I quickly ducked under the carport behind the gym, opened the back door, checked to make sure the storage room was empty and then marched straight to the oversized locker where I stored my guitar.
“Hey, what are you doing in here?” a grumbly voice barked.
“Nothing,” I replied automatically, swallowing hard and turning to more fully face the man who had grabbed my arm. “I just need to get into my locker.”
“Who gave you permission to be in here?” Bald, tall and imposingly built, I recognized him as the owner of the gym.
“Your wife.” My hands shook as I held up my key. His eyes narrowed. “She…” I swallowed again. “She said it would be ok for me to keep my guitar here. I…I don’t have any place else safe to store it. I’m sorry.”
His expression remaining hard, he studied me for a long uncomfortable beat. My eyes wide I didn’t drop my gaze though my heart beat rapidly.
“I saw you earlier. At the Deck Bar putting the trash back inside the can after you took all recyclables out. Took you a good long while.”
I nodded once in acknowledgement.
“Hardworking, conscious kid.”
A compliment. Not a reprimand. I let out the breath I had been holding in.
“I could use some help keeping the back room swept and clean. You think you might be able to do that for me?”
I nodded vigorously.
“Alright then. Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll need you to be here early before we open. I’ll pay you ten bucks. It’s not much but if you show up on time and do a good job I’ll let you come in and wipe all the equipment down in the evenings, too, after we close. Sound good?”
“It sounds great.” Tears pricked my eyes. It was perfect. Before everyone got here and after everyone was already gone meant no one would be there to potentially recognize me.
“Ok.” He gave me a nod, turned away and used his key card to enter the main part of the building Stunned by the unexpected kindness, I lost a few moments staring at the spot he had just vacated.
Ten dollars would help a lot, but it wouldn’t get Hollie and I where we needed to go by itself. Out of OB. Across the border. Beyond our stepfather’s reach.
I got my feet moving, inserted my key, took out my guitar and returned to the alley. Long sinister shadows had crept in beneath the street lamps. There wasn’t much performing time left. There was only the one place with enough traffic at this time of the night that would be worth my while. Stump’s Family Marketplace on Voltaire. But it was on the outer edge of the street gang’s territory. Dangerous, sure. Hollie had gotten that right. But I had no choice. It was a risk, but one I had to take.
~ ~ ~
“Hola, Lakers Girl.”
I froze. The crowd had dispersed. I had been just about to close up my guitar case. On the sidewalk in front of me, it brimmed with cash. Cash it had taken me well into the night to earn. Cash Hollie and I desperately needed but that apparently the three Hispanic guys in grey and black gang colors thought they needed more. The confrontation I had been hoping to avoid. Times three. Their wallet chains jingled as they strut-glided straight toward me.
My heart rapped hard against my chest with each step that brought them closer. The one I knew only as El Jefe led the way. He wore a rolled black bandana to hold back his long black hair. He wasn’t tall, but he had a sturdy frame that was packed with ropy muscle. He lifted a finger in some kind of silent command and the two guys flanking him separated. The taller leaner one moved to my right, the heavier one with the tear tattoos on his cheeks moving to my left. El Jefe stopped directly in front of me, his dark brown gaze slowly slithering over my form. The tips of his black shoes nearly touched my purple high-tops. I wanted to retreat, but there was a chain link fence directly behind me. I was hemmed in. Trapped.
“Hey.” I gulped. “Qué onda?” What’s up? I had lived in LA long enough to know basic rudimentary Spanish. And though I might not know a lot about bullies, I had grown up with my stepfather. So I had learned an important lesson. Never let someone stronger than you know that you’re afraid.
“Looks like you had another good day in my territory, güera.” El Jefe’s menacing gaze dipped to my guitar case full of money then rose, his expression even angrier than it had been a moment before. He and I had been playing cat and mouse like Ashland and I had been. Only with the gang banger it was no trip down memory lane, and it wasn’t a game. He was deadly serious.
“Grab her, Nieto,” El Jefe commanded lifting his chin. He grinned slowly. “It’s time for her to pay.”
