Allison
There was still no proof Leonardo was the same guy in Sarah’s past. Allison continued to remind herself of this even in the wake of Leonardo’s sudden silence.
“What do you wanna know?”
His stony tone only knotted Allison’s insides up further. Sarah had been understandably vague. But the few facts that did match when Sara’s sisters-in-law were far more willing to revisit what Sarah had referred to as a “lost memory” until now, did point at Leonardo. And now here he was not exactly confirming it but definitely not denying it.
“Can you start by telling me why you did it?”
He was silent again for a moment, unnerving Allison to no end, before responding. “I was perfectly upfront with you about having done some bad shit in my past. I’m not gonna sugarcoat anything for you, babe. I was an asshole back then. Everything I did then was for selfish reasons. There was money in it for me, so I agreed to do it.”
“I know it’s all in the past, and I’m not holding any of it against you, but I’m curious about something else. She said you did it because you claimed to have feelings for her. Was that a lie too?”
It was the part that made the least sense to Allison. If he was interested in more with Sarah, why have her believe she was a long-lost brother? She knew it shouldn’t matter, but for whatever reason, it did. It made her nervous because all his other offenses he’d been forced into. Of the long list of things he’d admitted to being part of, while wrong, most were in self-defense, retaliation, or straight out ordered by the cartel. This seemed more personal. She doubted the cartel had much to do with how he went about deceiving an innocent young girl. And so far, Leonardo had made it a point that he wasn’t about that.
“Look, baby. I told you all the need-to-know stuff. The heavier stuff in my past. But there’s a lot of the pettier shit I spared you.”
“Pettier? You tried to con her. You followed her to Havasu.”
She heard him exhale loudly. “Okay, I’m gonna be honest about this one. It’s something that never should have turned into what it did. But I never expected it to go more than a few emails.”
He explained the convoluted story about being approached by a man who had a job for him. When someone had a job for him back in those days, it never involved anything legal or moral. He was supposed to get close to her by lying and saying he was her long-lost brother so he could get some info about some lost jewels the man was after.
“At first, I didn’t even want to do it. I’d gone through all her social media. He’d given it to me to do my homework on her. But when I told him I wasn’t doing it, he mentioned who he could get to do it instead: some asshole I knew would take one look at her and do a lot more than just get the info from her if he ever got her alone.”
“So, you did it to be noble?” Allison did her best not to sound as sarcastic as she felt.
“No,” he retorted immediately. “No. I was still gonna get paid. I went into it with every intention of lying and scheming to get him what he needed and be done with the job. Obviously, in two weeks, there was no way I could catch you up with every fucked thing I did in my past, but I refuse to lie about anything that comes up. I’ll admit I did begin to think I felt something for her. At that point in my life, no decent girl in her right mind would give me the time of day, and I didn’t expect them too. So, I’d never even tried. She was the first girl I’d gotten close to, fake or not, who was a nice girl. A good girl. But there’s something else I hadn’t planned on sharing this soon, only I have to now for you to completely understand about this.”
Once again, Allison sat and listened to another hair-raising story about her boyfriend’s past. This time she sat on the beach as she stared out at the beautiful moon. She’d walked out there and away from the still ongoing party after the second interruption and Leonardo’s near outburst.
Leonardo explained about the first time he became a man. “I was thirteen. I’d never even kissed a girl. I was living with my mom in Yuma, Arizona by then, and my dad drove me over the border a few days after my thirteenth birthday, where I got my first taste of the cartel whores. Ali, I’d never even held a girl’s hand. I’d only begun experimenting with taking care of myself that past year. Suddenly, I’m thrust into manhood just like that.”
He paused when this time he was interrupted by someone saying something to him in the background. “Hold on,” he said as he proceeded to yell back that he was good.
Allison gulped hard as what he’d just told her sunk in. For as much as he’d been through in life, with all the experience he had over her, had they been the same age, at twelve-years-old she’d have been the one far more experienced than him. At least when it came to sex. Somehow, that revelation was oddly mollifying. It calmed the worrisome thoughts that had begun to fester today that maybe they were too different as he’d insisted at first. As different as they may seem, their pasts were sadly a lot alike.
Leonardo apologized about the interruption then went back to telling her about the night he lost his innocence. “In one night, I experienced more than some grown men ever experience in their lives. I’ll spare you the details, but use your imagination. Just about everything we’ve done and then some I experienced in one night.”
Despite his saying that, at the time, it was the best damn birthday gift he’d ever gotten, the rest of the story was told with an air of resentment. He said one of the few requests his father had granted his mother was to let Leonardo continue school like all the regular kids.
“It wasn’t even until I was in high school and I listened to the goofball guys my age talk about getting to second base and feeling up a girl they were into, that I realized I skipped over all that stuff. At the time, I thought it was funny. I thought them all fucking lame. Who the hell gets so worked up over making out or feeling someone up? But later, when I was older, going on nineteen and getting laid way more than most guys my age, it felt like something was missing. It’s, uh . . . the real reason for my piercing. For a few years after getting it, I honestly thought it’d been the answer I was looking for.”
