After the Before

by Gomez, Jessica

  I’m letting my mind wander to all the possibilities I know are impossible for us, when I notice small bumps on her back with my fingertips. They are very small, but I can feel them. At first, I play off that I haven’t even noticed them. When my finger prodding neglects to give me an answer, I pull back from her, searching her eyes for what I seek. She straightens up from my shoulder, a place I never wish her head would leave, to look at me curiously.

  “What are these bumps on your back?” I ask.

  After the words sink in, her eyes widen in panic. “Nothing.” She says and tries to pull away from me.

  I hang onto her hand and pull her back. “What are they, Jas?”

  “Nothing! Really.” Her words are begging me to forget about it, as she still tries to pull away from me.

  I hang onto her, pulling her with me when I climb out of the warm water.

  “Don’t lie to me, Jasmine.” I growl at her.

  “Please, Alex, stop. Please.” Tears are running down her face as she pleads with me.

  I make sure no one is around before we exit the water completely; Jasmine lost her shirt to the sea when she stripped it off. Luckily, mine is still next to the fire somewhere.

  When I finish looking off in the distance, partly for my shirt, and partly bracing myself to see her half-naked body, I turn to her. What I see, even though she’s topless, is not her breasts, but the discolored marks that cover her body. My mouth drops open in disbelief. Her ribs and stomach are covered in bruises of different sizes.

  “Turn around.” I order her.

  She does it, even as tears still stream down her face, and now she has the hiccups to go along with them. When she finishes turning, I’m in more than shock; I am enraged. The raised bumps I was feeling on her back look like deep pockmarks, with what appear to be belt marks lying next to each of them. I furrow my brows, not knowing who would have done this to her? Next to each mark are the bruises. There must be more than a dozen. My heart wants to rip out of my chest; it’s constricting and pounding in an unfamiliar way. I know I want to pulverize whoever did this, but it’s more than that. I hurt because someone did this to her. My heart seizes seeing her like this and not being able to do anything to help her.

  My voice is thick with emotion. “Jas…” I have to pause to swallow the lump in my throat. “Who did this to you?” Looking at the marks are too much for me. I pull her to me, where she’s happy to wrap her arms around my midsection and lay her head back on my chest.

  She’s still crying when she answers. “I can’t tell you.”

  Her words piss me off. “Why?”

  “I can’t. Alex, I don’t feel so well.” She’s clinging to me, and I hang on to her just as tight.

  “Alright, let me take you back to your room.” I pet her hair down.

  “No!” She says, pulling me to her as hard as she can, as if she’s as afraid to let me go as I am of her. “Don’t leave me, please.”

  “You want to stay with me?” I offer, knowing it’s not the best idea. We are both too drunk and high to be making good decisions.

  She nods into my chest.

  “Turn around.” She looks at me puzzled. “Unless you want to go topless with me in front of everyone, I have to get you my shirt.”

  She laughs through the rest of her tears. Wiping her face, she turns around, looking at me over her shoulder. She’s so gorgeous, but my eyes are glued to the wounds that litter her back. The sight boils my blood.

  I snag my shirt and tell everyone I’m heading back. I pull Carlos aside and give him a job to do before I make it back to the hotel. “I need you to go to my room and make sure Andrew isn’t there. If he is, get rid of him. I don’t give a shit where he stays, it’s just not going to be in my room for the rest of the week. Tell him to have his shit out in twenty minutes.”

  “Alright. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, tell him that he’s lucky I don’t beat the living mierda out of him.” Carlos looks at me with questions, but says nothing else.

  “I’m on it, jefe.” Carlos yells at the other members that are still with us, and they head off, running down the beach to our hotel room.

  When I return to Jasmine, she is lost in the stars. Her skins lustrous against the moon in the sky, and out of all the women I’ve been with, she is the most beautiful one I have ever seen. How did I not notice her when we were younger?

  “Jas?”

