Buried (Hiding From Love #3) Read online

"No," he replies softly. His hand reaches out as if he’s going to touch my face, and then he quickly drops it back to his side, shaking his head gently as he does so. "It doesn't sound stupid. It sounds like you're every bit as smart and kind as I always thought you were. I've known girls who needed someone like you."

  I feel something inside my chest sting suddenly. Juan knows girls. Given what he looks like, Juan has probably known lots of girls—known them very well. I’m pretty sure I don’t like that idea. I’ve always thought of Juan as belonging to my family—to me. It’s a ridiculous idea, but one that stuck.

  "Well, anyway, that's why I'm here." The sensation in my chest is making me increasingly uncomfortable. I need to leave. I just have to. "And, uh, it's why I need to get back to it. It was nice to see you." I give him a tight smile.

  "Yeah, of course," he says, his expression grim. "You take care, Beth."

  "Okay." I falter, unsure what to do next. "Um, you too."

  He nods, the mask he wore when I first saw him slipping back into place. 2"Hasta la vista, linda," he whispers before he turns and walks away, into the house.

  The sound of the door closing firmly drifts out to me as I stand on the grass, looking at the spot where he was moments ago. My head is swimming with things that don't make sense. It’s all too much—again. Too many feelings in one body, one hour, one moment, one heart.

  I walk to the patio at the women's house, grab my notebook, and head to my car, sensing that my life has just blown up and I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

  * * *

  1 Chica = little girl

  2 Hasta la vista = see you later

  IT’S the same dream I’ve had nearly every night for four long years. I wake from it in a cold sweat, my jaw clenched and my hands shaking. I lie in the dark, trying to will the images out of my mind, but I know it’s of no use. They stay there like some sort of fungus growing and spreading over the walls of my soul until someday everything will be black, infected, smothered.

  Images and sensations careen through me in random order. The music that was pounding, the roar of the car engine as we drew closer to the house where the captain of the Bustout Boyz—the BBz—was crashing. The pop, pop, pop of the guns. The look in her little eyes as she crumpled to the ground, a woman screaming and exploding out of the house while windows shattered and our tires squealed. Then the smell of the gunpowder and the pitch of Lobo’s voice as he shouted over and over, “You killed a kid, motherfucker! You killed a kid!”

  It’s been days since I ran into Beth, and I can’t stop thinking about her. Beth was only two years behind us in school. She was David’s little sister—supposed to be off-limits, a baby, someone to tease and find annoying. But I never admitted to David—or anyone, really—that I always had a thing for Beth.

  Even as a little girl, she was gorgeous, all long, thick hair and big, brown eyes. Her 1madre used to put her in these sweet cotton dresses with tiny straps on the shoulders and ruffles at the bottom. She looked like a doll—until she got old enough to take clothes off by herself. Then she wandered around in nothing but little girl panties and bare feet, following David and me from the front yard to the back yard as we played soldiers and superheroes. When I look back at my childhood, there really isn’t a period before I was seventeen that I don’t remember Beth as intimately a part of my world as David was. At home, it was just me and mi madre. At David’s, it was David and Beth.

  By the time David and I were in high school and Beth was thirteen, I was hopelessly hooked on her. She was the prettiest, smartest girl I knew and fun as hell even though she was two years younger. I remember I used to make up all sorts of excuses why we couldn’t sleep over at my house so we would have to go to David’s instead—all because I wanted to look at Beth Garcia across the breakfast table on a Saturday morning.

  I had lots of fantasies about her when I was a teenager. I dreamt about how I’d go away to college and come home over vacation when Beth was a senior. I’d tell her how I felt and she’d say that she felt the same way. Then we’d go off to UT together when she graduated. I’d become a lawyer and buy her a big house in San Antonio in one of the old neighborhoods with the Spanish-style mansions.

