Forever Innocent (9 page)

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.