Ella
All right, Ella had to finally admit it. The past few weeks she’d been a little absentminded. Carmen was right; she did seem to be walking around lately with her head in a cloud. Ella could admit to herself that maybe, just maybe, being around Felix so much and the way he gazed at her—making her insides go absolutely nuts, yet he was still a complete gentleman—had a lot to do with it. She’d thought him amazing looking from the very beginning, but adding to that how sweet he was when he spoke to her and how deeply he looked into her eyes sometimes, she’d been breathless around him more than once now. It was almost embarrassing, but as far as she knew, she’d managed to play it off every time she’d been around him.
Today she’d totally goofed and had shown up at 5th Street when Carmen and Sonia were scheduled for back-to-back classes. Ella had a couple of hours to spare now. The good thing was that Nellie had approached her with an outline of her ideas for the breast-cancer awareness program. It was several pages long, so it gave Ella something to do to kill time instead of heading back home only to have to come back in a few hours for the class she was actually scheduled for.
She’d been sitting at the juice bar for over an hour, drinking some carrot juice as she read through the pages of the outline very thoroughly. Nellie had some excellent ideas, albeit very ambitious but excellent ideas nonetheless.
“Hey.”
Ella looked up as Felix took the seat across from her, wearing that beautiful smile that would be the end of her. She smiled back, breathing in deeply.
“Are you saving this seat for anyone?” he asked.
“No.” She smiled, leaning over her juice and bringing the straw to her lips as a calming mechanism.
His eyes were instantly on her lips, and that completely warmed her insides. “You on a break?”
She shook her head then rolled her eyes, feeling dumb all over again. “I got here way too early. I mixed up my schedule. The class I’m here for isn’t for almost another hour.”
She lifted the paperwork she was reading and explained what she’d been doing since she’d gotten there to kill time.
“So you’ve been sitting here for over an hour?” he asked, and if she wasn’t mistaken, he almost sounded irritated by this.
“Yeah,” she said, confused by his annoyance.
Felix frowned, looking around. He was definitely annoyed. “I wish I’d known,” he said. “I could’ve kept you company longer.”
This wasn’t the first time he’d made such an in-your-face statement like this. He’d referred to her as a friend a couple of times, too, in the past recent days. Ella reminded herself that this is what he thought she was now—a friend. And that was all he meant by this. As a friend, he could’ve kept her company. It still didn’t stop the storm of butterflies already running amuck in her belly.
She waved the papers at him, trying to avert her panicking insides from giving way to the utter excitement that simple comment from him made her feel. “This has kept me busy. Nellie”—she laughed softly—“she reminds me a little of my mom.”
“How so?” he asked, his eyes full of curiosity now.
The girl behind the counter brought over a juice and placed it in front of Felix. “Here you go, Mr. Sanchez. One large Body Charger.”
“Thank you.” He smiled but brought his attention back to Ella immediately.
Ella glanced at the girl, who didn’t leave right away. If Ella were rude, she’d ask her when they started doing table service. In the two years she’d been there, they called out your order and you picked it up at the counter. As a matter of fact, the girl hadn’t even reached the counter when the other guy behind it was already calling out someone else’s juice. But then not only was Felix one of the owners of this place, he was the Felix Sanchez.
When Ella noticed that Felix was staring at her, she almost forgot what she’d been saying before juice girl came along. Then she remembered.
“My mom,” she said with a smile that filled her heart. “She was an amazing woman. Our family’s been through a lot.” She paused for a moment to reflect on what a loaded statement that was. “Through it all she remained so strong and pulled us all through it so flawlessly it was truly inspiring.”
Felix took a sip of his juice but kept his eyes on her the whole time. “You mentioned you lost your older sister early on. How old were you?”
“I was six. She was ten,” she explained, feeling herself go from heart warmed by the memory of her mother’s strength to somber about the memory of her sister’s death. “We’d been at the park having a good time and were about to get ice cream when there was a gang shootout. When it was all over, my mom held my sister Yesenia’s bloody and lifeless body in her arms. She died even before the paramedics arrived.”
