Chapter 14

I’m hard by the time I reach the top of the stairs.

At the end of the hall is a bedroom. Its door is half-open. I step inside.

A big picture window overlooks the street and the park. The glass is old and distorts the light like a lens. On the far side of the room, another window is open. A breeze passes over my face as I close the door and lock it behind me.

The room is not messy, but it’s full of things. Against one wall is a chest of drawers with a couple of perfume bottles and framed photos on top. The closet door is open. Dresses and clothes in dry cleaning bags hang inside. In the middle of the room is a bed with a huge wooden frame—dark wood. A big dark red quilt covers the bed. Underneath my bare feet is a thick oriental carpet.

Vanessa’s bedroom. I didn’t think I’d ever find myself here.

By the open window is a small desk piled with books. Vanessa shuts her laptop, turns off her desk lamp, and stands up from her work. She yawns and stretches. She’s wearing a pair of jean shorts and a gray tank top that lifts a little to show off her belly. When her yawn fades, she smiles at me.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey, schoolgirl,” I say. “Is it time for that study break?”

She runs across the room and jumps into my arms.

There are so few times in my life that anyone has ever been this happy to see me. My body doesn’t know how to take it. My chest grows hot. I’m jumpy and giddy. When Vanessa kisses me, I have to stop myself from enjoying this too much.

For the hundredth time, I tell myself to disconnect.

Some people have angels and devils sitting on their shoulders. I have two Sals. Stupid Sal sits down with Less Stupid Sal inside my head.

Less Stupid Sal says, “Listen, asshole.”

Stupid Sal replies, “What?”

“Remember, she’s using you for sex. Just enjoy it. Stop catching feelings for her.”

“But she looks like she likes me.”

Less Stupid Sal stands up and slaps Stupid Sal. “She doesn’t like you, pendejo. She likes gangsters. She likes the D.”

Vanessa pulls off my T-shirt and slides down my shorts. I take off her clothes and unclip her lacy purple bra. When I lay her down in the bed, her boobs jiggle a little and my whole body tightens up.

“We can be loud,” she whispers as I slip off her panties. “Muñeca’s at her best friend’s house. Chinita’s with the chismosas. Nobody will be home for hours.”

“The window’s open,” I say. “Don’t you care about that?”

She shrugs. “No.”

I kiss her neck and massage her warm, sweet tits in my hands. “You don’t care what the neighbors will think?”

“What will the neighbors think?”

“That Vanessa Velasco likes to talk to God.” I lick her nipple until it hardens.

She gasps. “Oh, yeah? What else?”

“That Vanessa Velasco likes Salvador Rosas’s dick a lot.”

“Or she pretends to.”

I smack the inside of her thigh as she giggles. “Little thug.”

Her giggling fades away as soon as my lips find her pussy. I’d eat her out in a snowstorm but lying in this big bed, with the breeze and the quiet afternoon outside, I think I could die here. Her flavor fills my senses. Minutes pass. Time slows down. Her gasps turn to little moans and her little moans turn to long silences. She’s holding her breath.

When she reaches down to spread herself open for me, I lean back to look at her. Dark lips, soft as sweet dreams. At her center, a dark pink rose, glistening and alive. She tightens her muscles and I watch her bloom and unbloom.

“What are you showing me here?” I ask quietly. I run my fingertip around the rim of her opening.

She flexes again. “My pussy.”

“Say the other word for it. The dirty one.”

Her eyes are dark as night, all pupil, no iris, like a bird’s. Her voice drops to a whisper. “My cunt.”

I push my finger into her. “Whose cunt?”

“Mine.”

“Whose cunt, hermosa?” I brush her clit with my thumb.

She grunts and shuts her eyes. Her whole body trembles as she fights back the orgasm. “Yours.”

Music to my ears.

The mattress is high off the floor. She’s on her back. I withdraw my hand, climb out of the bed, and drag her across the covers until her head is hanging off the edge of the bed.

“Let’s see what that pretty mouth can do.”

I take my steel-hard dick in my hand and slip it between her open lips. At this filthy angle, I can see my cock sliding in and out of her tight throat, the outline of my shaft clearly marked on her neck. I thrust slowly, giving her a chance to control her gag reflex. When we have a good rhythm, I reach forward and swirl her clit with my fingertips. When she moans, I feel the vibration in my balls.

