Hector (4 page)

This was the very argument he’d had with himself for months now.
For too damn long, he’d been plagued with the guilt that Walter very possibly
had done something tragic because Hector and his friends had pushed him over
the edge. As much as it was a relief to know that Walter was alive and well, he
hated that Walter
did
see him as the
same kind of piece of shit as the guys kicking him while he was down today.
Because ever since that last day he’d seen Walter, it’s exactly what Hector had
felt like.

Walter shook his head and started walking away. Suddenly Hector
was mad again. This wasn’t fair. “What was I supposed to do, Walter? You were
bigger than most of the guys back in high school. Why didn’t
you
stop them? Why didn’t
you
ever stand up for yourself?”

Walter turned around. “Like today?
Against more
than one bully?
Because I got news for you: it was never just one. Oh
no. You said it yourself, ‘Pussies don’t start shit one on one.’ It was always
at least two or more, and you saw today how that ends.”

“Still, you fight!” Hector insisted. With Walter on the ground
today, Hector had been outnumbered, too, but he never once thought about that
when he went at them.

“I’m not a fighter like you, man.” Walter said loudly. “I don’t
have a knockout punch. Hell, I don’t have a punch period.”

Hector was tired of this. All these months of beating himself up
about Walter, was ending
now
.
“And what?”
His voice was so loud he practically yelled. “You
think this happened overnight? You think this is just some gift I was given? It
wasn’t, okay? It took years of training and hard work at the gym. You should
try it sometime. But let me tell you something: I am
not
like them.” He pointed behind Walter with conviction. “I’m
sorry, okay?” He lost a little of the conviction as the guilt inundated him
once again.
This
is what he’d been
hoping for months that he’d get a chance to say to Walter someday, and now here
was his chance. He took a deep breath when he saw Walter’s confused expression.
“I’m sorry I didn’t stop them from breaking your robot.” He took another deep
breath. “And I’m sorry for all those years I stood back and watched them bully
you without saying anything. I really am, Walt. I’m sorry.”

Walter stared at him for a moment and then glanced away. Obviously,
he wasn’t expecting to hear this from Hector, and that’s what burned the most.
As much as Hector didn’t want to admit it, he
was
as bad as the guys beating on Walter today. Maybe he’d never physically
beaten Walter, but he’d been a part of beating Walter’s self-confidence to the
ground for years. Any sense of self-worth Walter might have ever had, Hector
had a hand in beating it lifeless. Hector knew he’d never join the jerks he
hung out with in ganging up to beat on someone, but how were Walter and some of
the other weaklings that got picked on regularly supposed to know that? Of
course, they’d never fight back. Who would fight a group of overconfident
bullies that included a trained fighter among them?

Hector waited for what seemed too long, but hell, he’d waited for
months. He could give this guy a few more minutes. He understood how Walter
could be so stunned. An apology from someone he considered to be one of his
bullies for so many years was probably the last thing Walter thought he’d ever
hear. Of course, he’d been stunned into silence.

They both looked up as the noise from a public bus that turned
into the college campus parking lot distracted them momentarily. “I gotta go,”
Walter said. “That’s my ride.” He started toward the bus stop a few feet away
from them but stopped just before he got to in and turned to Hector, still
holding his side in obvious pain. “I always knew you weren’t like them.” The
bus pulled up behind Walter, and he began to turn around to get on but stopped
again one last time to face Hector. “Thanks, man.” For the first time that day,
Walter smirked and lifted his chin. “I really didn’t have a plan back there.”

Hector smiled, laughing softly. “Yeah, I didn’t buy that shit for
a minute.”

Walter smiled and got on the bus. Hector walked back toward the
main building, flexing his now-aching fist and feeling a bit bittersweet. He
finally got to say he was sorry, and it was good to know Walter never thought Hector
was like his jerk ex-friends. But Hector couldn’t help shake the feeling that
he had done Walter wrong and for way too long.

Chapter 2

More than a week after the whole Walter/Ross incident,
Charlee still couldn’t stop thinking about the guy that saved them. At first,
she kept shuddering at the thought of what might’ve happened if he hadn’t
showed up when he had. Then, as the days went by, she stopped shuddering and
started daydreaming.