  I went to San Antonio once when I was a kid. My mom was helping a friend clean house for a party a rich doctor was having. It was a giant two-story stucco place, red-tile roof prominent above the wall that enclosed the whole property. Live Oak trees covered the yard, giving it this air of established, almost Southern gentility. There was a circular driveway for guests and a smaller back driveway for the ‘help.’ My mom’s friend was their live-in maid, and she had her own apartment over the garage. It was a choice job for an undocumented worker. The kind of job my mom was never able to have because of me. No one wanted a live-in maid with a kid.

  After the trip, that house and neighborhood—that way of life—became my ideal. I went through the rest of elementary school and on into junior high and high school with the dumbass fantasy that I could own a house like that someday. I actually dreamed that little Juan Martinez, whose mother had brought him across the border in the back of a furniture moving truck when he was two, could get an education—a law degree, no less—and become one of San Antonio’s elite.

  By the time I was fifteen, Beth Garcia had become part of my fantasy as much as the house. In Beth’s family, you were expected to go to college, to make something of yourself. Beth’s parents were respected. Her father was looked up to. David was going to go to UT. There was never any question. I knew that, if I could marry a girl like Beth, be part of a family like that, I’d have made it.

  Yeah, when I was fifteen, I thought I could have it all.

  I was a fucking fool.

  Now, I lie in the tiny bedroom of the halfway house, on the single bed they’ve wedged in along with a dresser, and I can’t stop thinking about her. It’s like having your teenage-boy wet dream brought to life in your own backyard. I keep telling myself that it’s just because I haven’t gotten laid in four years, but somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I know that’s bullshit. Still, I hold out hope that, if I could find some willing homegirl to blow me, my desire for Beth would fade.

  The biggest problem with that plan is that all the homegirls I know are RH women. I text one of them and the RH will know where I am within five minutes. Not that they don’t already, but me making first contact is like a big invitation to ‘come get me.’ The last thing I need is them breaking me out of here as if they’re doing me some favor. Then I’ll be in violation of parole, and it’ll be just a matter of time until I get picked up again and sent back to the big house. I’ve seen it with my hermanos in the gang over and over. The RH doesn’t give a shit if you get sent to la prisión. They just want to use you, wherever you are. And as long as I’m in this halfway house, they can’t use me. If I don’t make contact, they’ll wait patiently until I’m released. Otherwise, they’ll take me out and put me back on the streets.

  So, without some attention from an RH woman, my only outlet for the building pressure in my groin when I think of Beth is my right hand. And that’s what I find wrapped around my dick when I envision the way her tits stretched out that cotton top she was wearing in the yard the other day. Latina girls have it going on when it comes to T and A, and Beth is no exception. She’s stacked, with a tiny waist and the roundest, softest set I’ve ever seen. My hand squeezes my shaft harder as I imagine putting my mouth on those rosy nipples.

  I stroke up and down, harder, faster, my eyes drifting closed and my neck arching at the thought of her mouth where my hand is. Those perfect pink lips slick with my juices, moving up and down, over and over. My balls draw up, and everything south of my waist tingles as an excruciatingly hard orgasm drives through me. The waves are so intense that I’m left breathless, struggling to stay conscious and remember where the hell I am. Not in my childhood bed. Not in David’s room at his parents’. Not on a sofa in a seedy apartment in the 2barrios of Austin. Not in a prison cell. No, I’m
in a halfway house. Safe for the first time in so many years that I hardly remember what it feels like. Safe. But only for now, and never safe enough to be with Beth.

  No matter how much I think I might still love her.

  * * *

  1 Madre = mother

  2 Barrio = neighborhood, generally poor

  MY roommate, Jill, has a new girlfriend. This is never a good thing, and it happens frequently. As much as I adore Jill, she runs through women like some of the worst manwhores I’ve ever known. She likes them young, buxom, and dumb from what I can tell. Jill is in love with lust, so for the first two or three weeks of a new relationship, it’s like a lesbian lovers’ fiesta at our place. New girlfriend will be here night and day. There are breakfasts in bed, movie nights, nonstop giggling, communal showers, and articles of clothing left draped over random pieces of furniture.

