The Saints of the Cross (12 page)

“What are you doing here, Alexander?” Laurel asks, folding her arms across her ample chest. In an attempt to hide my lack of one, I pull the front of Xander’s jacket closed.

“Hey, Xander!” Jude gives him an enthusiastic fist-bump. “Are you going to soccer practice tomorrow?”

“Depends on how late Camilla keeps me out.” Xander shrugs. “I don’t think an eight a.m. practice is sounding too good right now.”

“I hear you, brother,” Jude commiserates.

“You didn’t answer my question,
Alexander
.” Laurel’s hands are on her hips, and the scowl on her face is the stuff of legends.

“That’s because I was ignoring you,
Laurel
.” Xander finally turns his head to her, defiance narrowing his eyes.

Laurel crinkles her face at Xander. Her stone-gray eyes fall on me with the same horrid disdain. She huffs something under her breath and then abruptly turns and storms off, a plethora of obscenities filling the cool night air around her.

“That’s a real peach you’ve got there, my friend,” Xander says to Jude as we watch Laurel stomp away.

“Yes, I know,” Jude exhales. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow, Xander. Evie, make sure this bloke makes it home. Camilla sure won’t.” Then Jude is gone, chasing after Laurel like a lost puppy as she weaves through the crowd.

“What was that all about?” I ask, a little shell-shocked from the drama. “I feel like I’ve walked into an episode of ‘Gossip Girl.’”

Xander guffaws long and hard, then looks at me with serious eyes. “That show can’t even come close to the craziness that goes on around here, Evie. There are definitely no saints at this Cross.”

Yeah, I’m already starting to realize that.

CHAPTER 8

Xander was right. Camilla did end up spending the night locked away with Christian in his room. I only saw her come out once to go to the kitchen. On her way back to his room, she glanced over at Xander and me sitting on the sofa in the family room and flitted me a look that said:
go for it!—
which I ignored. I found it distasteful that she left me alone with complete strangers, all of whom—save for Xander—were completely stoned off their rockers. But then again, I understand why she did it: for the love of a man. Who am I to judge?

I find talking to Xander incredibly easy and enjoyable. He keeps the conversation light and polite, never asking me questions that might be considered too personal. We mainly discuss Washington, DC: the sights, the sounds, and all the cool things to do. He makes me promise to go out with him and Camilla as soon as I am settled in my new surroundings. I don’t discuss my life back in Spain, my relationship with Javier, or my recent dreams-slash-memories of my mother. I just want to enjoy his company and not end up a sobbing mess.

Most of the party-goers have left by eight a.m. at which time Camilla finally pulls herself away from Christian and stumbles into the family room, where Xander and I still sit talking. To say she looks like she’s been hit by a Mack truck is an understatement. Her hair is knotted up in a mess on top of her head and her makeup is nonexistent, except for a smudge of mascara across her right cheek. She’s wearing a men’s Harvard Lacrosse t-shirt and, apparently, nothing underneath. She squints at us through heavy eyelids.

“Hey, you two. I wondered if you’d stay all night.” She yawns and plops down on the chair next to the sofa.

Xander grumbles and exhales a deep, long breath. “Oh, you really wondered, did you, Camilla?”

She looks at him with wary eyes.

“What?” she asks defensively.

“Every damn year you make me come to this stupid party so I can presumably drive your drunk ass home, but every damn year you end up spending the night in Christian’s bedroom, and I’m left waiting on the off-chance that you might decide to go home because you get in a fight with him. At least this year you had enough common courtesy to bring along someone beautiful and interesting for me to talk with. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

For a second, I think I see steam rolling out of his ears, but I take the comment about me as a compliment.

“Xander, you ass! I make you come so you can meet people, you pathetic jerk. So you can meet a
girl
.” She looks over at me and gives me a wicked wink. “Not so you can drive me around. Damn, who are you calling idiotic? You’re dense as hell!”

“Jesus Christ, Camilla! I don’t need your help finding a girlfriend.” Xander’s face goes three shades of red, and I feel a twinge of sympathy for him.

“Oh really? I don’t think the last one you had was such a gem, Xander. And you found her all on your own,” Camilla says, her expression smug.

“Shut up, Camilla.”

“I’m just sayin’.” She shrugs and stands up. Addressing me, she says, “I better get you home before your dad calls out the troops. I’ll get changed and be right back.”

“He’s actually a sailor,” I yell after her as she bounds off toward Christian’s room. Xander bursts out laughing.

