Текст книги "Forever Innocent"

Автор книги: Deanna Roy

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Chapter 12: Gavin

Bud looked up from the receipt book as I walked into the front office of the garage. “You’re late.”

“Had a school thing,” I said and walked on through to clock in. I spent all morning looking for Corabelle instead of working, just to find out she had some boyfriend.

I punched my card and actually wished for tires to throw and work off some of this tension. I could still feel Corabelle beneath my hands, her skin feverish, her body writhing against me. Was she doing it with that pipsqueak? Just thinking about it made my head want to explode. She was mine. She had to be. I had to get her to see that we belonged together.

But damn it, I upset her. Called her easy. Damn it.

Mario approached and shouted, “Heads up!” as he tossed me a set of keys.

“What’s this?”

“Another Camaro came through. Told the boss you could take one apart in your sleep. He says for you to change out the motor mount.”

That was a decent job, jacking the motor and pulling the mount, then realigning the engine. “He got the parts?”

“Yeah, came in while you were out. You’re moving up. Take Bay 3.”

I jingled the keys as I went out front to find the car. Bud was hard to figure out. First he threatens to fire me if I drop out of school. Then he moves me out of routine and into mechanics.

This Camaro was only a couple years old, and sitting in the driver’s seat didn’t fire up memories the way the other car had. I picked up the work order from the passenger side and saw it had come in for a tune-up when the motor-mount problem was discovered. With the other issues on the sheet, it looked like whoever owned this car rode it hard over rough terrain. The shocks were shot, tires out of alignment, and two of the axles were cracked. Those had all been fixed while I was scouting coffee shops, but the motor mounts were circled and Bud had scrawled, “Leave for Gavin.”

The motor clunked on starting up, a telltale sign of a misaligned engine. I glanced back at the work order to make sure they’d checked to make sure nothing else had been damaged. Fans could get chipped, hoses torked, a whole host of problems. I’d go over it all again after everything was back in place.

I pulled into the bay, starting to feel grateful for the task, work that would require more concentration than changing a filter, maybe get Corabelle out of my head for a while. Mario came up with the box containing the mount bracket and waited for me to step out. “Lemme know if you need a hand on the realign.”

“Will do.”

The hood popped up smoothly, and I peered into the Camaro’s guts. The inside of the motor mount was cracked clean through, but the bracket was easy to access. I just had to jack the block for support. The job would take less than an hour, if it all went well.

The clang of other mechanics working this end of the garage was a soothing sound. I rolled a jack under the car and steadied the engine. Everyone did their jobs with competence and skill. I could see the appeal of this sort of work. Finite, black and white, cut and dried. Unlike studying in school, where it seemed half the time you were spinning your wheels, memorizing something you’d never need to know again, or writing the same essay on Milton that a million other undergrads had done before.

I should just quit, lie to Bud about it, and pretend to go to class. I could keep up the ruse until December and if Bud kept feeding me real work, I’d be qualified for a better job. Mom might not like it, but hell, I wasn’t around them anymore. And my asshole father never approved of anything I did anyway. Screw that. After that scene with Corabelle, maybe I was turning out to be just like him.

The socket wrench fit neatly on the bolt. I remembered watching other boys with their dads, fixing bikes or playing ball with easy camaraderie. Mine had always been intense, angry, disapproving.

Once when we worked on my mother’s overheating Oldsmobile, I thought I was being so smart by using a towel to open the hot radiator. But when it spewed boiling water and antifreeze, Dad backhanded me so hard that I fell over my sister’s bike, breaking the wheel.

My life seemed like a series of missteps that pissed off my father. Now that I’d been around the block a few times, I knew some kids had it worse. They got in the line of fire just for existing.

When I was little, I felt like I deserved it, punishment for doing something stupid or wrong. Only later did I start to push back. If I went home now, we’d probably kill each other within five minutes.

The bracket came off easily, and I set it aside. Now to remove the long bolt to the mount.

Even when we got old enough to walk around the neighborhood without our parents, I never let Corabelle come over to my house, preferring the quiet simplicity of her family – mother, father, one little girl. But in that middle space when I was small enough to push around, but big enough to take a harder lick, the asshole sometimes really unleashed, like the day I got knocked across the driveway.

Corabelle had seen those bruises and looked up at me with wide sympathetic eyes. She started showing up and hanging out when my dad insisted I help him, reading or poking at the straggly flowers my mother tried to plant by the front steps. Her presence kept my dad in check, just one of the many ways that she saved me.

