The Story of You and Me (7 page)

My heart dropped into my stomach. Mr. Gorgeous was with Ms. Gorgeous. Just as nature intended; just as the world was supposed to be. I broke out into a sweat. I felt
 
every scab on my face, every puncture on my back, everything that was wrong with me as I stood here in this local eatery packed with impossibly beautiful people, the exception being me—Ms. Plain. Ms. Bruised. Ms. Diseased.

There was no way Alejandro would ever be interested in me. He was just doing his job. He was just being sweet. I was simply his latest rescue case.

“He’s busy,” I said. “Thanks for the beer, Nathan. See you around campus?” I smiled up into his face, beguiling. Friendly. Completely fake. Held my beer bottle up and we toasted.

He smiled at me. “Absolutely. Looking forward to it.”

I turned to leave.

“Sophie?”

“What?”

“You’re new in town. You probably know you’re beautiful—”

Nathan had a sense of humor.

 
“—but you might not realize that you’re different from most of the girls around here. All of us Drivers are intrigued.”

“Who are the other Drivers?” I frowned.

He pointed to a nearby table. Two handsome college-aged guys were watching our conversation and tipped their glasses in the air toward us in acknowledgment. “Right now there are only four of us. That said—we have a short code of ethics. One: Don’t drink and drive. Two: Do your best to take the keys away in a non-violent fashion. And three: The Driver who meets a pretty girl first gets dibs on her until he screws it up. I’m really hoping that happens tonight. Go talk with Alex.”
 

I frowned. I was already a pawn on too many boards. I had not come here to be a player in one more game. “Another night.”
 

“Reconsider?” Nathan asked. “The quicker Alex screws it up, the sooner the rest of us have a legitimate shot at you. Don’t get me wrong. He’s like a brother. But, you know how sibling rivalry works. You’d make three guys very happy by simply having a conversation with him.”

 
I looked over at Alex and the gorgeous girl. Now she was whispering into his ear, their faces touching, both of her arms wrapped around his neck. One of his circled her waist. They were a beautiful couple. Healthy, attractive and would most likely live long, happy lives. They were made for each other.
 

“I’ve got a better idea.” I chugged the rest of my beer. “Why don’t you just tell Alex thanks for me. And tell him I said he can forget the other night ever happened.” I placed the bottle on a table. “Feel free to tell him that.”
 

Nathan looked confused and I walked out the front door.
 

* * *

The two cookies, sadness, disappointment and probably a touch of anesthesia that was still wearing off had killed my appetite. So I skipped the fast food and made my way back toward my apartment. This time I knew the route. Turn left at the Gap store. Walk four blocks. Turn right on the street with the three lemon and orange trees on the corner.
 

Hold on—every corner seemed to have three lemon and orange trees. But I remembered to keep on walking until I hit the street where the apartment buildings had yellow, dark red and pink rosebushes out front. This corner only had red rose bushes. But the overwhelming scent of lemons distracted me.

Grocery store lemons never smelled this good. Only lemony fresh furniture polish smelled this good. I stopped and reached up to snap one from the lemon tree. But it eluded my grasp.

“Wuss,” Alejandro said.

Crap.

“What?” I slammed back on my heels.

“Wuss,” he said from the sidewalk and stepped onto the grass as he made his way toward me. “You came to see me at the Grill but then you left? Why’d you chicken out?”

“I did not chicken out. What do you want?” I backpedaled into a rosebush and jumped when a thorn poked my butt.

“You totally chickened out. You’re acting weird. What do you mean, ‘The other night never happened.’ Of course the other night happened. You’re not telling me something. Be honest with me.
What do you want?
”

“I want you to go back to the Grill and leave me. Just leave me alone.” I refused to let those seductive hazel eyes of his suck me in and returned my attention to the lemon tree. I balanced on my tiptoes and reached up for a juicy one high overhead, slightly out of my reach. I was grabbing a lemon and going home. I don’t care if he stripped naked right now in front of me and whistled the “Star Spangled Banner.” I would Not. Look. At. Him.

His hand brushed against mine, snapped the fruit off the tree and held it out to me. Unfortunately, he was not naked. I sighed and took the lemon as my heels dropped back onto the ground.