“See what I mean about her?” he says, shaking his head. “She’s insufferable.”

***

Camilla drops me off at my house at noon. When I find my phone sitting atop my dresser, it’s chiming with the voicemail alert. Great. I snatch it from the dresser and the display is flashing three voice messages: two from Javier and one from Coralea. I listen to Cora’s first:

“Hey, hooker. Just calling to check on you. Did you make it to DC safe and sound? Anyway, call me back a-sap. Just wanna make sure you’re okay. No news on this front, if you know what I mean. Later, babe.”

The sound of Cora’s voice and her usual too-cool-for-you shtick make me smile. I click on Javier’s first message next:

“Corazón, call me as soon as possible. I need to talk to you. Don’t text me. I need to talk to you about something.”

I don’t know why, but a feeling of dread begins to work its way through me. Feeling the anxiety numbing my extremities, I click on the next message he’s left me:

“Eva, I have something very important I need to tell you. Please call me as soon as you get this message. Where are you, anyway? Why don’t you have your cell phone on?” Then a moment of throat clearing followed by another moment of silence. “Bueno, I’ll talk to you soon.”

I hit the call-back button, as panic grips me. What could possibly be so important that would make Javier, usually level-headed, sound so anxious? The call goes immediately over to his voicemail, and my heart sinks.

“This is Javi. Leave me a message.”

If I could kick myself right now, I would. How could I be so careless as to leave my cell phone at home on the first weekend away from Javier? I leave messages four more times before my grandmother calls us down for dinner. I’m guessing that he’ll call me back sometime late during the night, as there is a six-hour time difference between Madrid and DC. It is seven p.m. in DC right now which means it is one a.m. in Madrid.

We’re not allowed to have our cell phones at the dinner table, but when I hear the familiar ringtone coming from the direction of my bedroom, I promptly ask to be excused. Without waiting for an answer, I run up the stairs and slam the door behind me. I grab the phone and see that it’s not Javier calling. It’s an unknown number.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Evie. I see you made it home alive.” I recognize the voice; it’s Alexander Bartolomeo.

“Yeah, finally. What’s up, Xander?” I hope I don’t sound too impatient—but I’m about to crawl the walls waiting for Javier’s call. “Wait. How did you get my number?”

“Camilla got it from her dad,” he reveals, a bit defensive. “I guess your uncle gave it to her dad, so that she could contact you when you moved here. Something about showing you around and introducing you to people.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say, with an apologetic laugh.

“Camilla and I are going to a club in DC tonight to watch Christian’s band. Want to come?” He sounds nervous, and I feel a little guilty. I may have given him the wrong idea last night.

“Thanks, but I’m waiting on an important phone call, so I should probably stay home tonight.”

“Really? Sounds like an excuse to me.” His voice is teasing, but I suspect he truly means it.

“No, I promise you, I’m really am waiting on a call.” I laugh, trying to lighten the conversation and my stern tone.

“Well, you have a cell phone, right?” Now it’s his turn to sound impatient.

“Yeah.”

“Then I don’t understand why you’d have to sit alone at home waiting for a phone call when you could just as easily answer it at the club,” he reasons. I know I’m defeated in this argument. “Besides, I need someone to talk to. Camilla will be all over the front of the stage giving the evil eye to all the other chicks swooning over Christian. She’s all about marking her territory at these shows.”

I laugh at the visual of Camilla ardently defending her territory. It could be pretty entertaining for a Saturday night, and, true, I
could
take Javier’s call there. Although I don’t think he’d appreciate me being underage in a club with people I barely know, which brings me to my next, more pertinent argument.

“I don’t have an ID,” I whisper into the phone, just in case one of the evil twins is eavesdropping at the door.

“No worries, we’ve got it covered,” he answers, and I wonder what the hell he means by that. But I guess I’m going to find out sooner rather than later, because for some reason, I’m finding it difficult to say no to him.

“So,” he says, “what do you think? How about we pick you up in thirty?”

“Oh, all right!” I sigh. “You win. See you in thirty.”

“Awesome! See you then. Bye,” Xander says, sounding like an excited thirteen-year-old at a Comic-Con event, and he disconnects at his end.

I go back down the stairs to the dining room where everyone is finishing their dinner. Grandma Winnie has started clearing the serving dishes. I ask Dad if I can go to out with Camilla and promise to be back by midnight, as we will be attending Sunday morning mass at five a.m. with Aunt Matilda and Uncle Calvin. Dad reluctantly agrees. I suspect he is doing everything in his power to make this adjustment more tolerable for me, although he may not necessarily agree with what I want to do. I feel grateful for his trust.

