More than a week after the whole Walter/Ross incident, Charlee still couldn’t stop thinking about the guy that saved them. At first, she kept shuddering at the thought of what might’ve happened if he hadn’t showed up when he had. Then, as the days went by, she stopped shuddering and started daydreaming.
The only information she had on him was what little Walter offered. His name was Hector, they’d gone to high school together, and he was an amateur boxer at a boxing gym over in East L.A. That explained how he’d knocked out Ross so easily. In her daydreams, Hector was now a superhero: a beautifully tanned, perfectly sculpted specimen of a hero.
What he said and did to her had become a little more elaborate with each daydream she had. She figured she’d never see him again, so it didn’t matter how ridiculous or naughty the dreams became. As far as she or Walter knew, Hector didn’t attend East Side U. Walter hadn’t asked him, but neither had he seen him on campus ever since. His being there at all that day was a mystery to them both. Never in her life had she felt so distracted and all because of a guy she got the pleasure of being in the presence of for about five minutes.
“Hello!” Drew waved her hand in front of Charlee’s face.
Charlee snapped out of it and smiled sheepishly at her friend, who held out a can of Red Bull for her. “What’s with you this week, girl?” Drew smirked at first, and then a look of concern washed over her face. “Are you sure you’re okay? Ever since what happened with that jerk Ross and his friends, you’ve been a little weird.”
Charlee shook her head, taking a sip of the much needed energy drink. “I’m fine. I’ve just had some stuff on my mind lately: midterms. You know that and the Jr. World Olympiad are coming up, soon.” In an effort to avoid her inquisitive best friend asking more questions, she tried changing the subject. “They’re having a knockout tournament this weekend to replace Vladimir.” She then frowned, thinking about what she’d just said. “I don’t think we’re gonna find anyone as good as he was.”
“How good could he have been, Charlee?” Drew rolled her eyes. “He got caught cheating.”
Charlee was about to argue that he technically hadn’t been caught cheating. He was just caught with a wireless device and headphones in his last tournament, something that was strictly against the rules, but it was never proven he’d actually used it to cheat. It was a bit unfair, Charlee thought. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty anyway? The punishment hadn’t even fit the crime. Not only had he automatically been disqualified from the tournament but he was kicked off the US team and the school team, losing his free ride to ESU. But before she could start her argument, she noticed Drew had slowed down and was glaring at something straight ahead. No sooner had Charlee looked up to see who she was glaring at than she regretted doing so.
“Why is it that before last week I’d never even noticed this guy and now it seems I see his stupid ass everywhere?” Drew asked as they walked out the cafeteria.
Ross and his friends were sitting just outside the cafeteria. Thankfully, unlike for Drew, this was only the second time Charlee had seen him since the incident the week before. The first time she’d run into him, he stared her down, giving her a major case of the heebie-jeebies but hadn’t said anything. His cheek still had some signs of the swelling Hector’s blow had left but nothing like last week when his left cheek was about an inch higher than his right and the whites of his left eye were all red.
Charlee didn’t look at him long enough now to take inventory of his injuries. But she may’ve looked too long because he smiled at her. It was early in the morning. Charlee and Drew were barely on their way to their first class of the day, but from the looks of it, Ross and his friends were already glossy-eyed. She turned away without smiling back.
“Just keep walking and stop looking their way,” Charlee said, pulling on Drew’s arm.
“Morning, Charlee.”
Charlee nearly jumped out of her skin at the sight and sound of Ross right next to her now. She flinched but kept walking. “Morning.” She responded, deciding ignoring him might elicit another rude reaction from him. Her heart was already racing.
“Can I talk to you?” He asked in a voice much nicer than last week’s.
“No, I’m late already.” She tugged at Drew’s arm to warn her that she didn’t need to her to come to her rescue. Charlee could already feel the anger radiating from her friend.
“Maybe later then?”
Charlee glanced at him for a second. “Maybe.”
“What!” Drew nearly roared.
“I gotta go.” Charlee said quickly and picked up her pace to a near sprint, pulling Drew along with her.
When they were far enough away and in the humanities building, Drew stopped in front of Charlee. “Maybe? You’re not actually gonna talk to that creep are you?”
“No, of course not,” Charlee assured her. “I just didn’t know what else to say.”
“How ’bout no?” Drew placed her fist on her hip.
“I just said the first thing I could think of so that I could get away from him as fast as possible. That’s all.” Drew gave her the stink eye. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, well, now he’s gonna think he has the go-ahead to confront you the next time he sees you.”
