To Selena, With Love (7 page)

When the show began, Selena came onstage and kept her eyes focused on the crowd. I was right behind her, on the same side as always. But, instead of looking in my direction, Selena kept looking the opposite way. We were both flustered, and then we had to kick into gear. I started playing the guitar, and she started singing, and after a few minutes things almost felt normal again.

Almost, but not quite. We both knew that something big had just happened, and that things were going to be different. After the show, I went up to her and said, “That was weird, right?”

“Yeah, that was weird,” she agreed, and then she just started laughing.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad that what happened, happened,” I said.

She grabbed my hand quickly and then let it go, so I knew that, whatever happened from now on, we were in it together.

I never imagined that Selena and I would declare our love for each other in a Pizza Hut, but that’s exactly what happened.

Whenever the band was on the road, we had a routine of meeting at the bus when it was checkout time at the hotel. The road crew would already be gone with the equipment, but we’d load our own bags onto Big Bertha and wait until everyone was there, then move on to our next destination.

Selena was almost always the last to arrive, usually because she was making last-minute clothing changes or doing her hair and makeup. It had gotten to the point where she never went out in public without looking her best; we never knew when reporters or fans or producers might be in a crowd or just waiting on the sidewalk if they saw our bus pull up.

This particular morning, though, it wasn’t Selena who was last to arrive: it was Abraham. The rest of us sat talking on the bus, and Selena kept saying how hungry she was. Her favorite food was pizza with extra pepperoni; I had noticed a Pizza Hut across the street but didn’t say anything about it. I assumed that Abraham was just on the phone with a promoter or something. There was no telling when he might return.

Selena, however, had spotted the Pizza Hut, too. She was going to do what she wanted—she usually did. “Want to go get pizza, Chris?” she said.

Everybody knew we had started a relationship by then, and they had our backs. The first thing Abraham would do when he returned
to the bus was ask where we were, but we knew they’d just say, “She went to Pizza Hut and Chris went with her.”

Abraham probably wouldn’t think anything of it. In fact, he’d feel better because Selena had a chaperone. That thought made me feel bad once again about all of the sneaking around we were doing.

I thought we’d order pizza to go, but Selena wanted to sit at a table. We sat near a window so that we could see the bus. And then she just started talking, asking me about my feelings.

“I’m really happy with you,” Selena said. “I love spending time with you. But I need to know where you think our relationship is headed.”

I decided that I had to tell her right then how I really felt. This was a terrifying prospect. I’d had girlfriends before. I had even said I loved them, because I thought I knew what love was. But I had never experienced the feelings I had for Selena, and I told her so. I just opened up and said how happy she made me feel.

“I always look forward to seeing you and spending time with you,” I said. “To be honest, I can’t wait until we’re going to be together again. When we’re not on the road, I wish that I could speed up time so that I could be with you. And, when we’re together, I wish that I could slow time down.”

I told her that I didn’t feel right hiding our relationship from her father. It was gnawing away at me. I was tired of the secrecy. “I wake up sometimes in the morning and feel sick, like I’m doing something wrong and just haven’t been caught yet, but today’s the day.”

Selena nodded. She understood that, she said, but she still thought it was too soon to tell Abraham. “Let’s wait for the right moment.”

I wondered if there ever would be such a moment, but didn’t tell her that. “Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’d never let my guilt about hiding this from your dad stop me from seeing you. It’s just that, if I could change one thing, it would be that. Your dad is a great guy, and I feel like I’m betraying him. But I will always want to be with you.”

I just stopped talking, then, wondering suddenly what Selena thought about everything I’d just said. I was almost holding my breath.

To my relief, Selena looked me in the eyes and said, “I love you.”

That was the thing about Selena: She was one of the bravest people I’ve ever known, not just onstage, but in relationships. She was really quick to put her feelings out there. You always knew where you stood with her. There was no manipulation, no lying or games. Selena was purely herself, and true to who she was and what she believed in.

My heart was pounding so hard that I thought everyone in that pizza place could hear it. My pulse was racing and I just wanted to get up and shout, “Did you hear what Selena just said? She loves me!” I had never been happier in my life than I was at that moment, hearing that declaration of love from Selena.

I grinned. “I love you, too,” I said.

