Home Free (11 page)

“Derek, I think it would be better if we
don’t see each other anymore.”

“What?”

“Look, I don’t want that kind of relationship
anymore, and it’s pretty obvious that you do, so I think we
shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

“What the hell do you mean, you don’t want
that kind
of relationship? What other kind is there?”

“Well, jeez, I still like you. I thought we
could be friends.”

He snorted, and his face contorted into
something ugly. “Like I want to be friends with you?”

“Whatever.” I stood up and reached for my
purse on the coffee table. He slapped my hand away, hard, and tears
sprang to my eyes. I was so shocked I couldn’t think. In my
sheltered world, men didn’t hit women.

“You whore. There’s only one thing a bitch
like you is good for, and I’m going to show you what it is.” He
shoved me and I fell over the coffee table onto my back. He was on
me before I could move, sitting on my chest, pinning my arms with
his knees. I couldn’t breathe.

He tried to kiss me, but I jerked my head
away and he slapped me across the face.

By the time he had shifted his position
enough to allow me to knee him in the groin with everything I had,
I was bruised and bitten, my clothes were torn, and my naïvete was
gone. He doubled over, moaning in pain, and I stood up and kicked
him as hard as I could in the side so he couldn’t chase me. I ran
to the car and locked myself in, shaking with uncontrollable sobs.
Eventually, reason returned and I drove.

I parked in front of the Salazars’. It never
occurred to me to go home. If my father saw me, he’d never let me
out of the house again. I walked up the driveway to the back gate,
let myself in and went around to Danny’s window, staying close to
the house so I wouldn’t trigger the motion sensor lights. The
blinds were open and I could see Danny talking on the phone. I
tapped on the window. He looked in my direction, but couldn’t see
me in the dark with his bedroom light on. He said something into
the phone, set it down and walked over to the window. He slid it
open and looked out.

“Don’t move,” he said. He pulled a blanket
off his bed and disappeared. A second later, he reappeared at the
back door.

The back light came on when he walked past
it, and he reached up and unscrewed it and tossed it into a
geranium bush. He walked over and gently turned me to face him in
the dark. He kept his eyes on mine, but I knew they had taken in
every detail. They were black and hard and cold.

“Who did this to you?” His voice was quiet,
tight with barely controlled fury as he slipped the blanket around
me, pulling it closed over my torn blouse. I winced when the rough
fabric brushed against the wound in my shoulder, and I saw the
muscles in his jaw clench tighter. I just stood there.

He whispered, “
Alexis
.”

I forced myself to speak. “Derek.”

“Did he - ?”

I stared at my toes for a minute, kicked a
little rock, shook my head no. Danny lifted my chin, forcing me to
meet his gaze. “Are you sure?”

“No. I mean, yes, I’m sure. He didn’t. He
tried.” I choked on a sob. “He hit me, and he tore my clothes and
called me a whore. I think he bit me. But I got away before... I
kicked him in the ribs and I ran away.”

“I’m going to go inside to get something for
your cuts, okay? Can you stay out here by yourself?”

I nodded and Danny disappeared inside. I saw
him go into his bedroom and pick up the phone. He dialed, said a
few words, hung up. I realized he was wearing his good jeans and a
new black t-shirt, and he had probably been getting ready to go
out. He disappeared again, then he was back. He had been gone less
than a minute.

He cleaned up the bite on my shoulder, and
some scratches on my chest where Derek had torn my shirt open, and
he pulled one of his sweatshirts over my head. I thought about
Rose, and I guessed this wasn’t the first time Danny had patched up
a woman. He sat on the lounge chair with me nestled against his
chest, the blanket around us. He stroked my hair and told me I was
going to be okay, and I believed him.

Pretty soon all I could sense was the heat of
Danny’s body against mine. I slid my hand inside his t-shirt and
felt him pull back. That was something new. I didn’t know what to
make of it. I sat up and looked at him.

“You don’t want me?”

“Of course I want you, Lex. That’s not the
point.”

“Well, then, what is the point?”

“This isn’t something you need to do for me.”
His voice was soft, but his face was still hard, angry. “You don’t
owe a man that, not ever.”