Ella stared straight ahead now, remembering that time in her life. She remembered it not feeling like the huge deal she knew it was now. But she knew it was only because she’d been so young. At the time she was too young to understand how final the events of that day were. That she’d truly never get to see her sister ever again.
“Sadly,” she went on, this time looking into Felix’s dark eyes so full of compassion, “in our neighborhood, it wasn’t that uncommon. It’s gotten better over the years, but back then drive-by shootings and innocent bystanders getting caught up in the mix were actually fairly common.” She smiled and she could tell that surprised Felix. “My mom was probably one of the reasons why the crime in our neighborhood went down significantly. Since moving wasn’t an option for us, instead of falling apart and drowning in despair and depression like so many of the other parents who’d gone through something similar in our neighborhood, she started up the neighborhood watch in our area and the local chapter of M.A.G.I.C.”
Felix’s brow’s raised. “I’ve heard of that. What is it?”
“Mothers Against Gangs In The Community,” she explained proudly. “She always said she’d already lost one child to gangs and she was not losing another. We were surrounded by gangs and kids getting in trouble blaming it on the area they lived in, but Memo and I are living proof of what my mom always said to us. You are who you choose to be. You’re only a victim of your environment if you allow yourself to be. We could’ve easily chosen the same path so many of our friends and neighbors chose, but my mom made sure we didn’t. My dad . . .” She stopped, wondering how much she should share about him and decided to keep it as simple as possible. “He didn’t jump back from the loss of my sister with the same passion my mother did. But my mom kept it together for all of us.”
That warmth in her heart was back, making Ella smile big again, and she was glad. She hadn’t realized when she made the comment about Nellie reminding her of her mother that the conversation would go around full circle to all this. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all heavy on you.”
“Don’t be,” he said instantly. “I was actually curious but not sure if asking flat-out would be rude.”
Ella lifted a shoulder and took a sip of her juice. “It’s just that even in her death my mom continues to be such an influence and inspiration for me. Even when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she put up such a brave front. She promised she wouldn’t go down without a fight and she didn’t. She beat it at first, and after she’d recovered from the chemo, she went on an awareness mission, putting together the first ever breast-cancer-awareness walk in our neighborhood.”
Felix was looking at her again as he did so often. The same way he’d looked at her that first night he’d walked into her class with Hector, Charlee, and Drew. She’d call it a proud parent look, but there was more behind it. She was caught in his eyes for a moment until he finally said something that broke the spell.
“So your starting the self-defense classes in response to your brother’s girlfriend getting raped was a tribute to your mother.”
It could’ve been a question, but the way he said it Felix sounded as if he knew for a fact that’s exactly why she’d done so. Ella had never thought of it that way. All she knew was at the time she wasn’t just going to sit around and wait for something like that to happen again. Much like her mom hadn’t waited around for gangs or cancer to come and disrupt their lives so easily.
Not without a fight.
“It’s what she would’ve done,” Ella said softly.
Felix slid his hand across the table slowly and touched hers gently. “She’d be proud.”
Under normal circumstances, the fact that his hand was on hers might’ve excited her; instead, she choked up so fast it caught her off guard.
“I’m sorry,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and blinking away the tears that had begun to fill her eyes. “It’s just . . .” She smiled again. “Yes, I know she would be.”
Glancing down at his hand still on hers, Ella decided to keep to herself how often she still spoke with her mom and how so many of those conversations lately had been about him. Just thinking of that made her smirk and she felt her face warm. When she looked up at him, he was staring at her again. The alarm she’d seen in his eyes just moments ago when he realized he’d hit a nerve with his comment about her mom, was replaced now with a sort of curious look.
“You do that a lot,” he said.
His hand slid down from over her hand to under it and played with her fingers. Now feeling his touch did what she’d expected it would. Her insides were instantly out of control. Was he really playing with her fingers? A million other questions flashed through her head as she attempted to remain as collected as possible.