I run back up the stairs, spritz my curls with spray gel, and slip on my favorite dark-denim miniskirt and a gauzy, black, butterfly-sleeved blouse. I decide to wear black, strappy heels and use a heavier-than-usual hand while applying my makeup, hoping I’ll look twenty-one instead of like a pre-teen. The curse of having pale skin is that I can never tan, which makes me look years younger than I really am. The freckles don’t help. Neither does the flat chest. 

As I’m finishing up, a car horn blares impatiently outside, and I peek out my window. Although the night is pitch black, I can still see Camilla’s BMW convertible, with the top up, in the driveway. I grab my iPhone, turn the ringtone up to full volume, with vibrate on, and stuff it into the miniskirt’s front pocket. There’s no way I’m going to miss Javier’s call this time. As I run to the front door, I yell “goodbye” in the general direction of the living room, where Dad and Grandma Winnie are watching reruns of
America’s Most Wanted
. I hear Dad say “Not too late, Evie,” as I slam the front door.

Camilla’s tapping her fingers on the steering wheel and looking impatient when I get to the car. Xander is sitting in the back seat, texting.

“Hey, guys,” I say as I close the car door. “I told my dad I’d be home by midnight.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Camilla scoffs as she eases the BMW out of the driveway. She looks at me like I’m the biggest idiot she’s ever met, but I ignore the glare she’s giving me and shake my head. “Well, that’s not going to happen, so maybe you should text him later and say you’re going to be late. Make up some excuse, like we’re stuck in traffic. It won’t be a total lie. The show’s not even over until eleven thirty. There’s no way we’ll make it back in time.”

“You know what?” Xander pipes up, and I turn to look at him. He’s sitting up straight and taking up the entire backseat with his head flush against the roof of the soft-top. It’s as if he’s one of those circus clowns in a tiny clown car. I’d laugh, except at the moment I’m too annoyed with Camilla. Instead, I give him a weak smile. He leans forward until his face is directly between Camilla and me, and I get a whiff of his cologne. He smells wonderful, like a meadow in a pine forest after a late-summer rain. No kidding. I inhale again, and he continues, “Why don’t we drop by my house. I’ll drive separately so I can leave a little earlier and bring Evie home on time. Jude and some other guys will be there for you to hang with after we leave.”

“Whatever,” Camilla replies, her eyes narrowing at me. “That’s fine with me. I’ll probably stay at Christian’s house tonight, anyway.” Camilla shrugs, but the annoyance is obvious in her voice.

“Shocker.” Xander retorts and flicks a smile at me. I mouth
thank you
to him.

***

Xander follows us into the city in his Land Rover. We find street parking—a miracle on a Saturday night in DC—just outside of Club Trinity. There’s a line of people wrapped around the block, mostly girls dressed in sparkly hooker attire. Camilla marches right up to the bouncers at the door—two tattooed, unusually large Asian men—and whispers something to the particularly burly one. She extends her hand to him, and he stamps the back of it. The three of us cross under the red-velvet rope he’s holding up, and the other bouncer stamps first my hand and then Xander’s. Cries of protest come from the line of people, who undoubtedly have been waiting for hours, and Camilla turns and sneers at them. Xander grabs her by the elbow, then wraps his left arm defensively around my shoulders and leads us inside.

Systemic Purgatory is already on stage. There’s Christian in front playing his guitar and singing with a voice that doesn’t seem to match him at all. It’s a nice voice, but there’s no hint of the British accent whatsoever. He sounds smooth, like Marvin Gaye, even though he’s screaming through most of the song. Those magnetic, blue eyes of his fall on us, and a devilish grin tilts his mouth. Again, I have to remind myself that he’s Camilla’s boyfriend, but it’s hard—because seeing him up on stage thrashing on that guitar and wailing into the microphone, sweat beading on his face, dials up his hotness quotient by a thousand. I glance to my right, and Xander’s staring at me with a defeated expression. I flick my eyes away, feeling my face flush, because I know he’s caught me ogling Christian. Thankfully, Camilla didn’t. She’s too busy giving the stink-eye to a group of girls dancing right in front of the stage where Christian is standing. She makes a beeline to the stage and positions herself between the enemy and her man. Christian smiles and, when the song is over, he kneels down to kiss her on the forehead. I look around at all the frowning faces, and I know that every girl’s heart breaks—except mine, of course—when he does this.