“Claro.” Rough fingers immediately latched around my upper arm. Nieto squeezed, and I hissed. Even with my hoodie providing a layer of protection his grip was tight enough to sting.
“You need to learn a lesson about working my corner without asking for my permission and paying me my fifty percent.” The El Jefe’s harsh features sharpened and his dark brown eyes practically glowed with steely anticipation. He enjoyed hurting people. I had seen that same type of creepy fascination in my stepfather’s eyes when he had threatened me.
“I’m sorry.” I licked my dry lips “Take what I earned tonight. You can have all of it.”
“I will have all of it. And you need to understand. It’s not what you earned. It’s what we earned. You sit on my corner. You play your guitar and sing your sad white girl songs in my hood. You pay.” He even sounded like my stepfather. “You disrespected me, güera. And this isn’t your first offense. You getting me?”
“I’m sorry.” I nodded. “Truly sorry.”
“Oh you will be.” He leaned close. I smelled alcohol on his breath and the pungent stench of cheap marijuana on his clothes.
“What’s underneath this thing? I wonder.” He reached out without warning and ripped off my Lakers cap. Spirally curls tumbled free to my shoulders.
“Roja.” Both his enforcers took a step back, making the signs of the cross on their chests.
“Madre de Dios!” Nieto exclaimed. Remember the fortune teller. She said…”
“Callete Mex,” El Jefe snapped, but his thick lips were pinched flat now, and his bronze skin had turned ashen.
“Maybe we should let Carlos handle her alone,” Nieto hooked his thumb sideways.
“Sí.” Carlos grinned darkly and the tatted tears beneath his eyes glistened in the street lamp lights as if they were real ones.
“No,” El Jefe decided after studying me a long moment. “Carlos doesn’t know when to stop. He just wants to earn more tears. But I don’t want to kill her. I just want to hurt her. Rough her up muy malo, but not so bad she can’t walk. That way she can still make me mucho dinero, comprende?” Fear trickled down my spine as he circled a finger and Carlos and Nieto came closer.
“Pobrecita. Poor baby. All alone sleeping on the street digging through the trash like a dog for her food.” He dropped my cap on the ground and stomped on it. “Shame.” His gaze lifted. “Such a shame. All that pretty flame. Sad that it has to die.” His arm flashed out again. This time a switchblade appeared in his grip. The metal caught the light, the brightness piercing my eyes. “Hold her still, mis hermanos.” She’s not going to like what I do.” Rough hands curled around both my arms. “But when I’m done, you two can have your fun.” He grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanked it and sawed it off slicing the top of my ear in the process. My stomach clenched. I couldn’t see how deep the cut was. It felt like a wasp sting but then a significant amount of warmth trickled down the side of my neck. Stomach turning, I leaned forward, grabbing the only thing I could, El Jefe. I retched, heave after dry heave my fingers curling around his forearms and my eyes bulging out from the force of it. If there had been anything inside of me it would have come up.
“Oh, she likes me, Nieto.” He put his hand on the center of my chest and shoved me backward. I swayed, but remained in place, since I was strung up tight, my arms outstretched as far wide as they would go between Carlos and Nieto. “Stand up straight,” he barked. “I don’t like little whit
e girls.” He grabbed another lock of my hair, sliced it off and grinned. “But you’re in luck, ‘cause Carlos does.”
Chapter Five
Ashland
I pumped my cock harder, my gaze on Renee and hers on me.
“Yes!” the naked blonde panted from her bent over position between my spread knees. Her face was so close to mine I could feel her hot breath on my skin. “Harder,” she begged, her passion glazed eyes dipping to my lap where pre-cum slickened my shaft. “Fuck me harder.”
“Babe.” My lip curled. I slowed my strokes. “You forget who’s in charge of this scene?”
“Ash, please don’t tease. I’m so close.”
“Grip her hips harder,” I lifted my chin making eye contact with the guy who was fucking her from behind. “She likes it a little rough.”
