Concealed - A Hiding From Love Novel #2 (5 page)

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.

O
VER
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.

A
USTIN
, 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?”