“Whoa.” Max was clearly in shock at who he saw entering the crib. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Don’t act like it’s a surprise, Maxwell,” Michael said, practically falling down into a chair. “I knew that somebody would give it to me good someday. I had it comin’.”
“Who did this?” Max asked.
“I got caught up in a little robbery at this bank,” Michael answered simply. “Kinda got a little violent.”
“What bank were you at?” Max continued to ask questions. “I mean, the only bank around here closed last week.”
“What? Are you investigating me now like Isabel is?” Michael snapped. “Did she recruit you into this little crusade of hers to figure me out? Is that it?”
“Relax, Michael,” Max said, throwing his hands up in front of him as defense. “I was just wondering.”
Michael let out a deep sigh, realizing that he’d had one of his legendary anger moments. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . it’s been a long day.”
“I understand,” Max said. “Look, I’ll get Tess to take a look at you. She’s pretty good with injuries.”
“Thanks,” Michael muttered as Max began to walk off down the hallway. “Maxwell!” he shouted when he was halfway to his room. Max turned around when he heard his name, and Michael ran his tongue across his lips, preparing to lie to his best friend. “I was at a bank way down on the south side of town.”
“The south side?” Max echoed. “Michael, what were you doin’ hangin’ out where the rich and famous live?”
Michael shrugged. “I dunno, man.” He knew it wasn’t the best lie, but the south side was about as far away as one could get from BlackCon territory without leaving the city. “Listen, could you just get Tess now?”
Max nodded and continued down the hall.
Michael, meanwhile, couldn’t even move. He was thankful that most people were out partying at the time.
He heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and he knew that he would have to explain his appearance to someone else, now. Well, technically, he wouldn’t have to explain his appearance to anyone unless it was . . .
Nix.
“Michael, what the hell?” Nix shrieked.
“It’s nothing big,” Michael lied. “Just a few scrapes and bruises. Got caught up in the middle of a bank robbery on the south side.”
“Looks kinda . . .”
“It’s fine,” Michael interrupted. “I’m fine.”
Before either of the two men could say more, Tess came rushing out of her room, running down the hallway exclaiming “Oh God!” before she even saw Michael.
“Michael, I’m gonna take care of this,” she said, immediately kneeling down beside him. “Max, I’m gonna need some wash cloths and . . . and whatever else we got.”
“Got it,” Max said as he made his way to the nearest bathroom.
“Michael, you look awful,” Tess said.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Michael lied again.
Tess sighed. “I just can’t believe it.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Nix agreed. Michael had almost forgotten that the guy was still lingering around.
“What do you mean?” Michael asked them both, confused.
“Well,” Nix said, “think about it. This is the first day in history that someone’s gotten the better of Michael Guerin.”
Michael clenched his fists at the thought of someone beating him, and Tess seemed to notice. “It’s alright, though,” she reassured him. “Happens to everyone.”
Michael remained silent as Tess tended to his wounds and Max and Nix watched every second of it. He knew that everyone lost a battle once in awhile, but he never had before, and he was never supposed to.
He hated the thought that he hadn’t emerged victorious.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
She told Liz and Slick and everyone else that she’d been roaming around town all day, but she didn’t mention that she’d been at the bank. They didn’t need to know the truth. Instead, she told them that a fight broke out at a food stand and food was being thrown everywhere. She said she’d gotten hit, and they laughed, because they thought her story was funny. She knew they wouldn’t laugh if they knew what had really gone down.
That night, Maria laid in her bed, pulling her blankets all the way up to her neck, encompassing herself completely. There was a tiny hole in her wall, and there had been for awhile now. Slick said he would fix it, but he never did, so Maria found her room rather cold at times, but she dealt with it, because she had to.
She could not sleep. Even though she was so tired, she could not sleep, at least not peacefully. She’d managed to fall asleep once, but images kept haunting and tormenting her as she dreamt. She saw the Rick touching her. She saw Michael’s bloody face. She saw the little girl, dead and bleeding on the floor.
When she woke up and stayed awake, the images only continued to haunt her, even though she wasn’t dreaming. She saw them over and over again until they appeared in such rapid succession that she couldn’t even distinguish one from the other. They all blurred together like a massive collage of violence and anger and pain.