“Do what?” she asked very calmly as he continued to gaze at her, but her mind was racing as her heart pounded away, and she was certain he could hear it—everyone in the juice bar probably could. It pounded so hard.
Was he flirting with her? Or was this his way of making up for nearly making her cry? Was this still him just being sweet, or was there more to the way he looked at her as she’d begun to think these past few weeks. But most importantly, what did she do a lot? All this time she’d thought she’d played the calm-and-collected part so well.
“The way you switch moods. What were you thinking just now?” he asked. “When you went from nearly crying to smiling to”—he smiled, and as if her heart wasn’t already out of control, he laced his fingers through hers—“blushing?”
She gulped as once again she was caught in those piercing dark eyes of his. “I, uh . . .” She cleared her throat, determined not to blow this—not to look away. He was just being playful. That’s all this was. “I don’t—”
“Yo, Felix.”
They turned to see a grinning Hector coming their way. Felix didn’t jerk his hand away from hers, but it was obvious he hadn’t wanted Hector to see them holding hands because he slid his hand back to his side of the table. Despite his efforts, Ella was certain Hector had seen them holding hands. It was what made him doing so that much more nerve-wracking. He’d taken her hand in his so candidly right there in the middle of the juice bar for everyone to see.
Ella may have her preconceptions of Felix being a ladies’ man—a flirt. But from what she’d seen so far, he hadn’t behaved that way. Since he’d started his daily pre-training here at 5th Street, she’d never seen him flirt or even engage in conversation with any other girls as much as he did with her. It was what made his seeking her out today and being annoyed that he could’ve spent more time with her dangerously thrilling. She was still refusing to jump to any ridiculous assumptions.
“What are you doing?” Hector asked as he neared them. “Noah’s been looking for you.”
Ella watched as the same irritation she’d seen earlier on his face bathed over Felix once again. “I was having some juice. Tell him I’ll be in there in a minute.”
Hector grinned as he said hello to Ella then turned back to Felix. “Yeah, I’ll let him know.”
Ella glanced down at her phone and saw that it was just fifteen minutes until her class started. “I gotta go anyway. My class starts in fifteen minutes.”
She stood up. The continued annoyance on Felix’s face about the interruption as he stood up with her was somehow even more thrilling now. Ella needed to get out of there fast. Having a moment in one of the stalls in the ladies’ room where she could finally hyperventilate, like she thought she might for a moment there, couldn’t come fast enough.
“Thanks for keeping me company,” she said to Felix then smiled at a still-grinning Hector. “I’ll see you guys later.”
As she hurried to the ladies’ room, she played back what had just happened and all the other conversations she’d had with him lately.
“You are not jumping to any conclusions,” she muttered under her breath. “So he’s a flirt. This shouldn’t surprise you.”
It was a decent argument except for the fact that Carmen wasn’t the only one who’d observed Felix’s questionable behavior around Ella. Drew had said something similar but a bit cryptic when he’d come over to say hello to them the day Drew had come down to film Ella’s class.
“Does he come in here a lot?” Drew had asked when he’d left the classroom.
“Not really” had been Ella’s vague answer.
“Not at all” would’ve been a more correct answer. The only other time he’d gone into her class was the day they’d all walked in so Drew could talk to her. But already even back then Ella had a feeling why she was asking. So she hadn’t wanted to give Drew too much to speculate on. The idea that Felix might actually be interested in anything with Ella still felt so preposterous it made her face hot.
All Drew had said after that was “interesting.”
Ella refused to refuel that uncomfortable topic, so she hadn’t asked her what she meant. She finished gathering herself in the ladies’ room and finally walked out toward her classroom. Carmen was already headed her way with that look on her face. That overly excited I-have-something-to-tell-you expression. What now?
“Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“That you and Felix were sharing a juice and holding hands?”
Ella felt her face flush instantly. “What?” She tried her damnedest to act as though the very idea was farfetched as it should be. “We weren’t sharing a juice.”
