A Fighting Chance

by Sand, A. J.

  Drew pushes away from me and with a quick sniff, the tears are done. “I’m gonna go down to the beach and see what they’re selling in those little shops. Do you want something to eat? There’s food down there, I think.” She’s at the door before I can even respond.

  “Yeah, whatever you get. Thanks.” But my stomach clamps on itself in disagreement. It’s not having any of that shit. I flop down onto the bed as the door shuts. The only thing I need right now is sleep, especially because my pain meds are wearing off.

  I don’t know how long I do sleep, but my eyes are suddenly open again; though, my brain only registers that I’m awake when Drew’s hand skates across my bare stomach. She doesn’t even give me a chance to ask anything before her face lowers to mine. I don’t interrupt. I just let our lips and tongues connect. I’m not going to stop Drew Hallisay from kissing me, even if I’m groggy and not sure which direction is up just yet. I’m not going to stop her from putting her hand down my PJs, either. I am hard as concrete in a few seconds from the tight grip she forms around my dick, and an ache of desire spirals through my core. My mouth drifts to her neck, and my palm slides up her warm thigh to the edge of her underwear. Her legs are between mine but she adjusts so that she can straddle my hips. She peels her top off, and I grip the back of her neck with my good hand to pull her lips against mine again. Her breaths become moans as I knead her breast. I cup her ass, sliding her hips forward, and Drew arches up to grip the headboard. While her nipple is in my mouth, she writhes on me until I feel the wet heat between her thighs on my stomach.

  Wild lust pounds into me and I grab the front of her underwear, pulling it away from her skin. “Take ‘em off…I need these to come off,” I say but I slide them down some until she wriggles out of them on her own. She assists me in getting my PJs and boxers down before she straddles me again. I can’t see much of her in the dark room; she’s just a silhouette of curves. My hand lands on her chest and I draw my fingers down her soft torso, her knees squeezing my sides as I stroke below her bellybutton. Drew shudders when I finger her clit until she’s slick. She leans down over me, hand clutching the edge of the mattress, and soon I feel the rumble of her orgasm travel from the pit of her stomach and end at a gasp against my ear.

  She jostles me as she reaches over the side of the bed. I hear the familiar crackle of a condom wrapper. The condom’s on me a few seconds later in a coordinated effort between us. She bends to my ear. “Please make me forget, Jess,” she pleads. It’s probably the best plan either of us has had in a while. Forgetting. “Make everything okay. Just make me feel something else. Tell me everything’s all right. Make it all right.”

  So I guide myself into her, and hope to paint the most beautiful lie I can. I keep her right where she is—pinned against me, hair draped over my face—and I grind my pelvis against her with soft thrusts. She rides me with a slow roll of her hips, and the pleasure numbs everything as it sucks me into delirium. We’re both sweating, skin gliding, our bodies hot enough to ignite. Her tongue brushes my ear and when she says my name, the tightly wound pressure in my gut is immediately on the verge of bursting. But it feels so fucking good that I just give in. I come hard with my head thrown back, rocking up into Drew as far as I can go, and pressing her against me until we’re both out of air.

  I guess I need this lie, too.

  ****

  The next morning, I wake up to a door slamming, and the walls barely block the sound of a woman cursing. Thin ass walls. I smile with my eyes still closed, and have no doubt that the neighbors probably heard us last night. My morning wood twitches with the memory of Drew’s body on top of me, and I reach to the other side of the bed. I know we both needed the distraction last night but…sex is sex. This morning, though, I just want to hold her and find my own comfort in the crook of her neck.

  My hand moves over cool sheets, and my eyelids fly open. The room is dark but the sun is pitching streams of light in through the blinds. “Drew?” The shower isn’t running, and that shakes most of the drowsiness out of me. She probably went to get breakfast. I swing my legs to the floor and notice that her bag is not where it was last night. It’s gone. In fact, the room looks like I checked in alone. She’s gone. Dread slams into me like a bullet and goes straight for my lungs, but my mind is too clouded with confusion to pay much attention to the burning at my sternum.