“I know that, Danny. You don’t get it. It’s
just,” I didn’t know how to explain it so he would understand.
“When I go to sleep tonight, I want to be thinking about your hands
on my body, not Derek’s.”

He stared at me for a full minute. His eyes
softened and he reached for me. “If you change your mind, you need
to tell me. Not just tonight, okay? You can
always
say
no.”

Later, he drove me around the block to my
house and, since no one was there, he came inside and tucked me in.
I wanted to tell him that I loved him and I knew I would always
feel safe with him. But I was seventeen years old, so instead I
said, “Sorry about your date.”

He laughed, and for the first time all night,
the smile reached his eyes.

The next afternoon, Danny, Kevin and I were
sitting by the pool when my mom came home from shopping.
Thankfully, my face wasn’t bruised, and the rest of my injuries
were hidden under my t-shirt. I was a little stiff, but no one had
noticed. Danny had showed up first thing, ostensibly to kill the
day with Kevin, but he hadn’t let me out of his sight.

“Alex, are you still seeing that Derek boy?”
my mother asked as she set out a pitcher of tea for us.

I froze. “We sort of broke up. Why?”

“They brought him into the ER last night. He
had two broken ribs,” that would be me, I thought. But she
continued, “A concussion, a broken arm, and every single one of his
fingers was broken.”

Holy shit. “Did he say what happened?”

“Just that he’d gone out to go to a movie and
some guys he didn’t know jumped him in the alley behind the theater
and beat him up. They didn’t take his wallet, though. I don’t know
what this town is coming to.”

Danny hadn’t looked up once from his
conversation with my brother.

“What time did they bring him in?”

“Nine-thirty or so.” I had been with Danny
from around eight-thirty till almost eleven. Then I remembered the
phone call.

After that night, Danny didn’t see Sherry
anymore. When school started in the fall, I avoided Derek like the
disease he was, and he looked through me like I wasn’t there.

I’d seen Danny angry before, obviously, but
never with me. Now he stood across the table from me, glowering,
and I’d say he was pissed.

“You can see why I would ask, can’t you?”
Technically, I still hadn’t asked. To this very second, we had
never spoken about Derek or about the phone call Danny had made
that night. But the knowledge that Chambers had been manhandling a
woman from Danny’s past, and then had wound up with extra
ventilation in his head sort of brought the whole thing up to the
surface again.

He was calmer now, not because he was any
less angry, but because he was fighting hard for control. His eyes
were flashing and his jaw was clenched and his knuckles were white
from the death grip he had on the edge of the table, but his voice
was steady, if strained.

“If you think I go around shooting people in
the head, then I was right, you don’t know me at all.”

“Maybe I don’t,” I barked. “Maybe if you’d
ever bothered even once to call me in the past decade, I wouldn’t
have to ask. But as it is, no, I guess I don’t know you.” Dammit, I
thought, every single conversation we had was turning into a
fucking nightmare. I half expected Jack to show up after all, in
keeping with the other spectacularly inane encounters we’d had so
far.

“No, I didn’t kill Chambers,” he growled. “Is
that what you need to hear? Now I think you need to get the hell
out of here before this gets any uglier.”

We stared at each other for another few
seconds, the muscles working in his jaw, and then I gathered my
purse and left. I slammed the door, just for dramatic effect. I can
be very mature.

Gee, that went well, I thought as I started
the car and headed for home.

I wanted, hell, I needed to believe Danny.
But I couldn’t in all honesty say I did, not a hundred percent. I
drove home thinking myself in circles about Danny and Sherry and
Chambers, not to mention Danny and me and Derek. I decided I needed
to know if he had visited Sherry at home.

I pulled into my driveway and felt relieved
when I realized Jack’s truck was nowhere in sight. The gray Escort
was parked in front of Debbie’s house now, but I knew Debbie was
hard at work at the post office, so I didn’t think it was someone
visiting her. I went inside, tossed the mail on the hall table and
sat down with my chin in my hands, staring unseeing out the front
window.

Whenever I’m stumped about anything, if I
stare out the window long enough, something comes to me. It never
fails. Once it took a week, but it never fails.