The mount was out, and I had to do the tricky part, get the new one to align.

Dad caught on pretty quick to when Corabelle and I shifted from little-kid friends to a boy and girl who were messing around. Early on, when I was thirteen, he grabbed me by the collar and flung me into the wall, telling me I better not go around knocking up any girls, or he’d throw my ass out.

By the time I was in high school, and Corabelle and I were crazy tight, I hardly stayed home at all. Her parents saw the handwriting on the wall and got her on that birth-control shot. Once that barrier was crossed we were insane, at each other every minute, and I couldn’t get enough of her. Now, sweating over the engine, I could picture every inch of her body.

Finding out about the baby was a huge blow. Because of the shot, we didn’t know what was going on for several weeks. She thought she had the flu, then that she was tired from staying up too late. I bought the test and stood over her while she peed on the stick. The sight of her astonished face as the two lines appeared is one of those moments seared into my memory.

We never bothered telling my parents about the baby, letting the town gossip handle it. I moved in with her and vowed never to let my father cast an eye on my son.

The new bracket wouldn’t align, so I shifted the jack up a notch, trying to find the sweet spot. I could call Mario over, get him to eyeball it while I worked the lever, but only if it took too long. I’d done it by myself before.

Clearly the work wasn’t occupying my mind well enough. I tried to shake off the past, how I worried about what sort of dad I could possibly be, having the worst possible example. When the baby was sick, and then when they told us he wouldn’t make it, I figured the score. The universe knew I wouldn’t do any better. The bad-father gene would end with me. After the funeral, I went to Mexico to make sure of it, even though I knew it meant I had to give up Corabelle.

Bud came out of the office. “How’s it coming?”

I walked around the side to check the screw mounts. They were aligned. “Just putting the last bolts in.”

“Good, ’cause the owner’s here to pick it up already, and I don’t think I can endure that woman one more minute.”

I chuckled. “Bud menaced by a woman. Never thought I’d see it.”

He looked under the hood as I locked in the bolts. “I don’t see anything damaged. She got lucky.”

The sockets were solid, so I backed away from the engine. “She should be good to go.”

“Start her up. Let’s take a listen.”

I hopped in the seat again and fired up the motor. The clunk was gone. Bud dropped the hood and came around. “She’s good. Pull it around.”

By the time I came back into the office, Bud was leading an old lady to the door. “And here’s the man who got her ready for you, Mrs. Peters.”

I handed her the keys. “Ma’am, you must live near some rough roads.”

“Oh, posh,” she said. “I live in La Jolla. I just hate speed bumps.”

Bud coughed to hide his laugh and I kept a poker face. “Well, I guess we’ll be seeing you again in about twenty thousand miles,” I said.

“Works for me!” She winked, the blue eye shadow over her eyes as bright as a peacock’s feather. “Maybe I’ll mess up something else just to come back and get another gander at you!”

Bud passed her a clipboard. “Sign here, Mrs. Peters.”

I turned to head back to the bays, but the woman grabbed me by the arm. “It wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of you if you didn’t see me to my car and make sure it is in good working order, now would it?”

Bud waved me on. “Start it up for her, Gavin.”

Mrs. Peters continued to hang on my elbow as I opened the door and led her out to the Camaro, all red and sparkling in the late afternoon sun. “What a grand day!” she said. “I don’t guess I can sneak you away for a drive!”

I pictured her wrecked and broken motor mount and imagined jumping creek beds with Mrs. Peters behind the wheel, her white hair flying. “I’m afraid I am much needed here.”

“Well, poo.” She waited by the car as I opened the door, then she slid inside. “Let’s see what she’s got.”

I handed her the keys and winced as she cranked the motor, stomping the gas so the engine revved loud enough to make people across the street turn to look. I leaned in the open door. “You might want to take it easy.”

“This car is going be around longer than I am!” she shouted over the roar. “Life is short. Go after what you love and ride it as hard as you can!”

I barely managed to close the door and jump out of the way before she shot backward across the parking lot, then slammed it into drive and careened past me again, heading for the exit.

That woman was going to kill someone. Still, I had to laugh as I headed back inside. Bud was stuffing her papers in a file folder. “She’ll be back. Drivers like her mean good money for us.” He turned around. “Let me guess, she gave you some sort of advice about life being short, and she was about to die?”

