“I’ll be right there.”
I pulled on a pair of jeans and didn’t even think about anything but Mayra needing me as I got in my car and drove to her house. The clock in the car read nine twenty in the morning though it didn’t really feel like I had slept more than an hour. My head was pounding, so I figured the pain pills must have worn off. My back and shoulders were stiff, too.
As soon as I turned into Mayra’s driveway, I was out of the car and heading up the steps to her door. Henry was there, waiting for me, so I didn’t even have to knock.
“She’s up in her room,” he said. “I think she might be asleep again, but it doesn’t seem to last long.”
I glanced up the stairs where Henry was pointing. I had never gone upstairs in Mayra’s house before and certainly hadn’t been in her room. I felt the tingle of panic wash over my skin but then reminded myself that not only had her dad asked me to come over, but he was pointing the way, so it must be okay for me to go in there.
“Matthew, I should tell you something.”
I turned my head to look at him, but I had to drop my eyes to his shoulder. The mustache waving around in the middle of his face was just too distracting.
“I got a call a while ago—from Officer Gregory. They caught one of the other guys—Mark Johnson. He must have been pretty freaked out and ended up giving them a full confession. Apparently there was some sort of bet between Lords and the coke dealer. Mayra heard me talking on the phone about it.”
“Bet?” I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know, but I asked anyway.
Henry growled under his breath as he turned his head to one side. His right hand balled up into a fist.
“Lords bet his buddies he could…have sex with Mayra. When they broke up, he stood to lose a lot of money to the coke dealer. This was his way of winning the bet.”
My hands started to shake as I processed what he was saying. I had to close my eyes and breathe slowly for a few minutes before I could even speak again.
“They followed us,” I said.
“Yeah,” Henry confirmed. “I don’t think they were counting on you to offer much resistance and figured they could threaten you both into silence. I’d say you gave them a bit of a shock.”
“What about the fourth guy?” I asked.
“The police have a name,” Henry said, “Steven Blake. They haven’t found him yet. At least they hadn’t as of a couple of hours ago. They have a warrant out for the assault charges, especially considering he was the one who busted you up the most. His brother is the dealer—the other guy you knocked out.”
“I’d never even seen them before.”
“I think Mayra has,” Henry said, his voice low. “Mayra’s mentioned their names before. I think Justin was hanging around them when she was still dating that…that…”
He growled again.
“Henry?” I said quietly, trying out his name for the first time.
“Yeah?”
“I kind of wish…wish I hadn’t stopped hitting him, you know?”
“Yeah, kid,” Henry said with a sigh. “I do know.”
Henry reached out and clapped my shoulder with his hand. I tried not to flinch, but I really couldn’t help it. I knew he was trying to be nice, and I knew he was grateful, but that didn’t stop me from cringing anyway. He pulled his hand back and dropped it at his side.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
Henry shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. He looked toward the stairs, scratched at his mustache, and tapped his foot a few times.
“She’s in her room,” Henry finally said. “Go on up if you want.”
Taking a deep breath, I walked up the stairs slowly and then peeked into the partially opened door. Mayra was lying on a twin bed with her legs hanging partway off the side. There was a blue and white comforter lying most of the way on the floor, which Mayra had apparently recently kicked off.
Her eyes were closed, but she was restless.
I approached her slowly, walking softly across the floor before kneeling next to her bed. I reached out and touched her arm gently, and she jumped. A second later, she sat straight up and screamed.
“Mayra! Mayra! It’s just me!”
“Matthew!” she cried as she grabbed hold of my shoulders. I hugged her to me, her body shaking under my fingers.
“It’s okay,” I said quietly. “It’s just me.”
She tugged at me until I was lying down next to her. As soon as we were side by side, she nestled her forehead against my chest and closed her eyes.
I glanced at the doorway to see Henry standing there with a scowl on his face. Tensing up a bit, I wondered what he thought of me lying down with her, but as she drifted off again, his mustache twitched into a bit of a smile. He nodded at me once and then turned to go back down the stairs, leaving the door wide open.
Without his eyes on us, I settled down and pulled Mayra closer to me. My head was right above hers on the pillow, and the sweet scent of her hair filled my nose. Her fingers clutched at my shoulders, and I realized she wasn’t quite asleep.
“I’m here,” I said quietly. Her fingers tightened on me again.
“I’m glad,” she whispered back. “I can’t sleep.”
“You can now,” I told her.
Mayra just shook her head.
“I can’t stop thinking about it.” Her hand slid down my arm until it came to rest on my bandaged knuckles.
I wished I knew what to say to her, but as usual, I didn’t. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I just lay there next to her and let her fiddle with the edge of my bandage. My mom would have had all the right words to say—she always did—but that was not a trait she passed on to me.
“I was a bet.” Mayra suddenly snarled, startling me from my thoughts. “He bet he could talk me into giving him my virginity. It was the only reason we were even going out at all, because he made a bet on me. When I wouldn’t give it to him, he thought he would just take it!”