Maria wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. She laid there for hours watching these images play out before her, and she was certain that she was going crazy.
But, suddenly, they stopped. Maria sat straight up in her bed, clutching her blankets to her chest. She looked around in the dark, searching for her clock. She noticed that it had shut off, so she had no idea of knowing what time it was, of knowing how long she’d laid up there like a crazy person.
Maria flung her feet over the side of the bed, running her hands through her hair. She couldn’t stay here another minute. Part of her problem was BlackCon. She couldn’t be around them right now. She couldn’t.
Maria got up and rummaged around her closet for something to wear. She found a plain white t-shirt and a pair of jeans. It was simple, yes, but sometimes simple was better, and it covered her up.
Maria also found the outfit she had been wearing that morning tossed onto the floor. She’d shed the jeans and the stained shirt the moment she got home. Rick had touched her in those clothes.
Slowly, Maria picked them up and headed out the door. She passed people on her way outside, but no one really cared where she was going and why.
Along the way, Maria passed an abandoned fire made by a homeless person. She threw the shirt and jeans in without a second thought and continued on her way, glad that they were gone for good.
Maria got to the borderline and stopped. What was she doing? She couldn’t believe that she was even thinking about heading into Darkstreet territory all by herself to find the enemy.
She shook her head, mentally correcting herself. He’s not the enemy, she thought. How could a man who helped me as much as he did be the enemy?
Maria gathered up all of her courage and continued on, stepping over the borderline and into Darkstreet’s territory, feeling suddenly almost as vulnerable as she’d felt at the bank. She tried to make herself as invisible and unnoticeable as possible.
When she saw the Darkstreet crib looming in the distance, she thought about stopping right where she was at. She thought about turning around and heading back to the BlackCon crib, but she decided against the idea. She’d come this far, hadn’t she? It would be pointless to turn back now.
Their crib was relatively quiet that night. That was a surprise. The members of Darkstreet were pretty well-known party animals. Stealthily, she stepped forward, letting herself sink back into the shadows. She was suddenly glad she’d grabbed her black coat on the way out. She was sort of camouflaged. Just sort of.
She looked around from her position in the shadows, trying to remember what balcony he’d been standing on last time. Her eyes settled on one particular room as she scanned. His light was on and he was hobbling around inside. She could hear his rock music blaring from inside, too, and she smiled, wondering how someone so different from her was the only person that she felt she could trust at the moment.
As if he sensed someone watching him, Michael looked out his window. He stepped forward slowly, and finally made his way out onto his balcony, scanning the ground below. At last, his eyes settled on her, and his mouth dropped open a little bit as if he were surprised to see her. He only looked at her for a few seconds, and then he turned and left the balcony. Maria watched as he turned the light and the music off, and a few minutes later, he was walking—more or less—out the front door of the building. His long black coat flowed behind him, and he should’ve looked threatening, but he didn’t. Not to Maria, anyway.
He used to look threatening. And intimidating and frightening. But he wasn’t anymore. He hadn’t been for awhile now.
He didn’t say anything. He just joined her in the shadows and walked away slowly, and she followed.
“What time is it?” she asked him when they were a good distance away from the crib.
He lifted his wrist and looked at his watch. “Midnight.”
Maria could hardly believe that. “I laid there for six hours,” she whispered more to herself than to him.
“What?” he asked, obviously having heard her a little bit.
She shook her head. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Well, no, it is something.”
“Wanna tell me about it?” Michael asked, heading down into an alley behind and apartment complex.
“I don’t know,” she said, following him. She sat down on the ground, not bothering to care what she was possible sitting in. She leaned her head against the wall, wanting to go to sleep, but knowing exactly what she would see if she did.
“Well, then why did you come here?” Michael asked, sitting down on a crate near the wall across from her. He groaned in pain as he struggled to sit, and Maria was reminded once again of what Rick had done.
“I . . .” This was going to be harder to say than she’d thought it would be. “I don’t know how to express what I’m feeling right now. It’s just that . . .”
