Forever Loved (The Forever Series) (8 page)

I’d stayed a week in that hotel, then moved on. I didn’t see Rosa for a little while as I searched for someplace to live while I took the GED and got enrolled at UCSD. I got a job as a night stocker at a grocer.

Then I remembered. Graduation night, a couple weeks later. I’d been lonely and feeling pent up. I didn’t know a soul and hadn’t talked to anyone but the uptight night manager of the store, who kept all the employees on different aisles as we worked so we wouldn’t waste time.

I knew Corabelle was walking across the stage and that they wouldn’t be calling my name. I wondered if she’d think of where I should have been, the people I would have stood between.

I drove back to the border about the time my classmates would be tossing their caps in the air. I waited across the street as Rosa locked up the
farmacia
, and this time I followed her a block before calling out her name.

When she turned, I saw something about her was different. Instead of looking at me with concern and patronizing patience, she actually seemed happy.

She ran down the street to me, but stopped a few feet short. “Gavin! You are here!”

I took one step toward her, and she lost her shyness, throwing her arms around me. I didn’t understand it, but just having someone who knew my name and was excited to see me made everything better.

“No hotel now?” she asked, glancing back the way we’d come, to the shabby place I’d called home that first week.

I shook my head. “I got a job in San Diego. I live there now.”

She smiled and led me farther down the street. “I live close. We go there.”

“You sure that’s okay?”

“I live with my brother, but he is not home.”

Something about her joy at walking with me put a little lightness in my own step. I followed her into the gap between the buildings and through the foyer I would later come to know so well.

The first time we trudged up those dirty stairs, I remember wishing I could do something to help her, get her out of these terrible conditions. But when we were inside her apartment with the colorful wall hangings and paper flowers, I realized she was happy there, close to work and making her own way.

I walked around her place, looking at the pictures and statues of the Virgin Mary, candles, and trinkets. She got two beers from her fridge, and we clinked the bottles together like we were old friends.

When I sat on the sofa, she perched awkwardly at the other end. I remember thinking that was an odd way for a prostitute, but she’d always had that innocent quality, even on the street, and of course, the other times we’d been together, nothing had happened. Maybe she didn’t know quite what to make of me.

I drank the beer and smiled at her, wondering what you said to a hooker you were ready to make a move on. I had zero experience. I hadn’t been with a single girl other than Corabelle, and we always made things up as we went along.

“Come over here,” I said to her.

She shifted over and laid her head against me like we had before. I thought of Corabelle again, her big night, probably no longer really caring that she’d lost the top spot to Charles, maybe not even listening to his speech. I wondered if she would give one after all. When Finn died, nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Little things like a commencement speech held zero meaning.

My mood plummeted and that ache I’d felt in the hotel on that first night threatened to overtake everything else. I couldn’t go back, couldn’t change things. I just had to charge forward.

I set the beer on the floor and pulled Rosa harder against me, turning her around so her legs crossed over my thighs. Her waist was small, and I let my fingers wander across her ribs. She had more give than Corabelle did before she was pregnant. I caught myself comparing them and forced myself to shut off the flow of thoughts.

Rosa wore a simple sundress with a tie in the back. I reached around and tugged on the bow, letting the fabric go loose around her. She looked up at me with big round eyes, her lashes heavy and dark. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup, but that was just for the
farmacia
. She’d been colored up when I saw her that first night. I was just catching her early.

I wasn’t sure if kissing on the lips was all right, so I aimed for her neck. Her throat was soft and hot, and now I could move faster, pushing the dress over her knees and spreading my hands over her skin.

Rosa shivered a little, and I remember thinking — she can play the part. But when I had the dress up and over her head, I realized she couldn’t be that experienced, she couldn’t have been at the game long. She was too earnest, held my gaze too long, and the way she welcomed me to her, seeming to really want me with her, kept bringing back the same feelings I had for Corabelle rather than what I’d expected with someone paid to be there.

I almost couldn’t do it. There was too much past in the room, and not enough distance. I couldn’t separate the sex from the emotion any more than I had before.