“There you go. Good girl.”

She takes all of me. I shut my eyes. I slide my middle and ring fingers into her tight pussy and apply gentle pressure to her clit with the pad of muscle at the base of my thumb. She grows wetter. She whimpers.

“Play with your tits.”

The sight of my dick rammed down her throat, plus her beautiful hands playing with her big breasts, plus her hot pussy wrapped around my fingers. It’s too much.

I flex and freeze and hold my breath. Using all of my willpower, I pull out of her mouth. My dick is rigid and dark purple. I’m ready to bust. She climbs back onto the bed and puts her head on the pillow. She’s looking at me as I reach down into the pocket of my shorts for the condoms I brought upstairs.

“I have a surprise for you,” she says.

“What?”

She leans forward and whispers in my ear. “No more condoms. I went to the clinic last week. I’m on the pill now.”

That catches me by surprise. “Are you serious?”

“I’m serious.”

I hold up the condom. “So you don’t want me to put this on?”

“No.”

“You trust me?”

“I told you I do. Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” A weird feeling bubbles up inside me. I can’t figure out what it is—a mixture of nervousness and vulnerability. “So…you can’t get pregnant on the pill?”

“No, Sal.” She pauses. “Well, there’s a zero-point-something chance.”

“They probably have to put that on the package for macho-ass supersperm like mine.”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Don’t make jokes. You want this or not?”

When I was younger and more reckless, I had a couple of close calls. I don’t take those chances anymore. “I haven’t gone bareback in a long, long time.”

She takes the packet out of my hand and puts it on the nightstand. “How about you try it with me?”

This girl is driving me crazy. Making love to Vanessa, skin to skin? My already-throbbing dick twitches. “Yeah. Okay.”

She holds out her arms. “Come here.”

I climb onto the bed. Vanessa runs her hands through my hair and down my back. I kiss her. We close our eyes. Her flavor intoxicates me, sweeter than sugar, stronger than liquor. I’m high when she reaches down and guides my cock into her. I break the kiss, look into her eyes, lift myself up on my arms and thrust gently. She’s warm and wet and slippery. I drag out my dick slowly and her pussy sucks at me. I thrust it back in and she grunts. Without a condom, I feel everything times ten.

We don’t talk. There, in her big bed, I make love to Vanessa slow and deep. This is an afternoon fuck between two thirsty adults. No music is playing. The only thing I can hear are the birds outside and the sound of her breaths, getting quicker and slowing down, matching the way I bring her to the edge and pull her back down.

When my heart feels like it’s going to burst from holding back, I tuck my arms behind her knees and spread her wide. I ride her harder and harder. The springs in the bed are squeaking. The wood frame creaks. When she looks down to watch me fucking her, I know I can’t fight the orgasm much longer.

“You close?” I whisper.

She looks into my eyes, reaches down between us, and rubs her pretty clit with her fingers. At once, her mouth opens around a scream and her pussy erupts around me. The contractions are so strong, I can’t breathe. She squirts—the hell? I’ve never been with a squirter before. I thought that was some made-up porn stuff. But she squirts all over the bedsheets, and before I can make some smart-ass remark, my balls give out and I come.

I come hard.

No, that’s not it.

I explode.

I couldn’t hold back if I wanted to. High as hell, I fuck her through the orgasm. Each thrust is a shot of pure pleasure pounding through my body. I feel it from my head to my feet. I fill her with hot come. She’s still coming, so the contractions in her pussy milk the last drops from me and I think for the first time there has to be a God. There has to be a God who planned out something that feels so good.

When we’re breathing again at last, I kiss her forehead. When we look into each other’s eyes, we automatically start laughing. It seems like the appropriate thing to do.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

“That was so good.”

We both watch as I pull out of her. It’s messy and sweet and good. Like the pervert I am, I spread her swollen lips open with my fingers. Come drips out of her pink pussy onto the bedsheets. I stare, hypnotized. This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Vanessa kisses me and pulls me down next to her on the bed. She rubs my back and arms and face until I’m high as a kite. When I close my eyes, I’m not sure if I’m falling asleep or waking up from a dream. It has to be a dream. Nothing this good ever happens to me.

Her fingers slide down my biceps, down my forearm. Then she stops.

“What’s this?”

