“It’s gonna be blondie,” Becky shouted, snapping her hair back.
“Excuse me?” Julie challenged.
“Ladies, are you ready?”
He hit the button on Carlos’s mic to cancel the mute. “Carlos, you want to ask the questions?”
Carlos’s eyes widened and his mouth went slack.
“Never mind,” Rocco decided. “In politics, what is the name of the intern who disgraced President Clinton?”
“Oh wait, it was that fat girl,” Becky shouted.
“Nuh-uh! The president wouldn’t f-bleep a fat girl,” Julie snapped.
“Okay, ladies you need to answer the question,” Sal interjected.
Rocco wondered how dumb they were when he got answers that included Marilyn Monroe, Britney Spears, and Jennifer Aniston. “Okay now, onto arts and culture. What is the title of the final Star Wars movie? Go!”
“I don’t watch space movies,” Julie whined. “They confuse me.”
The other two sat there thinking.
“Time’s up! Carlos, can you give us the answer?”
Carlos jerked up from staring at three pairs of breasts. Rocco held up a card for him to read. “Oh, uhh…Return of the Jedi,” Carlos repeated.
“Very good. Now world affairs. What are the two countries that border the contiguous U.S.?”
“Mexico and—” Becky’s eyes drifted up to the ceiling, her mouth gaping as she tried to think of the answer.
“Close your mouth please,” Sal said. “You’re making me think dirty thoughts.”
“Wha?”
“Answer the question, honey,” Rocco said.
“Okay. Mexico and Hawaii.”
“England and Cuba?” Stacy ventured.
“What is contiguous?” Julie asked.
Rocco looked over at Sal, who threw his hands up in the air. No one scored any points, but the call board lit up like the Vegas Strip.
“We’ll skip that one. Final question, ladies.”
They perked up like little girls sitting straight for the teacher.
“What star does the earth revolve around?”
“The sun?” Becky offered.
“The moon, you idiot!” Julie screeched.
Stacy drummed her nails on the table, sticking her tongue out of the left corner of her mouth. She brightened and said, “I’ll go with Julie’s answer. The moon.”
“Bitch, are you really that dumb?” Carlos asked. “My frickin’ ex is smarter than you.”
Stacy turned. “Excuse me, fat boy?”
“She might’ve been smart but she ain’t as good as me,” Becky added.
A slow grin spread across Rocco’s face as the intern and the guys in the booth were sweating it out hitting the mute buttons as volleys of “f-you” and “stupid bitch” went between Carlos and the girls over the airwaves.
Isa stopped short when she overheard Stan say to one of the assistant football coaches, “Did you see the women on that website? I went to school with Carlos and man, he never scored chicks that hot.”
The neanderthal chuckled, unable to pick up on the obvious compensatory remarks Stan made to maintain his cover. Sucking in that school machismo and cheap cologne, she walked into the teacher’s lounge.
Just like outside the door, the jocks crowded one side of the room and those with normal testosterone levels occupied the other. Bildo looked up from his conversation with Sandy Noel, a new chemistry teacher, and smiled at Isa.
The distance to the vending machines seemed to stretch grotesquely as Isa listened to more laughter from the guys in shiny sports pants. Her face felt like it turned to wood and even though she wanted to, there was no way she could turn around and leave without inspiring talk.
Her back felt the weight of disrespectful stares as she fed the machine her dollar. Two lifetimes probably crawled by as the machine’s belly growled and grumbled until her fully leaded soda tumbled out. She started to bend down but then thought they might be checking out her ass.
“Hey, Isa,” Stan called when she turned back to the door, her eyes avoiding them. The guys laughed in the way that little boys did when they were about to bully cornered prey.
“Hey, Stan,” she replied coolly, even when her skin burned.
He exchanged a nasty smirk with one of his cronies. “Just heard you got a new look.”
“Really? Well, thanks. Juanito did it.”
“I thought so. That little fag.”
