truly believed it. What she told them was so far from their ideas of what was reasonable and possible that they couldn’t imagine it as anything other than a form of temporary insanity. They freaked. They’d never had a kid go that far from home and never had one choose something or someone who was completely outside their realm of influence. They simply didn’t have the capacity to process it. Can you understand that? Even a little bit?”
I think back to Afghanistan and some of the things I saw there. Especially when I first saw them. There were things, everyday occurrences really, that are nearly impossible for Americans to wrap their heads around. I know what it feels like to think you understand the world and then discover it’s a very different place than you’ve been led to believe.
“Yeah, I can get that. Doesn’t make me any less pissed they’re doing it again though.”
She sighs and looks down at the table. “Yeah, I know. I’m embarrassed, honestly. I can’t believe they’ve written you and her off so readily. I know she’s young, but they’re not giving her any credit for good sense or knowing her own heart, and I can’t figure out why. She’s never given them any reason to doubt her judgment.”
“Fear,” I say simply. “They’re afraid of losing her, so they’re going to push her away before that can happen. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much if you’re the one doing the rejecting.”
She purses her lips and slowly looks up at me. “Sounds like you’ve got some experience in that arena,” she says bluntly.
I rake a hand through my hair, wondering if I’ll ever be able to tolerate growing it out again after having it so short for my time in the service.
“Yeah, I’ve got some experience in ‘reject before you’re rejected.’ In fact, your sister’s my one and only moment of overcoming that fear.”
“Why is that?” she asks, looking like she truly is curious. “What is it about her that makes you willing to take a risk you never were before?”
“Because when you find that one person who fills up every hole you have inside, who makes you feel like you’re more, more than you ever have been or thought you ever could be, there’s not enough fear in the world to keep you from them. It’s just how it has to be. You’ll know it when you find it, Beth. It’s pretty simple really.”
She smiles at me before she takes another long swig of her drink.
“I’m so glad she has you. I think, no matter what, she would have reached this showdown with my parents over something. She needs to fly farther than they want her to, and eventually she would have done it. But this way she’s got you, and I don’t have to worry about her.”
“You know,” I say as I put my arm around her and give a little squeeze, “I’m an only child, but I would have liked a sister like you. Alexis is lucky to have you.”
“Yeah,” Beth smiles coyly, looking me up and down once like I’m a nice juicy steak. “The sacrifices I make for her.”
We both laugh until Alexis comes rushing to the table, a look of panic on her face, Mike hot on her heels.
“Beth! It’s Mom. We’ve got to go.”
“What do you mean?” Beth stands up, concern spilling across her face.
“She’s in the hospital. They think it’s a heart attack.”
“Oh my God.” Beth pales, and I can see Mike grimace from where he stands behind Alexis.
“Okay, babe. Grab your purse,” I hold it out to her. “Let’s go. I’ll drop Mike at his place on our way out of town.”
Mike and Beth start moving to leave, but Alexis turns and faces me.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” she tells me robotically. “It’s not a good time. This is a family thing.”
“But, Alexis, neither of you should be driving.” I put my hand on her arm and she stiffens. “It’s late at night and you’re both upset. Let me get you down there. Then we’ll figure out the rest of it.”
“No!” she answers sharply. I jerk back from her, shocked at a tone of voice she’s never once before used with me. “I already texted someone to come get us. I’ll call you later or something.” She turns from me quickly and grabs Beth’s hand. Beth looks back
at me in confusion as they move through the crowd away from me.
I realize I’m frozen, standing in complete shock, when Mike touches me on the arm. I jerk my head toward him.
“What. The fuck. Was that?” I seethe, venom seeping through my words.
He scratches his head. “I don’t know, man. She felt her phone buzz while we were dancing. It must have been the message about her mom. Then she shot off a couple of texts and said there was an emergency and she had to come find Beth. That’s all I knew until we got back to you guys.”
My heart is beating a staccato in my chest and my lungs feel like they’re being crushed. I can’t let her leave like that. I have to talk to her, figure out what’s happened.
“I’ve gotta…” I say as I move away from the table.
“I know, man. Go,” Mike answers with sympathy in his eyes.
I shove my way through the bodies cramming the room as I move out of Margie’s. My heart is racing, and my head swims. Somehow I know whatever is going down isn’t good and is about to get worse.
Once I hit the sidewalk outside the bar, I look frantically left and right, trying desperately to spot Alexis and Beth before they get into some mystery car and leave town. I’ve nearly given up when I look across the street, just in time to see a green Nissan Leaf pull up to the curb.
Marco jumps out and runs around to the passenger side. He opens the front door and Beth climbs in back. Then he takes Alexis in his arms, stroking her hair as she cries. He gives her a gentle kiss on the lips and helps her into the car. As he jogs around the front end and reaches for the driver’s door, he sees me. He slows, and we stare at one another across the throng of drunken coeds clogging the street. He grimaces, opens the door, and climbs in. I stand alone on the sidewalk, my heart bleeding inside my chest, while he drives the love of my life away in the night.
Alexis
El que no es conmigo, contra mí es.
He who is not with me is against me.
WE’VE been in the waiting room of the hospital for hours. By the time Beth and I arrived, my older brothers had both made it, the oldest with his fiancée in tow. Now, at 4 a.m., there are fourteen cousins, six aunts and uncles, my four siblings, my dad, Marco, and assorted neighbors and parishioners from our church. I can see we’re taxing the hospital’s tolerance, but there are so many of us that they can’t figure out how to get it under control.
Concealed - A Hiding From Love Novel #2 Page 12