“Yeah.” Of course, that got me thinking about Corabelle. Hell, everything did.

“She’s been saying that for a decade. She’s going to outlive us all.” He glanced at the clock. “You can go ahead and head out. I’m sure whatever kept you all morning is still nagging at you now.”

I suppressed a smart-ass reply. “All right, Bud. See you tomorrow.” I wondered where Corabelle might be, at work still, or on campus. Maybe I could get that pink-haired girl to tell me where she lived.

I should leave her alone. I knew it. But something in me just couldn’t let it go.

Chapter 13: Corabelle

I crossed the quad, anxiety rising as the engineering building grew close. Gavin would be in there, just a few seats down. The two feelings for him warred inside me. Anger that he’d called me easy, when I hadn’t been with anyone but him. And an urgency to get him alone, to feel, if only for a little while, the way we had when we were young and innocent of all the ways life could fail us.

The stairwell echoed with my footsteps, and I couldn’t help but run my hand over the part of the rail where Gavin caught me trying to black out. I had to get control of that now. Gavin showing up again was the sign that my little fits of crazy had to end. I needed some other way to cope.

I thought I’d be able to sneak in close to the start of class and slip into my chair without having to talk to him. But Gavin was waiting outside the door, his lab assignment in his hand. He looked more amazing than ever. Every detail about him was seared into me, the blue T-shirt fitting across his chest and arms, the dark stubble on his jaw, the sideburn near his ear.

He held out the paper. “You turned this in for me?”

I nodded, grasping hard on the strap of my backpack.

“Why?”

“I felt bad that I upset you.” I drew in a deep breath. “By talking about Finn.”

It was so hard to say his name. And not easier on Gavin to hear it. I could see it in how his eyebrows drew together.

A couple other students cut between us to enter the door. “Thank you.” He hesitated. “Can I see you later?”

Panic rose from my belly. “No. I can’t. Please, Gavin. It’s too hard.”

He pressed his lips together. “This isn’t over.”

“It is. It has to be.”

He whipped around and went back in the room.

I leaned against the wall, eyes on the ceiling, trying to pull myself together. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t be with him. There was too much past, and I was barely holding it together before he showed up.

Unless maybe Austin really could help. He seemed so much easier to manage than Gavin, and my secrets had no power with him.

I pushed away from the wall and hurried to my seat, trying not to look Gavin’s way. While the professor talked about supernovas, I tapped out an e-mail to Austin on my iPad. “Are you on campus today? I get out of Jacobs Hall at 10. Corabelle.”

I could feel Gavin’s eyes on me as I took notes and tried to focus, already regretting involving an innocent boy to make life easier for me. I stole a guilty glance down the row. Gavin was still watching, intense and brooding. His eyes dropped to the strap of my tank top, and I knew he was remembering the moment at the coffee shop.

Fire licked through me again, and I focused back on the screen. Gavin always had that effect on me.

After that first kissing session in my closet, we were crazy with it. Every chance we got, we pressed against each other feverishly. When a movie or television show showed a couple clutching each other, we’d stop everything to pay attention, only to act the scene out later in my room.

The first time Gavin touched me was completely by accident. I’d just started wearing training bras. He teased me about it and threatened to pop the elastic. When he reached for the back, I whirled around and his fingers grazed across my chest.

The touch had been so electric, I almost screamed. Gavin immediately backed away, sure he’d done something wrong. All I really wanted was for him to do it again.

A lot like now. The scene in the dish room had played over and over in my mind all night. Surely Gavin wasn’t the only way to feel so intense. I had always been too afraid of giving any other boy a chance.

My screen popped up with an e-mail notification. Austin. I kept my head down as I opened it. He didn’t have class, but he’d come down anyway. He lived close to campus.

So it was done. I’d engaged him, and I couldn’t just back away. This was for the best.

I suffered through the lecture, taking frenetic notes to avoid looking at Gavin. At last class ended and Jenny bounded over to me. “You haven’t asked me how I am!”

“Oh, that’s right! Star party! How did it go with Lumberjack?” From the corner of my eye I could see Gavin loading up his backpack. I wanted him long gone before I went outside and met up with Austin.

“He was a dream!” Jenny glanced over her shoulder. Robert stood talking to Amy and the third TA. Jenny pulled me toward the door. “I have to tell you about him!”

