Concealed - A Hiding From Love Novel #2 (26 page)

Carla makes it very clear I’m not invited in when I take her home after the dinner of disaster. She’s normally a mellow girl, but tonight, I think she finally reached her limit. I try talking to her on the way home, but she’s not interested, and I’m too weighed down with baggage to put much effort into it. We say a perfunctory goodnight and I head on home. Yes I admit, I take the way that brings me back by the restaurant, which is how I see Alexis walking along Congress Ave at eleven p.m. on a Saturday night.

To say I’m pissed would be an understatement. I pull over to the curb right ahead of her, and I’m out of the truck before she even reaches it.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” I bellow.

Her eyes get wide and she takes a small step back. Shit, I’ve scared her. I take a deep breath and try to speak calmly, even though my damn heart is pounding right out of my chest.

“What are you doing walking along South Congress at eleven o’clock at night by yourself?”

She stands up straighter, the scared bunny look completely gone, and the fire that is Alexis back in her eyes.

“Not that it’s any of your business… At. All. But I’m walking home from work. I’d think you could have figured that out all by yourself.”

I start pacing in little circles up and down the sidewalk. People are shouting shit and catcalling as they drive by at forty miles an hour. I flip a couple of them off to make myself feel better.

“Have you totally lost your mind?” I ask. “Walking by yourself this late at night? Jesus, do you know how many different ways that could go wrong?”

“I’m careful.” She sounds just a bit pouty, which means she knows she’s been busted doing something stupid.

I finally calm down enough to stop pacing and lean against the truck, just looking at her for a minute. She glares back at me, trying really hard not to back down, even though I’m certain she knows I’m right.

“It doesn’t matter how careful you are, babe. You’re five feet four and a buck and a quarter. All the careful in the world won’t save you from some asshole who has eight inches and a hundred pounds on you. You can’t walk around at night like this.”

“Well, what the hell do you suggest I do then? I have a job, it ends late, and the buses have stopped running. It’s not like I can sleep in the kitchen at work. I don’t have any other way to get home. Besides, I’ve been doing it for weeks now and it’s been fine.”

My heart flips up in my chest and lands somewhere in my throat. The mere thought of her walking around like this by herself for weeks is more than I can take.

“Get in the truck,” I say as I push off the side and open the passenger door.

She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Then she folds her arms and glares. Shit. Why does everything with this chick have to be so damn hard?

“Alexis…” I growl in warning.

“Maybe you missed the memo, but you’re not in charge of me. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Christ Almighty! Seriously? You’re going to say no to a ride home just because you don’t want to do what I say? Come the fuck on, Alexis. Don’t do this. Just get in the damn truck.” Exasperation is me.

Her arms cross tighter, if that’s possible, and her foot starts tapping on the pavement. She makes me crazy. Absolutely crazy. I don’t want to grab her off the sidewalk and throw her in the truck against her will, but I’m about five seconds from doing just that.

“Fine,” she snarls as she marches over to the truck, gets in, and slams the door…hard.

So help me, if she broke the door, she’s paying for it out of that enormous tip I left her tonight.

I get in on the driver’s side and start up the engine. We drive in silence for several blocks until I think maybe the rage rolling off of her has subsided a touch.

“Do you still have the keys to this thing?” I ask, referring to the set of truck keys I gave her months ago.

“Yes. I’ll get them for you as soon as we get to the apartment.”

“No. I don’t want them back. I want you to drive it. When you go to work. Or to get groceries, or whatever. Hell, I don’t care. Drive it to South Padre and have a vacation. Just don’t walk around like that anymore.”

She turns and looks at me in astonishment. Then she snorts. “Yeah, right. What if your girlfriend doesn’t want to ride on your bike all the time?”

I run my hand through my hair in frustration. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

Alexis looks at me like I’m the biggest asshole in the world, and I suppose right now I probably am.

“I mean, yeah, we’re…I don’t know…dating or whatever. But she’s not…” What comes into my head is,
She’s not you
. But I can’t say that. I can’t say that I consider Alexis to be the only girlfriend I’ve ever had or ever will have.

I remind myself that she left me so she wouldn’t be my girlfriend anymore.

“I’m not worried about what she wants. I’m worried about you being safe. Take the truck. It’s yours. If I need it for something, I’ll let you know.”

She gives a tight little nod. “Okay. I’m trying to save up money to get a car this summer. But maybe until then. Just to get to work. I can ride the bus everywhere else.”

I sigh. “You don’t have to though. Why haul all your groceries and stuff on the filthy bus, in bad weather, with drunks and perverts when you can drive yourself?”

She laughs. “Your view of public transportation is comforting.”

“I’m from California, land of the car. Only vagrants use public transit.”

She shakes her head. “Fine. I’ll drive your damn truck.” Her words are pissed, but her tone is teasing.