“Come on. Just talk to me, Maria,” Michael urged. “I won’t think you’re stupid or crazy or anything like that.”
“Well, I’m starting to think I’m crazy,” she told him. “I mean, I laid in my bed for six hours, Michael, just thinking about all that happened to day.”
Michael nodded in understanding. “The bank.”
“Yeah. Have you thought about it?”
Michael shrugged. “A little. I try not to.”
“I try not to,” she told him, “but I always do, and whenever I do, I just feel . . . just awful about the whole thing.”
“You don’t have any reason to feel awful,” Michael told her. “It wasn’t your fault that any of that happened.”
“That’s not the point,” Maria said. “The point is that those guys were . . . okay, I’m trying to come up with some really hideous description here, but the only word that’s coming to my mind is bad. So, please excuse the lame adjective and think about what I’m saying here.”
Michael laughed a little. “Okay.”
Maria sighed. “Those guys are bad people. They do bad things. I’m . . . I’m so much like them.”
Michael looked confused. “What?”
“I’m so much like them, Michael,” she repeated. “I just . . .”
“You’re not like them!” Michael almost shouted, cutting her off. “Maria, you are not like them at all! You don’t go around robbing banks and sexually assaulting people and killing little girls!”
“But I’m part of a gang, Michael!” she shouted back. “A gang! And gangs are not good. People in gangs kill other people. People in gangs don’t care about whose life they screw up, just as long as they’re doin’ okay! People in gangs don’t have a future ahead of them. All they have is pain and misery, and all they cause is pain and misery, Michael!”
“Well, if you’re such a bad person, then I am, too,” Michael told her, “‘cause I’ve done some pretty bad things, Maria.”
Maria gazed at him for awhile, and she noticed something on his face, something in his eyes, something that looked an awful lot like remorse. Finally, she choked out the three words that she’d been trying to say ever since she became a part of BlackCon.
“I want out.” A single tear leaked from her right eye, followed by another. “I want out so bad, but I can’t get out.” She began to cry harder now, totally aware of the fact that she was breaking down. “I wanna lead a good life again. I wanna be a part of something good, and I can’t be. I can’t be, because there is no way out. I’m trapped. I’m trapped and I’m screaming, but no one even hears me.”
“I hear you,” Michael told her, “and I understand. I’ve been in for six years. I’m twenty-three. I should be doin’ something with my life. I’m supposed to be in law school right now.”
Maria dropped her head. “I’m supposed to be a senior in high school right now.” She shook her head, trying to shake her tears away. “I know that the age thing really shouldn’t be that big of a matter,” she said, “but it is. I mean, I know that lots of teenagers my age are in gangs, but in BlackCon, they’re all older and wiser and . . . and I can’t relate to them on any level at all. Even my friends . . . I can’t . . . I can’t let them in.”
Michael gazed at her but said nothing. He probably didn’t know what to say.
“I just feel so isolated and alone and vulnerable. I wanna be able to tell my friends everything that I’m telling you right now, but I can’t, because I just don’t think they’d understand or even care. I don’t know why you seem to care.”
Michael shrugged. “I don’t, either, but I do.”
Maria wiped her tears from her cheeks and tried to regain herself. “Tell me again that you don’t think I’m stupid or crazy, Michael, because I’m breaking down right in front of you. I’m falling down and I just can’t get up anymore.” She sighed. “God, you must think that I’m an idiot, right? I just keep talking all this mumbo jumbo. You probably haven’t understood a thing I’ve said. I can’t even really understand myself right now.”
“No, I think I get it,” Michael said. “You’re pretty much haunted by that incident at the bank. You think that being in a gang symbolizes all of the stuff that Rick did there. You think that you’re this bad person, even though I know you’re not, and you wanna tell your friends that you feel this way, but you can’t, ‘cause you’re separated from them. Apart. And you want out.”
She dropped her gaze to the ground again and nodded slowly, whispering, “Yeah. I want out.”
“Well,” Michael said, standing up slowly. “I guess that I could suggest running away.”
