Forever Loved (The Forever Series) Page 6

  “Yes, you got it the day we met. I remember.”

  “So, the boy can’t be mine.”

  “But he is. He cannot be any other.”

  “Rosa, you know I like you. But in your…your line of work, couldn’t he belong to anyone? Besides, he’s three years old. Why didn’t you tell me about him before?”

  Bud stuck his head out the back door. “Think you can take one more belt job today?”

  I froze, wondering if he’d heard anything. He stared at me with a question on his face, so I glanced at my watch and nodded. “Rosa, I have to get back to work. I’m sorry. I wish I could help you. Just be safe, okay?”

  I hung up the call, anger rising up. What sort of idiot did she take me for? I’d seen her dozens of times in the last three years. She never mentioned any son. No kid was ever around, or any toys, or anything to indicate she’d been pregnant. Ha, I’d never even seen her pregnant. The whole thing was a lie!

  I followed Bud into the garage, supremely pissed off now. All those years she’d seemed so sweet and good. Just to pull a stunt like this!

  I strode through the bays. Bud stopped by a banged-up Corvette. “This one’s yours,” he said. “See how she looks.”

  I yanked on the latch and jerked up the hood. When I tried to force the metal stand into the hole, it missed, and the heavy hood came crashing back down, startling everyone in the garage.

  Bud cocked his head at me. “You okay?”

  I pressed the heel of my hand into my eye, wishing the pressure would ease the ache in my temple. “Maybe not.”

  Mario came up behind Bud, wiping his hands on a towel. “I finished up that radiator blowout. I’ll hang with Gavin.”

  Bud backed away, nodding. “Keep him straight.”

  When he disappeared back into the front office, Mario whirled around. “What the hell is up with you lately?”

  “Nothing.” I yanked on the latch again and lifted the hood, this time making certain the stand was secure before letting go.

  Mario tugged on the main belt. “This one’s shot. I’ll go hunt down a replacement.”

  While I waited, I stared into the engine and wondered why Rosa had tried to pull a number on me.

  My phone buzzed, and I wanted to just ignore it, but it wasn’t a call, just a text with a photo attached. From Rosa.

  The picture loaded automatically, a boy, probably about three. I was going to delete it when something caught my attention. A cowlick split his hairline just to the right of the center of his forehead.

  I touched my hair. I kept it short up top to avoid the whorl I couldn’t control, in almost precisely the same place.

  I clicked on the picture and zoomed in. His eyes were Rosa’s, no doubt. But his ears — they laid just like mine, mostly flat but with a flare at the top.

  Impossible.

  I shoved the phone back in my pocket but pulled it out again five seconds later.

  It couldn’t be.

  The message said only “Manuelito. Feb. 15, 2010.”

  I counted back. That time frame was right.

  Shit.

  Mario returned with the belt. “You look like you’ve eaten some bad chili.”

  “How long after a vasectomy before you start shooting blanks?” I asked, my stomach turning.

  He balanced the belt box on the frame of the ’Vette. “Hell if I know. You thinking of getting one?”

  I tried to swallow, but my throat was blocked. “Already did.”

  “Damn. That’s one hell of a thing to do.” He leaned against the car. “That girl you’re seeing — she just find out or something?”

  “No. I mean, yeah. But, shit.”

  He stared at me a second, then turned back to the motor. “Maybe you should take a walk or something. I can handle this.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The air outside was cold and helped me think. What the hell was going on? I strode briskly down the sidewalk, punching on my phone for a Google search on vasectomy.

  I hadn’t understood a single word anybody said to me at the clinic. I’d awakened on a lumpy cot, groggy, with jagged shards of pain shooting up from my groin. They seemed to want me off the premises right after. I’d only made it a few blocks before I knew I had to figure out something to help ease the misery. Walking was near impossible and I couldn’t spot a taxi anywhere midafternoon.

  The farmacia where Rosa worked was blessedly close. Between her broken English and the help of the man behind the counter, they got me some cold packs to stuff in a jock strap, plus God knows what sort of drugs.

  But I still didn’t have information on the procedure or when it worked. I hadn’t worried about it, as sticking some girl was about the last thing on my mind.

  The doctor I’d seen stateside a couple months later had confirmed I was sterile. He’d asked too many questions about where I’d had it done, so we didn’t exactly chat.

  The first link came up on my phone, and I scanned through the information, looking for how fast it worked.

  I bumped into a bench and sat down, feeling dumbfounded. Weeks? It could take up to two months?

  I backed up and chose a different link, hoping for another answer.

  Ten ejaculations, this one said.

  How long had it been? Rosa had spent that first night with me after surgery, but we hadn’t done anything. I’d been strung out from pain and full of regret. When had I gone back to her?

  I closed my eyes to piece together those days.

  ~*´♥`*~

  After leaving the farmacia, I’d barely made it to the hotel across the street before collapsing. I took the first two pills Rosa had given me and crashed a little while.

  But the pain woke me, and heeding her stern warning about not taking any more until bedtime, I wandered the room in a haze until I spotted her from my window. She stood on the street corner below, dressed very differently than she had been inside the shop.

  I turned away from her curling black hair that reminded me of Corabelle and what I had done, this irrevocable act that meant I could never return to her. I stared at the ceiling, refusing to succumb to the heaving sobs that threatened to take me over, unable to erase the image of her standing in the aisle of the church, mute and shocked, Finn’s blue casket just behind her.

  I had to get past it all. I had to force myself to think of something else. I pulled a chair up to the window and watched Rosa stand by a pole, awkward and too innocent for the job, finally getting approached by a man but pushing him away.

  When she had had no luck for an hour, and I was in too much misery to sit there alone any longer, I went down to see if I could pay for her myself. Company, any company, was preferable to the blaring Spanish channels and peeling wallpaper that only exacerbated the despair that tried to drag me back into a pit.

  Her presence kept my demons at bay that night. I held her close as if she were Corabelle, and took the pills when she said it was okay to do so. In the morning, she left after asking only a pittance, and the next night I waited for her to close up the shop before I approached her to come again.

  Her frightened face made me hang back as the man behind the counter came out and took off down the street. I figured the score pretty fast — he had no idea she was hooking and might fire her if he knew.

  When he was well away, she turned back to me. “Better today?”

  “I will be if you come with me.”

  She glanced down the street, her black curls blowing across her face like her hair was the wind itself. I suddenly understood the concept of transference. I couldn’t love Corabelle anymore; I had cut myself away from my old world. So I would love this girl instead, in some new and different way, one that got nowhere near any tender or vulnerable space.

  “I need to go home first,” she said and glanced up at the hotel. “Room is same?”

  I nodded.

  She slung her heavy black bag on her shoulder, trapping a swath of the wild hair. “I will come.”
<
br />   We turned from each other, and I trudged with my old-man walk across the street and up the stairs, then back down to a liquor store next door, buying a bottle of wine, and up again.

  We hadn’t done anything that night either, as the wine on top of the pills knocked me out cold not long after she arrived. I had pulled her against my chest on the lumpy bed, both of us fully clothed. I didn’t want her in any other way, not then, not so soon, my groin still searing from the stitches and Corabelle still so close in my memory.

  When had we gotten busy? Within the two months? The ten jacks?

  I stood up from the bench, restless, angry. Surely I hadn’t made so stupid a mistake. I headed back to the garage, racking my brain for the memory. How long had it been?

  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.