Felix
From the moment she’d clicked over to take the other call, Felix had been on his feet. Her mentioning it was the third time he’d called had Felix sitting up from his comfortable resting position on his bed. And even though he’d mentioned her being on the other line had been quick, it’d actually felt like a fucking eternity.
Asking her who it was who had felt it necessary to call three times had been pointless. His gut had told him who it was the moment she’d mentioned it was the third call from the same guy. Felix had refrained from asking her anything further about Grayson since that first meeting in the stairwell because he hadn’t wanted to ruin the good times they’d been having. But one thing he’d picked up on from this guy since day one was that, even though she was through with him, Grayson was hardly over her. The day he’d showed up the way he had, forcing her to jump into the squad car with him to avoid a confrontation, was further confirmation. Now this.
He paced as he waited for Ella’s response and hoped she’d be as detailed as she’d begun to be when she told him a little bit about Grayson at the blood drive. Felix ground his teeth now, remembering the frustrating interruption.
“I have no relationship with Grayson aside from trying to keep things amicable.”
“Amicable,” he said, trying not to sound as irritated as that made him. “Like jumping in his car if he ever sees you so much as hanging with another guy?”
“No.” She sighed. “That won’t be happening again. I already told him I won’t put up with that, and he promised he wouldn’t do anything like that anymore. I probably didn’t even have to get in with him that day. I just panicked.”
Felix stopped pacing, feeling a different kind of unease, one that had him fisting his hand. “Are you afraid of him, Ella?”
“No!” she said too quickly.
“The day of the blood drive you said he’d changed. What did you mean? No, you know what?” He reached for his phone charger and plugged it into his phone then lay back down on his bed though he had a feeling the way he was feeling he’d be up on his feet again. “Why don’t we back up a little? Was Grayson your first serious boyfriend?”
“No,” she said softly.
For some reason, that surprised him. But then just because he’d only managed to stay in what he’d consider a serious relationship for a few months—one that ended disastrously—didn’t mean she was the same. In fact, he knew she was very different. Everything about their lives was.
“Can I ask you how many serious relationships you’ve been in?”
He waited, hoping this wasn’t too soon, but given the circumstances and how he’d been completely honest with her about his feelings, he didn’t think it an unreasonable request.
“You can ask me anything, Felix.” As usual, her response only further confirmed what he’d pretty much already known. He was falling for this girl hard. “I’ve had two of what I would consider serious relationships. The first was during my senior year in high school and lasted just under five months. The second was a couple of years later with Grayson.”
It almost hurt to ask, but he had to know everything. “So you’ve been in love?”
“I was with Grayson. And I thought I might be with Gabe, my first boyfriend, but in hindsight, I know now I wasn’t.”
Felix closed his eyes, still feeling the blow to his gut. She’d been in love with that asshole. Was she still?
“What happened with Grayson? What made you fall out of love with him?” He wanted to make sure he never made the same mistake if he was lucky enough to get that far with her, but mostly he needed to know. “Because you did, right? You’re not in love with him anymore, are you?”
“Um . . . no, I haven’t been for a while.”
Felix let out a long relieved breath, but it wasn’t quite as satisfying as he would’ve thought. The slight hesitation before she confirmed she wasn’t was enough cause for concern. Also, she hadn’t broken up with Grayson that long ago. The guy was still visiting her at the gym, and he clearly felt some kind of claim over her still. Why would she continue to have him in her life if things were really over and she no longer had feelings for him?
“My only relationship before Grayson was eye-opening. I’d known Gabe my whole life because we grew up in the same neighborhood. He still lives there. But by high school, he’d started hanging around the wrong crowd. Because of what happened with my sister and all the effort my mother put into keeping us out of trouble, my brother and I vowed never to get involved or hang around with people who were trouble, and Gabe was trouble. By the time I was a senior, Gabe seemed to have gone straight. He was staying out of trouble—or so I thought.” She paused and Felix was on his feet again.
The thought of Ella with other guys was one he didn’t even want to think about, but he hadn’t lied when he first asked her about her past relationships. This was something he needed to know the details of before he was in too deep. It’d been a long time since he’d dealt with feelings of insecurity, and it was probably why he’d been so against getting involved with anyone he felt any kind of connection with. Since his breakup with Bianca, there’d only been one other time he’d even come close to feeling what he thought he’d started feeling for Bianca way back.
