Arizona Allspice (38 page)

“How have you been feeling?”

“How have I been feeling?”

“Since the panic attack and all.”

“Oh.” He chews on his bottom lip. “Yeah, I’m good. Thanks.”

“You walked from your house to the soccer field and then back to my house all by yourself?”

“Yep.”

“Cool. You want to go for a walk with me?”

Joey looks down at his legs. “Remember that whole ‘I know my body and what it can and can’t handle’
schpeel
?” He raises his eyes. “I can’t walk too much farther today.”

I nod and swipe my moist brow with the back of my hand. “It’s really hot out anyway.”

“We could go somewhere shady like around the lake, if you don’t mind driving down there.”

“No, I don’t mind. I love
Amo
Lake. Let’s go.” I hold my hand out. He grips it with a grin and I help pull him up from the steps. I walk and he limps to the truck and I drive us to
Amo
Lake.

I swear the temperature is always perfect at the lake. I inhale the refreshing breeze as the green grass tickles my palms. Joey sits next to me in the grass. Framed by a clear blue sky, Joey’s blue eyes shine with a surreal light. His red hair lies close to his head since it is still short, but it gets wavier every day.

“Who’s the friend?” He stretches his long sun kissed legs out in the lime green grass.

“Hmm?”

“The friend you said you were worried about.”

I can’t say it was him I had been concerned about so I tell him the friend is Raul. My mind keeps looping back to him and if I talk to someone about it I could get some peace of mind. I don’t really have any other friends besides Raul, so really I had no choice but to name him. I hug my knees to my chest as Joey acknowledges the lake with a long pensive gaze.

“I don’t mean to sound impolite or critical, but I never understood why you dated Raul for so long.” 

I want to yell at Joey. I want to defend Raul however I can. It hurts to hear the way Joey snorts out his name. However, why I stayed with Raul so long is something I need to face. If I don’t understand why I stayed, what’s to stop it from happening again with someone else? I take a deep breath of the lakeside air. Joey speaks again.

“I know you never slept with Raul, or anyone, so what is it that made him so appealing?”

“How do you
kn
How do you even know that?” I sputter as my throat constricts with embarrassment. “What are you?
A stalker or something?!”

Joey’s face turns visibly pale and his eyes widen. “I just, it just came up in conversation one day when I was talking to your brother. Manny told me. I’m sorry. I should’ve…Sorry.”

I wrap my arms around my legs and bury my face into my knees. Manny told him? You can’t just tell a friend all your business and your family’s business if you’ve only known them for six months! Manny is too trusting and too open. I’m going to beat him up the next time I see him. I lift my head from my knees. Apparently Joey had been staring at me the whole time, wondering if I was crying or not. I’m not. When I look up he looks away. I hurt his feelings pretty bad. I know he worried about it and felt weird about it; about admiring me from afar for so long. I was angry that he knew my personal information so I lashed out. But that’s who I am. I’m a hurtful person and he needs to know that to move on.

“You don’t need to be sorry. It’s Manny who needs to keep his mouth shut. Hey,” I say to get him to look at me. “I
want
you to ask me those questions because I’m truly trying to learn from my mistakes.”

He massages the nape of his neck. He lets the hand fall back into the grass and watches a bird step from the bank into the water. “Why did you let Raul cheat on you?” he asks carefully.

“Raul was faithful to me in another way. He told me his secrets, things that no one else knows about him, all his dreams and fears. I was the only one he confided in. I cherished that.”

 “He confided in you because he knew you didn’t have anyone else to tell.” His words needle me. “You’re defensive, closed off, cautious”

“Are you done listing my flaws?”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” his voice softens. “You’re honest, too, and smart and modest and he is just
not
.”

I chuckle. Honest, smart, and modest? I’m sure he means to say crass, dorky, and repressed.

“You just don’t understand him,” I shake my head. “I don’t blame you. Not many people do because they don’t know the hell he went through as a kid. I understand him and he understands me, but a lot of the time he doesn’t understand himself.”

“Is that the excuse he gave you? I don’t
understand
myself so I can’t be responsible for disrespecting you in every way possible? That’s bull. He used you, Elaine.”

“It’s my excuse as well. And I used him, too,” I counter. Joey’s eyebrow peaks skeptically. “I wanted to get back at all the people who treated me wrong. Going out with
El
Capitán
of the Park Kids did just that.” I smile remembering the jealousy or surprise on all the Park Kids’ faces when they first saw me on Raul’s arm. “I had him. In a way no one else did. Those girls he slept with thought they were getting the best part of him because, after all, he
is
attractive. He’s
charming,
he has a great smile, a nice body”

“I know what he looks like. Thanks,” Joey grumbles.