Carmen’s eyes opened even wider. “Oh my God, you’re blushing. You never blush.” She stopped in front of Ella, forcing Ella to stop too. “Please tell me you’re not keeping something this big from me. I’m your best friend! That would be like a mortal sin or something. You’d be breaking some kind of rule or code, a very bad one with, like, massive bestie repercussions, Ella!”
They were turning a few heads, and Ella shushed her. “Do not shush me!” Carmen said in a very loud whisper then thankfully lowered her voice. “Was he or was he not holding your hand?”
“Yes, he did,” Ella finally conceded as her silly friend gasped, smiled big, and then brought her hands over her mouth, practically jumping in place. “But not like what you’re thinking. We were talking about my mom, and I got a little misty-eyed, so he touched my hand and maybe picked it up for a few moments. Jesus, that got around fast. Who told you?”
Ella tried to sound annoyed to cover up the mixture of excitement and utter fear she was suddenly feeling. This was getting too real. Not only had it really happened and not in the toned down way she’d explained it, but word about it was getting around this fast?
Before she let the fear paralyze her and the thrill of this make her lose sight of reality, she reminded herself once again this kind of flirtation was probably something that came so naturally to a guy like Felix. And that’s all this was. Nothing more. She wouldn’t let her heart run with this, over-thinking this like her mind was already doing. More than anything, she could not, would not, get caught up in something like this. If there was something she knew already, while she could easily control her reaction to many things—easily manipulate her nerves to appear to be undaunted even under the most intimidating circumstances—her heart was a whole other story.
She had no control over what it felt or did. The unrestrained pounding it continued to do now even as she tried to appear carefree about this whole thing was further proof of this. Her only choice now, if this was really happening, was to go into full protective mode. Protect her heart at all costs or pay dearly if she chose to believe even for a minute that this might be anything more than a flirtation—a flirtation that she needed to steer far, far away from.
~*~
Felix
It’d been well over a week since Felix’s conversation with Ella at the juice bar. Since then, they hadn’t had a conversation where he felt as close to her as he had that day. He finally decided to address something he’d been wondering about. It might help him get his shit straight. If he at least had a schedule to work with, he could work out a way to casually run into her every day until he could figure out what the hell he was going to do about this. So far all this time he hadn’t known if she was coming or going.
Over a month since he’d begun his informal training, Felix was still trying to figure it out, but by then he knew one thing for sure. He was very attracted to her now. Not just in that usual he-could-already-picture-her-under-him way. Not that the thought hadn’t crossed his mind—more than once. Ella was constantly on his mind now, and he hadn’t even kissed her. Aside from that one time he got to hold her hand for too short of time, there’d been nothing more than exchanged smiles and prolonged gazes. He was fairly certain she’d picked up on his attraction to her, but beyond that there was nothing more. How was it even possible that he could feel so hung on someone he’d yet to even kiss?
Not just that, he still wasn’t even sure what, if anything, he should do about it. He couldn’t even bring himself to ask for some kind of schedule from her. Not even something simple and innocent like are you usually here in the day or evenings. Half the time he had no idea if she’d be in that day or not. Asking her or anyone else still felt risky. Someone would wonder why he wanted to know, and he still wasn’t sure of that answer. Why did he want to know so badly?
And then it happened.
He walked into the upstairs break room around lunch time, hoping it made sense that she’d be up there since there was no self-defense class between twelve and twelve forty-five. He started to smile when he saw her at one of the tables, giggling into her hand, until he saw who she was sitting with. Camera boy. The guy Drew had brought with her the day they’d filmed parts of Ella’s class for her documentary on the gym. More grating than seeing her laugh so sweetly at whatever it was he was saying to her was that he knew they’d long ago finished the documentary.
That strange feeling in his gut—the one he’d felt even that first night at the pizza place—and the one he’d felt every single time he’d been around her since, was back. Only this time it felt different. This time there was a kick to it, and he gulped, deciding on whether or not he should go talk to her. He wasn’t sure he could keep himself from being a dick to camera boy.