  My sister, Alexis, can’t understand why I put up with it. “You’d never tolerate a guy roommate acting like that,” she tells me. And maybe Alexis is right. What she doesn’t understand, though, is that, underneath the womanizing crap, Jill is one of the loyalist, most honest friends I’ve ever had. There are never any doubts about whether she’ll support me, never any questions about whether she’ll be there for me. Jill is one hundred percent on my side—always. So I tolerate the girlfriends coming and going, although I have to admit that I’ve quit trying to learn their names.

  When I come home from class the day after seeing Juan at the halfway house, I walk in and step right on a pair of denim cut-offs lying on the floor of our tiny living room. Guess that means Jill and the flavor of the month are here—hopefully in Jill’s room and not on top of the kitchen table like last week.

  “Jill!” I call before stepping farther into the house. “I’m home!”

  I hear giggling followed by a door slamming. Relief washes over me. Good thing I’ve learned to announce my presence.

  Kicking the cut-offs to one side, I make my way across the creaking oak floors that are everywhere except the kitchen and bathroom. Our little house is one half of a duplex and has exactly two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. The entire thing measures eight hundred fifty square feet. It’s a dollhouse, but it works for us. Jill is in my program in women’s studies, but she’s already done with classes and writing her thesis. She works nights bartending at a gay bar on Sixth Street. I’m still taking a class, researching my thesis, and volunteering at the halfway house during the days, so we’re on opposite schedules for the most part.

  I make my way to the kitchen, grab a Monster out of the fridge, and head back to my room. Once there, I get out my laptop and Google Juan Martinez, conviction, Travis County, 2010. About one hundred thousand hits pop up, but of course probably only the first twenty-five are actually useful. I start with the second item, a story in the Austin American-Statesman newspaper dated July 19, 2010.

  The highly publicized trial of the drive-by shooting of seven-year-old Amanda Johnson concluded Wednesday in Austin when prosecutors gave closing arguments to the jury, urging them to convict known Reyes Hispanos gang member Juan Martinez and sentence him to the maximum allowed by law, twenty years in prison.

  The case has been controversial because of the inability of police to prove that Martinez was the gunman in the car. Without solid evidence that he was the one who pulled the trigger, the charges were reduced to accessory to a drive-by shooting, a second-degree felony. The penalty for that offense is as little as two years in prison and a maximum of twenty. Family members of the child shot and killed have been protesting the reduction in charges throughout the eight-week-long trial. The victim was believed to have been the niece of a member of the Bustout Boyz, also called the BBz. In recent months, the BBz have been in a violent turf war with the Reyes Hispanos.

  Due to the fractious nature of the parties involved in the case, police have kept a lid on both the investigation and information regarding which Travis County facility Martinez is being housed at. The defendant is being kept in solitary confinement for his own protection, and extra security measures have been in effect at the downtown Travis County courthouse throughout the duration of the trial. The Statesman will continue to follow the story as it develops and bring you the latest information on the reading of a verdict. Simply follow the story online at…

  My heart beats double time as I read, imagining Juan being in that kind of danger. I try to imagine what it would be like to fear for your physical safety every moment of every day. Wonder what it would be like if the person who just walked into the room was trying to kill you. What if you had to watch every face for signs that he was the one who was going to end your life? What kind of person would you become when you lived like that every day? Would you ever feel normal again? Can you ever see the world the same way after that?

  I close the computer and stare out the window over the desk. The trees outside are swaying gently in the late afternoon breeze, and the sky is full of big, puffy, white clouds. I look down at my hands, surprised to see them shaking. I swallow, my throat so dry it’s painful. It occurs to me that I might be in mild shock. I know Juan was in a gang. I know he was in prison. But it crystalizes for me that it was all theoretical until this moment. Now that I’ve seen him, talked to him, read some of the details of what happened to him, it’s real. Too real. So real that I’m not sure what my stunned soul should do with it all.