The guy groaned. His eyes were nearly black. He was beyond talking, but he complied with my directions. He slammed his cock inside her.
“Oh!” Renee approved whimpering then crying out as his thrusting deepened. Her breasts bounced in front of my face, but she didn’t lose her hold on the leather ottoman that separated her from me. I stroked my cock faster. The sounds of their heaving breathing and flesh slapping together was the only other sound besides my measured respirations inside the room.
“Faster. She’s nearly there.” The guy grunted and picked up the pace. He started drilling her. Renee squeezed her eyes shut. She was there and so was the dude. His body stiffened. He planted himself deep. His fingers dug into the skin at her hips. She moaned low and long. Her thighs quivered. Shuddering, I watched her come. Then I closed my eyes a couple of seconds, used my imagination and felt the wet heat of myself as I erupted all over my hands.
A moment later, I opened my eyes and snapped a couple of tissues from the box on the table beside me. After doing what I needed to do, I drew my jeans up, buttoned a couple of buttons and stood. “I’m getting cleaned up in the master bath. You two are welcome to use the guest room for whatever.” No one went inside my room but me. Not even Renee. Without another word, I stalked from the room. I made it to the mouth of the hallway behind the kitchen before it hit me, the flicker of disappointment in Renee’s expression and the shit-ton of it inside of myself.
Suck it up, Ash. This is your life. And this was our arrangement. A consensual arrangement. She knew the score. The guy she had called up on Tinder and brought in had certainly been apprised. Voyeuristic scenes where I called all the shots and watched someone else get fucked used to be a preference. Now they were all I had. All I allowed myself anyway.
Inside my room, I tried to strip off the feeling of dissatisfaction as I peeled off my jeans. I folded the pants neatly and dropped them in the hamper. The hardwood floors felt cold beneath my feet as I continued toward the bath. No reason to linger in the bedroom. It was an uninspired space. King mattress on a frame, boxes for nightstands, a dresser with a mirror. I hadn’t gotten much beyond the living room with furnishings that had a cohesive vision. No time. Not much interest really. The only personalization within the bedroom space that really mattered to me was the floor to ceiling windows that faced the ocean that I loved and had missed so much during all those years on the road.
I stopped in front of them, naked though it didn’t matter since the windows were unidirectional. I could see out, but no one could see in. Much how I had structured my life. I stared out into the cloudy night for a moment. I couldn’t see the stars just the waves crashing into the concrete pier. The water churned, almost as if it were angry. It would be cold. The spray that lifted into the arcs of light from the pier would sting exposed skin. My thoughts drifted. Her again. Even my thoughts pursued her. Was she cold? Had she tended to the abrasions on her hand? It had clawed at my insides all day that she had been injured trying to get away from me. And the way she had looked at me, her eyes stormy like the ocean was tonight. Stormy like my thoughts. Did she have somewhere safe to go on a cold, unsettling night?
As much as I loved the ocean, I found no answers to my questions in the waves. Shaking my head, I sighed and almost wished I had taken Ramon up on his offer. It would have given me a distraction from my own tumultuous thoughts.
I turned away from the windows and entered the bathroom. Going straight to the shower, I popped open the door and flicked the dial all the way over to hot. I avoided my reflection in the long mirror over the double sinks. No way in hell did I want to acknowledge, let alone confront the me who stared back. “You got off,” I mumbled at him. “Get the fuck over yourself.”
I got in the shower. I scrubbed. I lathered. I washed my hair, rinsed and got out again. Snagging a big white towel from the heated rack, I dried off, tucked it around my waist and reentered the bedroom.
“Shit, Renee.” I stopped short. “What the hell?”
“He’s gone. The guy I picked up for us on Tinder.”
“That’s well and good, but…”
“Don’t you even want to touch me anymore, Ash?” Her expression crestfallen, her voice hitched on my name. My fingers twitched. Renee and I had been through a lot. Over the years, I’d allowed her in more than most, but the boundaries were set, established. She could come to the line, but not go across it. No one could. That was a place reserved for only one. Me. I kept my arms by my sides.
