Hector (46 page)

Hector opened the door for her and she got in. As soon as he was
in his side, he kissed her but then asked her to continue as he slipped the key
in the ignition.

“Anyway, we tried it again in middle school, and, God, that was
even worse. I didn’t even last a week.” Taking a very deep breath, she braced
herself before getting the next part out. “There was a boy who lived up the
street from me named Danny. I used to watch him from my window as he and his
friends walked to school. He was one of the only popular kids who
was
actually nice to me, and by nice, I mean he didn’t throw
food at me or taunt me. He hung out with some of the kids that did, but he
never joined them. And he even smiled at me a few times.”

Sitting this close to Hector, she noticed his body go stiff, and
he gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “But he never stopped them from
taunting you?”

She shook her head. “No, but silly me, just because he smiled at
me, didn’t actually do the taunting, and, of course, because he was popular and
cute, I made him out to be some kind of prince. For years as I watched him go
by my house to school, I daydreamed of him and harbored this massive crush on
him.”

He squeezed her leg, and she decided to spare him the details of
all the doodling she did writing her and Danny’s name all over her notebooks
and journals. “By the time I was old enough to go to high school, I tried again
freshman year, and that was another disaster. Looking back, I realize it was me
being too weak to fight back or stand up for myself. But I was so shy it was
paralyzing.” She cleared her voice, realizing this is where the explanation
about her behavior last night began. “As shy as I was, I was still your typical
teenager with raging hormones. But as awkward as I was, I knew, or at least I
believed very strongly, that I would probably never even be kissed much less
experience anything more than just kissing. But as a young girl, I still
daydreamed about it—a lot, especially every time I’d watch Danny walk by my
house.”

Again he squeezed her leg, and she straightened up a little,
feeling her face warm by what she was about to say next. “Like any normal
teenage girl,” she turned to him, making sure he got this part, “because I’d
been called a freak so often, I read up on it and looked it up on the internet.
It was totally normal,” she waited until he nodded. “I started doing
things—touching myself.”

He turned to her with a smirk.

“It’s not funny,” she said quickly.

“I’m not laughing,” he responded just as quick. “I’m just
visualizing it.”

She nudged him, pressing her lips together. He’s seen you naked.
You’ve made love to him. You rode him this very morning, and any badass cowgirl
would’ve been proud. You can tell him this.

“Anyway, as the years passed, I graduated from just touching to
doing other things.” She squeezed his leg now as he sat up, adjusting his
pants. “Don’t you dare ask for
details.
Just use your
imagination. You’ll probably be right.”

He stared straight ahead, smiling, pulling into the parking lot
of a charbroiled burger joint, parked, and then leaned against his door. “Okay,
I guarantee you my imagination is going nuts right now, but, please, go on.”

Charlee rolled her eyes, deciding not to further that part of her
story until she had to. “So fast forward to senior year or rather the summer
before I would’ve started my senior year in high school. The town I lived in
was small, and everyone knew everyone else. I’d been labeled by all the kids as
Charlee, the redheaded freak who couldn’t even deal with high school. Drew
refused to admit it, but I knew what everyone thought of me, and I had long ago
accepted it. At that point it didn’t matter. I hadn’t planned on ever going
back to that school anyway.” She glanced down at his hand as he squeezed hers,
hoping he wasn’t
pitying
her. “Drew was doing
everything she could to convince me to enroll for senior year, and let me tell
you that girl can be persuasive.”

He chuckled. “I don’t know her too well, but she seems as though
she can make a pretty good argument. I still have to thank her for convincing
you to move out here.”

Charlee smiled sideways, feeling bittersweet. “Danny had a hand
in that decision too.”

Hector’s smile immediately went flat. “Fuck that. I ain’t
thanking him.”

Soothing his suddenly tight upper thigh muscles with her hand,
Charlee continued. “Now what I’m gonna share next stays strictly between you
and me. It’s something very personal about Drew.” She paused until he nodded.
“Right around that time, Drew’s parents separated. It was sort of this big
local scandal. Her dad was always gone like he is now, and her mom started
having an affair with her brother’s travel team baseball coach.” Charlee shook
her head, remembering how devastated Drew had been. “The coach was also married,
and his son was also on the team. All the other parents were appalled because
apparently the coach’s wife was so very much involved with the team and
well-liked that people took sides, and the team eventually fell apart. It was
just a big mess. So only after having to see Drew go through all this did I
begin to consider enrolling senior year. She said she needed me there for her.
This happened during that summer, so she was dreading going back to school and
have everyone talking about it.”