The only information she had on him was what little Walter offered.
His name was Hector, they’d gone to high school together, and he was an amateur
boxer at a boxing gym over in East L.A. That explained how he’d knocked out
Ross so easily. In her daydreams, Hector was now a superhero: a beautifully
tanned, perfectly sculpted specimen of a hero.

What he said and did to her had become a little more elaborate
with each daydream she had. She figured she’d never see him again, so it didn’t
matter how ridiculous or naughty the dreams became. As far as she or Walter
knew, Hector didn’t attend East Side U. Walter hadn’t asked him, but neither
had he seen him on campus ever since. His being there at all that day was a
mystery to them both. Never in her life had she felt so distracted and all
because of a guy she got the pleasure of being in the presence of for about
five minutes.

“Hello!” Drew waved her hand in front of
Charlee’s
face.

Charlee snapped out of it and smiled sheepishly at her friend,
who held out a can of Red Bull for her. “What’s with you this week, girl?” Drew
smirked at first, and then a look of concern washed over her face. “Are you sure
you’re okay? Ever since what happened with that jerk Ross and his friends,
you’ve been a little weird.”

Charlee shook her head, taking a sip of the much needed energy
drink. “I’m fine. I’ve just had some stuff on my mind lately: midterms. You
know that and the Jr. World Olympiad
are
coming up, soon.”
In an effort to avoid her inquisitive best friend asking more questions, she
tried changing the subject. “They’re having a knockout tournament this weekend
to replace Vladimir.” She then frowned, thinking about what she’d just said. “I
don’t think we’re gonna find anyone as good as he was.”

“How good could he have been, Charlee?” Drew rolled her eyes. “He
got caught cheating.”

Charlee was about to argue that he technically hadn’t been caught
cheating.
He was just caught with a
wireless device and headphones in his last tournament, something that was
strictly against the rules, but it was never proven he’d actually used it to
cheat. It was a bit unfair, Charlee thought. Whatever happened to innocent
until proven guilty anyway? The punishment hadn’t even fit the crime. Not only
had he automatically been disqualified from the tournament but he was kicked
off the US team
and
the school team, losing
his free ride to ESU. But before she could start her argument, she noticed Drew
had slowed down and was glaring at something straight ahead. No sooner had
Charlee looked up to see who she was glaring at than she regretted doing so.

“Why is it that before last week I’d never even noticed this guy
and now it seems I see his stupid ass everywhere?” Drew asked as they walked
out the cafeteria.

Ross and his friends were sitting just outside the cafeteria. Thankfully,
unlike for Drew, this was only the second time Charlee had seen him since the
incident the week before. The first time she’d run into him, he stared her down,
giving her a major case of the heebie-jeebies but hadn’t said anything. His
cheek still had some signs of the swelling Hector’s blow had left but nothing
like last week when his left cheek was about an inch higher than his right and
the whites of his left eye were all red.

Charlee didn’t look at him long enough now to take inventory of
his injuries. But she may’ve looked too long because he smiled at her. It was
early in the morning. Charlee and Drew were barely on their way to their first
class of the day, but from the looks of it, Ross and his friends were already
glossy-eyed. She turned away without smiling back.

“Just keep walking and stop looking their way,” Charlee said,
pulling on Drew’s arm.

“Morning, Charlee.”

Charlee nearly jumped out of her skin at the sight and sound of
Ross right next to her now. She flinched but kept walking.
“Morning.”
She responded, deciding ignoring him might elicit another rude reaction from
him. Her heart was already racing.

“Can I talk to you?” He asked in a voice much nicer than last
week’s.

“No, I’m late already.” She tugged at Drew’s arm to warn her that
she didn’t need to her to come to her rescue. Charlee could already feel the anger
radiating from her friend.

“Maybe later then?”

Charlee glanced at him for a second.
“Maybe.”

“What!” Drew nearly roared.