“Your answer doesn’t cut it, Bonita.”

I suddenly missed Oconomowoc, my Wisconsin hometown. Where lemons didn’t smell lemony and I already knew and had turned down the majority of the Alpha Boys. “Look Alejandro, Alex, whatever I should call you…”

“Call me whenever you want.”

“…I’m not a wuss. I’m simply the new girl in town for summer session at USCLA who had one bad night.”
 

Make that two nights in a row.

“Thank you for helping me,” I said. “That’s why I went to the Grill. To thank you. And now you can leave.”

“You’re welcome. But I’m not leaving without an explanation why you left the Grill with your weird ‘the other night never happened’ remark.”

“Fine. You’re obviously a guy who has a lot of stuff going on, a lot of chicks coming and going, no pun intended.” I stared up into his beautiful, now frowning face.
 

“How do you know the number of chicks I have coming and going?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. I’m too young and I’m also too old for these kinds of games. You need to go back to the Grill, find a hot girl, maybe that raven-haired one that was all over you. You need to drive her some place, bang her and carve another notch in your belt.”

“Are you talking about Lucina?” he asked. “The girl with the dark short hair who kind of looks like me?”

Maybe she did kind of look like him.

“What’s her name who was swirled all over you like icing on a freshly baked cinnamon roll.”

Alex laughed out loud. Then covered his mouth and laughed with a snort. The same way I did. “Lucina’s my cousin. Yes, she’s gorgeous. She’s also a lesbian. She pulls the whole fake seduction thing with me every time she meets a new girl that she’s interested in and wants to test her. Will that girl fight for her attention? Or see her with me and simply let it go? Her technique separates the serious suitors from the ‘maybe-I’d-be into it for a night’ bi-curiosity.”
 

“Oh,” I said. “Smart on her part. Good technique.”

“Right now, Bonita, I’m not seriously involved with any girl.”

 
So—how many girls he was not seriously involved with?
I stared at his chin because I couldn’t look him in the eyes. “I know about the Drivers. I know you all compare notes, compare chicks you rescued and have a—” I did the quotation mark in the air thing with my fingers. “—code of honor. I don’t know what goes on at your headquarters or if you even have one. ’Cause I don’t really know what you do or why you do it. I also don’t know if you record the girl, list your conquests on an Internet page and chalk them up on a board or whatever. But FYI? I am Not. That. Girl.”
 

I walked away from him toward my apartment, which I now knew was only one block away.
 

“Are you out of your mind?” Alejandro followed me. “I will cop to dropping daisies on your doorstep, as well as cookies. But if you think I put your name on a board, somewhere? Anywhere? Well, you’re just plain wrong. Wait. I did put your name on the ledger at the USCLA Emergency Room. Excuse me.”

I glanced at Gidget and Cole who spied on me from behind the curtains through his open kitchen window. And I gazed at Alejandro who stood on my front lawn, a frustrated look on his face.
 

“You’re funny. You’re smart. You’re different. I want to spend time with you,” he said. “Is that a sin?”

“No.”

“Then, why are we standing out here,
again
, on your front lawn, in front of your cookie-thief neighbor and his creepy dog while we try to figure out our next step?”

“Uh!” Cole grabbed Gidget, slammed his kitchen window shut and then his curtains.

“Do you have a next step in mind, Sophie? Because if you do, I’d really like to know what it is.”

“Yes,” I took a deep breath. “I want to know, I want to ask…Would you drive me?”

He frowned. “Why?” He leaned in toward my face, totally catching me off guard. His lips were an inch from mine. I bit my lip. Was he going to try and kiss me? But he didn’t. Instead he sniffed my breath. “Are you drunk?”

“Are you high?” I pushed him away from me. He stumbled for a second and stared at me like I was a wacko. “Of course I’m not drunk. I had one beer.”

“Some people can’t even drink one beer—”

“That’s not it.” I threw my hands up in the air and paced back and forth on the sidewalk.
 

How much truth should I tell him? How much should I keep secret?