  She turns around with her arms folded across her chest. Our eyes lock and neither of us look away. She lifts her arms above her head, beckoning me to pull the shirt on for her. I lift it up over her head, slipping her arms in the holes, and pull it down slowly, letting my knuckles trace the rivets of her ribs. I feel her body respond to my touch.

  “Come on. Let’s get you back to the room.” I put my arm around her waist and help her walk back.

  She begins to giggle half way there. She’s definitely three sheets to the wind. “I can’t believe this is happening. I mean, is it?” Her words are more slurred than they were earlier. More of the alcohol must be kicking in.

  “What?” I ask her.

  “You, me… this?” She’s talking with her hands, pointing at me, herself, and then twirling her finger in the air, motioning to everything around us.

  “Yeah, I think it is, and I know what you mean.”

  We reach the hotel, well after curfew, at about three in the morning. We sneak past the one person at the front desk, and the rest of the place is like a cemetery; quiet and dead.

  We reach my room and I pray that Carlos took care of Andrew, because if I open this door and find him here, I will be glad to show him out… out the window.

  The light clicks to green when I slide my card into the key slot, and open the door. I enter first, hanging onto Jasmine’s fingers with my own, making sure Andrew is not here before I let her in completely.

  When I see his bed a mess and all of his stuff gone, I know that Carlos came through for me. Where he has moved is not my concern, at least not until I go to find him for what he did to Jasmine.

  “Come here, querido.” I pull her against me and kiss her. She sinks into my arms, and I can feel the heaviness of her drunken state. “Let’s get you out of your wet clothes.”

  I turn to my dresser and pull out a clean pair of boxers and wife beater tank top. She takes them from me with a lazy smile. I think it’s all she can muster at this point.

  “Thanks.” She says.

  “You want to change in the bathroom?”

  “No.” She says, softly. “I can change here.”

  I turn around and let her dress. Yes, I can be a gentleman, even as I want to watch.

  When she’s done, she slides her arms around my waist and runs her fingers over my bare chest and stomach, while her chest presses firmly to my back. I take her hands and squeeze them before I turn around to kiss her again. I get the feeling that she wouldn’t mind me holding her all night long.

  Leading her to the bed, I pull back the covers. I slip her legs under them before I pull them up to her chin. Thoughts of where I’m going to sleep run through my head. There’s no way in hell I’m sleeping in that piece of mierda’s bed, and I don’t expect Jasmine to let me sleep with her. She seems to sense my distress and slides to the opposite side of the bed, inviting me in. I’m still sopping wet, so I grab a pair of briefs and slip out of my wet clothes, pulling the clean ones on.

  I turn to find Jasmine watching me, my bare backside exposed to her before I pull the briefs up and in place. I smile in return and climb into bed with her. I want to keep sex the furthest from my mind. I do want to have sex with her, I mean, do I ever, but we’ve both had too much drink and smoke tonight, and when I make love to her, I want her to have all her senses. I want us both to be able to feel and remember every second of it, and right now, that may not be possible.

  So instead, I pull her onto my chest and she snuggles up to me the way I’ve been dreaming of since I laid eyes on her at school. Something changed for me the
instant I saw her. She became more to me than a childhood friend, and I am still sorting through those feelings, and nowhere near admitting them aloud to anyone, even myself. Having her here in my arms makes me feel like my dreams could come true. I kiss the top of her head and run my fingers through her hair. After the third pass, I feel a lump by her temple.

  I run my fingers over it again and she jumps.

  Panic rises in me again. I pull her hair aside and find a large gash, covered by the way she’s been styling her hair.

  “Jasmine.” I whisper to her, my voice actually cracking around her name. “Who’s doing this to you?”

  I’m not sure if she’s going to answer me, she appears asleep. She begins to talk to me, half-asleep. I’m not even sure she realizes she’s talking. “I’m not supposed to tell. I’m not supposed to talk to you.” She says, confusing me even more.