Charlee frowned. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. Truth was he’d spooked the hell out of her. The only thing she could think of at the time, aside from wanting to run away like a crazy person, was to agree to anything and get away without making a scene.
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, if I ever have to.”
She didn’t even want to think about having to talk to Ross again. Unlike that first time, today she’d been in the middle of a crowded campus with her best friend at her side, and she was still terrified. There was something so ominous about him. If he ever confronted her alone again, she’d probably freak out.
They reached their class, and Charlee decided she’d not think about it until she absolutely had to. For now, she had the bottle of mace she’d bought the day after the first incident, and if she was forced to use it, she would. She sat down and thought of something much more pleasant: Hector, her dreamy hero.
~*~
It’d been weeks since Hector’s texts and emails with Lisa had tapered off. When she first moved up north they’d spoken on the phone a few times late in the evening, and their conversations had begun to take an intimate feel. Hector actually thought he was really starting to feel something for her. She even said she was going to try to come back down to L.A. and visit as soon as she could. Normally something like that might’ve scared him a little. He’d never done the relationship thing. He wasn’t sure if her making such a long trip meant she thought he was getting that serious. But the thought of it had begun to grow on him.
Then, he noticed a change. She’d say she was going to call him and wouldn’t. The texts began to dwindle, and any talk of her visiting was suddenly never mentioned again. That’s when he noticed a reoccurring dude in her Facebook photos. The captions only ever mentioned his name and where they were but not what relation he was to her. Never one to beat around the bush, Hector asked her flat out who the guy was. All she said was that he was a friend, but soon there were photos of them at college football games and at a fair. The kicker was the photo of them posing in front of a movie theater, holding hands. That’s when Hector un-friended her and stopped responding to her texts. They were few and far between anyway. He’d already started to feel a bit creepy stalking her Facebook photos, but he still insisted she should’ve just been honest with him.
The most maddening thing of all, though he was more pissed at himself than he was with her, was that his dumb ass actually passed up hanging out with some of his regulars in the last couple of weeks. He’d never admit it out loud, but clearly he was secretly hoping she was doing the same thing.
He decided not to give it another thought. He’d already obsessed too much about her as it was, and all he’d ever done was kiss her one time. Instead, he decided to focus on his latest challenge.
Shaking his head, he finally admitted it. He’d screwed up. Hector had never actually discussed college in depth with his mom and his older brother, Abel, but apparently he was expected to go. He hadn’t even bothered taking his SATs because he was sure that being part owner of 5th Street he’d go straight to working full time there after high school. It’s what Abel had done when he graduated.
His mother, being old-school, had been fine when Abel went straight into fighting and working at 5th Street after high school. Of course, it had always been his brother’s dream to be a heavyweight champ, and the way things were looking, Abel had a damn good chance of making it. There’d already been one alumnus from 5th Street to make it to the big time. Abel wasn’t far behind.
Hector was a good enough fighter, but he did it for the same reason he’d done just about anything growing up: because of his big brother—his hero. He almost never admitted it aloud, especially now that he was older, but he had always been and still was his brother’s biggest fan. Abel was the real fighter of the two and would someday be the heavyweight champ. Everyone said he had a real good chance at the title. Hector only really did it for the adrenaline rush fighting gave him, and he liked what the workouts did to his body, but he’d never really been interested in fighting professionally.
It wasn’t just the fighting. There were a lot of other reasons why Abel was his hero, so hearing him say he was disappointed in Hector was all it took to get his ass scrambling. He needed to figure out a way to get into a good school, even if it meant waiting until the winter session since it was way too late for fall.
The day he’d gone down to East Side U, he did so for one reason—to see about trying out for their coveted chess team. He thought he could just go down there, show the instructors his skills, and just like that he’d be in. Unfortunately, that’s not how it worked, and with the fall semester already well underway, there was no other way he could think of getting into that particular school. So it was back to the drawing board because Hector was determined to get in one way or another.
Then something came up. In high school, Hector had refused to join what he referred to as the “nerd fest”—the chess club. Chess was another thing Abel had gotten him into. Abel played for fun and was pretty good, but he quickly realized Hector wasn’t just good but he had an exceptional gift for the game. Next thing he knew, they were on a bus to Santa Monica to play with the hard-core chess players at the chess park on the beach.