“No,” Maria said, dismissing the idea immediately. She knew that running would not help this. “I don’t have any way to support myself. I’ve never even had a job, let alone lived on my own. Besides, I ran away once, and look how that all turned out.” She grunted, mentally thinking how stupid she was for leaving that night, just because she couldn’t face her father. She should have told somebody about what he’d done, about what he would have done if she’d been placed in his custody. She hadn’t done that, though, because she’d been so afraid.
Fear. Fear was a turbulent emotion, one that seemed to affect her all of the time, whether she wanted it to or not. Fear was affecting her now, because she was fearing that she was a bad person.
“Well, then I can only think of one other thing that might help,” Michael said.
“What?” she asked him, eager to know.
“We gotta loosen you up a bit,” Michael explained. “You know? Go out and just have a good time and forget about everything that happened today.”
Maria shook her head. “I don’t think that partying is going to help me, Michael. Besides, there’s not even a live band playing at Club Funk tonight.”
“First of all,” Michael said, “I’d kill myself before I ever partied at Club Funk, and second of all, and second of all, I have this gut feeling that this could really be good for you.”
Maria felt herself giving in. She wanted to just go and have fun, but at the same time, she was surprised that she was thinking about going with Michael. A few days ago, she’d barely known him, except for what people said about him, and now she was sneaking around with him and confessing all of her fears and doubts to him and crying in front of him. She’d promised herself to never cry in front of the enemy, because she’d told herself that she hated them so much, because BlackCon hated them so much, but she’d already broken that promise several times in front of Michael.
“What do you say?” Michael asked. “You wanna go hit that new place called Motion that just opened up on your side of town?”
“I’m pretty exhausted,” Maria pointed out.
Michael nodded. “Yeah, and so am I, but my body isn’t really hurtin’ me that bad right now, so maybe you wanna take me up on the offer.”
She did, and she knew she did. “Alright. Let’s go.”
Sorry for not updating sooner. -April
Beautiful (AU,M/M, MATURE) 10/31/04 [COMPLETE]
Moderators: Anniepoo98, Rowedog, ISLANDGIRL5, Itzstacie, truelovepooh, FSU/MSW-94, Erina, Hunter, Forum Moderators
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April
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Michael surveyed the cars lined up along the street, quite impressed. He knew that BlackCon territory was a little nicer and all around richer than Darkstreet territory, but he had no idea that he’d be walking along and spot a red Viper . . . with the doors unlocked . . . with the key in the ignition.
“Right here,” he announced. “This is it.”
“What is?” Maria asked. She was clearly completely clueless about what he was planning on doing.
“The car,” Michael explained, casually running his fingers over the top, enjoying the smooth feel. He looked around, making sure that no one was looking that shouldn’t be. “You didn’t think that we were gonna walk all the way to Motion, did you?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Maria said, joining him by the side of the car, “but this isn’t our car.”
Michael sighed. “Maria . . .”
“Look, I just gave you this whole big speech on how I think I’m this bad person, and if we take this car, then I’m gonna have proof, actual solid proof that I’m this bad person I’m thinking I am.”
“No,” Michael corrected, “you’ll have proof that I’m this bad person that I know I am, ‘cause it’s my idea to take this car, and it’s me who’s gonna tell you to just get in and not worry about it.”
Defeated, Maria let out a long sigh and made her way around to the passenger’s side. “This person was pretty stupid,” she commented, opening her door, “to just leave his car unlocked. So, really, it’s his own fault that we’re stealing it.”
“We’re not stealing it,” Michael told her, sitting down in the driver’s seat. “We’re borrowing it. And, actually, we’re not doing anything at all. I am.” He didn’t know why, but he felt the need to reassure her that this was all his doing, that she wasn’t to blame.
Maria reluctantly sat down in the passenger’s seat and closed her door. “Leather,” she commented, running her fingers over the seat.
Within minutes, they were flying down the street towards the new club, going well over the speed limit at 90 miles per hour.
“You know, I never even learned how to drive,” Maria blurted out all at once as they drove.
Michael gave her a confused look. “You really didn’t?”
“Think about it, Michael. I was fourteen. Fourteen.”
“Well, didn’t Slick or somebody ever teach you?”