“Gabe had always been such a hothead in the past,” Ella continued, “but he claimed he’d changed. He said he’d been in so many fights and stuff only because of the crowd he’d hung out with. Once we became a couple, the drama was never ending. Looking back, I realize now it was our age. All of it was so high school. He was good-looking, and his bad-boy image made him the object of many of the girls’ desires.”
“Yours too?” Felix asked. “Is that what attracted you to him?”
“No.” He heard her laugh softly. “I’d always had a crush on him even before he’d gone bad. His going bad was what actually made me not like him. It was something so deep-seated with me that the thought of hanging around with the likes of him and his friends was something I never considered.”
“So why did you?” Felix asked, sitting down again pinching the bridge of his nose.
This was fucking great. Not only did he have to deal with the fact that she was still very much in touch with her ex—an ex who she’d only broken up with a few months ago and admitted to having been in love with, a guy who no doubt was still completely into her—but now she’d just admitted her other ex, her very first serious boyfriend, was one she’d always had a crush on. Someone who still lived in her neighborhood and with Felix’s luck she was probably still on speaking terms with the guy.
“Because I could see the change,” she said. “He promised me that he had. He knew how I felt about his past. And because we held off letting anyone know we were seeing each other until I felt comfortable about it.”
“Sounds familiar,” he said, hoping she’d think he was feeling playful again, though that couldn’t be further from the truth.
She laughed softly again and he was glad. He didn’t want her to catch onto how fast this conversation had gone south for him.
“But as soon as people found out, the drama started,” she said without commenting on just how similar the way her relationship with her first bad-boy boyfriend was to their situation now. “It wasn’t too bad at first. He got into a few scuffles with some guys he’d heard through the grapevine were saying things about us—about me. Then the rumors of him with other girls started. Everyone knew my stand on not hanging around with anyone who was trouble. So then the rumors of him dealing weed started. I was convinced this group of girls, his ex and her friends, were behind it all. They were bound and determined one way or another to break us up. Am I boring you?” she asked suddenly.
“No, not at all, I want you to tell me everything.”
He wouldn’t tell her that he was glued to her every word now and felt willing to pull an all-nighter with her if that’s what it took to get every detail of her past relationships. He was dying to know how those guys blew it. It was scaring him now that it sounded as if one thing she’d learned from her past experiences was to not put up with shit from any guy. Felix was bound to blow it with her.
“Well, long story short, I found out he was back in contact with the guys he used to run with. He tried denying it at first but then finally admitted he had a few times, so I broke up with him.”
“Just for hanging with them a few times?” Felix asked, even more alarmed now about her no-nonsense attitude.
There was so much that could go wrong with all the shit he dealt with on a daily basis. The paparazzi were just waiting for him to screw up in any way. As soon as it was announced that he and Grecco would be having a rematch, they’d dig up everything and anything that would make headlines about him regardless of how long ago the stories were. He’d never given a flying fuck what they said, but this actually had his blood thrumming good and hard. His ass would get dumped in a heartbeat.
“I didn’t need that in my life, Felix. I made the right decision too. Less than two weeks later he and his brother were arrested for grand theft auto. The only reason he didn’t go to jail was because he was still a minor at the time. I knew immediately that what I’d begun to think, that I might be in love with him, was wrong. It was the weirdest thing.” She stopped as if to ponder. “It was as if the betrayal of it just sucked whatever feelings I had for him right out of me. It didn’t even hurt, and I was so relieved I hadn’t given up my V card to him.”
Felix stopped his pacing. V card? Was she saying she was still a . . .?
“After I graduated . . .” she went on.
Felix stood there in the middle of his room, barely able to catch his breath. Either she was still a virgin or this just made her keeping in touch with Grayson that much harder to tolerate.
“I was so busy with my job, school, the neighborhood watch, and trying to be what my dad called me, ‘the little woman of the house,’ I didn’t have time for a social life. Then Sonia was raped.”
She stopped talking, and Felix wasn’t sure if he should say anything or give her a moment. He decided to wait, with the maddening thoughts of Grayson very possibly being her first still buzzing around in his head. Finally, she spoke up again.