“Anyways,
I
had the best part of him. I had his heart. He cared about me.”

Joey rolls his eyes. “I still don’t want you to settle for that.”

“Besides, I never thought guys were capable of keeping it in their pants. Especially not sports jockeys.”

 He smirks and lazily scratches his chest. “You know what they say about soccer players. Soccer players can do it for 90 minutes, in 11 different positions, without their hands.”

My mouth falls open. “You are so…!”

He laughs. “Come on. I’m kidding. I know lots of guys, soccer players included, who can and do, as you say, keep it in their pants.”

“Can you count them on one hand?”

 
“Uh, yes.”

 I snort. “Do they live in this town?”

 “Yes.”

 
“Who?”

 “I’m not going to name names. But, I can tell you that I’m one of them.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. When I said ‘keep it in your pants’ I didn’t mean not cheating on your girlfriend. I meant”

“Never gone all the way.
I know.”

I stare at Joey more confused than surprised. He’s a virgin? He’s never slept with
any
of the dozens of girls I’ve seen him hang out with? “Why?” I ask dumbly.

His answer is coarse. “I don’t want to get some girl knocked up. Kids aren’t for me, okay? I’d ruin them.”

“You’re good with people and you’re high energy. You’d be a great dad.”

“No.
Just thinking about that kind of responsibility makes me nauseated.
I couldn’t handle it. I’d probably skip town or something stupid.” He crumples a blade of grass between his fingers and I frown because he thinks he is his father. “Helping my friends is different than helping a child. They’re adults. They have grown up problems. With a baby you have to be, like, gentle. You have to be delicate and patient. I’m a hothead. I don’t have any of those qualities,” he says bluntly.

“Hmm. Gentle comes easy when you love the little sucker.”

“You want to have kids someday?”

“Of course.”
I smile.

He shakes his head. “How can you be so sure?”

“It’s pretty much the
only
thing I’m sure of.” I smile sadly.

“What about you? Why haven’t you?”

It took me a second to realize he was talking about my virginity. “I had an eye-opening experience when I was a teenager.” Joey gives me a questioning look. I don’t want to elaborate on being sexually assaulted at a party when I was fourteen-years-old. I’m not that weak-minded little girl anymore. No need for anyone to think I still am. Joey’s cell phone rings, “Excuse me, Laney,” and saves me from revealing any details. As Joey falls back to lie in the grass and smiles and chats with whoever called, I sit cross legged and wallow in the pitiful jealousy I felt the instant he’d answered that phone to talk to someone other than me. Joey’s phone conversation fades into background noise as I focus on the faces of the yellow poppies shuddering in the slight breeze.

Joey finally flips his cell phone closed. “The girls and some of my players,
Niko
and Cesar, want to hang out with me in a few minutes. You want to go to
Niko’s
and chill with us?”

“No,” I plainly say. I do not want to spend my Saturday night uncomfortable.

“Sure?”

I nod then stand up from the grass and hold my hand out to him. “Let’s go.” I pull him up and we walk towards the truck. “And tell them I said thanks for helping Manny.”

******

I step out of the Firebird and walk up the steps of my trailer balancing a large pizza box in my upturned hand. It was Sunday and Miss Amelia was working this evening at
Bartolo’s
Pizza Parlor so she gave me a friendly discount because I’m “dating” her son. Or maybe it was hush money.
Either way, cheap pizza for me.
Uncle Frank took my truck up to Duncan, the nearest city, to secretly buy a new refrigerator for Miss Amelia’s house. He could have just fixed the
jiggly
door handle on the old one, but he’s a generous man. As I climb my front steps I see something glinting, reflecting the glare of the setting sun. I bend down to pick the object up from the middle of the top step. It is one of Raul’s rings. I thought I’d given all of them back but I must have dropped one as I ran out of the house Friday night. I study the thick metal ring and realize I wasn’t the one who dropped it there. On the outside of the ring, written in black permanent marker reads: 2AM.

At 9:47 PM, Uncle Frank came home. He whistled and laughed when he saw only half of the pizza left on the kitchen table. He said Miss Amelia got teary eyed over his present. He asked how I was doing. I didn’t tell him what I’d be doing tonight. I told him I was fine. I told him Manny still hadn’t called. He shook his head solemnly and went to bed. At 12:02 I wasn’t fine. Nothing could distract or calm me. What if something happened? How could I do this on my own? I walked three or four times from my bedroom to the bathroom feeling as though I would vomit, but nothing would come up. At 12:50 AM I knew I couldn’t confidently pull this off on my own.

Joey would know what to do. He could help me.