He watched her intently, and now she had to tell him why she was
ready to run the moment she suspected he wasn’t being completely honest or that
by chance he was secretly ashamed of her. “Since Danny lived up the street, we
often ran into him at the local burger joint or convenience store up the street,
and like he’d always been, he was nice to me: said hello, smiled, and was
polite.” Even though Drew had been right about Hector, Charlee still couldn’t
help roll her eyes having to explain the next part. “Drew’s always said she has
this sixth sense about certain things, and she started to insist she was
picking up on something from Danny when he looked at me and smiled at me. Of
course, I didn’t buy it for a second. I was Charlee the Freak, and he was the
popular good-looking jock in high school, but she insisted there was something
about the way he looked at me. She said the same thing about you, by the way,
when we first met you at the tournament.”

Hector lifted an eyebrow. “Did she now?”

“Yep,” Charlee nodded.

“And she picked up on the same thing from this guy?”

“Yes, but she was totally wrong about him. Only I’ve mentioned
how persuasive she can be, right?” He smiled but it was strangely strained. “She
kept insisting that every time we ran into him he stared at me a little too
long or was a little too smiley or whatever. Finally, she asked him straight
out when she ran into him at the library one day, and he said he thought I was
cute and there was something special about me, so she gave him my number! Next
thing you know he’s texting me and calling me, and Drew’s all full of herself.”
Charlee couldn’t help laugh, but there was no humor in it. “I knew it! I called
it! I knew he was into you and then . . .” She paused, unbelievably still
feeling the hurt seep in. “After several long, very deep conversations with him
where I really thought I began to feel a connection and he was so damn sweet,
he asked me to a party.”

She didn’t even realize she’d fallen deep into her thoughts until
he interrupted them.

“Charlee?”
Glancing up at him, there was
no missing how undeniably hard his expression had gone. “You said you’re over
this guy, right?”

“Yes,” she nodded, but she was sure she wasn’t convincing. She
hadn’t allowed herself to relive this in so long she was certain he saw the
hurt she was feeling from scraping old wounds open and not understanding why it
still hurt so
bad
.

“Are you sure?”

She stared straight
ahead,
nodding,
realizing her eyes were now flooding quickly with tears and Hector wasn’t
buying it for a second, but she couldn’t help it. After all this time, she
still couldn’t believe Danny had done that to her. He’d been so sincere, so
sweet. He called her Tangerine, damn it, because it was the name of his sister’s
orange cat, which he always pretended to hate but secretly liked holding and
petting when no one was around. That should’ve been clue number one: when no
one else was around. He said it was because of her hair and the cat was orange
and sweet, but she knew better now.

“Are you crying for this guy right now?” Hector straightened up
so abruptly his elbow hit the horn, and he raised his voice just a notch, but
Charlee caught the anger loud and clear. “Is that what I’m sitting here
watching and listening to?” The anger changed suddenly, and there was suspicion
now—severe suspicion. “Did you and him—”

“It was dog party, Hector. Ever heard of them? You were probably
on the other end of them, not on mine: a party by his football friends where
they compete to bring the worst date, and he invited
me
.”

He stared at her, his hardened expression looking more confused
now. “What?”

“I was the dog, the schmuck, the fucking freak! And guess what?
He won.” The tears were really coming now, and she hated that it still hurt
this bad even after all this time. But she continued even through the tears.
“He won for having the biggest, freakiest,
schmuckiest
date! That was why he befriended me. This was why he was so sweet and spent all
that time with me on the phone. I was special all right, but not the way he
made it sound. And I went out and bought a dress and did my hair and did all
the things excited high-school girls do when they’re invited to a party by the
boy of their dreams.” She wiped her face with both her hands, angry that she
could still get so worked up over this. “For once I felt normal, like I
actually belonged with the crowd my age. Drew swore she knew he liked me all
along: that she’d seen it in his face, heard it in his voice when he talked to
me and about me. But it was all a lie.”

