Chapter 1
I watched him leave but I didn't cry. He'd been working up to it for three
months. Since spring break. He'd gone to the Florida Keys and I'd stay home
and I was not really sure what had happened there, but he'd been distant
since.
I don't know why he got pissed when he left. Like he needed it to be bad between us in order to really believe it was over. Like he wanted an ugly breakup so he couldn't change his mind later.
So he couldn't back out on Ashley Hampton. I wondered how many people knew she was pregnant. I wondered if anyone knew her baby was Jackson's and not Mitch Stadler's. Well, I knew. And I was so calm about it. As I stood there, knowing he'd ruined his life. He was eighteen a month ago. The baby was due in six. And he still…even as he drove away…had never told me he'd slept with Ashley. She had rung me the prior week and told me she was pregnant, by Jackson, that he wasn't going to tell me but that she couldn't live with it anymore.
Even then I'd been calm.
"Okay," I'd said. "Thanks for calling."
It didn't mean much. The way I looked at it was Mexico vs. France. I'd broken up with Jackson Gauthier. I would be spending the summer at the villa with my family rather than in Paris with his. My brothers were 25 and 29 that summer, one finishing law school, one in the middle of med school. So it would be my mother, who was a stranger to me, but…a nice stranger, and my father, who really didn't care for me at all. The only sentiment he wasted on me was a sort of impatient exasperation. I didn't really know him either. Our maid and nanny, Milagros, or Millie, had retired last month. I would be in Mexico for three months, virtually alone.
I think my mother must have had a steamy affair in Mexico when she was young, because before she left she dragged me to our family practitioner and got me on Depo-Provera. I knew refusal to go would look like guilt; argument with either of them was futile.
"I don't doubt your values, dear," she had said. "But just
in case." So I got a pap and a shot and we went to Mexico.
"For your birthday, we should have a fiesta," my mother said quietly.
"Don't be ridiculous, Carolyn," my dad cut in. "She'd never want a birthday party with her mother there."
"I wouldn't mind," I said, but was, as usual, ignored.
"You're always forcing yourself on her," he said.
"Well, at least I acknowledge that she's alive."
I sighed and stared out across the clouds as they bickered. The gentle hum of the jet engines was making me drowsy but I was too nauseated to sleep. I closed my eyes, tried valiantly not to, but I couldn't help it…I thought of Jackson.
He was beautiful. And I hadn't slept with him. Not because I was afraid, or wanted to wait, or…He was Christian. Deeply so. 'Sex before marriage is evil' and the whole nine…And I know it wasn't fake. Wasn't a front. He'd opened up to me many times in the warm afternoon light of his bedroom, or the dark of the basement on the leather couch, in the nearly-three years we'd been together, about his faith, about the way he felt in church and the way it seemed the Bible had been written just for him.
Yet he wasn't on fire with the Lord, a tacky evangelist, a Jesus Freak. His faith was beautiful. He'd been deeply religious all his life, took it very seriously and had an unwavering belief unusual in one so young.
So we didn't have sex. We fooled around sometimes, kissing, touching…but it made him feel guilty. Toward the end, before spring break, I went down on him.
But that's it. The Keys with Ashley Hampton, a few beers, and now a baby. For what was probably 30 seconds he couldn't remember or wanted to forget, he had given up everything he believed in, his family's trust, and me…Although I'm not sure how sorry he was about giving me up. I think it was getting old. I felt that way. He did, too, obviously.
He was more beautiful than I was. I knew that and I never pretended not to. He was too good looking. But then he'd have been too good looking for almost anyone. He was captain of the baseball team, starting quarterback on the football team, point guard for our state-champ basketball team. All the girls wanted him and he wanted nothing to do with them. I was 'one of the guys'-always have been. And we grew together. I remember the first time he kissed me. I was 10 feet off the ground. We both were. Neither of us knew what was happening. We were fifteen.
He had curly chestnut/auburn hair cut short and highlighted in the front, giant shoulders, brown eyes, and beautiful, straight teeth, a blinding smile. And he was so, so smart. And shy around all but his closest friends. Everyone at Gaskill Prep wanted to get close to him-girls wanted to be with him, boys wanted to be like him. He was so quiet everyone thought he was conceited, too good to talk to them…But he wasn't. Just shy.
Jackson Pierre Gauthier. I remember I used to just stare at him forever, loving every part of him. I'd wanted to sleep with him but hadn't pressed the issue out of respect for him and now I wished I had. Because I was almost eighteen. Almost a woman. And I was a virgin. And Ashley Hampton was so…It just wasn't right. Our first time was supposed to have been together. To have been phenomenally important. It was supposed to have meant something. And I couldn't imagine ever being close enough to any other person to…Well, I just couldn't imagine it.
Mexico was hot. And it was hot. It was not dry heat, either…a ninety-nine degree blanket of sheer humidity smothered me the moment I stepped off the plane, and I had to throw up immediately.
My parents had arranged for a car from the Villa to fetch us and our things, and the driver was not Mexican. As I looked around, I saw that almost no one was Mexican. Tourists, all of them. Rich Americans. Pigs, like my family.
