by J. A. Huss
And Danny.
I’m pissed about Danny, I realize. Because I like him. And that story Mary told about him coming to her rescue as a little kid, well, it clinched it for me. He’s not as bad as he looks. I felt it immediately when I met his eyes in the counselors office on Monday. He was sympathetic to my plight.
He gave a fuck.
So why does Mateo’s warning unsettle me so much?
There’s a knock at the door but I say nothing, just lean against the yellow cinderblock wall, smoking my cigarette.
“Shannon?” Mateo asks from the door. “I can smell the cigarette in the hallway, I know you’re in here.”
“I need the night off.”
“Why?”
“I’m not in the mood for your shit or your head games. I worked ahead anyway. I’ve gotten five chapters outlined already.”
“Trying to get it all done so you don’t have to come here anymore?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think it will be as easy to breeze through trig like you did science.”
I blow out smoke rings as my response. “You’re a fucking genius.”
“Why are you so pissed off?”
“Why?” I huff out some air. “Just go away, Mateo. I’m not coming to class today.”
A second later the door closes with a soft whoosh.
Well, mission accomplished. I wait in there, smoking my brains out, until the whole building goes silent. And thank God, when I finally decide to leave, the hallways are empty.
This has been the longest week of my life and it’s not even Friday. I push through the front doors and a weight lifts off me. Mateo is stressing me out. That’s why I’m mad. Mateo and his rules. Mateo and his weirdness. Mateo and his fucking dick.
God.
I have a problem. A really big problem. And it’s not Mateo. My problem is me.
Jason is drunk when I get home. “Nice,” I sneer at him. Olivia is awake, but Jason has a bottle of formula propped up on a blanket and she’s slurping quietly in her swing. “I guess you won’t be needing my services for much longer. Not after you get fired for showing up drunk tonight.”
He drags his glazed eyes from the TV and stares at me in the chair to his right. “Be careful, kid. If you start nagging me like a wife, I’ll start expecting more than just babysitting.”
“You try it, I’ll cut your dick off when you’re sleeping.”
“Tough girl, huh?” he says back, taking another swig of beer.
“People underestimate me all the time, Jason. You have no idea who I am. So feel free to join the rest of the world. You’ll see what happens if you ever lay another hand on me.”
He gets up, throws his empty bottle in the trash with a clang that says it’s not his first today, and then grabs his keys and walks to the door. “You’re so dramatic, Shannon. It’s not my fault you fuck every guy you meet on the first date.”
“Oh, is that what you think?”
“Jill talked just as much shit about you as you do about her. I know exactly who you are.” He walks out the door, slamming it behind him.
Olivia starts and begins to cry. “Shhhh,” I say to her, taking the bottle and lifting her out of that damn swing. I hold her close, rocking her a little as she rests her head on my chest. Poor baby. She’s stuck with him and she has no idea what kind of a piece of shit he really is. “I won’t leave you here,” I tell her softly. “I promise. I won’t leave you here.”
We sit on the couch and mindlessly watch TV together. Well, she drinks her bottle and I do the mindless stuff. And before long she’s her usual sleepy self. I take her back to Jason’s room and place her in her crib, covering her with a light blanket.
When I get back to the living room my phone is chiming a message.
Mateo: Did you eat?
Shannon: No.
I’ve been using the money Jason leaves on the counter for me for bus fare and school lunch all week. I haven’t eaten since last night. I’m secretly hoping for a dinner invite when Mateo messages back.
Mateo: Check the back porch.
I get up and walk to the sliding door and look down at the ground where a brown paper bag is sitting. I open the door and look to my right, trying to see if he’s in the alley beyond the gate, but there’s nothing there.
I grab the bag and go inside, my mouth watering before I even set it on the counter. There’s another note stapled to the bag, so I rip it off and open it up.
Remind me to remind you to tell me about how people underestimate you all the time.
Jesus Christ. He’s watching me. Listening, at the very least. I bet he came over with food and stood right outside the slider.
I sigh, take out the food—leftover lasagna, hot—and get a fork. I can’t shovel that stuff in my face fast enough, that’s how hungry I am. I’m lucky if I eat once a day. I’ve never been this skinny in my life. I’ve lost so much weight since we moved to California, I’m probably about a hundred pounds. Which doesn’t look bad on me, since I’m so short. But my stomach hurts every day from hunger. I just smoke to forget about it. I always have those, Jason has cartons of them on top of the fridge and for whatever reason, he doesn’t bitch about me taking them, so I help myself daily.
You’d think that asshole would at least bring food home from the restaurant, but no. He doesn’t.
My phone rings and I fish it out of my pocket and press accept. “Yeah,” I say.
“Hungry much?”
I turn around and look at the back patio. Mateo is leaning against the chain-link fence that separates him from a hundred cars a second whizzing past on the freeway below. He looks like he hasn’t got a care in the world.
“You’re a creep, you know that?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“What do you want?”
“No thank you?”
“Thanks,” I mumble, then let out a long sigh. “Really, I mean it. Thanks. I was starving.”