“I gotta go.” Charlee said quickly and picked up her pace to a
near sprint, pulling Drew along with her.

When they were far enough away and in the humanities building,
Drew stopped in front of Charlee.
“Maybe?
You’re not
actually gonna talk to that creep are you?”

“No, of course not,” Charlee assured her. “I just didn’t know
what else to say.”

“How ’bout
no
?”
Drew placed her fist on her hip.

“I just said the first thing I could think of so that I could get
away from him as fast as possible. That’s all.” Drew gave her the stink eye.
“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, well, now he’s gonna think he has the go-ahead to confront
you the next time he sees you.”

Charlee frowned. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. Truth was
he’d spooked the hell out of her. The only thing she could think of at the time,
aside from wanting to run away like a crazy person, was to agree to anything
and get away without making a scene.

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,
if
I ever have to.”

She didn’t even want to think about having to talk to Ross again.
Unlike that first time, today she’d been in the middle of a crowded campus with
her best friend at her side, and she was still terrified. There was something
so ominous about him. If he ever confronted her alone again, she’d probably
freak out.

They reached their class, and Charlee decided she’d not think
about it until she absolutely had to. For now, she had the bottle of mace she’d
bought the day after the first incident, and if she was forced to use it, she
would. She sat down and thought of something much more pleasant: Hector, her
dreamy hero.

~*~

It’d been weeks since Hector’s texts and emails with
Lisa had tapered off. When she first moved up north they’d spoken on the phone
a few times late in the evening, and their conversations had begun to take an
intimate feel. Hector actually thought he was really starting to feel something
for her. She even said she was going to try to come back down to L.A. and visit
as soon as she could. Normally something like that might’ve scared him a
little. He’d never done the relationship thing. He wasn’t sure if her making
such a long trip meant she thought he was getting
that
serious. But the thought of it had begun to grow on him.

Then, he noticed a change. She’d say she was going to call him
and wouldn’t. The texts began to dwindle, and any talk of her visiting was
suddenly never mentioned again. That’s when he noticed a reoccurring dude in
her Facebook photos. The captions only ever mentioned his name and where they
were but not what relation he was to her. Never one to beat around the bush,
Hector asked her flat out who the guy was. All she said was that he was a
friend, but soon there were photos of them at college football games and at a
fair. The kicker was the photo of them posing in front of a movie theater, holding
hands. That’s when Hector un-friended her and stopped responding to her texts.
They were few and far between anyway. He’d already started to feel a bit creepy
stalking her Facebook photos, but he still insisted she should’ve just been
honest with him.

The most maddening thing of all, though he was more pissed at
himself than he was with her, was that his dumb ass actually passed up hanging
out with some of his regulars in the last couple of weeks. He’d never admit it
out loud, but clearly he was secretly hoping she was doing the same thing.

He decided not to give it another thought. He’d already obsessed
too much about her as it was, and all he’d ever done was kiss her one time. Instead,
he decided to focus on his latest challenge.

Shaking his head, he finally admitted it. He’d screwed up. Hector
had never actually discussed college in depth with his mom and his older
brother, Abel, but apparently he was expected to go. He hadn’t even bothered
taking his SATs because he was sure that being part owner of 5
^th
Street he’d go straight to working full time there after high school. It’s what
Abel had done when
he
graduated.

His mother, being old-school, had been fine when Abel went
straight into fighting and working at 5
^th
Street after high school.
Of course, it had always been his brother’s dream to be a heavyweight champ,
and the way things were looking, Abel had a damn good chance of making it.
There’d already been one alumnus from 5
^th
Street to make it to the
big time. Abel wasn’t far behind.

Hector was a good enough fighter, but he did it for the same
reason he’d done just about anything growing up: because of his big brother—his
hero
. He almost never admitted it
aloud, especially now that he was older, but he had always been and still was
his brother’s biggest fan. Abel was the real fighter of the two and would
someday be the heavyweight champ. Everyone said he had a real good chance at
the title. Hector only really did it for the adrenaline rush fighting gave him,
and he liked what the workouts did to his body, but he’d never really been
interested in fighting professionally.