That’s where he’d met Sam, a retired, cranky-as-shit Army vet and chess grandmaster with many championship titles under his belt. Abel had taught Hector the basics. Hector had tossed in his own spin on the game, stepping it up so much he impressed the hell out of Abel. But Sam, Sam was why he was here today, why he thought he had so much as a prayer at winning a knockout tournament that would get him on the US under-20 chess team—a team that would be playing for a spot in the Junior World Olympiad later this year. Sam had trained him and taught him everything he knew about mastering the game. Most importantly, Sam thought Hector had this.
Even with all the smaller events he’d won over the years and the online tournaments he’d taken first place in over and over, Hector never thought he’d be playing in major knockout event like this. But having played and won in the World Olympiad more than once himself, Sam recommended Hector be entered in a chance to make a team that would be trying out for it. A week later, Hector was invited.
At first, Hector was hesitant. Then Sam mentioned some of the team players for East Side University chess team were already on the US under-20 team and the trainers for the school team would be at today’s event: trainers that Sam said would no doubt notice Hector even if he didn’t win. Getting noticed by them this way might get him invited on the school team. This was his chance at early admission to the spring semester. Hector wanted nothing more than for Abel to take back how disappointed he’d been with him about not taking school more seriously. He hadn’t even told Abel about today. He was hoping to surprise him.
Getting out of his truck in the quickly filling parking lot, Hector looked around for Sam. Sam was meeting Hector there and had told him to get there early. This was Hector’s biggest tournament ever. Sam had been pushing him for years to enter some. When he was younger, he’d been in a few, but then puberty hit, and once Hector discovered girls, forget about it. He already knew from his brother and some of the other guys at the gym that girls had a thing for boxers. And did they ever! Somehow he knew saying he was a chess player and won lots of tournaments wouldn’t have quite the same effect on girls as it did when he mentioned winning a bout.
Add to that, physically, because of all the training he did at the gym, he was bigger and had a lot more muscle to flaunt than most boys his age, starting very early on. So the attention he received from the female population at his school won out every time Sam mentioned a new tournament. Sitting and playing chess for hours on a Saturday was up there on his list of things he liked doing. But once the options were that or steaming up the windows of his truck for hours on a Saturday instead, the latter won hands down every time. He knew it annoyed the hell out of the old man, but certainly Sam had to understand that for any guy, but especially one like Hector in his prime, the choice was a no-brainer.
Hector didn’t see Sam’s old Volkswagen van anywhere. It was hard to miss. Although, ironically, Sam had it custom painted to look Army camouflage, it stood out like the eyesore that it was everywhere he went.
Doing a double take, Hector stared at the guy getting out of a beat-up car two spaces over. “Walter?”
Walter turned to him, at first expressionless, then he smiled. “Hey, we meet again.”
“Yeah,” Hector reached out for Walter’s guy handshake, trying to push away that still-lingering guilt that hadn’t completely disappeared even after making amends with Walter, “under better circumstances this time.”
Walter chuckled. “I know. My face ain’t being kicked into the ground this time.”
Hector smiled and motioned to the beat-up car Walter had just gotten out of. “And I see you got some wheels now too.”
“Yeah, well,” Walter shrugged, “when it’s running anyway.”
Thoughts about Walter’s car were pushed back by thoughts of the beating Walter took. “You all healed up now, though? Were your ribs okay? I remember you were hurting bad.”
Walter pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Not broken but I did have hairline fracture. By the next day, it hurt to even breathe, and I ended up in the emergency room. One had the fracture; the others were just bruised real bad.”
Hector winced. “Ouch, I’ve been punched in the ribs before but never bad enough to have anything fractured.”
“Yeah,” Walter nodded. “It was no fun, let me tell you. I was down for days.”
It still pissed Hector off that those pussies had ganged up and beat on him like that, especially since he was already down. “So those guys ever bother you again?”
“Nah.” Walter shook his head. “That school is so damn big. I don’t know if they’re avoiding me or I just haven’t run into them again.”
“Well, that’s good.” They moved off to the side of the crowds walking toward the auditorium. Walter seemed to be taking in the crowd or looking for someone as they stood there for a moment without saying anything. Hector remembered another thing he had always wondered about. Although he had an idea of what had happened, he still wanted to know. He may never get another chance to ask.
“So what happened to you, man? End of school year, you disappeared. Did you move?”
Walter’s eyes met his for a moment, but then he shook his head and continued to glance around. After a few awkward silent moments, he finally spoke. “I just decided to get my GED and get out. I hated high school.”
