Chapter 20

TWO MONTHS LATER.

Welcome to Burbank.

I walk from the bus stop to my corner store and pick up some eggs and a bunch of bananas. On my way home, I pass house after house with identical floor plans, little cottages built in the ’50s. They all have bright green lawns.

I’m copying my brother and growing out a beard. My hair is longish now. With the curls I look like a cross between Jim Morrison and a Mexican Jesus.

This is a nice neighborhood, quiet and well behaved, but just to be safe, I always wear long sleeves and keep my tattoos covered up. I don’t know any of my neighbors. I’m just a stranger here. To be honest, I like it. Being alone doesn’t bother me.

The days are getting colder. The wind blows through my hoodie. I have to buy a real jacket soon.

My apartment complex is small, twelve units total. There’s a courtyard with a palm tree. My apartment is on the second floor.

I live alone even though I have two bedrooms. For a week, Eddie tried to live with me, but he got bored and took the bus back to East L.A. At first I was angry with him, but I’ve come to realize he’s his own man. He has to find his own way.

Today was leg day at Defiance, so I make myself an omelet and a protein shake with two bananas. I eat my breakfast at the counter, then wash my dishes and put them away.

Surprise, surprise—my place is neat and tidy. Not that there’s much to keep clean. I’ve got a new mattress and one armchair from the Goodwill store. That’s it.

Instead of going straight to bed, I take off my shoes, open my blinds, and sit in the armchair. In the light from the window, I open one of the books Alan gave me about the history of beer. I read a chapter about Trappist monks.

Would I make a good monk? Shit, I’m living the life of one right now. Minus the prayer, I guess.

I doze off with the book in my hands.

Someone knocks at the door.

Who’s visiting me? No one visits me.

I get up and look through the peephole.

It’s Vanessa.

What the fuck?

I look again, just to make sure.

Yeah, it’s her.

I run a hand through my hair.

What’s she doing here?

Get a grip, Sal.

I unchain the door and open it.

I haven’t seen Vanessa since the night of the fire, but she’s lived in my head nonstop for the past eight weeks. Night and day, thoughts of her push out all my other thoughts. For the luxury of every memory, every wet dream, I pay a high price—regret for the mistakes I made. Regret for the way I lost her.

But thoughts of Vanessa can’t compete with the reality of Vanessa, standing here at my front door.

My whole body wakes up from its two-month nap. My blood heats up, melting my heart until it starts beating again.

She’s wearing boots and jeans and a soft sweater that rides her curves. Her long dark hair is loose and she’s wearing her red lipstick, I think, to kill me.

“Hey.” My voice sounds far away. Nervous and scared.

“Hey.” She looks at my chest and my beard and my hair and the apartment behind me, but she avoids making eye contact. “I’m just here…to…uh, give you this. It was sent to the house by mistake.”

She reaches into her purse and takes out a thick envelope. It has my name on it but her address. It’s from Greenbriar University in Glendale.

“Oh, shit.” The words escape my mouth before I realize I’ve said them.

“Exactly.” She holds up the envelope higher. “Take it.”

When I take the envelope, she turns to leave.

“Wait,” I say quickly. “Can you stay while I open it?”

“What?”

“You helped me write the application. I don’t think I can do this alone.”

She looks at the envelope in my hands and then up into my eyes at last. Pain flashes between us for a moment before I open the door wider and say, “Just for a second. Come inside.”

She brushes past me and the scent of her strawberry shampoo goes straight to the pleasure center inside my brain. That’s the smell of lying naked in bed with a beautiful woman. That’s the smell of three orgasms a day. That’s the smell of soft skin and wild mornings and falling asleep on her pillow after she goes to work.

Just like that, I’m hard as a crowbar.

I adjust my boner so she doesn’t see it.

She looks around my apartment. “So this is your place?”

“Yeah, yeah. My friend Alan loaned me the money.” I try to see it from her perspective. No one would be impressed by this. “Uh, I got a chair.” I point out the boring beige armchair. “It’s really comfortable. Have a seat.” I move the book out of the way.