This would work. As long as Jenny and I were absorbed in a conversation, Gavin would pass on by and I could wait to go outside to meet Austin.

When we were out of earshot of the TAs, Jenny said, “I got him! We’re going out Saturday night!”

“That’s great. Is he okay with you being a student?”

“Rules are made to be broken. We’re discreet.”

Jenny was about as discreet as a fire truck. “You sure about that?”

She hugged her messenger bag to her chest. “Completely. After all the other students left the lab, we stayed up on the roof until midnight!”

“Wow.”

“He kisses just like Westley in The Princess Bride.”

“You kissed him already?”

“Of course!” Jenny slung her strap over her shoulder. “I’m not into taking things slow.” She threaded her arm around mine. “And based on the dish room, neither are you!”

The hall was clear, so I let her lead me down the steps.

“So what about the guy from the coffee shop? You seemed all serious coming from the alley with him despite serving up suds with hunk boy.” Jenny sighed. “I should have been taking notes from you.”

“Austin is meeting me here.”

Jenny halted by the door to the stairwell. “Seriously? Man-meat looked ready to kill him yesterday, and you’re putting them in the same zip code?”

“Gavin’s probably already halfway across town on his Harley by now.”

Jenny tugged on the handle to the stairs. “Your funeral. Or his.”

I winced at the word, refusing to let the image of a powder-blue casket stick in my mind. “It’ll be fine.”

Still, we took our time on the stairs, killing a few more minutes. “Let me scout ahead,” Jenny said. We walked down the hall and approached the main doors. “I’ll come back when the coast is clear.”

“Corabelle?”

I turned to the voice. Austin was coming down the hall.

“Hey,” I said, not sure at all I was doing the right thing. But I’d committed.

“Hey.” He reached out like he would take my hand, then pulled back, closing his fingers around the strap of his pack.

“So you said you live close?” I asked.

He nodded. “You want to go there?”

My face burned. “No! I – it was just conversation.”

Austin laughed a little. “I’m glad you wrote me. I’m glad I could come.”

A few other students passed by us, and we moved to a corner. I relaxed a little. Finally I’d do something like normal girls. Meet a regular guy, have a normal conversation, and just be another college student. This was going to be all right.

Chapter 14: Gavin

I didn’t really want to leave campus. I hung around the door, waiting on Corabelle, but she kept talking to that girl she worked with. Finally I gave up, heading to my Harley. But instead of driving off campus, I decided to go past the engineering building. Maybe I could convince her to take a ride with me.

Corabelle’s pinked-up friend was standing at the entrance, looking around.

I braked in front of her, and she stuck her hip out, all full of attitude.

“You need to roll right on by,” she said.

“Nice to see you again, too.” I pulled off my helmet. “Where’s Corabelle?”

“Not anywhere you can get to her.”

“She and I have a history.”

“Yeah, that was pretty obvious in the dish room.”

I assessed her. She met my gaze pretty steady, not intimidated in the least. “How long have you known her?”

“Since I started working at Cool Beans.”

“You her friend?”

“I’d take her over you.” She jutted her hip out. She was a live wire, completely the opposite of Corabelle.

“Fair enough. I need to be able to contact her.”

The girl laughed. “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to give up her number.”

“It’s important.”

“So is her privacy. You look like a stalker to me.” She tossed her hair behind her shoulders.

“I could say I got it from the TA. She’s in my study group. But it’s serious. Corabelle, she —” How did I persuade this girl? “She’s getting upset with me around.”

“That’s not exactly convincing.”

“I’m the only one who can help her.”

She looked back to the door, and I knew Corabelle was still inside.

“All I know is that she’s been hurt by somebody.” She moved in close and poked my shirt. “And I’m figuring after that scene yesterday that the somebody is you.”

“We grew up together.”

“And she wanted to get away from you. That’s why she changed groups. So I don’t think she wants to hear from you.”

“But this guy?”

“Not your business.”

“They been together long?”

“Again, not your business.”

I couldn’t crack this girl. Corabelle would get mad at me for this, but I had to give it a shot. “We had a kid together,” I said.

The girl’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“He died when he was a week old.”

Her bag slid down her shoulder and rested on the ground. “I didn’t know.”

“We were eighteen. I sort of left her. I shouldn’t have.” I stuck my helmet on the handlebars. “I want to make this right. Help me do that. You saw her yesterday. I think we have a shot at this.”