But Rosa got it. She knew it was hard, and she took control then, stroking my face and kissing my hair. She touched me like a lover would, not a stranger, and when her mouth met mine, I just let everything fall away, eyes closed, like I could be anywhere, like I could be home.

When she straddled me, I sank right into the passion of it, relieved to connect with someone. Only later, too late, did I remember the condoms in my wallet and that with this woman I had to protect myself.

Afterward Rosa curled against me like a girl rather than someone jaded about sex. And so I held her and let the moment go. The sounds of night life heating up drifted in from the windows, and I wondered if she’d take on someone else that night, more than one. A wave of revulsion washed over me, wiping out the tenderness. I sat her up and reached for my clothes.

She snapped out of whatever had her so sensitive, jumping off the sofa and dragging her dress back over her head. I didn’t want to pay her only the few dollars she’d asked for the other times, and so I laid an amount on her table that I thought was hopefully enough.

As I headed down the stairs, my anger at the whole situation threatened to boil over. I’d done this thing, broken away from my past. It was time to stop thinking about Corabelle and the life I’d left behind. I’d figure out a new future and a new path. If I wanted to rut into street walkers, I would. If I wanted to bet on pool, or get in bar fights, or be the asshole my father showed me I could be, then it just didn’t matter.

I wasn’t going to let any of the bullshit matter.

When I first opened the door out into the night, a couple guys looked at me like I might be an easy mark. But I was scrappier than they figured, and after a couple punches and a bit of blood on all sides, I felt initiated. I would come back to Tijuana again and again, and each time I’d piss off somebody different and live to tell about it. I’d see Rosa, maybe another girl, maybe two at once.

Nobody would tell me what the hell I ought to do. I didn’t owe anybody anything.

~*´♥`*~

As I walked back to Bud’s, the anger of that night threatened to take over the control I’d reestablished since Corabelle came back. How many stupid things could I do in one month? Walk out of my kid’s funeral, get sliced by who knows what sort of illegal doc, then screw a hooker without a condom.

I’d checked out fine after, no bonus diseases, and they’d certified me as properly snipped.

But that was weeks later. That one time with Rosa was definitely in the window. Damn it, why hadn’t she protected herself?

But then Corabelle had been on the shot. Maybe I had jiz of steel.

I pulled out my phone and stared at the picture again. Surely it couldn’t be. I’d seen Rosa pretty often for the next few weeks, between rounds of drinking and raising hell in various bars, until I cracked the radiator block on the Camaro. I spent pretty much every dime getting it running again so I could keep going to work, since the night shift meant the buses were shut down.

In fact, everything went south after that. I had to pay tuition, then books. I eventually sold the car and bought a junker to cover the next quarter. Eventually I dropped to fewer credits because I couldn’t afford full-time tuition. Then even the junker had to go, so I walked.

I hooked up with a lady or two stateside on the rare occasions I had any extra dough, but not in Tijuana, since I had no way to get there. I could have gotten normal girls for free, but I saw how clingy they got with Mario and some of the other guys. I didn’t want to feel obligated to them, for them to pin any of their hopes on me.

Actually, I knew when I finally got back to Rosa. Finn’s birthday almost a year later. I hadn’t told anybody I’d gotten to know about my history, hell no. But Rosa I could tell. I couldn’t call her up, as I’d always just showed up at her job or her place. We had no way to contact each other.

I’d just started at Bud’s and Mario loaned me his Yamaha. I didn’t have a license for it, but that sort of obstacle didn’t stop me in those days.

When I got to her
farmacia
well ahead of closing, she was still there behind the counter.

Seeing her again was like taking a step into my past. I wasn’t the boy I’d been when I first asked her to come up the stairs with me. But looking across those shelves at her, I could experience, for a minute, what it was like to be the old Gavin.

She’d changed. I remembered that now, puzzle pieces falling together. Softer around the middle. Sadder, too. When she looked up at me, she wasn’t joyful the way she’d been before, but shocked. She glanced anxiously behind her at the man, as if worried he would guess who I was. I didn’t say anything but bought a bottle of perfume, letting my hand linger when she handed me the change. Then I hung out at a bar down the street until the hour came for her to lock up.