  Mentally and emotionally exhausted, I move over to the bed and lie down, curling in a ball and hugging my pillow like a lover. For a long time, I stay that way—motionless, feeling nothing. Then, finally, when I think maybe sleep will simply take over, the tears start. They aren’t hard tears. They don’t submerge me, but rather envelope, welling up from someplace deep inside and sliding out to coat everything until I feel saturated—inside and out. It’s a painful, quiet sensation. Not a sharp pain, but a crushing pain, the kind of weight that attaches and then travels with you, day after day, year after year. Juan’s life isn’t the sort of thing you ugly-cry about. It’s too dark and too serious for that. It isn’t a soap opera or an in-your-face reality TV show. Juan’s life is a tragedy, pure and simple.

  The drops of salt water roll slowly down my cheeks as my heart presses against my rib cage so hard that it aches. When I close my eyes, I see the boy I knew as a child. I remember his mother and the way he used to hug her when she’d come to pick him up after a playdate with David. “Te he echado de menos,” he would tell her—I missed you.

  I think about the man I saw at the halfway house, his hard eyes when he first looked at me and then the way the brittle layer cracked open when he laughed, his full lips turning up and revealing the perfect, white teeth that are so familiar to me. I try to reconcile those memories with the story of his trial, his imprisonment, and most of all, his crime. Could that sweet, loving boy I watched grow into a talented young man possibly have shot and killed a child? Would he have hidden behind the sturdy metal of a one-ton machine and gunned down an unprotected innocent?

  And can I really yearn to be around a person like that? I fear the answer to that last question—it’s ‘yes.’ He is all I’ve been able to think about since I saw him. Like there’s some sort of magnet that pulls me back to memories of him, questions about him, feelings for him, over and over. My stomach churns at the idea that I could possibly be attracted to someone who would murder, someone who could kill without remorse. Can I be that woman? One of the women I’ve studied and taught and fought for? A woman who has so little faith in herself and her values that she would give them up at the drop of a hat for a beautiful man who paid her attention?

  The answer has to be ‘no.’

  I make it ‘no.’

  I reassure myself—I’m not weak; I never have been. I’ve never relied on a man for my self-esteem. I’ve had my share of boyfriends, but I’ve never needed approval from any of them. I’ve lived my life the way I wanted, believed the things I wanted, been who I wanted. I respect myself, my opinions, the Beth who lives deep
inside and makes decisions about people and events I encounter.

  I simply don’t believe that Juan is the man the newspapers talked about. The boy I know is still inside somewhere. He may have strayed, but I know deep in the very fibers of my being—he isn’t lost. A man who would gun down a child is lost, and Juan isn't. He might be buried beneath the years of suffering and deprivation, but he isn’t lost.

  As the sky outside darkens and eventually turns to night, I make a decision. I’m going to find Juan—the real Juan. I’m going to bring him back from the dark, deep place of pain and punishment he’s been living in since that fateful day when he was seventeen. I know who he is. I’m going to remind him who he is, and then I’m going to make sure the world knows him too.

  I’VE got an appointment with the vocational counselor they’ve set up for me. He’s supposed to help me decide what kinds of jobs I should apply for after my cuff gets removed. I don’t know why the hell I need to see a vocational counselor for that. It’s no mystery after all. I’m a convicted, violent felon with a history of gang involvement that goes back to before my eighteenth birthday. I don’t have a real high school diploma and no job experience beyond the lawn mowing and soccer coaching I did in high school. About the only job someone like me gets is a dishwasher or a parking lot attendant. And if you're on the run from the RH, it had better be a job off the books and out of sight as well.

  The guy meets me in the former garage of the halfway house that’s been remodeled into an office. He’s about thirty-five and Latino. I’m sure they set me up with him intentionally. The penal system is always very conscious of my ethnicity.

  “How you doing, man?” he asks as he puts his hand out when I enter the room.

  I shake his hand and give him a chin tip but don’t answer verbally.