This driver…he climbed out. He was no Mexican, and he was no chauffeur, either. His eyes were beautiful, strange…green…or blue….or both. His hair was probably curly, cut too short to tell, brown with sandy highlights from the unrelenting sun. I stared unabashedly as he bent to load our bags into the shiny silver Lexus. His boxers were white, peaking out with some golden skin between the hem of the shirt and the waist of his pants. He wore blue jeans, baggy-ish, and a white cotton shirt that buttoned up the front, saying "Hermosa Beach Villa" across the back in an arc. I could scarcely breathe looking at him, the way he moved, the way the muscles in his arms played against one another as he grunted and heaved all our shit into the trunk. As he turned to face us, to get the doors for us, I read an embroidered patch on his breast pocket: 'Leon.'
Chapter 2
My father whispered something to my mother and I hated him for it, something about Leon not wearing a suit, and although I knew he heard it, the smile never wavered. He helped my father with his laptop and his briefcase, made sure his suit jacket didn't get shut in the door. When he opened mine, he touched my elbow and guided me in. A spear of a thrill shot through me. Doesn't take much, I thought, but he smelled wonderful. Like Mexican food and the ocean and sweat and expensive cologne. I inhaled deeply and hoped it wasn't audible, watched him as he climbed in and donned black shades and started the car.
I could smell him on the breeze from the open window. I think my parents were afraid of him, because, for once, they were quiet. He was looking at me.
Damn. He was looking at me! Over the top of his shades, he was looking at me.
But why? That was the question.
I did a quick rundown of what I must have looked like. Dark curly hair all over like a bushwoman from having the wind in it. Pale, pale face from a New York winter and from puking a second ago…Black tee shirt that said 'Back OFF!'…dark denim jeans and black men's Superstars. No makeup. No jewelry.
He was too old for me and I knew it, but there…there he was, looking at me again. His eyes were smiling, his mouth wasn't. My dad would have seen. It was becoming nearly impossible not to let a big, shiteating grin break out across my face, so I turned it abruptly to the window. A man was looking at me. A man who wasn't Jackson. A man who wasn't Christian. A man who had tattoos all up his beautiful, roped-with-muscle, working-class arms.
I had not been to the villa since I was eleven years old, and since then I'd been parceled off to camps, to culturally enriching foreign learning facilities, to college prep courses, and anything else my parents could think of to bore the shit out of me while they did…whatever they did…in Mexico.
The house was as big as I'd remembered. Pale lemon-colored stucco with Spanish tiling roof, white windowsills without shutters. White picket fence all around it, and a bright flower garden in front. Three floors. Seven bedrooms. Four baths. It was a beast. I walked in and took off my shoes. The hardwood flooring was cool on the soles of my bare feet, and I meandered slowly up the winding staircase to the top floor, to my room. It was the entire third floor, my room and an adjacent bathroom with a white marble jacuzzi. "Spare no expense…" My father's motto. I sat down on the bed. It smelled dusty and old and like the ocean too and I loved it.
I didn't remember falling asleep, but when I woke up I felt hungover. I felt drunk. Dizzy. And it was dark.
The house was silent, so I knew my parents weren't anywhere around. I sat up and saw a note on my dresser.
"Come to the Cabana (down the street on the end of the block). They have a live band, margaritas, some nice boys. Casual dinner attire… Love Mom."
I sighed. My mother was scaring me. She'd never mentioned the word 'sex' to or even in front of me in my entire life, and now she had me on the shot? Meet her at the Cabana? Nice boys?
Yet I could hear the music…Caribbean, kind of. Steel drums. I decided to take a bath and then go. I peeled all of my clothes off and looked in the full-length at my reflection. I was nothing special, really, but my personality always had made do with what God hadn't given me. I had long, unruly hair, dark brown curls with natural red highlights, to my waist. It was so thick and heavy, so hot and sweaty, that I was already considering chopping it an hour into the vacation. My breasts were big. C-cups that made my waist look small. I had some muscle in my stomach left over from dancing, and kind of a ghetto-booty. I was curvy. Not short and not tall, not close to either thin or fat.
Since I'd grown 'the body' the summer before, I'd received a lot of attention from other men. That Jackson didn't appreciate. Catcalls at the mall, whistles on the street. I didn't really get it…never had considered myself very attractive. Of course, the people I surrounded myself with were 'the beautiful people.' The tall, thin blonds and the boys with Abercrombie bodies. Like Jackson. Like Mitch. Like Ashley. I was built more for…well, for a gangsta bitch, or something. I sighed and stuck my tongue out at myself and climbed into the tub.
It was still hot, but there was a good breeze, clean-smelling ocean air, as the beach was 200 feet from the road. I walked and liked it, the way it felt on my skin. I got to the Cabana in the little black dress, sat at a table by myself. I didn't see my parents and I was relieved. I still felt dog tired. A waiter came up to me and I asked for water, then shooed him away.
The people there were the usual suspects; rich, well-dressed. The 'nice boys' were in expensive suits with big ears and glasses, the keys to Daddy's car bulging in pocket, and I could just see my mother, face warm with delight, discovering me here with one of them, chatting at a table. Other girls like myself, bored out of their skull, both privileged and hindered by their parents' money.
I sat back in the chair, kicked off my shoes, folded my hands on my stomach. I could barely keep my eyes open. How could I possibly still be tired?
And then, suddenly, I was very awake. I smelled something, something familiar, that smell of sand and water and cologne and man…Before I realized it was him, I felt fingertips on the back of my neck, and a warm whisper in my ear.
"Hey, you."