“You eating up here, Sanchez?”
Felix turned to see Noah and Hector walking toward him. “No, I was, uh . . . just looking for someone.”
Hector turned to see who he’d been staring at. “And you found her?” He smirked.
Noah turned to look in Ella’s direction too. Fucking great.
“Ella?” Noah asked.
“No, not Ella,” he lied. “One of the guys I’ve been working with.”
Hector turned to look at him, still smirking. “You sure? Because you looked like you were getting ready to go talk to Ella and, uh, her friend there. Who is that she’s having lunch with?”
“I dunno,” Felix lied again, looking around trying his damnedest to look uninterested in Ella and her friend. “The guy I’m looking for isn’t here. I’ll talk to him later,” he said and started to walk away.
“Oh, I know who that is,” he heard Hector say. “That’s the guy working with Drew on the documentary: Conner. Charlee mentioned he had a thing for Ella and would be coming down to ask her out.”
Felix stopped in his tracks and spun around. Hector’s head fell back and he laughed. “I fucking knew it!” He shoved Noah in the arm. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“Tell him what?” Felix asked, glaring past him at Ella and camera boy who were now joined by Drew. Drew sat down next to the guy, pecking his lips, and Felix knew he’d been had. “You’re an asshole,” he said, shoving Hector and feeling like an idiot but at the same time enormously relieved.
“What?” Noah asked confused as Hector continued to laugh, bringing his fist to his mouth.
“You should’ve seen your face.” Hector was laughing so much now Drew and Ella were now looking their way.
Felix smiled, grabbing Hector by the shirt, and pulled him roughly out of the small break room.
“He’s the sap Drew talked about at the pizza place,” Hector explained, still laughing as Felix let go of his shirt but not before shoving him again. “The ‘sweet guy’ she was considering going out with. I guess they’re a thing now.”
Hector still laughed, and now Noah was smiling big too. “You into Ella, Sanchez?” he asked.
Felix glanced away, annoyed that he hadn’t been able to make it even a few weeks without someone noticing. He shrugged. “I think she’s cool.”
Hector laughed again. “Charlee’s gonna love this. She called it from day one.”
Felix had been ready to jump all over him about not saying a damn thing to Charlee or anyone for that matter. It was bad enough these two knew now, but his second comment got him. “She did?”
Had he really been that obvious? Even back then? The smug smile on Hector’s face was answer enough, but he went on anyway. “She said you looked struck that first night we all went to Barros. Man”—he shook his head in mock disappointment—“I even argued with her, saying you don’t get struck, and she said everyone does sooner or later.”
“You do know she’s Nellie and Abel’s little project, right?” Noah’s voice warned. “They really like her, and Nellie’s hoping she’ll take her up on the offer of a full-time position here. If you screw this up—”
“I’m not gonna screw anything up,” Felix said suddenly feeling defensive. “All I said was she’s cool. I haven’t even decided what, if anything, I wanna do about it. I told you about the Grecco meeting I had. I doubt I’ll have any time for any kind of social life once that gets going, much less a relationship, and she’s too sweet a girl for anything less.”
Hector patted him on the shoulder. “If you’re leaning on maybe going for it and let me tell you”—he laughed again—“that look on your face says you are, I’d make up my mind soon if I were you. According to Drew, she’s considering going out to dinner with that cop friend of hers again, something she hasn’t done in months.”
Felix gave him a look, and Hector lifted his hands in the air, eyes full of humor. “I’m not lying this time. Drew was over last night. I heard her telling Charlee. Drew even offered to do a double date thing with her because she said Ella’s not one hundred percent sold on the idea. But I guess the guy’s been really persistent.”
It suddenly dawned on Felix. “Is that why they’re here today?”
Hector’s brows jumped up. “Good question. I don’t know. Could be.”
Torn for a second, he glanced at Noah then back at Hector, who both looked at him blankly with no answers. He could hardly believe he was doing this, but he headed back toward the break room.