  “Drew?” I call out one more time as I snatch my crumpled jeans off a chair and yank a shirt from my bag. Shoes on, keys in hand, I jog out of the room and go straight to the front desk. The bellhop tells me that Drew had asked him questions about the nearest bus station as she waited for a cab. There’s one nearby with a nonstop to Monterrey, and she can change buses there for one to Brownsville, Texas.

  She’s going home.

  I sprint to my car and drive off with him shouting directions behind me. I’m surprised they stick because there’s not much room for any other thoughts, except for questioning why she left. What if she’s already on a bus? My blood is cooking me from the inside out. The traffic in Mexico is scary as fuck, so to say I’m driving fast even for Mexico is to say my brakes are going to be worthless if I need them, because my car will be flipping like it’s at a gymnastics tryout.

  Eventually, the bus station appears on my left. There are lines of people struggling with luggage and filing onto the buses. Some of them are already pulling off for the highway when I park and run inside. It’s a sea of black chairs, a loud PA system, and garbled conversations, but I manage to spot Drew buying popcorn. She grimaces and her entire body stiffens when she sees me.

  Really? She’s pissed? Irritation digs into my throat and my words are gravelly when I speak. “You weren’t even going to say good-bye? You’re just leaving? Why? Was it last night? You regret—”

  “No, Jesse. I don’t have any regrets. None.” Yet, she’s clearly spiteful when she pushes past me.

  I step into her path. “Then, what’s the problem?”

  “That is the problem. I don’t have any regrets. When it comes to you, I don’t have any.” Her tone starts out flat but edges into annoyance as she shoves by me again. “Buck wasn’t really okay with me coming to Mexico at all, okay? But look where the fuck I am. And I came here knowing I’m in love with another woman’s boyfriend, knowing I still wanted you. I stopped wearing my ring after Polanco. I don’t even know where in my bag it is. But, hell, I would have fucked you in that bathroom, just like I did, with my goddamn ring on. And…still no regrets.”

  I glance around as a few heads turn our way. Her raised voice is attracting a lot of attention. “Will you come outside and talk to me? In the car?”

  She relents in silence but she won’t let me touch her while we’re walking out of the station. “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t have done for you during that fight with Carlos. Nothing else mattered, except getting you out,” she continues.

  I slide my hand into hers. “And I’m always going to be grateful for that, Drew. To you and Miguel—”

  “No…” She jerks out of my grasp. “All I’ve ever done is carve out a space for you inside me, Jesse. And I’m afraid it’s gotten so big, it’s going to eat me alive one day. It certainly got Miguel killed. I’m leaving before you completely destroy me again.” The stinging words come with resolute finality as she heads back for the station.

  “So you can go be with Buck?” I shout after her, my pulse firing at a maniacal pace. Drew keeps walking. “‘Cause you’re not even fucking in love with him.” That stops her in her tracks and I don’t care if I shouldn’t have said it.

  “Excuse me?” A car narrowly misses her angry stride back to me. “You know what? You’re about to earn the title of being the first person I have ever slapped. Don’t you fucking dare. Don’t you fucking dare say anything else. You don’t get to have an opinion about what I do, asshole. You left me.”

  “That’s not exactly the truth.”

  “You left me with everything you hated about Glory, so don’t you act like you w
ere still invested. Yeah, we broke up but you swore to me we would stay friends.”

  “You’re so fucking wrong.”

  “Oh? You didn’t walk away from all the things you didn’t care about?”

  “Drew—”

  “You left your trash behind, didn’t you!” She gives me a weak push. “I called you for FOUR years. Four years. And I did it every time with the stupid hope that you would answer just once. Even if it was to tell me to fuck off. I’m pathetic. I’m so weak.” Tears are streaming down her cheeks with the same fury she’s letting out right now as she pounds on my chest. “I’m weak and I’m mean. I was planning the life I want with you with another man, hoping it would make me forget all about us.” She pushes me again. “God, I’m so fucking in love with you, Jesse, that sometimes I resent you for it. Sometimes I just want to hate you for making me feel this way. I want to hate you because I can’t let go. But you…you let go so easily, didn’t you!”