My grip on her tightened.
“I won’t let him hurt you.” I made the same promise to her that I had to her father.
She placed a hand on my chest and pushed back until she was looking up into my face.
“He’s not going to get another chance!” Mayra exclaimed. “No one will ever get that chance again! You can’t be there all the time, Matthew. I’ve got to fix this.”
“Fix this?” I asked, confused.
“Yes, fix it,” she said again.
Her hand came up to the side of my face, and she pressed her lips desperately to mine. She broke away quickly and looked into my eyes.
“I want it to be you, Matthew,” she told me. “I want you to be my first. Then no one else can ever threaten to take that from me again. I’m going to give it to you.”
I couldn’t even fathom a way to respond to that, so I just freaked out.
Lose.
Chapter 13—From Freak to Hero
The sheer number of emotions that passed through my head probably equaled the average spending budget of a congressional member for the month of July, fireworks included.
The first set of thoughts focused on exactly what Mayra was saying and whether she meant right here and right now with her father downstairs, watching a baseball game on the flat screen. The notion of being unprepared didn’t even come marginally close. It wasn’t just a matter of not having a condom in my wallet, like Joe always did. He claimed he never wanted to have the opportunity and have to bail because of something like that though I was pretty sure he had never had the opportunity anyway. No, I was unprepared in five hundred different ways. Well, maybe not five hundred, but plenty.
Or at least three.
First, Mayra was scared. Second, her dad was right downstairs and definitely within earshot. And third, I didn’t have the slightest idea how to have sex with any level of understanding past “Tab A goes into Slot B.”
Cognitively, I knew this was a reaction to what had happened to Mayra and
not something she would be considering if the events of the previous night had not occurred. She was scared and reacting without thinking. She didn’t really want this at all.
The last wave of emotion that covered my skin was nothing short of sheer, raw desire.
I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it with Mayra.
In my fantasies I had known just what to do, and sweat had glistened on her forehead as her neck arched back, and she called out my name. I moved in and out of her effortlessly, and every touch of my skilled fingers brought shivers from her heated skin. We went on for hours though the fantasy itself would only last a few minutes. Still, there was little more I could have asked for than having her want this from me.
It didn’t matter.
Regardless of desire, I was not going to have sex with her when that mustache was waving around on the ground floor just below us.
The very thought of Henry and my own unpreparedness would have been enough to send me over the edge, but combine that with the understanding that Mayra only said this because she was frightened was far, far too much.
Her fingers against my jaw became electric, and I felt as if I was shocked right off the bed. I fell onto the floor and conked my head on the wood slats. Prying open my eyes, I was met with a vision of a pair of dirty blue socks just beneath the bed’s dust ruffle.
“No…no…can’t…wouldn’t be…don’t know…no…no…”
My limbs acted on their own, quickly propelling me across the room until my back hit the door to her closet. My body began to shake, and my rapid heartbeat threatened to move right out of my chest and into one of the residence halls on campus. Finding my way into the corner between the back wall of the room and the closet, I huddled. I didn’t even fight it as my mind started to close in around me, shielding me from everything outside. I knew I couldn’t deal with this, so I let the panic take me.
Part of retreating inside of myself was extraordinarily comforting. Everything around me would just disappear as my mind would shut down to keep at bay all the thoughts that threatened to overwhelm me. If only I could also keep out the physical reactions at the same time—the pounding of my heart and the difficulty getting enough air into my lungs—then it wouldn’t really be bad at all.
Of course, were that the case, I might not bother to come out of it.
Through my choked breaths, I vaguely registered Mayra’s voice. I couldn’t make out the words, but I knew she was talking to me. There was something she was trying to tell me—something she wanted me to do—but I had pushed it away from my conscious mind.
A distinct ache in my shoulders crept up my neck, and I wondered how long I had been punching the bag. Something wasn’t quite right, though, because I was sitting in an uncomfortable position and was not sprawled out on my bed or the couch like I usually was after a long workout. I realized my head was against my knees, and my legs were drawn up tightly against my chest.
Shit, shit, shit.
The moments leading up to my attack came back to me, a little slower than the first time but almost as strong. Mayra curled her hand into the hair right above my ear, and she stroked my jaw.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispered again and again.
“I…I…I can’t, Mayra!” I stammered. “You’re just scared! I don’t…I don’t want to just because you’re scared!”
She moved her arms around my head and pulled me against her shoulder. My body resisted at first, but I was calmed enough by her scent to let my forehead drop against her. With her hands in my hair, she just whispered “Shh” over and over for a few minutes.
Eventually my breathing slowed, and my heartbeat returned to its more natural rhythm. Once my own body calmed, I realized how agitated Mayra was and looked up to her tear-streaked face and cringed, knowing I was responsible.
“You’re scared,” I whispered.
“I want to do it,” Mayra insisted.
“Not because you’re scared.” I shook my head, running my cheek on the top of her arm. “I don’t want it to be like that.”
“That’s not the reason,” Mayra said.