  “What?”

  “She said not to talk to you and I did. It’s my fault.”

  “This happened to you because of me?” My heart drops to my stomach.

  “No, because I wouldn’t stop talking to you, I couldn’t stop talking to you. I tried, really, I did. I tried to date Andrew, but he wasn’t the one I wanted… I just wanted you.” Her eyes flutter open to look at my face. “I know you’ll think I’m being ridiculous, but I have known you for so long Alex, and no matter what has happened to us over the last few years, I still see the same person you were to me before, and I love with you, Alex.”

  Looking in her beautiful blue eyes, my heart stops, along with it, my breathing. Did I just hear her right? Did she just say she loves me? I can’t say it back, even though on a subconscious level, I feel the words circulating through my veins.

  Again, she reads my panic. “I don’t expect you to say it back, or even feel that way toward me. I just wanted you to know.” Her smile melts my insides.

  “You still didn’t answer my question, Jas. Who hurt you?”

  She averts her eyes. “My mom.” Her voice is barely over a whisper, but I hear it, and I jump when I understand what she has said, startling her and she begins to cry. “She warned me the first time.”

  “The first time?” I want her to clarify.

  “I came to class and you asked me what happened.” I nod, remembering the cuts. “Margret threw a glass liquor bottle on the floor. It shattered, and she dragged me by my hair through it, and then slapped me across the face to drive her point home.” She reaches up and touches her cheek, remembering.

  I’m speechless. Actually shocked. I knew Margret favored Jace, but beating her own daughter, using me as the excuse to do it? Come on. How could she hate Jasmine so much she would hurt her? I look into Jasmine’s eyes and try to find the answer, “And the next time?”

  “Andrew came over after school to drop off my math book. When he left, he said, “have fun with Alex,” or something like that, but he said your name and that I was going to see you. She had already warned me once.” She breaths in deep and takes so long to finish, I think she has fallen asleep. “She punched me in my ear.” She points to her discolored ear. “Threw a glass vase and hit me in the head. That’s what the gash is from.” She touches the side of her head tenderly.

  “The marks on your back… what are they from?” I’m not sure I can tolerate or hear anymore, but I have to know.

  She swallows back her emotions. “She took off her belt…” but then she cracks and starts crying again.

  I pull the box of hotel tissues over to me and hand her one, while clicking the pieces together. Her mom hit her with the buckle, several times by the looks of things. “Jas, did your mom hit you with the metal part of the belt?”

  “And that’s not the worst part.” She sniffles.

  ‘How is that not the worst part?’

  “She said if I talked to you again, she would smother my dad in his sleep. That’s why I’ve been trying to stay away from you. I want to think she wouldn’t, Alex, but she has so much hate for me that I believe she would take him away from me, because she knows how much I love him. She would do that just because she hates me that much.” Her body is shaking next to mine.

  “Dammit, Jasmine. You need to tell someone… you should have told me.”

  “I can’t. I shouldn’t have told you. Remind me to never drink, because I obviously get diarrhea of the mouth.” My strong girl is trying to make a joke.

  I smile at her. If she hadn’t been such a blabbermouth, we might not be here together right now. “Alright, let’s get some sleep. We can sleep in as long as we want, especially since I don’t have a roommate anymore.” The thought places a smile on my face.

  “I thought Andrew was your roommate. What happened to him?” Jasmine looks over at Andrew’s side of the bed, noticing for the first time that it’s empty.

  “I took care of it. Believe me, if he stayed in here after you told me what he did, he’d get several bloody noses throughout the day, every day. Let’s just say getting him out of here is me helping him out.” She smiles. Her hair is dangling over me, framing her face. Her eyes are glassy, bright blue. “Eres hermosa.”

  She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, and at that moment, it’s the only thing I’m able to concentrate on.

  “What does that mean?” Her voice is seductive. She’s making it extremely hard for me not to take her right here.

  “You’re beautiful.”