“Thank you,” I say, my muscles unclenching for the first time since I saw her on that street. “And the truck thanks you. It likes you better than it does me anyway.” She arches an eyebrow at me as we pull into the lot at our apartments. “Seriously. It asks about you every day. Says I don’t treat it right.”

“It’s not an ‘it,’” she tells me as we open our doors and get out. “It’s a she. And her name is Lucy. Lucy the truck. She and I will get along fine.”

“Well all right then, Lucy and Alexis. You’ll make a great pair.”

Now things are awkward. We’re standing in the parking lot, and we both know the reprieve is over. She goes back to her life, and I go back to mine. But now she’ll have something of me with her all the time. It makes me feel a glow inside that hasn’t been there since she left.

“Thanks, Gabe. Thanks for the loan of the truck. Thanks for the ride home. It, uh… It was really nice of you.”

I stretch and try to seem casual even though standing this close to her is enough to make me see stars.

“You’re welcome. And really, you’re the one doing me the favor. I couldn’t take it if I thought you were being unsafe. Just, I don’t know, remember that…please.”

She blushes and smiles softly. “Okay.”

“Okay…I guess I’ll see you around. And when that odometer hits eighty thousand, will you bring it by Ramon’s so we can give it an oil change? It’ll only take a half hour tops, but then I’ll know everything’s working right for you.”

She nods and swallows like she can’t speak right then.

I smile back and force myself to turn and walk to my apartment. When I open the door to go inside, I look up at her unit like I always do. She’s standing on the stairs, watching me again. But this time, instead of devastation in her eyes, there’s hope. And I realize there’s a tiny spark of hope in me as well.

Alexis

No hay mal que por bien no venga.

Every cloud has its silver lining.

I
drive Lucy every single day. I drive her two blocks to get a candy bar. I drive her to San Antonio just to turn around and drive her back again. I drive her to get that damned odometer up to eighty thousand miles so I’ll have an excuse to go to Ramon’s and see Gabe again. It’s pathetic, it’s needy, it’s desperate, and I don’t care. Hearing his girlfriend tell me he’s still in love with me has set my heart to banging around in my chest, and I can’t get it to stop. It’s like some sort of caged animal screaming to be set free.

I realize it makes no sense. He’s seeing someone. She’s blond and pretty and actually not a totally reprehensible person. Why she thinks he still loves me, I don’t know, but all the indicators point to him being into her. I haven’t seen her around lately, but I haven’t seen him either. They’re probably hanging out at her place so she doesn’t have to run into me. There’s no logical reason why I should feel like there’s even the slightest chance he might want me back at some point, but my heart simply doesn’t give a damn.

I’m on one of my purposeless drives, inching that mileage up the scale, when Beth calls.

“What are you doing?” she asks without preamble.

“Driving around. You?”

She snorts, because she knows what I’ve been doing with the truck. She thinks I’m an idiot.

“Drive over to my house. I have to tell you something.”

“Okay.” I pull a U-turn a block past Ramon’s Repairs. Yeah, I drive by there sometimes. So sue me.

When I get to Beth’s, it’s already nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. I know she volunteers at the women’s halfway house on Friday mornings, but she usually has a class on Friday afternoons.

I walk up to the house just as her roommate, Jill, is walking out. “Hey, Jill.”

“What’s up, baby Beth?” she asks as she stops on the porch and lights up a cigarette.

“Not much. You heading to work?” Jill bartends at a gay bar where most of the customers are men. Don’t know how she gets any tips, but they seem to like her. She’s a total hardass, so maybe they find that entertaining.

“Yeah, I’ve got a shift a little later, but first I’m stopping off to see Jessie, if you know what I mean.” She winks at me.

“She’s still putting up with you?” Jill’s never been able to keep a girlfriend more than about two weeks. I think Jessie’s been around for at least twice that long.

“Hey, I went for looks
and
brains this time. Makes a difference.”

“My point exactly,” I quip as I dodge her slapping hand and run inside.

“You can’t run forever, baby Beth!” I hear her calling as she walks out to her car.

I toss my backpack down on the floor and yell for Beth.

“Back here!” she answers from her bedroom.

I walk through the living room, my shoes squeaking on the scarred wood floors. When I get to Beth’s room, she’s sitting on the carpet surrounded by papers. She’s got a stack of file folders next to her and she’s taking papers out of the folders, sifting through them, then tossing them haphazardly in piles around her.

“What the heck are you doing?” I step over the stacks and sit on her bed.

“Research,” she answers, not even looking up at me.

“For your thesis?”

“Not exactly.” She stops her sorting and turns to face me, pulling her glasses off. “Do you remember Juan Martinez, David’s friend in high school?”

Of course I remember my older brother’s best friend. He was my first crush, the boy I would have done anything for when I was fifteen.

“Yeah, of course. How could anyone forget a story that sad?” I ask, referring to how Juan went from a normal life to that of a teenager on the run from the INS and eventually a gangbanger.