Knowing Walter was a top student the entire four years, Hector knew he didn’t mean he hated the academics part of high school like most kids. Hector knew exactly what Walter hated about school. He hated what Hector and his friends had put him through all those years. Even though he had the incredible urge to apologize once more, he decided he wouldn’t go there again, so he nodded and let it go.
“I was still able to get into East Side, and . . .,” he turned his head, and Hector turned to see what had distracted Walter: a passing car that parked nearby. Two girls got out of the car—a blonde and a redhead.
Walter’s shoulders went limp, and he backed up and leaned his elbow against a brand-new Mustang behind him that still had the dealership plates on. His demeanor went from awkwardly shy and quiet like he normally acted to this weird smug guy leaning on his own brand-new Mustang, almost as if he were trying to show off. As the girls got closer, he looked around with the goofiest expression on his face. “Yeah, I’ve been working out a few times a week.”
Hector turned to the girls, wondering if maybe he was talking to them. When he realized he wasn’t, because the girls weren’t even looking at him, he turned back to Walter. “Huh?”
When the girls got even closer, Walter very obviously sucked in his big gut and lifted a flabby arm. In a somewhat strained voice, he spoke again. “Yeah, I bench about thirty pounds on a bad day, about fifty the rest of the time.”
“Hey, Walter,” the redhead in a ponytail said, “new car?”
Seeing the ridiculous expression go even stupider, Hector finally figured out what Walter was doing. It was obvious he was about to lie about the car being his when the alarm on the car went off, startling Walter, whose elbow slipped off the car, and he nearly fell.
The blond girl squealed as the sudden blaring alarm startled her as well, and then both girls laughed and continued walking but not before the redhead glanced in Hector’s direction for just a split second. That’s when he realized who she was—Charlie—the same girl that was there the day Hector saved Walter’s ass, the one Walter had been so upset about not being able to make a connection with.
Never having been or even hung around with any girls but those with dark features, he was caught by her big deep blue eyes just as he had been that first day he saw her. But just like that day, it was only for a moment because she turned away too quickly. Hector turned to a now-back-to-awkward-and-frowning Walter. “What the hell was that about?”
Walter rolled his eyes, kicking a bottle cap on the floor. “Nothing you’d know about.” He kicked the bottle cap even harder. “Crap on a stick! Just like last time and all the other times, it never fails. I always end up making an ass out of myself instead of impressing her.”
Hector couldn’t help laughing as they both started toward the doors of the auditorium where the event was taking place. “What exactly was supposed to impress her: you sucking your gut in or the fact that you could bench fifty pounds?” He laughed even more now. “Because let me tell you fifty pounds ain’t shit. For a guy your size, you might want to up that to more than two hundred.”
Walter turned to him, incredulous. “Over two hundred? Are you crazy!”
“Nope,” Hector said, looking around again for Sam then back at Walter. “And it wouldn’t kill you to actually get your ass in a gym if you really want to impress this girl.” He reached over and patted Walter’s soft middle. “Getting in shape would probably help your little dilemma, you know. Girls appreciate the effort we put into getting our bodies nice and hard.” Hector lifted his arm and flexed with a smirk. “And they show their appreciation in real nice ways.”
Walter rolled his eyes, flinging his backpack over his shoulder as they reached the auditorium doors and walked in ahead of Hector. “Yeah, that’s easy for guys like you to say.”
With Sam nowhere in sight, Hector decided he may as well go in also. “Wait up. Are you here for the tournament too?”
Walter stopped, turning to look at Hector wide-eyed. “You’re in the tournament?” He shook his head, frowning when Hector nodded. “You play chess well enough to be invited to one of these things?”
Hector shrugged. “I’m here, right?”
Walter shrugged, imitating Hector. “Oh, yeah, of course, because it’s not enough that you look like this.” He lifted a finger up and down in front of Hector. “And that the girls in high school went crazy for the badass boxer from 5th Street, but you’re smart too?” Walter dropped his head back, looking almost disgusted.
Hector laughed. “You’ve always known I wasn’t stupid. We had a lot of the same AP classes together, remember?”
“Yeah, but to play chess at this level—” Walter stopped suddenly and raised a bushy eyebrow. “You do know this is a speed tournament, right? Thirty minute games and that there’s players here that flew in from all over the world—places like the Soviet Union and Romania—just to get on this team?”