“I can tell. So you wanna tell me what that little meltdown was in school today?”
I just stare at him through the glass. “Why are you here? Why are you doing all this shit?”
“Are you going to finish that science work soon?”
“What?” Nice, I think. Change the subject as soon as it comes back to you.
“Shannon,” he starts. “Don’t ask me what when you hear me just fine.”
“Yes,” I snap. “I’m going to finish that fucking science.”
“Good,” he says. “We’ll have class tomorrow at Gilbert. I’ve got a story to tell you. Make sure you’re there.”
And then he ends the call and walks off.
Chapter Nineteen
I enter Gilbert School at three-oh-five and make my way back to the class. There’s a few people in the office today, and one classroom towards the front with kids in there working quietly. When I get to room twenty-one, Mateo is sitting at the desk reading a book.
I rest my backpack against the leg of the desk and sit in the chair opposite him.
“You going to finally teach me something today? I’ve outlined seven chapters in that book already.”
He peers at me over the top of his book, which has the title Exoplanets and Alien Solar Systems on the cover.
“I’ve taught you a lot already. But I can understand why you’re missing the point.”
“Right. Don’t flatter yourself, Mateo. I knew how to fuck before you showed up.”
He puts his book down. “I have no doubt.”
My face goes red. I wonder if he heard Jason basically call me a slut last night.
“Do you know what an exoplanet is?”
“No,” I sneer.
“Hmm,” he says, “too bad. It’s pretty interesting.”
“You said you had a story,” I remind him. “Something about why you have take-out containers and food delivery bags.” I’ve already worked out that his parents probably owned an Italian restaurant and that’s why he can cook lasagna from scratch and has
takeaway bags.
“Oh, that’s not the story,” he says, putting the book down. His hand goes to his belt and he starts unfastening it. It jingles a little and I just stare at him with an incredulous look.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I look over my shoulder at the open door. “I’m not fucking you here again. You can forget it. I’m not fucking you ever again, in fact. I’m done playing this sick game. I’m probably gonna date Danny Alexander,” I say, lifting my chin up in defiance. “He’s nice and he makes me laugh.”
“Is that all it takes, Shannon? To win you over? A laugh?” He pops the button on his jeans and drags his zipper down so slowly, I can almost hear each interlocking piece disengage. I watch the movement of his arm as he pulls out his cock and fists it, pumping up and down slowly.
“About a month ago I saw you walking to Bill’s. I followed you there, watched you eat a burger. Jose was nice to you, and that got me thinking. I know Jose. I know Jason, and Phil, and Mark at the arcade across from Anaheim. We all went to school together.”
He’s still masturbating as he talks, but sorta halfheartedly.
“So I asked him about you after you left. Told me you were Jason’s sister-in-law, that he was back in town and living in those apartments across the way from my house.”
“You’re been spying on me. Got it.”
“You walked over there a lot,” he says, ignoring my comment. “So I had a lot of chances to follow you. I worked out where you lived, which window was yours on that patio facing the alley. And one night, I looked in and you were sleeping.”
“Creep,” I mutter. “You’re such a creep.”
“You guys never lock your patio door, did you know that?”
I get a sick feeling in my stomach.
“So one night I walked right in. Right into your bedroom. You were wearing a black tank top and just your underwear. Pink, they were,” he says, smiling at me.
My mouth is open in shock. “You were in my bedroom?”
“And holy fuck, Shannon, you were so goddamned hot. And you’d been drinking, I think. You were sleeping pretty good.”
I rack my brain, trying to figure out if I ever went home drunk in the last month. Maybe once, twice at the most. I haven’t been partying a lot since I don’t have many friends.
“So I started touching you.”
“What?”
He’s pumping his cock harder now and his breath is coming faster. He drags his white t-shirt up his stomach, exposing his abs to me.
“First, it was just a soft fingertip tracing the curve of your thigh. It made you shiver. And then you opened your legs and I did the same thing on the inside of your thigh.”
I catch a glimpse of his swollen head each time his fist slides down his shaft. His eyes are closed now. There’s voices in the hallway, and I have a brief moment of panic that we will get caught. That I will be blamed for letting him jerk off in front of me at school.
“I took my sweep a little higher each time, until finally I was fingering you through your pink panties. They were wet, Shannon. You were wet for me in your sleep.”
The voices in the hallway recede, but I am speechless at this point. I would not be able to talk, even if I wanted to interrupt him. And I don’t. Want to interrupt him, I mean. I want to hear every word.
“Very carefully I pulled your panties aside and began to play with you. You moaned in your sleep. Groaned, even. Like you wanted more. And you were so fucking wet, my fingers slipped right inside.”
I think I’m at that same level of wetness right now.
He stops talking, pumping his cock harder now. I strain to get a better look at what he’s doing. His legs are open, spread out under the table. Our legs are touching, in fact.
“And then I leaned down, pressed my lips to your pussy, and ate you out.”
He groans and pumps himself furiously for a few seconds before spilling his come all over his bare stomach.
“You came,” he says, after a few moments of rest. His eyes open and he looks straight at me. “You came in my mouth.”