“You know that’s not the way we are,” I reminded her.
“One time…”
“One time that didn’t work out and that was before my diagnosis.” I could feel my expression hardening as I recited the facts the doctors had given me. “I’m HIV positive. I can continue to be sexually active with minimal risk to my partners as long as I use protection. I can live out a life as normal as anyone else provided I take my antiviral meds religiously.”
“This isn’t normal, Ash. And you’re barely living. You’ve taken it to the extreme, these parameters you’ve set for yourself. The no touching thing during sex we do now, I don’t understand it. And I don’t understand why you gave up the band when you love music so much.”
“I only gave up touring,” I corrected. “It’s too exhausting and makes my body too susceptible to secondary infections. I still have my music. I just produce and compose it now.” My eyes narrowed. “What is this really about, Renee?”
“This isn’t working for me anymore.”
“It was working for you just fine fifteen minutes ago.”
She flinched, and I felt like an ass.
“I’m sorry.”
“I am, too, Ash. I need more from you. That connection we used to have grows fainter each time I come over. It’s almost like scening with a total stranger now.” I didn’t argue with her. She was right. I felt exactly the same way. “I can go clubbing if I want something like that. Just do a hookup with someone random like that guy tonight.”
“That’s not smart, Renee.” My fingers curled into fists. I wanted to grab her by the upper arms and shake some sense into her. But I wouldn’t touch her or anyone else when I was pissed. I was in control of myself. A man wasn’t a man if he wasn’t the master of himself. Another valuable truism from my father. The clincher on that lesson had been seeing the marks Linc’s father left on his body and deeper ones on his soul. My cousin and I both had damage we carried on the inside from our childhood. His from his drunken old man. Me from my mother’s struggles with mental illness. “Promise me you won’t put yourself at risk like that.”
Her shoulders went back.” You don’t control my decisions outside the things we do in our scenes, Ash.”
“I know that.”
“And you’re fine with that?” She cocked her head to the side. “You’ve got your life arranged just like you want it.” She sighed. “I guess that the fact that I’m in love with you doesn’t fit your neurotic narrative.”
I stiffened.
“Case in point.” She rolled her eyes. “My emotions are my own. Deal with it. But unlike you I want to nurture my feelings not neglect them. I won’t keep going on like this. We either move beyond the lin
es you’ve drawn or we fall back to just being friends without benefits.”
I watched her stomp out of my room, then glanced at the rustic hardwood beams and scalloped ceiling as if there were answers up there about how to deal with women. Renee. The homeless girl. It seemed all I had lately were women running away from me.
Fuck it.
I grabbed a set of sticks from the dresser and headed for the rooftop where I had my kit. I didn’t want to rot in my own thoughts anymore. I didn’t want to worry about what I was going to do about Renee’s ultimatum. And I sure as hell didn’t want to consider what it meant that I couldn’t stop obsessing about the Lakers Girl, and that it had been her not Renee or anyone else I had been imagining tonight when I had closed my eyes and jacked off into my hand.
Chapter Six
Fanny
I stopped at the pier. The truth was I collapsed. At least the pavement wasn’t as cruel as they had been.
I continued on my hands and knees. I wasn’t too proud. Not anymore. Not after what they had done to me.
Eyes forward. Keep going. You’ve picked yourself up before. You can do it again, Fanny.
Mother? The voice inside my head that kept prodding me sounded a lot like her. I squinted through the slit of what remained of my vision. With both my eyes nearly swollen shut, I was lucky I could see at all.
Don’t freak out. Don’t panic.… It is held that valor is the chiefest virtue. And most dignifies the haver.
Alright. Valor it was, and dignity, even in the current state that I found myself. Thank you, Mom for insisting I memorize Shakespeare.
1. Crawl.
2. Breathe—even though each breath felt like I had to suck in the air through a straw—a straw that was on fire in the center of my chest where Nieto and his counterpart had kicked me.
3. Don’t think about it.
4. Don’t cry. I tasted salt between my lips but pretended it wasn’t there.
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