She waited for the laughs to die down before she said, “I didn’t know Juanito was dating anyone. Hmm. Takes one to know one, doesn’t it, Stan?”
His cronies sucked in their laughter as blood rushed into Stan’s pretty-boy face. She left him steaming up a froth, resisting the urge to look over her shoulder to see if they’d chase her into the girl’s bathroom.
When she arrived at her classroom, her cell phone was buzzing in her purse.
“I’ve got an idea,” Alex said without preamble. “How about I bring dinner over and we hang out?”
Grinning mischievously she said, “I think you’ve got the wrong number.”
He fell for it. “Uh, isn’t this three-one-zero…”
“Yes, it’s me!”
“Cute. So what do you think of my idea?”
The more she thought about it, the more reasons cropped up as to why she should make up an excuse not to. So she stopped thinking.
“If you don’t mind playing video games with Andrew, I don’t have a problem. That’s our Friday night thing.”
“I’m there.”
True to his word, Alex showed up on Isa’s doorstep with a box of chocolate and of all things, fried chicken.
“Wow, just what I need,” Isa said when he handed her one of the bags.
“I didn’t know what kind you liked so I got one of everything.”
Her fingers slid past his warm ones and their eyes locked for just a second before he leaned in to kiss her cheek. If it wasn’t for Andrew, Isa would have felt like she’d dropped into a black hole.
“You’re here early!” Andrew cried.
Alex stepped inside, his heavy black coat brushing against the sides of the doorway.
“How much homework do you have left?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Just one more page.”
Alex wiggled his eyebrows at her and she heard herself tell Andrew, “Put your stuff away and do the rest tomorrow.”
She knew her cheeks were giving her away as she helped Andrew gather his things up from the table. She’d been fine at yesterday’s practice, even though she wasn’t sure how to act around him. But he brought so much noise and fun, the kind that hadn’t been felt in her apartment before.
Andrew was so wound up and excited that he hadn’t heard her the second time she asked him to wash his hands. When she opened her mouth to lay down the law, Alex simply laid a hand on her son’s shoulder.
“Dude, your mom wants you to wash your hands.” Alex nudged him. “I swear I won’t touch the extra crispy until you come back.”
“Better not,” Andrew warned as he tripped over his own feet.
For a moment, Alex wasn’t so sure he’d get to stay after dinner with the way Isa anxiously circled around him. But she gradually relaxed, watching him and Andrew slice and dice each other on the Soul Caliber video game.
As his guy lay flat on his back, broken and bleeding, Andrew handed her the controller. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” he promised Alex.
Isa flicked her eyes up at him and then focused on choosing her character. She picked a scantily clad warrior with pink hair and an anatomically impossible body.
“Oh, now wait,” Alex said, flipping his side of the screen to select an even bigger and better character. “I’m not getting my ass kicked by someone with pink hair.”
“Hair color has nothing to do with it,” she said primly.
“We’ll see about that,” Alex said, picking a hulking brute with red eyes that glowed through a black samurai helmet.
Sure enough, Isa had moves that he hadn’t thought possible. Her thumbs moved so fast they were a blur over her controller, sending the scantily clad warrior flying through the air and capturing his guy’s neck between her legs.
Roundly defeated at every turn, Alex threw his controller down when she threw him off the mat and into a deep chasm. Isa and Andrew blinked simultaneously at his sudden roar of defeat.
“Do you want another round?” she asked sweetly, her eyes narrowing in warning.
“Whoa,” Andrew breathed. “I didn’t know that character had an energy field.”
Stretching his legs and propping up one elbow on the seat of the sofa, Alex struggled to contain his temper.
“So how long will I have to hear about this?” he asked, forcing a bit of teasing in his voice.
“Oh I don’t know,” she said, looking at him as if she could read his mind like a book left open. “Maybe a week.”
“Maybe forever,” Andrew added.
“Honey, why don’t you get ready for bed. It’s late.”