Sam had explained some of that vaguely to Hector, but being here now and having it spelled out for him was starting to make him nervous. Not wanting to let Walter in on his teetering nerves, he played it off by shrugging again. “Yeah, I know,” he said as the self-doubt sunk in fast.
Charlie and her friend walked by them and Walter’s shoulders went all limp again as the goofball smile once again made an appearance. He bobbed his head up and down then actually bit his bottom lip and held his teeth there as he continued bobbing his head. Charlie smiled at him while the blonde looked away, and Hector could only assume she was trying not to laugh. “The team is sitting over there,” Charlie said, pointing toward a group by the back door.
She glanced at Hector again, giving him another glimpse of those dramatically blue eyes, but like all the other times, she quickly looked away, and she and her friend kept walking.
After a few seconds of staring at the back of her head and that intensely scarlet ponytail, Hector brought his attention back to Walter, who was still doing the slumped shoulder thing and bobbing his head. “Why are you doing that?”
Walter looked at him and stopped. “It’s called muted confidence. Read about it. I’m giving her the impression that I’m cool, confident, and just, you know, chillin’.” He started bobbing his head again.
Hector couldn’t help laughing again. “You’re giving her the impression that you’re a moron. You look like an idiot. What’s with the biting your lip shit?”
“It’s sexy!”
“No, it isn’t.” Hector laughed even more but made an effort to not ridicule Walter. The guilt of having done that to him for years was something he was still dealing with. He cleared his throat and stopped laughing, especially since he saw Walter’s expression go all serious as he gazed in her direction.
“So her name is really Charlie?”
“Yeah, but not like a guy. It’s Charlee spelled with a double e at the end.” Walter took a deep breath. “Charlee Brennan. Isn’t she beautiful?”
Hector was still stuck on the odd name. Charlee? “She’s cute,” he said, following Walter’s gaze.
More like okay, and he left out what else he was thinking, if you’re into white girls. Hector wasn’t, never had been, especially ones this snowy white. The neighborhood he grew up in and the schools he’d attended his whole life had maybe a handful of them. He had nothing against them; he just didn’t think he could relate. Everyone he hung out with was Hispanic, and so he was attracted mainly to Hispanic girls. He liked his girls with a little color, and, by that, he didn’t mean bright red on white. He was into dark hair, dark eyes, and the darker the better—like Lisa. He pushed away the annoying thoughts of Lisa blowing him off so easily.
“She’s amazing,” Walter was still gazing in her direction. “And she’s always nice to me. Like today she always says hi and even made sure I knew where the team was sitting. Stuff like that.”
Hector was about to comment on that: say something like maybe she liked Walter too. Though it was obvious she was just being nice. No way could she or anyone be into Walter. The guy was a mess. And his ridiculous muted confidence bullshit only made things worse, but then it hit him. “You’re on the team? U.S. under 20?”
“Yeah,” Walter turned back to Hector. “So is Charlee. We’re on the team at East Side too.” Walter looked around and lowered his voice. “Personally, I don’t think a speed knockout tournament is the way to go about looking for a replacement on the team. But we’d made it into the Junior World Olympiad just before the whole cheating scandal broke, and we had to drop that player. Luckily, they didn’t punish the whole team by disqualifying the team, but they did give us only so much time to fill that spot. With a regular tournament taking days, we had no choice but to do a one-day knockout tournament.”
Hector tried not to stare at Walter’s bushy eyebrows as Walter peered at him. Did the guy not realize a near unibrow was not an attractive quality to girls? “You really think you have a shot at this?”
Again, shrugging off any signs of nervousness, Hector glanced away at the crowd growing larger with every minute they stood there. “Sure, why not?”
He wouldn’t tell Walter that speed chess was his specialty. He knew a lot of serious players looked down on speed chess as if it weren’t as dignified as playing the six-hour games. Walter’s lowered-voice comment about this not being the greatest way to pick up the best player to fill the open spot on the team, was all Hector needed to know—Walter was one of those chess snobs.
Looking around again for Sam and not seeing him anywhere, Hector knew he had to get on with it and get registered. Sam had said he’d be there to walk him through the whole thing, but it looked like he was on his own now. With a deep breath, he turned back to Walter. “Well, I better get going if I’m gonna do this. Right?”
Walter smiled. “Best of luck. If you’re anywhere near as good at this as you are at knockout punches, you should do well.”
With that, Hector nodded and started through the crowd, his heart already beginning to thump anxiously.