“I look back now, and it’s hard to decide what was harder, losing my mom or going through that and the fear of my brother possibly being charged for murder. At least when my mom died we had time to prepare for it. When Sonia was raped and the guy my brother beat up died from his injuries, it felt so much more devastating especially because I was trying so hard to hold us all together. Memo was losing his mind over what happened to his girlfriend, my dad was beside himself because his son might go to jail for years, and that’s when Grayson came into the picture.”
Felix remembered her mentioning this that first night at Barros when Drew had first brought up the cop who visited her at the gym. He also remembered Drew’s grating comments about what an interesting and romantic way to meet a guy and what great stories these two could tell their kids someday. Most irritating now was Drew’s comment about their breakup being a temporary fizzle.
“He arrested your brother the night of the . . . incident,” Felix said, letting her know he remembered the conversation that night.
“Well, technically, my brother was never arrested, but, yes, he was the officer who took him in for questioning when he was detained that night. It wasn’t until later when we got the news that the guy he’d beaten had died of his injuries that Grayson really stepped up and put us in touch with a great attorney friend of his. He was really like a blessing that came out of nowhere when we most needed him. He kept us all calm at a time when we all felt like our world might come crumbling down on us and assured us from what he knew that Memo would walk away from it without so much as having to go to trial. And he was right.”
Felix could almost hear the grateful smile on her face. Great. The guy was a family hero too.
“Of course, there was still a full investigation,” she went on. “But Grayson assured me it was a mere formality. He said under the circumstances this was a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide, but we still couldn’t help worrying. Hold on,” she said suddenly.
“Is that him again?” Felix asked, feeling every muscle in his body go taut.
“No, Larry’s at my window.”
Felix’s head jerked up; then he glanced at the clock. It was past midnight. “Who’s at your window?”
“C’mon,” she said. “Get in here.”
Felix stood there, stunned. She was letting this guy in her bedroom window? Then she heard the whiny meowing and he exhaled roughly.
“Larry’s a cat?”
“Yeah,” she said then laughed. “Did you think I was letting some dude named Larry in my window right now?”
Now he laughed, releasing a bit of the tension that had built up so quickly. “I didn’t know what to think. You’d mentioned your cat before, but I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned his name. Larry, huh?”
She told him about naming the cat after the caregiver at the hospice where her mother spent her last weeks. He’d been a heavyset cheery fellow who kept her mother’s spirits up even on her worst days. The guy died suddenly of a heart attack shortly after her mother passed.
It was a nice break from the tension-inducing conversation about her past relationships; then just like that the plug on that break was pulled ruthlessly.
“So when Grayson brought me this adorable little stray kitten he’d found while patrolling one night, it instantly reminded me of the stories Larry used to tell us about his cat. It was a no brainer. I named the kitten Larry.”
This was the last place he thought the story about Larry the cat would come back to. Felix lay back down on the bed, feeling a bit defeated. Somehow he was going to have to dig real deep for patience to deal with anything regarding Grayson. So far it sounded like her ex was a good guy—a hero and giver of adorable pets—a fucking blessing! Of course, all this only made Felix hate him more.
Felix hated to go back to Grayson, but now he had to know why they’d broken up. He could only pray it was bad—though the fact that she was still talking to the guy and trying to keep things amicable didn’t give him much hope.
“So why’d you break up with Grayson?”
He heard her take a deep breath. “He told me that he’d wanted to ask me out a lot sooner but didn’t think it appropriate with everything going on, and he also didn’t think it’d look very good if the cop who’d given key statements in my brother’s case was dating me. So that’s why it took almost a year after we’d met for us to start dating.” She sighed softly, and Felix hated hearing even that.
Was she still disappointed things hadn’t worked out? Was that a sentimental sigh reflecting on the memories of her time with Grayson? He squeezed the phone in his hand, remembering how this could get even worse. Before he had a chance to put too much thought into it, she went on.
“He was a sweetheart at first, really polite and respectful as you’d expect from a cop. Then he mentioned having to attend anger-management classes. At first, he said it was because of a minor incident at work between him and a co-worker. He said the department has real strict policies about that kind of stuff so the union advised him to just attend the classes to avoid being written up. I couldn’t even imagine him flying off the handle; he was so sweet.”
She chuckled while Felix felt his skin crawl from having to sit there and listen to her refer to Grayson as a sweetheart and then so sweet again all in the same breath.