Vanessa looks at me with an eyebrow raised and sits down.

I look at her for a moment and try not to feel what I’m feeling, but it’s hopeless.

This is my apartment. This is my chair. Vanessa is sitting in my chair in my apartment just like she sits in my heart. There is only one seat in my heart, and it’s hers. It will always be hers.

“So,” she says.

“So.”

“Are you going to open it?”

Carefully, I tear open the envelope. Inside is a full-color folder of the university and a group of smiling students clinking beer bottles. The folder is stuffed with flyers and documents, but right on top is a letter from the director of the hospitality management program.

“Read it,” Vanessa says. She’s excited for me, which means way more than whatever is written in this letter.

“ ‘Dear Salvador Rosas, Congratulations on being admitted into the Brewing Science program at Greenbriar University. It is my pleasure to welcome you to this innovative program and to offer you a full scholarship. We were impressed by your application. You placed among our top group of applicants, and we are excited to have you join us.’ ”

I blink. “Hold up. I have to read that again.” I read the letter to myself a second time. At the bottom of the letter is a handwritten note from the director. We enjoyed your beer. Well done.

Vanessa’s smiling. “You got in.”

“I got in.”

“With a full scholarship.”

“With a full scholarship.”

I look at the letter, front and back. This has to be a joke. Why would they want me? I didn’t hide that I dropped out of high school. They know I got my associate’s degree in prison. I’m a fucking lowlife. And yet…they’re going to pay me to attend their school?

Vanessa takes the letter out of my hands and reads it to herself.

“You sent them a beer?” she asks.

I smile. “Yeah.”

“What kind of beer?”

Alan and I bottled the second batch two days ago. He’s selling it as a special edition at Bay City Brews, but he says the recipe belongs to me. “Do you want to try some? I have a bottle in the fridge.”

She glances at her watch. “It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

“You mean it’s beer o’clock.” I go to the fridge and take out the bottle. I put it on the edge of the counter and smack it. The cap flies off.

“You make beer and you don’t have a bottle opener?” she says.

“What?” I say. “It’s open, ain’t it?” I pour a glass for her, complete with a foamy head.

She takes the glass and clinks it against my bottle. “Congratulations, Sal.”

We drink. I watch her as she takes a sip. She smiles and takes another. “What is this? It’s delicious.”

“This is a Hefeweizen flavored with hoja santa. I got the idea sitting in your backyard. The flavors complement each other. Spicy, not bitter.”

Vanessa takes a third sip. “What do you call it?”

Alan had his graphic designer make up a special edition label using the Old English font from one of my tattoos. I hand Vanessa the bottle. “You gave me the idea for the name too.”

She reads the label aloud. “Eastside Pride.” She turns the bottle back and forth in the light from the window. Golden sunlight fills the brown glass.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” I say quietly.

“Sal—”

“Every moment, Vanessa. Every moment is filled with you. With regret over what I did to you.” My arms ache to embrace her but I hold back.

She puts the bottle and glass down on the windowsill. “Why? Why did you lie to me? I’m a big girl. I grew up in the hood, same as you. I can handle the truth. Why didn’t you respect me enough to tell me the truth?”

I kneel on the carpet in front of her. “I didn’t want to lose you,” I say. “If you knew the truth about me, you’d kick me out of your life. If you knew the truth about how scared I was, what a fucking coward I was, you would have made me go.”

“People can’t leave gangs,” she says quietly. “Can they?”

“Not really. If you drop out, if you stop taking orders, any homeboy has the right to take you down if he sees you on the streets. That’s what happened the night of the fire.” I look into her sad eyes. “I thought I could figure out a way to cut myself loose. To convince Ruben to let me go. But I wasn’t brave enough or strong enough to do it. By the time Demon and Spider showed up at the house, I was too late.”

I decide to tell her everything that happened the night of the firebombings up to my visit with Spider in the hospital. If the police come to question her, she can tell them whatever she wants—it’s her choice. But she deserves to know the truth.