She shook her head.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Michael said. “What if you ran into the cops one day and had to get away? Driving would help you out.”
“Slick’s got it in his head that feet are faster than wheels,” Maria explained. “I don’t see why he thinks that. I mean, there’s no logic behind it, but, whatever, I guess. I can’t drive. Big deal.”
“No, no, it is a big deal,” Michael said, putting on the break and pulling the car over onto the shoulder. “Everyone should know how to drive.” When the car came to a complete stop, he said, “Alright, switch me seats.”
“What?” Maria shrieked.
“Take the wheel.”
Maria shook her head vigorously. “No, see, that’s a really bad idea. I’ve never driven anywhere, Michael. Ever. Not even around the block.”
“Well, you gotta learn sometime, then,” Michael pushed. “Now come on.”
She continued to shake her head and protest verbally, but even as she did that, she was sliding over Michael and he was sliding under her, and she soon found herself positioned in the driver’s seat anyway.
“I can’t do this,” she kept repeating. “I just can’t.”
“It isn’t that hard,” Michael told her again, making himself comfortable in the passenger’s seat. He reached for his seatbelt and hooked it, just to be safe.
“It is for me,” Maria said, glancing out onto the street at the passing traffic. “It is when you’ve never done it before.” She finally tore her eyes away from the traffic and looked back at him. “You know, this street kinda looks busy tonight, so maybe we should just go and drive around somewhere where things aren’t so . . .” She trailed off, and the sound of a car horn honking violently interrupted her. “Disorderly?”
“No, we’re doin’ this now,” Michael said, immediately dismissing the idea.
“No, we aren’t,” she protested. “Nobody just gets behind the wheel and drives down a busy street.”
“How do you think I learned?” Michael shot back. “Driver’s ed?” He chuckled. “Maria, I did the same thing when I was fifteen, and I survived.”
Maria sighed dramatically and then ran her hands through her hair. “Fine,” she muttered at last. “Fine, I’ll do it. Now, uh, which one’s the gas pedal?”
Michael suddenly wondered what he had gotten himself into. “It’s that one,” he said, pointing to the pedal on the right.
Maria nodded. “Right. So, the other one is the brake, right?”
He nodded slowly, wanting now more than ever to jump out of the car.
“And what’s the rest of this stuff?” she asked him, motioning to all of the other gadgets in the car.
Michael leaned over and pointed all of the most important features out to her one at a time, but quickly. “Steering wheel, turn signal, gears, speedometer, mirror. Got it?”
She turned to look at him, sending him an incredulous expression. “You are, like, the worst teacher ever!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “I know. Now drive.”
“This isn’t even my car,” Maria mumbled, slamming her foot down hard on the gas pedal. The car did not move. “What’s wrong?” she asked immediately, panicked. “What did I do? Why isn’t it moving?”
“Relax,” Michael told her, reaching over and changing the gears so that the car was in drive. “You had it in park.”
Maria smiled. “Oh. Duh.” Michael held back laughter as he watched her.
“Alright,” she said at last. “I’m gonna do this.” She focused on the road in front of her and slowly lowered her foot onto the gas pedal, and then she made her first mistake. She slammed down, hard.
She screamed as the car flew forward, and Michael had to contain his own scream. “Get over to the left!” he told her as calmly as he could, noticing that they were inches away from going into the ditch. “Turn the wheel a little!”
She did turn the wheel, only she turned it a lot, and they made a full turn right in the middle of the road.
“I said ‘a little’!” Michael shouted.
“Sorry,” she apologized. She’d managed to straighten the wheel back out now, but they were still barreling down the street at an even faster speed than Michael had been going.
“Let up on the gas a little!” Michael told her, noticing a stop light in the distance. When the car barely slowed, he said, “Okay, let up on the gas a lot!”
“I’m letting up,” Maria said. “I’m letting up.”
“No, you’re not,” Michael told her, dreading the busy intersection that was approaching faster with every second. “Holy shit, Maria, just brake!”
She moved her foot over to the left pedal and pressed it down slowly.
“Brake!” Michael shouted again. “Brake! Brake! Maria, BRAKE!”