  She leans down, pressing her lips to mine almost desperately. Leaning toward her, I wrap my arms around her lightly, careful not to jostle her injuries. Turning her slowly, I place her underneath me, leaning my body halfway over hers, our lips never parting.

  My fingers glide over the curve of her hip, to her waist, and continue along her rib cage; each little divot driving me closer to the edge of insanity. I trace the curve of her breast, sensuously with the tips of my fingers, then cup the side in my palm.

  Her hands are wondering up and down my back and sides, tickling me when she reaches my midsection. I’m completely aroused being this close to her, breathing in her scent; I’m fighting to maintain control.

  When her fingers snake into the waistband of my briefs and slide around to the front, my heart pounds harder. She reaches in, wrapping her hand around my erection, halting my breathing completely. I almost release at the feel of her skin on mine. The only noise I hear is the quiet moan that crosses my lips against hers, and I feel her smile.

  Some of my senses are coming back to me. We shouldn’t be doing this, but it’s impossible for me to stop touching her, having her touch me.

  Now that I have tasted and touched her soft skin, I couldn’t fathom not being able to do this. She’s like a drug to me; how I resisted her this long is mind boggling.

  Finally, the rational part of my brain wins out and I pull away from her. My breathing is heavy and I have to swallow more than once before I can form words. “Jasmine.” I whisper in her ear as she trails kisses down my neck. She ignores me.

  “Jasmine.” I repeat. This time she looks at me and I think, ‘maybe it was a bad idea to have her look at me.’ That face could get me to do anything she wanted.

  She’s beautiful. Her lips are wet and plump from our kissing, her cheeks flushed with anticipation, and her eyes are staring at me with all the trust in the world.

  ‘How could I let her trust me?’

  I feel like I’ve already let her down in some way. The glassy gaze in those same eyes show me that she’s too drunk to be having any kind of physical encounter.

  Normally, I would take advantage of a night out drinking with a girl, as long as she knew beforehand what we were getting into. I would never take advantage of a girl, especially not Jasmine… I care about this girl too much.

  “We can’t do this, precioso. We’re both too messed up for this tonight, and regardless of that, I wouldn’t want it to happen this way. I want both of us to remember every second of it.” Mind you, this is extremely hard to express while she’s still handling me; they are the last words I want coming o
ut of my mouth at this moment.

  She stops, but slowly slips her hand from my briefs. “You want to just go to sleep?” Her voice is sweet and silky in this dark room.

  “Yeah. Is that cool with you?” It worries me that she will feel like I’ve rejected her.

  “Yeah.” She says, and snuggles up to my side, placing her head on my chest.

  “Alex?” I can hear the nervousness in her voice. “I’m a virgin.” She pauses. “I just wanted you to know.”

  Relief floods through me. I’m so thankful that I stopped our progress. It needs to be perfect for her; not like this in a hotel room, drunk, after some other jerk tried to have his way with her, and especially after divulging that her mother beats her for talking to me. No, tonight is not the night for such an occasion.

  I remain silent. I mean, what do you say to that? My only instinct is to pull her closer to me. She wraps her legs around me, propping her hip half way on mine.

  “Goodnight, cariño” I say, with my lips pressed to her hair.

  “Night, Allleeexssss…” Jasmine begins to fall asleep, slurring out the end of my name.

  Falling asleep is an easy task, with my angel in my arms and the fresh feel of her lips on mine… I am at peace tonight, for the first time, in a long, long time.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jasmine

  When I wake up with a smile plastered to my face, all I can think about is my dream. My very, very good dream. As warm sensations begin filling my body, I become aware that the blankets have nothing to do with it. The dream I had was not a dream at all. I am in Alex’s room, in his bed, wrapped in his arms. I refuse to open my eyes, afraid the moment will end.

  “Jasmine,” His deep voice vibrates against my ear. “You awake?”

  I smile against his chest. “How’d you know I was awake?”