I open my eyes. Her hand is frozen on the bruise I gave myself after my run-in with Demon. It’s gotten darker. Blue and purple.

“I hit myself at work,” I lie. “On one of the weight machines. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Jesus.”

“It’ll be all right. It doesn’t hurt. Just ugly.” I don’t like how that lie came out. Easy. I didn’t have to think about it.

To keep her from asking more questions, I grab her and pull her close. I line up our bodies until I’m spooning her. It’s warm in the room but the breeze cools our skin. I take a deep breath and let it out. I stroke the curve of her hipbone and try to understand why we feel so good together, how our bodies click together like two puzzle pieces.

We lie like that for a long time. Just breathing. In and out.

From our spot on the bed, I can see the five photos lined up on her dresser.

There’s one of Chinita and Ben at the beach. Vanessa is six or seven, riding on her grandfather’s shoulders.

There’s two of Muñeca. In one, she’s just a baby in her baptism gown. In the other, she’s on a pony at Griffith Park, laughing.

There’s a photo of Sleepy, looking hard in his white T and khakis, posing on the sidewalk. He’s nineteen. We thought we were men back then, but when I look at him now I think, That’s a boy. That’s a child.

There’s one more photo on the dresser. A mother and a baby. At first I think it’s Vanessa holding Muñeca, but when I look closer, I see that the mother’s eyes are bright green, like Ben’s.

“Is that you and your mom?” I ask quietly, pointing.

Vanessa nods.

I remember the hollow-eyed fortune-teller in the Halloween photo from the garage. “What happened to her?”

“Not sure. She was in and out of my life when I was little, but I haven’t seen her since my grandpa’s funeral.” Vanessa sighs and settles against me. “She first ran away when she was sixteen. Lived in Las Vegas, met some guy and got pregnant. She came back with me a year later.”

“Do you know your dad?”

“Peter Velasco. Truck driver. I know his name and he knows mine. He’s never tried to reach out to me. I don’t want to know him. Not now, not ever.”

I’m quiet for a second. I think about the ways our parents let us down, about the ways Vanessa and I have had to build ourselves from scratch, without their help.

“When I was a little kid, I hated and loved her at the same time,” Vanessa says. “I hated that she left me. I hated that she didn’t care how much she hurt me. But most of all I hated how happy she made me whenever she came to visit. She’d stay for a day or two. We’d have so much fun together. I could pretend I had the best mom in the world. Then she’d sneak away in the night and disappear for years at a time. She broke my heart a dozen times. And I let her. I always let her.”

“You were just a child. Of course you did.”

“When I got older, I realized that all of my hatred had turned to anger,” Vanessa says. “I was angry at her. I still am.”

In silence, I wonder if having a terrible mom is better than having no mom at all.

As if she can read my thoughts, Vanessa says, “I remember going to your mom and sister’s funeral, but my grandmother never told me the details.”

The ancient ache inside me comes back to life. “A car accident.”

“What happened?”

“It’s…a long story.”

“I don’t mind.”

I kiss the back of Vanessa’s shoulder and hold her tighter. This is an old story but I still have to brace myself before I tell it. “When my grandpa was shot, my dad took his place in the gang. He told me my grandmother died of a broken heart.”

“How old was he?”

“Sixteen.”

“Young.”

“It all happens when we’re young, doesn’t it?” I kiss her shoulder again. “He was a daydreamer, a kid with big plans, always thinking up the next new scheme. That’s how he got his name—Dreamer. He met my mom when he was twenty. Her family were all farmworkers from Salinas. She met him while she was visiting family here in L.A. He called out to her in the street. She was with her mom. Can you believe the balls on my dad?”

I laugh, thinking about the anger on my old-school Mexican grandmother’s face.

“He found out where she was staying. Visited her. Courted her, the old-fashioned way. He was such a charmer that her parents and grandparents gave him their blessing when he proposed. This kid—a tatted-up gangster with no family and holes in his shoes. They said yes. On one condition.”

“What?”

“My dad had to go straight. So he did. Charmed the bosses to let him go.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Hollenbeck cut him loose. They even let him stay in the neighborhood. He got work at the slaughterhouse. A good job, at night. My mom and dad bought the house. Had me right away, then my brothers. Last, a girl. She was a surprise. We loved her more than anything.”