“It’s not braking!” she shouted. “It’s not braking, Michael!” She let up on the brake all together, and the car coasted through the intersection at a relatively fast pace, narrowly missing hitting another car.
“Just keep driving,” Michael said. He found that he was gripping onto the dashboard in front of him so tightly that his hands were hurting.
“Am I doing okay, now?” Maria asked him.
Looking around, Michael noticed that something wasn’t right. It took him a minute to figure out what that was. “Shit, Maria, you’re in the wrong lane! Get over to the right!”
Maria jerked the wheel to the right, and Michael saw a vision them flying into the ditch. “Left!” he shouted. “Go left!”
She jerked the wheel to the left and then abruptly slammed on the brake right in the middle of the road. Luckily, no one was behind them.
“You can’t just stop right in the middle of the road!” Michael told her. “Put on the gas, and let’s go nice and slow the rest of the way.”
She nodded and put on the gas very slowly, inching along on the road until a car behind her started honking, impatient, and she started to go faster.
“How am I doing now?” she asked him.
“Better,” he told her, catching his breath. “You’re doin’ better.”
All at once, Michael could make out a huge truck coming up over the hill at an unbelievable speed. He felt his breath leaving him again when Maria began to panic.
“Oh, God, Michael, look at that thing!”
“Stay calm,” he told her, “Just, stay calm!” He was finding it hard to stay calm himself at the moment.
“I can’t do this!” Maria started shouting again. She squeezed her eyes shut and her hands left the wheel. Michael reached over and grabbed the wheel before the car went careening straight into the truck. “Eyes open!” he told her. “Eyes always open! And hands always on the wheel!”
Maria’s hand knocked the gear out of place as she tried to regain some sort of control, and Michael found that the car was now going backwards. “What the hell? Maria! You’re in reverse!”
“What? What? What’s that mean?”
The car behind them swerved around them, barely missing a collision. The person driving flipped them the finger as they drove on.
Michael reached over and quickly put the car into drive. “You’re fine now,” he told her. “Just give it some gas.”
She slammed her foot down on the accelerator again, and the car was flying down the street uncontrollably again.
“Maria!”
At last, though, they reached Motion. Michael felt relief wash over him when he saw the flashing neon lights and heard the reverberating music coming from inside.
“Should I park now?” Maria asked eagerly.
“Uh . . .” Michael didn’t know if that was such a good idea. Even though he knew this, though, he answered, “Sure.”
Maria had no idea what she was doing, but she pretended like she did, and she even revealed to him that she was kind of liking the whole driving aspect. “Maybe you could teach me again sometime,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe,” Michael said, though he didn’t have any plans to let Maria drive again anytime soon. He’d seen his life flash before his eyes one too many times within the last few minutes, and that was enough to make him fearful of a second drive.
After Michael helped Maria park the car in straight, they both got out of the car and surveyed the club. Motion looked like a cross between a rave and dance club and a rapper’s paradise. It didn’t look like they’d be playing the rock music that he liked so much, but . . . what the hell. He wasn’t here to party. His battered body would probably not allow him that. He was here because Maria needed to be, because she couldn’t stay with BlackCon right now, and because she couldn’t very well be nowhere with no one in her state.
“The line’s pretty long,” Maria commented, eyeing the winding trail of people that lead from the door all the way back behind the building. It made sense that there would be a lot of people at this place. It’d only opened up a short time ago.
“I’m not waitin’ to get in,” Michael said. “I’ll just throw a punch at whoever tries to stop me.”
“No,” Maria told him. “No more violence tonight. Look, we’ll just wait.”
Michael knew he should’ve known that violence was out of the question. He shouldn’t have even brought it up. He could be such a loser sometimes. He felt like apologizing, but he looked at Maria, and she seemed to have already forgotten about it. She was looking at the guy who was letting people in, and Michael could almost see her thinking.
“Unless . . .” she said quietly, trailing off.
Michael sighed. “Maria, I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t we go over all that seduction stuff out there on that street corner awhile back.”
Maria looked down at the clothes she was wearing and shrugged. “I guess I’m not really dressed to seduce, anyway. But still . . . I don’t wanna wait in that line any more than you do.” She cast another look back at the guy at the entrance. “It’s worth a shot, don’t you think?” She shrugged and headed off in the direction of the front of the line. Michael followed.