Rosa was reluctant to see me then and wouldn’t go to her apartment. But when we got to the old hotel room, she forced a smile and put on the face that I would grow used to over the years that followed, a pretend sort of happy.

If she’d had a baby in that time I was gone, I wouldn’t have even known.

If it had been mine, she would have had no way to contact me about it until I showed back up again.

Damn it. Why hadn’t she told me when I came back? We could have sorted this out.

The phone felt cold in my hands. When I got back to Bud’s, I didn’t bother going inside. I knew exactly where I had to go.

I fired up the Harley and headed for Interstate 5 and the border.

10: Corabelle

My father never missed a thing.

“You were expecting him, weren’t you?” he said, stretched out in Gavin’s chair in the corner.

Mom sorted through their bags from the museum purchases. “Never mind that, dear. Look, I got you some things to set around the room.” She unpacked a handblown glass bowl swirled with blue and yellow and set it on the side table with the flowers. “That’s better.”

I gritted my teeth. “Thank you.”

Dad yawned. “Did the doctor say if you were leaving today?”

I glanced at the clock. Two in the afternoon. “He hasn’t been by. Another staff member came in and seemed to indicate I wouldn’t be here much longer.” I picked at the sheet across my lap. Gavin’s last two texts were cryptic and short, just “At work” and “I’ll get there when I can.”

“Was it a nurse?” Mom asked.

My hackles rose. “No, just somebody from the hospital.”

“Maybe we could page the doctor.” She arranged herself on a chair, tugging her knitting from a bag. Great, she was going to settle in. Maybe I could walk the halls a bit and try to place a call. Except I didn’t have anything but this breezy hospital gown. And Gavin had my keys. I was stuck.

“He’s probably got more pressing patients than me,” I said.

“Then they should give up your bed, send you home,” Dad said.

The gray-mop-headed nurse popped in. “Time for a temperature check.”

Mom stood up. “Do we know when Corabelle gets to go home?”

The woman clicked on her iPad. “The doctor should be by soon. He’ll decide.” She sheathed a thermometer and slid it into my mouth.

We all waited for it to beep, as if it would be anything but normal. I felt fine.

She peered at it. “Hmm. Up again a bit. You been out of bed a lot?”

I shook my head. “I feel fine. I was walking earlier. Maybe I just did too much.” It was a lie. My chest felt like it was being crushed. But I wanted to go home.

She tapped the temperature into her iPad. “Let’s take it a little bit easier, just to be sure.”

“I will.” God, I could not jeopardize going home. I was already going crazy.

Dad locked his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. “Sure you don’t want to come back with us? I don’t know why you couldn’t finish up in New Mexico like you planned.”

I had to keep all my stories straight about why I had transferred. “I have a better shot at grad school here.”

“Sure was nice having you closer to home.”

“It’s nice here. I can see why Corabelle would like it,” Mom said, diplomatic as always.

My phone beeped and I practically lunged for it. Surely Gavin would be off work soon, or at least have a moment to let me know when he could bring my clothes.

But the number was unfamiliar.

Hey — a hospital just called to schedule an interview. Said you gave them my name. Thanks. Tina.

I smiled. I hoped she got the job, if she wanted it. I pictured Sabrina in her paint-splattered dress and stifled a laugh.

“Good to see you happy,” Dad said. “You haven’t smiled enough lately.”

I would have said it was Gavin, and new friends, but I let it go. The last thing I wanted was to invite Dad to start bashing him again.

“You know, I ran into Alaina the other day,” Mom said.

I stiffened at the mention of Gavin’s mother. “Oh?”

“She got a little flustered. We haven’t really spoken for a while.”

Since the funeral, probably. Gavin’s departure had pretty much ended the friendship between his mother and mine. “Where was she?”

“At the grocery store. I think she must have started going to Wal-Mart since I never see her at Peppers.”