When I finish the story, I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“If you’re retired from the gang and Spider tells the homeboys to leave you alone, why did you move away from the neighborhood?” Vanessa asks.

“After everything that happened,” I say, “I knew I had to leave. To start over. The guilt and the regret were too strong.” I look up at her. “Every time I thought about how I hurt you—it was like stabbing a knife into my chest, again and again.”

Vanessa is quiet for a long time. I don’t know what to say, so I just sit there, waiting. At last, she wipes her eyes with her fingertips and shakes her head. “My mascara,” she says. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Sure,” I say. “Down the hall.”

I hear the door close and the water run. When it opens again, there’s silence.

“Sal?”

I stand up and join her in the hallway. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s that?” Vanessa points. The door to the spare bedroom is open and spread out on the carpet is an old bedsheet. There’s a toolbox and steel wool. The little bicycle that used to belong to Vanessa is upturned on the sheet where I’ve been removing some rust from the frame.

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Uh, about that.”

I follow her into the bedroom. She examines the bike. “I thought I told you to throw this away.”

“Right. So technically, I didn’t steal it.” I smile at her but she doesn’t smile back. “When Yoda towed your grandfather’s truck, I put this in the bed and told him to hang on to it for me. I don’t have much to do in the afternoons. Restoring this has been a good way to pass the time.”

“Were you going to sell it?”

“Sell it? No.” I turn the wheel. “I was planning on having it ready by Christmas. I was going to have Eddie deliver it, Christmas morning, all dramatic. The tag would say, ‘To Muñeca. From Santa.’ ”

Tears fill her eyes. “Motherfucker,” she says.

“Do you mean motherfucker in a good way…or a bad way?” I ask.

“I was so lonely. You have no idea how lonely I was, every day with nothing but work and my kid and bills. Then you come into my life, and Sal, it was like I came alive again.” She sobs. I want to wrap my arms around her, but still I hold back. She slips into Spanish, the language we use for our deepest feelings. “It’s like you woke me up after I’d been asleep for five years. Every part of me, awake and alive. But now, without you, I’m twice as lonely as I was before. As if being happy for a short time only magnified my loneliness instead of weakening it.”

I watch as she runs her fingers over the dusty streamers on the sheet.

“I heard you passed your test,” I say. “I’m proud of you. I knew you would.”

She nods but says nothing.

“I’m sorry, Vanessa. I’m sorry for that night, for everything.”

“I know.”

“You and me, we happened real fast,” I say.

Vanessa smiles sadly. “When it comes to guys, I don’t really know how to go slow.”

For the first time in two months, I reach forward and cup her cheek in my hand. Her tears are warm. The touch of her soft skin turns my willpower to dust. My heart pounds against my rib cage.

“How about we try it now?” I ask.

“Try what?”

“Going slow.”

“Slow, huh?” She looks up at me. “I’d like that.”

Vanessa lets me lead her into my bedroom. As I remove each piece of clothing from her body, I run my hands over her exposed skin. My nerve endings drink in her softness. Down to her pink lace bra and panties, she lies down in my bed—technically, my queen-size mattress on the floor—and holds out her arms.

“Come here,” she whispers.

I lie down over her, pinning her hips to the mattress with mine. She runs her fingers through my hair and pulls my head down into a soft, sweet kiss. I nip at her red lips. She parts her teeth and I slip the tip of my tongue between them. She licks me and a jolt shakes my entire body.

“Your beard—it’s rough,” she whispers against my lips.

“Should I shave it?”

“No. I like it.”

Her hands slide underneath my clothes and soon she’s stripped me down to my boxers. With a clever wrestling move, she flips me onto the mattress and straddles me. Through the lace of her panties and the cotton of my boxers, I feel her heat.

She runs her hands all over my chest as she takes a slow ride, grinding down on my hard cock. I rest my hands on her hipbones and look up at her.

This girl—this woman—drives me crazy.

So smart and sexy and tough.

She took a chance on me once and she’s taking a chance on me again.

I will not let her down a second time.