“How many years apart were you all?”

“Let’s see. Eddie’s a year younger than me. Mateo’s five years younger. Esperanza was four years after Mateo.”

Vanessa does the math in her head. “You were ten years older than her?”

“Yeah. She was three when she died.” I remember standing at the gravesite. I didn’t know they made coffins so tiny. Next to my mom’s it was like a toy. I blink away the memory to keep from getting dragged down.

“God. What happened?”

“The slaughterhouse shut down. My dad lost his job. It was a good one—a union job with good wages. He was a skilled worker, but there was nothing available like that, especially for that money. He got on unemployment, kept looking, got discouraged. The bills piled up. Four kids and a mortgage payment. My mom cleaned houses and babysat but the money was running out fast.

“My dad started talking to Ruben again. Started hanging out with his old homies, the ones who were still around. I think he was desperate. My mom would yell at him about it. She’d scream the house down. The fights would get so bad, I remember taking my brothers and sister into the laundry room and running the washer and dryer so they couldn’t hear the things my mom and dad would say to each other.”

I take a deep breath. “One night the fighting was so bad, my mom packed a suitcase. My dad was screaming, shaking with anger. She ignored him. Then—I think to really hurt my dad—she took my little sister out of bed and put her in the car seat. My sister was crying. She was wearing her Little Mermaid nightgown. Her hair was messy. My brothers and I stood on the porch. We didn’t know what to do. We told them to stop fighting. We begged my mom to come back in the house. But that night she had made up her mind. She was driving to her family in Salinas. It was a two-lane highway. A drunk driver going in the opposite direction collided with her head-on. She and my sister were killed instantly.” I pause, the pain running through me like lava, hot and slow. “And that’s pretty much when my life went to hell.”

Vanessa says nothing, but I can hear her sniffles and feel the tears that land on my arm. I’m raw from the story, as if telling it has torn open old wounds.

I never talk about that night. In group therapy in prison, I mentioned that my mother and sister passed away, but I never said how.

My dad never talked about it. My brothers and I never speak about it. We share this great shame—the inability to save our mother and sister. The inability to go back in time and find a way—drag them back inside, take the car keys, slash the tires, anything—to undo the damage. To get back everything that’s been lost.

Vanessa turns around in my arms and faces me. Her dark eyes are wet and I regret making her feel bad.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t want to upset you.”

“No.” She touches my cheek. “You didn’t have to tell me. But you did. Thank you.”

I pull her against my chest and stroke her hair. The breeze washes over us. I take another breath and let the pain run its course. I can feel Vanessa breathing in my arms. She makes my anxiety melt away.

How does she do this? What is it about her? About us together?

After a long time, I whisper, “I better get dressed and go downstairs. Chinita might come home.”

Vanessa opens her sleepy eyes and looks up at me. “Listen, Sal.”

“What?”

“If you want,” she says slowly, “you can sleep up here. For the rest of the two months. I mean, if you want.”

If I want? An invitation to sleep in the world’s most comfortable bed in the arms of the world’s most beautiful woman? “Are you sure?” I ask.

“I’m sure.”

I hesitate to tell her the next thing, but she needs to know. “I’m on parole, baby. That means cops can come by at any time and search the house. You understand that, right?”

“Who cares? We have nothing to hide.”

I pause. “What about Muñeca? What are you going to tell her?”

“I’ve thought about that.” She touches my face. “We’ll just tell her…you’re ‘Mommy’s Special Friend.’ ”

“ ‘Mommy’s Special Friend’?” I laugh.

“Yes. ‘Mommy’s Special Friend.’ Who’s having a two-month sleepover.”

I kiss her again and again and again until we’re both ready for round two. We make love slowly, almost lazily, and I pull another orgasm from her sweet, beautiful body. We take a quick shower in her bathroom, get dressed, and head downstairs together. Vanessa hops in the car to go pick up Muñeca. I sit on the porch and watch her pull away.

Just as the afterglow fades away, some fresh anxiety takes its place. It takes a seat on my shoulders, heavy and hot.

Vanessa’s opening her life to me, taking down her barriers one by one. She trusts me.

I’m afraid of her trust.

Ruben owns me. The gang owns me.

I’m falling in love with Vanessa, but I can’t tell her the whole truth about who I am without hurting her.