My gaze met hers briefly, and I narrowed my eyes. Mayra sighed.
“It’s not the only reason.”
“Your dad is right downstairs…”
“I didn’t mean right now,” Mayra said with another sigh. “I guess I should know better by now than to spring things on you like that. I just never know what will upset you. When we were…in the alley…I couldn’t even think past trying to scream, but you took on all four of them. You looked so…I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were so angry,” she said quietly, “but calm at the same time. As soon as you...as soon as you pulled him off me, and Mark let go…I just looked at you and knew everything was going to be okay again. You were completely in control. That’s when I just fell apart, I guess. I knew it was safe to do so.”
She reached under my chin and tilted my head up a little. I didn’t quite meet her eyes, but I came close.
“How could you be so calm with all of that happening?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “It’s all kind of a blur. I couldn’t let them hurt you.”
At some point, we left the floor by Mayra’s closet and crawled back onto her bed, completely exhausted. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and pulled her close to me, wondering how we managed to switch roles so quickly again, I now the caregiver and she the recipient. Mayra let out a long, slow breath before curling into my chest and closing her eyes. The grey light from the overcast morning penetrated the thin curtains hanging over her window, casting soft shadows around her shoulders.
“Have you ever thought about it?” Mayra’s quiet voice floated over the blankets.
“About what?” I asked, somewhat lost, watching the little floating pieces of dust above the bed.
“About you and me…” Her voice went very quiet. “You know…together.”
I swallowed hard and willed my heart to stay right where it was and not jump into my throat. Before I could process exactly what she was saying, my mouth opened.
“Yes.”
I couldn’t take the words back, so I stuck my head underneath Mayra’s pillow. She tried to pull it off, but I gripped it tightly and held it against my cheek.
“Are you going to come out of there?” she asked after a few minutes.
“No.” Frankly, it was kind of nice under her pillow. It was soft, warm, and smelled like Mayra. It was also dark, and my face was hidden so Mayra couldn’t see me after my admission of thinking about having sex with her.
I could hear her deep sigh and feel her fingers rubbing the spot between my shoulder and my neck. I was still sore there, and it felt good.
“You’re being silly.”
I shrugged, causing the blanket to fall off my shoulder. Mayra pulled it back up.
“It’s not like I don’t know where you are!” she said with a bit of a giggle. I shrugged again, but she kept the blanket in place. She trailed her finger down over my shoulder and upper arm. It felt a little like it did when she ran her fingers through my hair, and I felt myself relax.
“I have too, you know,” Mayra said quietly.
“You have what?” I asked.
“Thought about you,” she said. Her voice dropped lower. “While I was here…in bed.”
I swallowed hard and closed my eyes even though I couldn’t see anything from where I was anyway. I understood what she was saying, and I definitely remembered what I had done while in bed, thinking about her.
She traced farther down my arm with her finger, and my hand gripped her side reflexively. She slipped her hand off my arm and onto my hip. With her palm placed firmly against my thigh, she rubbed against the material of my jeans. I had to swallow again, trying to decide if I was hoping she would move her hand around to the front or hoping she would just send me home.
“Mayra,” I said as I finally pulled my head out from
under the pillow and glanced at her face, “I want to, I do…but you are scared.” I took in a long breath, still not knowing if I really agreed with what I was about to say. “On top of that…well, I…I…Mayra, I’m not ready.”
She stilled her hand and let it lie on my leg for a moment before she brought it up to my face again. She cupped my cheek and tried to get me to turn to face her, but I was more likely to dive back under the pillow than meet her eyes at this point.
“Why do I feel like we’ve reversed roles here?” Mayra said with a soft laugh. “Isn’t the guy supposed to be trying to talk the girl into it?”
I shrugged again.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “But Mayra…I’m still trying to get used to the idea that I have a girlfriend, especially one as beautiful as you are. I don’t want…”
My voice trailed off, and I tilted my face back toward the pillow. Mayra’s hand stroked my hair.
“Don’t want what?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t want”—I gritted my teeth and made myself say it—“I don’t want to disappoint you.”
This time, when I wouldn’t turn my head toward her, she ducked down and pushed her face into the pillow beside me, pushing down the fluff and exposing my face. She moved forward until our noses touched.
“I don’t know what to do either,” she told me. “But I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t disappoint me.”
Our lips brushed softly together before Mayra settled back and closed her eyes. I wrapped my arms tightly around her, pulling her close against my chest. A few minutes later, she was asleep.
~oOo~
Mayra and I ended up sleeping away most of Sunday, not realizing the story of our attack had gotten to the local news. Henry knew, but he must not have thought to tell either of us. Maybe he just didn’t want Mayra to think about it so she could sleep that night. Regardless, when we got out of Mayra’s car on Monday morning and started walking toward the front doors of the school, everyone stopped and looked at us.
“Oh shit,” Mayra muttered under her breath.
“What?” I asked.
“Half the football team is over there,” she said. “Look at them. They all have to know what happened.”