  “Drew, stop.” I hug her tight against me, even though it’s killing my sling-less arm, and she gives up. “I walked away from the things I cared about, too. I was holding you back, baby. I was fucking holding you back, so your dad asked me to walk away…”

  “My father?” She lets out a dry laugh, her body tensing up again. “My goddamn father? You mean the one who threw me out ‘cause I was having your kid?”

  I freeze. “What…what?” One minute my feet are planted firmly on the ground, and the next I’m falling off a cliff too fast to scream or even flail futilely. I drop my arms to my sides but Drew doesn’t move. “What kid? What kid, Drew?” I need to sit. Anywhere. Fast. Luckily, I make it to the backseat of the car. The opposite door opens and she gets in next to me.

  “You…we had a baby?” I slump down in the seat and expect my heart to launch itself out of my mouth at any moment. A baby. A human being. Holy shit. What does she look like? I don’t know why I assume it’s a girl. I want to be a father to a little boy someday, be the one I didn’t have, but being a dad to a little girl just sounds so fucking cool. Maybe because Drew’s so beautiful I’d want a little carbon copy of her. Big curly black hair and dark brown eyes. Drew’s smile, too. Her laugh. Definitely her laugh. Only one Hallisay temper allowed, though, and her mom can keep it. I smile to myself.

  “No, I…lost it. Pretty early on…” Drew explains just above a whisper. The image of the baby girl evaporates, and suddenly this news is more jarring than the pregnancy revelation. It hurts a lot more, too.

  “I’m so sorry…” I hear my voice but it sounds disembodied.

  “I didn’t mean to drop it on you like that, I’m sorry. Heat of the moment.” Concerned eyes shift to me and I shake my head in defiance.

  “No, Drew, don’t apologize to me. I’m sorry you went through that…” I reach over and I’m glad she lets me take her hand. “Were you alone? Please tell me you didn’t go through that alone. Your parents kicked you out?”

  She nods. “It’s why we don’t talk anymore. We live in the same town, and I won’t speak to them or go see them or acknowledge that they’re alive. They were so happy when they found out we were going to separate colleges and ecstatic when I left before you did. You were no longer going to be able to taint their perfect daughter. And then it all came back when I told them I was pregnant.”

  I’m remembering that summer now. “You left for A&M to do that scholars program before orientation, but you were still coming home pretty regularly, because I hadn’t gone to Hamilton yet.”

  “Yeah, and we were still having sex pretty regularly, too. The last time we were together before you actually left, I was home for a while, and we were pressing our luck the whole time. Sometimes using condoms and sometimes not. I couldn’t get the morning-after pill anywhere around Glory. When I finally did get it back at school, I just assumed all was well and didn’t think much about it, ‘cause I figured, ‘Well, I took the pill.’ But, obviously, I had missed the window for the most effective use, or I was already pregnant. I confirmed the pregnancy at the school health center, and after it sank in, I decided to go home and tell my parents. It wasn’t something I wanted to say over the phone, especially if I had chosen to keep it. My father was so angry, which was understandable, but I learned quickly it wasn’t really because I was pregnant. It was because I was pregnant by you. He would’ve married me off had it been anyone else. He called you such awful names. And suddenly my pro-life father was making calls to anyone who could fix my problem quietly and do it outside of Glory. I hadn’t even made a decision yet.”

  “He wanted you to get an abortion?”

  “Wanted? He demanded it. He said if I didn’t get one, then they wouldn’t pay for college anymore. We were arguing a lot while I was home. It got to the point where I was afraid they would just slip a pill in my food or something. Oh, and he threatened to kick me out for good, too. You remember my aunt Michelle? She said if any of that happened I could stay with her and figure out what I wanted to do. I had packed up a few things to take to Michelle’s on my way back to school, in case I couldn’t come home again. Michelle was so angry about my parents’ reaction that she called and chewed my dad out. I guess he didn’t like that I was telling people, and that set him off. They attacked me—”

  “Your parents?”