Hector shook his head, his face still full of disbelief. “How the
fuck did you win?”

“Because he coaxed Charlee the Freak out of her cave and got her
to come to a high-school party where everyone could laugh and watch me turn
beet red at the drop of dime. The worst thing was I didn’t even know. I was
actually proud that I’d gone through with it, and it wasn’t until he took me
home and refused to kiss me because he said he didn’t deserve to that I knew
something was wrong. Drew was there before he even left.”

“How did you find out?” he asked, wiping more of her tears away.

“Drew,” she said simply. “It was all over Facebook already, and
she was there to warn me. She told me not to look, that I didn’t want to. But I
had to. Danny had been so sweet and so sincere the entire time I talked to him
that I just couldn’t believe he’d do that to me.” She stared at the floor, a
bit calmer now, but the memories she’d worked so hard to let go of all came
flooding back so vividly. “They’d tagged me and him in all these congratulatory
pictures of dogs in dresses and tiaras. It was mostly the guys from the party,
but there were a lot from other random people in my neighborhood.”

“Did he ever apologize or explain himself?” Hector cupped her
hand in his, caressing it.

She shook her head. “I shut down my Facebook page and blocked him
from being able to text me or call me. He did relay a message through Drew not
too long after to say he was sorry, but I cut Drew short. I didn’t even wanna
hear his explanation. What more was there to say? The rules were simple: bring
the most pathetic freak you can think of, and he chose me.”

Taking a deep breath and glad that the tears were over, she
decided she was done with this subject. She actually preferred to go back and
talk about the more uncomfortable side of her being a freak now than this. “So
as you can imagine after that, there was no way I was enrolling in school for
senior year. Drew didn’t even try to convince me anymore. She knew it wasn’t
happening after that. And the very idea that I’d ever show my face at any
parties or anywhere in that town to socialize was completely buried. Drew
dropped that as well. I was afraid to run into Danny, so I hardly left the house
after that. I was certain that I was doomed to be a lonely hermit forever.” She
bit her lip and glanced at him quickly then looked away. “But I still had urges,
strong ones now, and I really began to feel like the freak everyone made me out
to be because I was doing it more often.”

She wouldn’t look at him now. How could she admit the next part?

“Charlee, babe,” he said, kissing her hand. “I know it’s
embarrassing for you to admit, but not only are sexual urges normal sex in
general is huge. Let me assure you, you are not the only one with urges. It’s
what marketing and advertisers bank on. They use sex to sell everything because
that’s how powerful it is. It goes all the way back. Why do you think all those
famous sculptors who are hailed most for their tastefully artistic sculptures
happen to be the ones who sculpted naked people? Artistic my ass, it’s the sex
appeal that everyone is drawn to. As freaky as it may’ve made you feel or think
you were, it’s perfectly normal.”

She didn’t want to argue, but he didn’t know the half of it, and
she had to explain last night. The look in his eye earlier when he thought she
was crying because she might not be over Danny was telling of what he still
might be wondering about her behavior last night. “I bought toys, Hector. At
seventeen, I ordered stuff on the internet all on my own. No one encouraged me
or told me about these toys. I looked them up all by myself, bought prepaid
credit cards, and I purchased sex toys—more than one.”

He seemed stunned for a moment but then regrouped looking almost
relieved, not disgusted, and nodded. “And there you go.
The
adult toy and porn industry—huge.
And why is that?
Because
sex sells.
And why does it sell so much?
Because it
feels damn good.
You’re far from being alone on this, Charlee.” Suddenly
his face soured. “I just found out a few months ago my mom went to some party
with her girlfriends and my aunts.” He shuddered, pretending to gag with his
hand at his neck. “She told us it was a sort of Tupperware party with margaritas
and shit, and Abel and I found the flyer a few days later. It was an adult toy
party.
My mom!”
He shook his head, looking absolutely
disgusted. “As much as it makes my skin crawl, it’s normal for everyone to be
in touch with that side of themselves.”