The girl pushed at her bangs, upset, and I could see she was struggling with what to do.

“What’s she been like?”

She shrugged. “Sad. Alone. She doesn’t go anywhere, do anything.”

Her words were a blow to the gut. “You two? Do you do things?”

“Sometimes. Mainly I see her at work. And we signed up for this class.” She twisted her bright hair in her fingers. “She doesn’t go out.”

So that guy had to be something new. “Corabelle used to light up a room. Her laughter was the happiest sound in the world.”

“I’ve never heard her laugh.”

Another blow. “We were supposed to get married, but the baby came early. Then I left.” I had to get to this girl. I needed to talk to Corabelle, before she got all tied up in that other guy. What was going on with me was pushing her toward him, I was sure of it. “If I could just talk to her, outside of class, I think I could make things right.”

The girl pulled out her phone. “I tell you what. You give me your number, and I’ll give it to her. If she wants to talk to you, she’ll call.”

That was probably about as good as I could get for now. I told her my number and waited as she tapped it in. “You will tell her?”

She shrugged. “If I think it’s a good idea.”

The doors behind her opened and her eyes went wide as Corabelle and another guy came down the steps.

“Shit,” she muttered.

Corabelle saw us and froze. The dude seemed oblivious and tried to lead her away, but she wouldn’t move.

Everything inside me wanted to claw its way out – rage, disgust, and somewhere way down there, despair. I was going to be too late.

She grabbed the boy’s hand, and he looked surprised. They took off along the front of the building and down a path away from us.

I started to swing my leg off the bike even though I was in the middle of the sidewalk, but the girl punched my arm. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “I’m not going to let you mess with her unless it’s what she wants.”

“I’m what she wants.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what it looks like to me. You need to back off. I don’t care how well you can put a girl up against a dish counter, that boy is bound to be better for her than you.”

I snatched up my helmet and shoved it on. This was pointless. I needed away from all this, and the fire in my belly wasn’t an easy one to quench.

The Harley roared, startling a bunch of birds in the tree next to us. The pink girl backed away. She’d probably delete my number. I’d gotten nowhere. I probably wasn’t going to get anywhere.

I left campus behind to head to the garage. I had a short shift this afternoon, then the night was free. I could see if Mario wanted to shoot pool, but really I knew what I had to do. Scrounge up a bit of cash and head to Zona Norte in Tijuana. There, the girls were easy and paid to like you, and I didn’t have to think about real life at all.

•*´`*•*´`*•

The border guard glanced at my ID and waved me on with a halfhearted “Be careful.”

The half-hour drive from San Diego to Mexico helped put the scene with Corabelle behind me. I felt like I was at my second home as I left the searing lights of the border complex and rolled down Segunda Benito Juarez toward the red-light district.

I knew my way around Tijuana and the women there. No attachments. No risks. Just a simple ease of a simple need by a seasoned pro.

I turned off the highway and onto the main strip. The streets were pulsing with neon signs for hotels and taquerias. Cars rolled slowly, trolling for girls. They stood in their territorial spots, and if one was picked up, another took her place.

They waved as I zipped past, flashing a lot of skin. High heels, leopard prints, red vinyl, and fishnet. Not my scene whatsoever.

The best girls weren’t there, just the ones aiming for turistas. Overpaid and under-interested. And mostly managed. I hated the girls with pimps. They had too many bruises, and I struggled to kill my urge to drag their asses out of there.

Just a couple streets over would be the ordinary girls, the professionals-on-the-side kind, many of them wives or students or making their way on the streets on their own. They kept quiet, avoiding attention, not wanting to catch the eye of anyone who might try to claim them or make their lives more difficult than they already were.

Tonight I wanted Rosa, and the thought of her already had my mood downshifting into something more manageable. Rosa lived with her brother, or so she claimed, and worked in a little farmacia during the day.

In fact, that’s how I met her, just a couple weeks after I left New Mexico.

I’d driven my Camaro through the border states, aimless, exhausted, stopping nowhere. The picture of Finn they passed out at the funeral sat on my passenger seat and I glanced at it often.

The only real thing I’d done as a parent was sign away my kid’s life. And after my stupid exit during the funeral, I was pretty sure the world had decided I was no more fit to be a dad than my own father had been.

Somewhere in Utah I decided that a vasectomy was the way to go. Corabelle had been on birth control, and it hadn’t mattered.