“That should’ve been my first clue that he wasn’t as sweet as he was pretending to be.” This time her chuckle sounded more like a scoff, and Felix’s hope that maybe this had ended badly was back. He got back on his feet with his fingers crossed. Then she sighed again. “But I didn’t pick up on the clue, and he continued with the sweetheart act. I fell for it hook, line, and sinker and even began to really fall for him so much so I decided he’d be my first.”
Felix nearly let out a groan as he fell back on his bed, bringing the pillow over his face. God damn it! Grayson had been her first and this after he’d waited over a year to go out with her and probably longer until she decided to let him be her first. No wonder the idiot was so unwilling to just walk away. The guy’s feelings of entitlement were likely off the charts. “So what happened?” Felix asked, sitting up.
“That’s when he changed,” she said softly. “Once we took the relationship to that level, it was as if he became another person. He was suspicious of everything after that. Trust became a major issue even though his suspicions were completely unjustified. Before we started sleeping together, he knew I still kept in touch with Gabe.”
“You did?”
“I still do,” she said matter-of-factly. “After his brother went to jail, he did a complete about-face. He has two older brothers from his mom’s first marriage, and they stepped in and straightened him out. He made it a point to apologize to me, but we’re just friends now like we were when we were kids. Grayson was fine with it until we started sleeping together. All of a sudden he couldn’t stand it, and Gabe was the reason for his first outburst. Even though it was on the phone, I still wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard him with my own ears.”
“What did he say?” Felix asked curiously.
“I’d run into Gabe that day at the neighborhood market I often walk to, and we walked back together. When I mentioned this to Grayson, he went off on me. He accused me of still having feelings for Gabe and asked if I was planning on . . . sleeping with him too. Only he used a much more vulgar word for it. So I hung up on him. I was stunned.”
Felix made a mental note. As he suspected, Ella wasn’t going to put up with shit. She explained that days later when she finally answered Grayson’s call he claimed to have had a bad day the day he went off on her and that it wasn’t like him at all to act that way. But it was all B.S.
“He began questioning everything. I couldn’t even look at my phone without him questioning who I was texting or emailing. He monitored all my social media and asked about every single guy I interacted with. There was always something wrong with any photos I posted. My shorts were too short, I was showing too much cleavage, and any guy who liked or commented on my page was suspect. I broke up with him the first time after he showed up at the Starbucks where I work and was rude to one of my coworkers—a guy, of course. When Grayson had walked in, my coworker and I were laughing about something, and Grayson immediately acted like a complete jackass, asking me in front of the guy if that’s why I’d been working so much lately. Just like the day he showed up at the gym last week, I was mortified.”
“You had no reason to be,” Felix interjected. “He was the one being an asshole, not you.”
“Yeah, well it was still mortifying and I broke it off. Being with him was more stressful than he was worth. But he’s a persistent one. He assured me he was working on it and begged for another chance. Since I felt so committed already and both my dad and Memo liked him so much, I decided to give him another shot, and things were good for a couple of months. Then, just after my birthday, Gabe posted a video of a song on my Facebook wall. Grayson went apeshit. When I attempted to defend it, saying the video was an innocent birthday gesture, he once again suggested maybe I wanted to . . . sleep with the Gabe, only like the first time he used the uglier word again. So I was done.”
“But you’re trying to keep things amicable?”
Felix didn’t want to sound like Grayson; he was just trying to figure out why she’d want to stay in touch with a prick who would talk to her like that.
“Yes, I am,” she said without qualm. “Like the first time, he apologized profusely and very sincerely, and he admitted his temper was a weakness of his he’d been working on for as long as he can remember. He said I wasn’t the first girlfriend he’d lost to it. It’s something I can relate to because, even though I don’t think he’s as bad as Grayson, my brother has issues with his temper also. His reaction to Sonia’s rape will be an eternal reminder of it.”
Felix needed a break from this topic, and since he’d been curious about this before, he decided to ask now. “Did your brother actually see it happening or was she raped and he hunted the guy down?”
Ella explained again about the night her dad had people over to watch Felix’s fight and why Memo had missed the fight to begin with. Memo’s friend who lived in the same apartment building Sonia lived at called just before the fight to tell him he’d seen one of the other guys in the building harassing her, and, of course, her brother’s natural reaction was to bolt out of the house and rush down there.
“Sonia had told him earlier that she’d be over as soon as she was done doing her laundry,” Ella said, her voice going somber. “Memo made it to the laundry room in the back of her apartment building, just in time to hear her muffled cries, and lost it.”