It’s my turn to pull her down into another hot kiss. The last of our clothes melt away and I hold her feverish body against me. Pinned against her soft stomach, my dick is hard and wet. She is so perfect I wonder for a moment if I’m dreaming, sitting in my armchair nudging a book about Trappist monks off my lap with my steel-hard cock.

Vanessa breaks the kiss and starts a slow journey down my body. She kisses my neck just below my beard. She kisses my shoulders, my collarbone, and my chest. With the tip of her tongue, she swirls my nipples. My head drops back on the pillow and I close my eyes. This feels too good to be real. Too good to be anything but a dream.

Her hand slides down my abs. She grabs the base of my cock in her little fist and gives me a hard pump. With a happy sigh, she wraps her lips around the head of my cock and starts to go down on me. She sucks me hard while teasing the head of my cock with little flicks of her tongue. At the same time, she kneads my shaft in her fist, stroking in time with her mouth.

It’s too much. I have to hold back as I push her back gently.

“Not yet,” I whisper.

I lay her on her back and cover her neck with kisses. I knead her tits and suck on her dark nipples until the hard, pretty tips turn rosy from my tongue.

When I reach down between her legs, my fingertips drown in her wetness.

“I’m still on the pill,” she whispers. “I haven’t been with anyone since you.”

I kiss her full red lips and swirl my fingertip around her hard little clit. “I haven’t been with anyone since you either.”

She spreads her legs for me. I take my dick in my hand and slide it up and down her swollen lips. She’s slick and hot. My whole body aches to dive in but I massage her clit with the head of my cock until she’s trembling, grasping on to my forearms like she’s falling off the edge of a cliff.

“Please,” she says.

I press the head of my cock against her opening and push. Her tight lips stretch to crown me. She shuts her eyes tight and holds her breath. I lift myself up on my arms and swing my hips forward, slamming my dick into her so deep I can feel her wetness on my balls. We moan. I pull back and slam into her again. She arches her back. Goosebumps break out all over her body. I pull back once more—this time almost to the tip—and thrust hard.

“Whatever you want in a man,” I whisper in her ear. “Whatever you need. I want to become him.”

She opens her eyes and touches my face. “Don’t be stupid,” she whispers. “You are already what I want in a man. You are what I need.”

Hot blood races through my veins. I lose myself in Vanessa—her touch, her voice, her scent. The way her pussy milks me, urging me on with each thrust until I can’t hold back. I grab her hips and with the tip of my dick, thrust hard against her sweet spot again and again and again until her entire body locks up.

“Sal,” she whispers, “I’m going to come.”

When her orgasm rips through her, I let go. We come together, grabbing on to each other and cursing, the pleasure so strong it binds us together like fire fusing two pieces of glass into one.

Afterward, we hold each other. Our legs are tangled together under the covers. Vanessa strokes my arm from shoulder to wrist and back again. When her fingers rest on the fading bruise, I flinch.

“Tell me about this.” She looks into my eyes. “Tell me the truth.”

One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is return to therapy. For a long time, in my head, admitting I needed help was the same as admitting defeat. But now I know this isn’t true.

I hold my arm up to the light where we can both see the bruise. “This—this is my anxiety,” I say. “I self-harm.”

As I explain what I’ve learned, Vanessa listens. I tell her about my therapist. I tell her about negative thought patterns and coping skills.

“At first, I thought therapy was complete bullshit,” I say quietly. “But then I gave it a chance. It helps.”

“How often do you see your therapist?”

“Once a week for one hour.”

Vanessa takes my wrist and gently brings my arm to her lips. I hold my breath. When she kisses the bruise, my soul cracks open.

“I’m proud of you, Sal,” she whispers.

For the first time in weeks, the anger and regret and sadness in my chest go silent. Now I feel a deep sense of peace. Even stronger than that, I feel a sense of possibility—Vanessa and I have a future together. It’s as bright and beautiful as she is.

Right before she falls asleep, she says, “I missed you.”

I kiss her forehead and stroke her hair.

I wish I could bottle up this moment and save it for a million years.

“I missed you too, hermosa,” I whisper.