Andrew turned to Alex for support and when Alex shook his head, he gave up and disappeared down the hallway.
“I never would’ve pegged you as a video geek,” Alex said, keeping up the teasing to break the intense watchfulness in her eyes.
Her eyes flashed. “I am not!”
“That wasn’t beginners’ luck. Not that move where you kicked me in the air and then stabbed me with your sword,” he remembered. “That was practiced.”
When Isa laughed, she did so with everything. And unlike some people, she laughed only when she meant it. She smiled at him and then shook her head, putting a damper on his totally uncalled for anger.
And then she surprised him with, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” he answered, feeling like the criminal who opened his front door to the cops. “Why not?”
Isa busied herself with switching off the game. “I don’t know. You just seem different. You really were mad, weren’t you?”
He wanted to tell her, just so she and Andrew wouldn’t think it had anything to do with them. He wanted to tell her that he’d left the house at four-thirty this morning, pretending to his dad and June that he was leaving for work. Instead he drove to Norwalk for breakfast. Then to a Starbucks in Long Beach where he emailed his sixteenth resume and received one message.
Shame flared up when he remembered his disappointment that the email had been from Ted, rather than a reply about one of the jobs he’d applied for. Ted had thanked him again for letting June stay with him and Dad. Alex tasted the bitter acid of his dinner working its way up from his stomach when he remembered the line: It makes me feel better knowing you’re taking good care of them.
“Why’d you think that?” he asked Isa casually.
“Nothing.”
She didn’t believe him. No one would believe him for much longer. So he struck back. “What would you do if I kissed you?”
She dropped the controller on top of the box. “What?”
Suddenly he felt restless, wanting to go back and play with that fire they’d started in the backseat of his SUV. When she’d been with him, all the worries had washed away.
“You heard me,” he challenged. “A kiss. Would you let me?”
He crawled over and picked up the controller to roll the cord around it. “I liked coming over tonight.” He looked her in the eye so she could see that he didn’t just limit the comment to dinner and video games.
Isa didn’t scurry away, nor did she break his gaze, which he took as a good sign. Even if his blood burned feral, he wasn’t the kind of asshole who forced a woman.
Putting one fist on the ground and then the other, he eased closer, giving her time to back off. But she didn’t, and at last, he brushed his lips against hers. He was just barely getting started when Isa grasped onto his hair with one hand, holding on until his scalp burned.
She moaned deep and wet against his mouth and he snaked his tongue in, daring her to keep going.
She jerked away and he nearly fell on top of her.
“Wait,” she whispered, her breath warm against his ear. “I thought I heard—” She called out Andrew’s name. Someone outside forced a door shut and then the lock turned over. Andrew had the water going in the bathroom.
Alex brought her attention back by tracing the side of her breast with his knuckles.
“We need to stop,” she said, her voice a dash of cold water against his skin.
“Why?” he breathed against her cheek, staying right where he was. She pulled back, looking around the floor as if she couldn’t remember what she’d been doing. Out of breath, he sat back on his legs as Isa shoved the game system in the cabinet, giving him a scenic view of her rear and a tempting sliver of skin over the waistband of her jeans.
“I have something to say but I don’t know how to say it,” Isa said, standing up and dusting off her hands as if preparing a speech. “Just so you know, Andrew worships you and I know with uh, everything, it’s weird—”
“I like Andrew and I like you. We did something crazy but we’re friends now and maybe with time we can be more than that.”
“Oh.”
Was that awkwardness because she didn’t feel the same way or that she was too embarrassed to admit it?
“Thanks for having me over.” He stood up and the blood rush made him dizzy. “And before I tried to, you know…I really had a good time just hanging out. And I’m just a sore loser.” He lied about the last part.
“I didn’t finish what I had to say.”
He waited for her.
“I get the feeling that you’re here with us because you feel responsible for the other night. And you don’t have to because I don’t want you to feel like you have to…ugh, I don’t know how to say this.”