Once I got the idea in my head to do it, I couldn’t think about anything but finding a doctor and getting it done. I had no other goals, no other place to go.

I went to three clinics stateside, trying to find a doctor willing to do a vasectomy on a teenager. No dice. I remembered my grandpa used to get his denture work done in Ciudad Juarez because it was cheaper and there wasn’t any hassle with insurance or paperwork.

I was already west by then, so I sold my laptop for cash and drove along the border until I got to Mexicali. A doctor there sent me on to Tijuana, where I finally found someone who didn’t want to see ID, and cash on the table was good enough to get snipped.

The procedure itself wasn’t too bad. They gave me some pill that made me loopy and sluggish. I felt a needle and some pinching. Afterward, though, walking was impossible. I couldn’t really understand the nurse’s instructions and had no idea what I was supposed to do for pain.

I ended up at the farmacia in hopes of scoring something stronger than Tylenol. The girl behind the counter was beautiful, long black hair curling down her back, not unlike Corabelle’s. She spoke enough English that I could explain what had happened, and she consulted with a man in the back. She gave me a cold pack and a jockstrap and a bottle of pills with the stern instructions to take only two per day.

I was saved. I stayed at a hotel across the street, unable to go any farther, and I remember looking out the window and seeing her close up the shop. The nightlife was colorful and the pain, while duller, kept me up for hours.

In that hot little room, though, the magnitude of what I’d done started to hit. I couldn’t go back to Corabelle, not ever. She’d take it personally. She’d assume I didn’t want a baby with her after all. I would have to stay away. I’d finished us.

I don’t think about those first few hours after the surgery any more than I replay that span of time after the ventilators went silent. But when I pulled myself together enough, I tried to find a diversion inside those four filthy walls.

All the TV channels were in Spanish, so I pulled a chair up to the window, surprised when I saw the girl back again, lounging on the corner, wearing a low-cut stretchy blouse and a short skirt.

She seemed uncertain about what she was doing, and that innocence caught my attention. A man approached her and they argued a moment, but she sent him on his way. Probably wanting something for free. When an hour passed and she had no luck, I made my way painfully down the stairs and out onto the street.

She saw me coming and pressed her hand over her cleavage. “Feeling better, señor?”

“How much?”

“Perdón?”

Suddenly I worried that I was dead wrong. She was just hanging out here, waiting for someone, someone who was really late. I waved my hand at her. “Sorry. Never mind.”

I turned away, but she caught my shoulder. “You are not well for this.” She glanced down at my pants, bulging from the cold packs.

“I know.” My ache for Corabelle was suddenly fierce, and the comfort of this woman seemed like it might help.

“Okay. I come. You are up there?” She pointed at the hotel.

I nodded.

We walked back across the street and up to my room. I had to take it super slow, and she held my arm, keeping me steady.

“This doctor. Was he good?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

She helped me get settled on the bed. “Why you do this? You are so young.”

“I have my reasons.” I reached out for her hair, tweaking the strands between my fingers. When she faced away, taking off her shoes, I could almost believe she was Corabelle.

We still hadn’t agreed on a price, and I had no assurance that she wouldn’t rob me blind if the drugs knocked me out. But most of my stuff was in a locker on the other side of the border. I could probably afford to lose everything I had on me. I twined my fingers through her hair, relieved I could touch her without worrying about her reaction, and closed my eyes.

Her body fitted next to mine and now I could really imagine that Corabelle was next to me. We were on a holiday, our honeymoon maybe, and this was all we could afford. Her parents were watching Finn for a couple nights, and we’d gotten away. The girl laid her hand on my chest and I held it.

“Rosa,” she said.

“I’m Gavin.”

“You rest, Gavin.”

And so I spent my first night with her in a seedy hotel room and slept through the haze of pain medication and sore balls. I stayed in Tijuana for a week, until I figured out that I wasn’t going back home and I needed to find a job. Settling in San Diego made sense, and since I was already accepted to UCSD, I could easily get admitted, take a GED for my diploma, and start my coursework.

At first I went back to see Rosa just to get a sense that I had taken a few steps into my past. I always paid her, but it was probably my fourth or fifth visit before we finally got to business, when my loneliness hit a peak. After her I found other girls, closer, in San Diego, and realized that prostitutes were a perfect solution. No strings. No mess. No mistakes.