  “Yeah. Both of them. They woke me up in the middle of the night and basically dragged me down the stairs. My dad was screaming that no daughter of his was going to have a baby by someone like you…” Drew shakes her angry expression away. “I tripped near the bottom of our staircase. I barely caught my balance, and I guess the sight of me almost falling and crying and struggling, snapped my mother out of her craziness. She had a change of heart right in our foyer and begged him to stop.”

  “Shit…” I speak calmly but rage is building in my heart, and I have to take several deep breaths to keep it from spreading to the rest of me.

  “Dad told me my choices were to do what he said or to get out. I told him it was my decision to make, and he held the door open and told me to go. I was begging my mom to help me. As betrayed as I felt, I just wanted my mom…” Drew’s voice breaks on the last word, and the vulnerability and irreparable hurt in her eyes are a blade to my soul. My beautiful Drew looks so fragile, clearly still reeling from the wound that hasn’t stopped bleeding, even after all this time. I envision myself punching out the window next to my head; my fist is clenched and poised on my lap. But what good would it do? I can’t turn her emotional pain into my physical pain.

  She bites her quivering lip. “Mom didn’t budge. The last thing I saw before I drove off was her comforting him, and then she shut the door. I was only at Michelle’s a few days before it happened…the miscarriage. I didn’t even know if I wanted to be a mother, but it was ours, you know? I just wanted more time to figure it out. And I didn’t even get that. Then every piece of you I had was gone. And every time I see my parents, it all comes back to me. My mom always buries a halfhearted, cryptic apology in a card she sends to me at Christmas, but my dad still thinks he had good intentions. You should’ve seen the look on his face when I told them I lost the baby. I swear to God he was relieved. Even today, I keep wondering how far they were willing to go that night. Would he have pushed me out of the house if I hadn’t left on my own?” She can’t hold back her sobs anymore. “I had to face who my parents really were that night but, truthfully, I have always known. It was so clear in the way they treated you, even though you were so good to me, and you made me happy. Pretty houses can hide some ugly secrets.”

  “And Buck was there for you?”

  She nods. “I started spending time with him when I would come back to visit my friends in Glory. It was a friendship at the beginning. I wasn’t even attracted to him at first. And it just grew…out of habit or necessity. I don’t know.”

  “I’m glad he helped you…” I say. As much as it hurts, I mean it. “Uh, so, what time does your bus leave?” I don’t really want to remind her of her plan, but I don’t know what the
hell else to say.

  “Oh crap…” Drew brushes her palm against her wet cheeks as she looks at her cell phone. “It’s gone. Dammit. It’s the only one that goes to Monterrey. I was going to spend the night and leave there tomorrow.”

  “I’ll drive you to Monterrey.” I swing the door open and walk to the front seat.

  “It’s a long way, Jesse,” Drew says but she gets into the front passenger seat.

  “It’s okay…” You would think learning that Drew was pregnant and then lost our baby would have drained me emotionally, but I have so much nervous energy stirring in my gut and nowhere for it to go because I can’t punch anything. I pull out of the parking space and trail the slow queue of buses to the road. The silence between us is acidic, and may be worse than it was the first day we got to Mexico.

  This whole time I thought Drew was just mad at me for cutting her out of my life, but I had done it at a time when she needed me to be there. She has every right to hold a grudge against me, but she needs to know everything.

  “I’m sorry I never gave you a chance to tell me you were pregnant, back then. Right before I left for Hamilton, your dad came to see me. I was going through mom’s stuff that night, deciding what I wanted to take to college with me. Photos. Music. Stuff like that. I answered the knock on the door, and there’s Doctor Hallisay standing in my doorway. I must’ve looked like shit and I was drinking pretty heavily. You remember what those last days being in Glory were like for me. I wasn’t eating or sleeping normally. I was basically just trying not to intentionally walk into oncoming traffic most days.

  “I saw sympathy on your dad’s face for just a minute, and I invited him in. We talked. Trivial stuff. The house was falling apart. I hadn’t washed dishes in days or taken out the trash. I didn’t know how to function anymore. I was so lost.” Drew touches my cheek, and it’s only then that I realize a tear has slid down.