Felix obviously knew about the story, but he’d never thought about the graphic details. Her brother had actually walked in during the act. Saw another guy attacking his girl? Raping her! That had to be brutal. No wonder he’d killed the guy. If Felix walked in on a guy raping any girl, he’d beat him senseless, but if it was his girl—Ella . . . The very thought had him squeezing his eyes shut. He’d lose his fucking mind.
Ella switched the subject back from Sonia’s rape to Grayson. “I’ll admit I am beginning to have second thoughts about keeping things amicable with Grayson.”
That pulled Felix out of the ugly visual he’d been having of someone attacking Ella.
“Really?” he asked, trying not to let on how instantly chipper that made him.
“Being persistent is one thing. But he’s starting to take it to a new level. Like now, for instance. Ever since I hung up on him earlier, he’s been calling every few minutes. And I haven’t checked any of them, but I can hear him blowing up my phone with texts.”
Felix swallowed back the irritation he knew could easily manifest into rage because he didn’t want her comparing him to Grayson’s dumb ass. So he took a deep breath and, as calmly as he could, asked. “You hung up on him?”
“Yes. He was rude.”
“What did he say to you?”
He sat up slowly in hopes that doing so would help him better enunciate. He’d tried so hard not to sound pissed at the thought of Grayson being rude to her again that his words had almost sounded robotic.
“The day I left with him at the gym he’d already asked me the same thing about you that he had about Gabe. Using the same language,” she added with a huff. “I already told you what he thinks your interest in me is. He warned me that day you’d only hurt me. So when he asked if it was you I had on the other line and I told him it was none of his business, he started going off again. I hung up before he could go on.”
One thing Felix could already tell he wouldn’t have to worry about with Ella was she’d never keep things from him for the sake of not upsetting him. But another thing he was picking up on from the “Mighty Little Ms. Ella” was she obviously didn’t think either Grayson or Felix had any say about which guys she kept in touch with, even if some of those guys were ex-boyfriends. Ex-boyfriends posting songs on Facebook.
Grayson had disrespected her more than once now. She’d just admitted he’d done so again tonight, he was blowing up her phone after midnight, and she was just having second thoughts about not keeping things amicable with the douche?
He suddenly remembered something, and before he opened up a can of worms by letting her know what he was thinking, he had to ask. “Curious. That video you said Grayson went apeshit over? The innocent birthday one your otherex posted on your wall. What song was it?”
To his surprise, she laughed out loud, breaking him slightly out of his tensed mood. “That’s actually the funny thing about it. It was supposed to be an inside joke. The last time I’d spoken to Gabe, the day we walked home from the market together, someone was blasting an old Spanish song out their front door. Something I’m sure you know is fairly common around these parts. That got us talking old Spanish classics and what some of my favorites are, like the timeless ones by Vicente Fernandez and Juan Gabriel. Obviously, Grayson doesn’t speak Spanish, so I assumed he copied and pasted the lyrics to Google translate, but when I tried doing that, it was so off the mark it had me cracking up.” She giggled. “Grayson later told me he’d asked someone he works with, and, of course, they made more of the meaning of the song than it was. It really was just an innocent inside joke. I would’ve explained it to him if he’d just asked me first, instead of assuming the worst.”
Felix frowned. He grew up hearing Spanish music, but he doubted he’d know any lyrics to any of those old songs off the top of his head. “What song was it?”
“Just one of the Vicente ones I’d mentioned liking.”
He could be wrong, and he didn’t want to start being paranoid or acting like a jealous boyfriend. Obviously, it wasn’t a quality in a guy Ella found endearing, but if he weren’t mistaken, she was purposely avoiding a straight answer. He’d asked her twice now, and she talked around it but hadn’t actually answered the question. This could be an issue, especially if she was still insisting it was completely innocent.
“What song, Ella?”
She cleared her throat, and he heard her whisper something in a coddling tone to Larry. “The song? Umm . . . Lastima Que Seas Ajena.”
Felix squeezed the phone. He’d been right. He didn’t know the lyrics. But he didn’t have to. Not with a song title that said it all. It’s a shame you belong to someone else.
“And you still talk to Gabe?”
“Yeah,” she responded without the slightest hesitation. “Mostly via social media. But he does call me on occasion.”
This was definitely going to be an issue.