Fortunately, today it only took a few
minutes. I went over to the bookshelf and pulled out my eleventh
grade yearbook. I looked through the senior portraits till I found
Danny’s picture. I didn’t have any snapshots of him, so the
yearbook photo would have to do. I opened the lid of the scanner
and laid the book facedown on the glass plate, then replaced the
lid. I flipped on the computer and, when Photoshop opened, I
scanned in the page and then used the cropping tools to delete
everything except Danny’s face. I expanded the photo to four inches
by six inches, standard snapshot size, saved the image, and printed
it on glossy photo paper.

Armed with the photo, I drove back to Cherry
Street. Angela wasn’t on the porch, so I knocked on the door. A
woman in her mid twenties answered.

“Is Angela here?”

She gave me the once over, then hollered,
“Angela!” and disappeared back into the house.

Angela appeared, looking curious when she saw
me. She stepped out onto the porch and said, “Yo.”

I handed her Danny’s photo. “Have you seen
this man?” I made some deals with God on the condition that she
said no.

“Yep.”

No fucking way. I felt like a fist had
slammed into my chest, and I struggled for breath. I had wanted so
badly to believe him.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded.

“At Sherry’s place?”

“What? No, at school. He’s the Fire Captain.
He came one day during career week to give us a talk on
professional baseball and firefighting. I remember him because he’s
fine.”

My breathing returned to normal, and I stared
at her, speechless. First of all, because Danny hadn’t been at
Sherry’s. But also because a, she went to school and b, she seemed
to have lost her barrio slang.

“At school?”

“Well, duh.”

“What about the baby? From before.”

“I was babysitting for my neighbor. She had a
doctor’s appointment. You thought he was mine, didn’t you?”

“What happened to your speech?”

“You know, it’s not a good idea to look too
smart around here. People think you’re putting on airs and acting
superior, they’ll want to knock you down a peg.” She gave me a
pointed look and continued, “People see what they want to see.
Doesn’t matter to me. I know what’s what.”

She was right of course. “I’m sorry. If it’s
any consolation, you’re not the only person I judged unfairly
today, and at least I didn’t imply you killed anyone.” Nice
apology, I thought. I was going to have to work on my people
skills.

She shrugged. “I guess you’re worried about
your fireman, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “He’s not
my
fireman, but
yeah, I am.”

She gestured towards the photo in my hand.
“Can I have that?”

I guessed she had a crush on Danny, and since
I couldn’t blame her in the least, I gave her the picture, thanked
her for her help and left.

I flung myself on the bed and tried not to
think about anything. I didn’t know what I was doing, going around
asking stupid questions and jumping to stupid conclusions. If I’d
just believed Jimmy C when he said that Chambers had stumbled into
the pyro party, I could have avoided the ugly scene with Danny.
Plus, I wouldn’t have insulted a perfectly nice girl. I wasn’t
helping Danny or Kevin, and I sure as hell wasn’t helping myself. I
was wasting my time, driving around town, sweating and annoying
people instead of doing my job. What I needed to do was go in the
office and do some work, some real work that I could get paid for
and that wouldn’t screw up anyone’s life or make anyone mad at me.
I was going to get right on that.

Two hours later, I woke to the sound of
voices. I tiptoed out of my room and down the hallway, stepping
over the squeaky board, and peered into the living room. Kevin and
Jack were sitting on the couch, drinking beer and watching a ball
game. Jesus Christ, don’t these guys have homes? I wondered. I
sighed and decided I wasn’t up to another fight today, so I went to
the kitchen, grabbed a soda and a bag of potato chips and went to
the living room to join them.

I must have fallen asleep again, because the
next thing I knew, someone was kissing my neck. I opened my eyes
and Jack smiled. Kevin was gone, the television was off and it was
dark outside. Jack went back to work, tracing his tongue along my
neck to the base of my throat. I closed my eyes.

“Mmmm, that’s nice, Danny.”

I know, I
know
. I heard myself saying
it a split second too late to stop. I squinched my eyes into little
slits so I could peek at Jack. He was sitting back looking at me. I
sighed and sat up.