I just stare back. Unable to talk. Unable to comprehend what he’s saying. “You’re a liar.”
He smiles. “But I’m a good one, right?”
“What?”
“You believed me. And you know why you believed me, Shannon?”
“That never happened?”
He scoffs. “Please, how drunk would you have to be for me to suck you off and never wake you up? Do you know why you believed me?”
“You’re a psycho,” I say, floored.
“Because you want to believe me.”
I shake my head slowly. “I don’t believe you. You’re a very good liar, Mateo. And that’s not something to be proud of.”
“Right. So why are you so sure Danny Alexander is the nice one, and not me?”
“Because look at you,” I scoff. “You’re such a fucking freak.”
“I’m sitting here in a chair, masturbating as I tell you a fantasy, Shannon. It’s hot.” And then he laughs. “You know it is.”
“It’s weird,” I say. “I’m speechless with you most of the time because you’re blowing my fucking mind. You make no sense to me. You don’t follow the rules.”
“Whose rules? Your rules?”
“School rules, for one. You’re my fucking teacher!”
“Technically, no. I’m a subcontractor. But ethically, yes.”
“It’s the ethics that count, don’t you think?”
“So walk out. Report me to Bowman. Call the police. Do whatever the fuck you want.”
My thoughts are racing around in my head. “Maybe I will.”
“At least you’d be invested. At least you’d stop just sitting here, begging me to get you out of this.”
“Beg you!” Holy shit. “To get me out of what?” I just want to punch him in the fucking face right now.
“Life.”
“OK,” I huff. “I’m done here.” I push my chair back to stand, but his words stop me.
“You want to skate through school, you said, take tests and call it learning. You want the prize without the work that goes into it. You want things you don’t deserve.”
“You don’t know what I deserve,” I say quietly. “You have no idea what I deserve.”
“I know,” he says, nodding. “But I do know what you don’t deserve. And you can deny it all you want, it won’t change the fact that you didn’t earn it. I’m asking you to earn it.”
“Earn what, Mateo? You make no sense.”
“It.” he replies. And then he lifts his hands up towards the ceiling.
“What’s any of this,” I say, lifting my hands up in the same way, “have to do with sex?”
He just smiles. “Nothing at all. It’s got nothing at all to do with sex. I just like you and I want to fuck you, and tease you, and play you. Not like that,” he says, seeing the anger inside me building. “Not like a victim, Shannon. Like an instrument.”
He reaches over for a roll of paper towels sitting on the table next to him, rips one off, and cleans up the mess on his stomach. He throws it into the trash, stands up, and puts himself back together.
“If you want to walk away,” he says, grabbing his book from the table, “go ahead. Report me to Bowman, tell the police, do whatever the fuck you want. But I’m trying to tell you, I’m invested. So go date Danny Alexander if you want. You can quit this class and drop out of school. You can fuck everything up. You’re a grown woman, you can make whatever choice you feel is best. But when you look back in ten years and wonder where it all went wrong, don’t blame me, Shannon. Because I gave a fuck and you walked out.”
And then he walks out. He’s got that stupid book in his hand and he just walks out and leaves me there.
Stunned.
I sit in silence for, fuck—minutes, I think.
“You done in here?”
I whirl around in my chair and find the janitor peeking his head into the room.
“I�
��m locking up, kid. Time to go home.”
I nod, dragging myself out of my stupor, and grab my backpack. I don’t say a word as I walk past him and out of the school. It’s dark already and the parking lot is empty. But off to the left I can hear the low rumble of a motorcycle.
I look over and see Mateo, helmet and leather jacket on, staring at me.
I walk towards him and stop a few feet away. He’s holding out a flannel and a helmet. I take the flannel and slip it on, hiking my pack up onto my back, and then shove the helmet down on my head as I swing my leg over the seat.
I sigh as I press my cheek against his jacket, taking in the scent of him, and wrap my arms around his waist. He places a hand on mine for a second, and then we move forward and leave the school behind.
He doesn’t take me home. He pulls into his driveway and I sit on the back of the bike as we wait for the garage to open. He pulls in, turns the bike off, and kicks down the stand.
There are at least half a dozen cars in his giant garage. All classics. An old Mustang, a classic Camaro, a GTO, and some more I can’t easily identify, plus parts. The place is spilling over with cars and it’s a lot bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. I get a sense that there is a lot more to Mateo Alesci than meets the eye. I don’t know him any more than he knows me.
I take my helmet off and swing my leg over the bike. He does the same.
And we look at each other.
“You wanna go to the beach with me tomorrow night?” he asks.
I nod and place the helmet on his seat.
“Pick you up in front of your house at seven.”
He walks away and goes inside his house.
I’m barely aware of the traffic on Broadway as I cross the street, walk through the gate of the apartments that are not mine, enter the alley on the other side, and make my way to my patio. I have to lean against the brick wall next to my window and take a few deep breaths.
I don’t know anything right now. I’m blown. I go inside and I don’t even hear Jason’s snide remarks as he gathers his keys and walks out, leaving me with a sleeping Olivia.
I am blown.