“You showed up at the Grill tonight. I understand the Lucina thing might have looked confusing. I hope I cleared that up,” he said. “Now’s the time for you to tell me what you really want. Because if you don’t want anything from me? Now’s also the time I need to move on.”

I took the deepest breath I’d taken since I’d landed in L.A. “Look, Alejandro. I’m sorry if there have been misunderstandings. I don’t know how you all handle things here, on campus, in L.A. Whatever. But—”

“But what?”

“I want to hire you.”

“For what?” He cocked his head to one side and raised an eyebrow.

“For driving. People tell me you’re a great driver.”

“That’s because I am. Which doesn’t answer my question. Why do you want to hire me?”

“Because I can’t drive here. This place is too big, it’s too much. I get lost so easily. I don’t have a car. I took the bus yesterday to an important appointment. I mapped out the whole trip. I arrived on time. I thought I had it all figured out. But on the way back I got lost and it was kind of a mess and almost a disaster. I can’t do this on my own. I just can’t.”
 

I felt my face shoved up against the chain-link fence while Oscar restrained and ground up against me.

“You said I wasn’t completely honest with you.”

“You’re not,” he said.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m not just here for summer school. I’m here to…” My mind trailed off.

I’m here to participate in a hospital study where they knock me out, inject stem cells cells into my spinal cord and the very best outcome is? Cells don’t proliferate next to my spinal cord. Malignant tumors don’t grow into my brain. Nothing shitty happens to me.
 

Alejandro snapped his fingers. “Finish your thought.”

 
“I’m here to research and interview alternative healers for a book proposal. My grandmother encouraged me to turn it into a non-fiction book that we are creating together. I need pages done by the end of this summer. I need an outline, chapters and a great pitch that we can send to lit agents.”

I’m here to voluntarily be a guinea pig for any kind of healing. No matter how strange it is—I’m up for it—if that kind of healing could actually save a life.

“I’m asking you to drive me to places in L.A. where these people are,” I said.
 
“Because, after today, I don’t think I can do this on my own.” I gazed into his hazel eyes flecked with gold. Got lost for a moment before realizing I was me and he was him and we were two persons, not one. That I needed to pull myself out of a delusional fantasy and attend to the real reasons I came here.

Alejandro reached out and cradled my face in his hands. Brushed his thumb over my cheek. “Half your face is healing. The other looks like some of your cuts broke open. What happened?”

“I can’t…”

“You
can.
Why
won’t
you tell me?”

Because I wanted him to be part of my healing—not part of my fear.

I shook my head and pushed back tears of frustration. “Can I count on you? Will you drive me?”

He took my hand and held it between both of his. His touch was warm. Strong. My pulsed raced, but I felt safe. Like I was coming home.
 

“Yes, Sophie Marie Priebe,” he said. “Yes, I will drive you.”

Chapter Seven

“U of W, Whitewater?” Alejandro asked. “Why not Madison?” He drove his black shiny Jeep down Pershing Drive lined with squatty apartment buildings, gas stations and tall palm trees with more dead fronds than live ones. We were on the way to my appointment in Playa del Vista.

“I’d planned on Madison, but Whitewater was closer to home.”

“Lots of people go even farther away for college. Why did you want to be close to home?”

“Maybe I get homesick easily? Besides, you said you’re from around here, right? And you’re going to USCLA.”

“Point taken. What’s your major?”

“I keep waffling. I was thinking about pre-Law. But then didn’t think I’d be up for law school after.”

“That kind of kills the pre-Law thing.” He pulled into a turning lane and flipped on his signal.

“So I’m shooting for a B.S. and see where that leads me.”

Probably back to another surgical room and a cold, hard operating table.

“You’re thinking about transferring here in the fall, right? USCLA isn’t that easy to get into. But if you have a good GPA and applied right away—it could happen.”
 

“Nah. I’d miss the fall weather and Green Bay Packers’ football and frost on the windows and all the leaves turning gold, orange and red.”
 

“We have an awesome football team.”

“They’re not the Packers. I’m only here for the summer.”

* * *

Alex maneuvered his vehicle into a small parking space at a tiny strip mall. In the distance you could hear the planes rumble as they took off and landed at LAX, L.A.’s behemoth airport.