It felt good to have taken that next step and declared our feelings aloud to each other, even as we watched out the window for Abraham. I reached across the table and took Selena’s hand in mine. We just sat there for a while, touching and loving each other, secure in the knowledge that we would never let go.

Selena wore the biggest smile as we walked back to the bus. I still smile, when I remember how happy she looked that day. At the
time, though, I had to scold her. “Hey, stop smiling!” I said. “You’re going to give us away!”

But it wasn’t Selena who put our relationship in jeopardy—it was me. A few short months after Selena and I first declared our love in that Pizza Hut, I sat in a San Antonio police station under arrest, wondering if I had destroyed the best thing in my life.

C. W. Bush / Shooting Star

I
magine how I felt as I stood in the police station, muddied and bloodied and beaten up, when the song “Ven Conmigo” started playing on the radio. It was as if Selena could see me there. At the sound of her sweet, soulful voice, my head dropped, so ashamed was I to be in this situation.

Was I going to lose the woman I loved as soon as I’d found her? Maybe I truly didn’t deserve Selena. Maybe our future together was over before it had really begun.

As I waited for the police to book me, I looked back on my brief, blissful time with Selena and wondered how I could have ended up in this predicament. Everything had been going so well.

Between being on the road and working on the songs that would become our next album,
Entre a Mi Mundo
, Selena and I spent as much time as possible together during the early part of 1991. She was busier than ever with promotions, but still cheerful and energetic. That year, her duet with Alvaro Torres, “Buenos Amigos,” became her first number one song. At the same time, Capitol EMI was getting ready to launch us in Mexico.

Despite her intense schedule, Selena and I had continued to see
each other on the down low, escaping to restaurants, movie theaters, and anywhere else we could be alone together without word getting back to Abraham.

I had learned a lot about Selena in this time. I knew that she hated to exercise, other than an occasional jog—she definitely wasn’t one of those women who would get up early and work out at the gym. She had few friends, but was close with everyone in her family—especially with her sister Suzette and her little cousin Priscilla, who was just starting middle school. She preferred magazines over books and loved to shop.

Selena and her family were Jehovah’s Witnesses. They seldom talked about their faith with me—or with anyone else, for that matter. I had been raised Catholic and had let my faith lapse; I didn’t know much about Jehovah’s Witnesses and thought it must be some kind of radical religion. Sometimes, though, Selena and her family would talk about religion on the bus, and I realized that they used the same Bible I’d grown up with and understood its teachings much better than I did. They lived according to their deeply held values. This made me start thinking about God and the point of faith in our lives in ways that I never had before.

What struck me about Selena more than anything else during this time, though, was her compassion. Her compassion encompassed her friends, her family, her fans—especially those who were struggling in their lives with illness or poverty—women in crisis, children, and even animals.

I remember one time when we were driving alone together and Selena hit a dove. She wasn’t speeding or anything; Selena and I were just jamming to the radio cranked up loud when a flock of doves shot up from the side of the road and started to fly.

This one little dove was slower than the others. It started flying straight along the road ahead of us, and we came up on that poor bird so fast that we hit it. The windshield popped him right on his tail feathers and then the dove flew off. I swear that for a second I could see that bird’s surprised face as he curved off.

The bird wasn’t hurt, but Selena had to pull the car over to the side of the road, she was crying so hard. She was almost hysterical. “I hit that little bird!” she said, sobbing. “I killed it!”

“No, you didn’t,” I reassured her. I leaned over to hug her, holding her close while she cried. “I saw the bird fly off. It’s going to be fine. You didn’t even hit it that hard.”

Selena sat up again and dried her eyes. “Really? You think the bird is okay?”

“I do,” I said.

At the same time, we both noticed this little streak on the windshield. I knew it couldn’t have been from the bird, but Selena made me clean the windshield before she started driving again. “I just can’t stand to hurt anything,” she explained.

Because I was in the band, Abraham had continued to allow Selena to spend time with me without questioning either of us about it. I’m sure he thought that, at least if Selena was with me, she was still beneath the protective umbrella of her family.

Meanwhile, I was growing ever more uncomfortable with the idea that I was betraying this man who had trusted me. I cared about Abraham on a personal level, yet ever since that fateful trip to Mexico, Selena and I had been dishonest. Now I had been arrested and could very well serve jail time, proving to Abraham that I wasn’t worthy of Selena—even before he knew our relationship had begun!