He paused for such a long moment Allison had to ask if he was still there. “Yeah. I am.” But he went quiet again. “Allison, I’d never share this kind of shit with you because God knows I wouldn’t want to hear about your sexual experiences, but I’m only telling you this because I need you to understand this. That piercing is as pleasurable for you as it is for me. Back then, the added pleasure of seeing these chicks’ eyes light up with a mix of curiosity, dread, and excitement was hot as fuck. Feeling what it added to their orgasms was what I thought I’d been missing until I met Sarah, and I never even kissed her. I’d never been inclined to get that close to a regular girl: a sweet innocent girl with a normal life—normal family. I could excite her with the simplest things, like talking about our fake dad and relatives she’d never met. It was so fucked up because, apparently, she’d never had any family but her mom. So, seeing her eyes light up over something so trivial like the possibility of meeting her brother—me—for the first time in person, did something to me. It was refreshing to talk to a girl about regular things, not drugs, or pushing tricks, or discussing jobs and shit. For the first time in my life, the thought of kissing a girl excited me. It was when I realized I didn’t just skip over that exciting but gradual change from innocent kid to manhood; I was robbed of it.
“So, instead of dropping the act when it was clear she didn’t have the answers the guy who hired me needed, I kept it going. I knew before I met her in person that it was pointless to continue with the sham. If I worried about it now with you and all that illegal shit is behind me, it was even worse then, when I was at the height of that lifestyle. There was no room for a girl like that in my life. But I thought if I met her just once I could get her out of my system.”
He explained about Havasu. He lived there, he didn’t follow her there, and when he found out she’d be there, he hadn’t been able to resist finding her and hanging out for the day. “But nothing ever happened between us, and when I realized nothing ever would, I tried to make a clean break. Only I hadn’t counted on her being so hurt when she found out the truth. So, I made one last ditch effort to explain. And, yes, I did tell her I had feelings for her, because I thought I did, but I know now they weren’t what I thought they were. They weren’t what I yearned to feel and thought I never would. I know this because what I felt then doesn’t even begin to compare to what I’m feeling now with you. With her, it was just the idea of it that excited me. With you, it’s the real deal.”
“How did you just do that?” Allison whispered.
“Do what?”
Allison gulped, willing the fear and doubt away. So, he’d nearly conned another girl into believing he was really her brother who was just as excited to meet her as she was him. Leonardo had been nothing if not honest with Allison thus far. Vanquishing her qualms, she decided to be just as honest as he’d been so far and say it. “I went from dreading asking you about Sarah, to falling in love with you all over again.”
She heard him chuckle under his breath. “Well, that’s good to know. Very good to know because it happens every time I hear your voice and see your face, Ali. It scares the hell outta me.”
“Sup! Sup! Super Sonic!”
Allison turned to her gracelessly dancing very white friend with a laugh and asked Leonardo to give her a sec. “Are you drunk?”
Drew held a shoe in each hand and shook her hips, missing every beat so bad it almost looked like she was doing it on purpose. “No, but I love this song!” Drew proceeded with her awkward moves, and to Allison’s surprise, continued to follow the rap song playing word for word. “. . . yeah, it’s finally my turn to rock the mic. Because my devastating beats I know you will like.”
Allison laughed even louder this time. “How in the world do you know the words to this ancient song? It’s gotta be as old as you are.”
“Older,” Drew clarified. “But my mom and grandma used to clean the house, listening to the eighties and nineties music.”
That only made Allison laugh even more. She could just picture Drew’s lily-white mom and granny dancing around the house and rapping to this song. “Come dance with me!” Drew insisted.
“I’m on the phone.”
Paying Allison no mind, Drew was back to rapping along loudly with the song word for word. This time even Leonardo was laughing. “Go dance with her, babe,” he said then added, “Her, not any of the single ballplayers.”
While Allison was sure he was serious about it, his tone was far more playful than it’d been earlier when they’d touched on that subject.
“Got it.” She smiled big. “No single ballplayers for me. I’ll call you tomorrow when I’m on my way home.”
“I can hardly wait to see you again,” he said, making Allison take a big relieved deep breath.
She’d begun to think this night might end badly. Instead, she was walking on air again. “Me too. I love you.”
“I love you, too, baby.”
With Drew still dancing so close by, their goodbye was cut short. As soon as Ali hung up, Drew was pulling her back to the party with her. They waddled through the sand until they were back on the cement. The song Drew had been singing was over, but the next one had everyone jumping, so Allison and Drew didn’t bother putting their shoes back on. Instead, they proceeded to the dance floor and began to jump. Clearly, someone was requesting music in Drew’s mom and grandma’s era because Allison knew this one was an old one too.
As expected, Drew knew the words to this one too. “Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin . . .”
Laughing again because she would’ve never thought Drew would be into this music, Allison didn’t even care that they were quickly joined by several guys. The song was not the least bit romantic or even sexy. It was fun, and she decided after the stressful night she’d had listening to Sarah and her sisters-in-law’s account of Leonardo’s con, she was just going to enjoy herself now.
“Jump up, jump up, and get down!”
Allison turned to see AJ’s uncles dancing and singing even louder than Drew. That explained who might’ve requested this music. The guy dancing across from Allison smiled at her with a little too much smolder. Allison smiled back politely then turned to Drew as the only part she knew came up and they both chanted it together, jumping even higher with each word. “Jump! Jump! Jump . . .”
It went on forever it seemed because Allison was a sweaty breathless mess by the time the DJ slowed it down. The same guy who’d smiled at her earlier approached her as bodies started coming together on the dance floor to the slow song playing. He touched her elbow gently. “Dance with me?”
That close, Allison could see just how good-looking he was. She smiled, feeling bad because she was sure a guy like him wasn’t used to being turned down. She knew it would be awkward, but there was no way. “I’m sorry, but my boyfriend wouldn’t like that.”
The smile waned ever so slightly, but he nodded and walked away. She turned to walk off and came face-to-face with a curiously smiling Lila. “Your boyfriend?”