“Well, I do feel responsible and I’m trying to do the right thing here, bu—”
“You don’t understand,” she rolled right over him, hugging her arms tightly around her middle. “If there’s nothing for you to be responsible for, then you’ll just drift out of our lives and Andrew will be the one who gets hurt.”
He should’ve felt some relief that she’d seen the truth. But it stung. “Andrew and I are buddies. How am I going to hurt him?”
“This,” she said, jerking her head down to the empty ice cream bowls that sat on the coffee table. “With you coming over, Andrew is probably thinking that this will be permanent.” She squeezed her eyes tight. “He wants a father.”
Alex took in a deep breath. He’d been so transparent. She saw right through him playing the good guy, trying to win their trust. And while that had been his first intention, he found himself enjoying the night with Isa and Andrew. They made him forget and with them, he fell right in place.
“I’m not saying this right and it’s late so I—just forget we ever had this conversation,” she mumbled as she brushed by him and opened the front door.
When Alex didn’t move, Isa whispered his name. She wouldn’t look at him as he swept his jacket from the back of the couch.
“Sorry about—” He couldn’t say “the kiss” because he didn’t regret it. He just regretted that it sent him right back out her door and into the night. “Tell Andrew I said good night.”
16
Alex tossed his cell phone on the passenger seat, determined not to dial Isa’s number or let thoughts of her and Andrew distract him from landing this job. Sunday night, Victor, a hardwood floor guy Alex had worked with on a few high-end projects, called with the chance he’d been trying so hard to get.
“See, I’m working for this guy who wants someone to manage his crews for him,” Victor had said, his voice struggling through static over his cell. “I told him you were perfect.”
That was all Alex needed to jump in the car on Monday morning with his resume and pray his way through traffic clogged by a four-car fender-bender down to Newport Beach.
By the time he pulled up to the job site, he put Isa an
d Andrew in a separate compartment. Driving under the scattered shadows of the tree-lined street, he saw the answer to his prayers in the form of a beautiful Craftsman on a street of new houses that took up every square inch of their lots. This was his chance to get back in the game. No more worrying about Christine’s tuition and making the mortgage. He wasn’t any closer to going back to school, but at least no one would have to know how close they’d come to disaster.
As Alex jumped out of the car, he felt something he hadn’t felt in too long: confidence to talk his new boss, Daryl, into hiring him. In a market like Costa Mesa and Newport Beach, Alex imagined himself managing the crews and possibly getting his own jobs for the business. Hoo yeah, he was ready to let his resume and his experience talk for him.
Victor ran out the front door. The windows of the house were still taped and the yard was just hard dirt and piles of manufactured river rock for the walkways and chimneys. Crows squawked in a pine tree, coal black against a blue sky that promised everything and anything a guy could ask for.
“You got here in record time, man,” Victor said. “Come on in.”
Alex picked Daryl out immediately. He stood as big as the two-ton Chevy parked crosswise in the driveway.
“Yo Daryl,” Victor called in the foyer. The plastic sheeting crinkled over the hardwood floor. “This here’s Alex I was telling you about.”
They shook hands and Alex thought maybe he’d seen a strange look on Daryl’s face when he handed his resume over. His thick fingers made dirty prints on the fine paper while Alex pitched what a good asset he’d be to his business, how he could possibly expand the operation to build commercial spaces.
“This is like bringing a Desert Eagle to a paintball fight, man,” Daryl said of his resume. “Honestly, not that many jobs like these. And with what I’m making, I can’t afford someone like you.”
Alex couldn’t have helped it when he asked, “Then why did you have Victor call me out here?”
Victor jumped in, “Hey man, I thought—”
“Victor told me you could speak-uh the Spanish and you knew construction.” Daryl hitched his jeans and raised his voice over the whine of a power saw out in the back. “I need someone who can speak to the day laborers and the soccer mom but still know how to do this stuff. Capiche?”
In Between Men Page 10