“Excuse me,” Maria said when she was in front of everyone else. “I was wondering if you could let my friend and me here,”—she motioned towards Michael, who was standing behind her with his hands in his pockets—“inside.”
The guy laughed. “For free? You’re dreamin’, baby.”
“No, we have money,” Maria reassured him. Then, as if reconsidering her statement, she turned back to face Michael. “We do have money, right?”
“Yeah,” Michael told her, reaching in his pocket for his wallet. He couldn’t believe that he was about to shell out cash for some club that probably didn’t even play rock music.
“See, we have money,” Maria told the guy, grabbing the cash from Michael. “Now will you let us in?”
“Why? So you can bang each other all night?”
Michael held in his laughter, though he knew Maria had a mortified expression plastered on her face by now. “Oh, there will be no banging involved at all!”
“Girlie, you just go wait in the back of the line like everybody else.”
Maria, though the people behind her were growing very impatient and beginning to shout angrily, was not at all about to give up. “Listen, buddy,” she said, leaning forward and placing her hands on his shoulders. “If you let me and my friend in right now, I might be able to promise you a little banging later tonight. What do you say?”
The guy tried to stand strong for a moment, but then he faltered. “Fine. Just go on in.”
“Thank you,” Maria said, prancing on inside. Michael followed her once again, ignoring the angry protests of those behind him.
“I gotta hand it to you, DeLuca,” Michael said, “that was pretty good.”
“I know,” Maria said, walking forward excitedly. “See, Michael, I don’t have much, but I do have this one thing that tends to make guys falter, and I know how to use it. Except for the street corner. I guess that’s just an exception.”
Michael had to agree with that. Even in her regular jeans and T-Shirt, she might have managed to make him give in, too.
“Wow,” Maria commented when they’d finally made their way into the club. “Look at this place!”
Michael looked around. It was quite impressive, for a place that played rap and techno. He and Maria were standing on a tall balcony that had stairs leading down to the lower level on either side. The lower level consisted of a huge dance floor lined by tables all around and a few couches in the corners. There was one more level, too, a level that was even higher than Michael and Maria were now. It consisted of one gigantic bar and a bunch of tables and chairs, and it seemed as if the club’s classier group was conjuring up there. There were neon lights and lasers and disco balls and so many other lights that Michael was thinking his might be sick sometime soon.
What am I doing here? he asked himself. What the hell am I doing here?
He looked to Maria, and he knew the answers to his questions.
“Right here,” he announced. “This is it.”
“What is?” Maria asked. She was clearly completely clueless about what he was planning on doing.
“The car,” Michael explained, casually running his fingers over the top, enjoying the smooth feel. He looked around, making sure that no one was looking that shouldn’t be. “You didn’t think that we were gonna walk all the way to Motion, did you?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Maria said, joining him by the side of the car, “but this isn’t our car.”
Michael sighed. “Maria . . .”
“Look, I just gave you this whole big speech on how I think I’m this bad person, and if we take this car, then I’m gonna have proof, actual solid proof that I’m this bad person I’m thinking I am.”
“No,” Michael corrected, “you’ll have proof that I’m this bad person that I know I am, ‘cause it’s my idea to take this car, and it’s me who’s gonna tell you to just get in and not worry about it.”
Defeated, Maria let out a long sigh and made her way around to the passenger’s side. “This person was pretty stupid,” she commented, opening her door, “to just leave his car unlocked. So, really, it’s his own fault that we’re stealing it.”
“We’re not stealing it,” Michael told her, sitting down in the driver’s seat. “We’re borrowing it. And, actually, we’re not doing anything at all. I am.” He didn’t know why, but he felt the need to reassure her that this was all his doing, that she wasn’t to blame.
Maria reluctantly sat down in the passenger’s seat and closed her door. “Leather,” she commented, running her fingers over the seat.
Within minutes, they were flying down the street towards the new club, going well over the speed limit at 90 miles per hour.
“You know, I never even learned how to drive,” Maria blurted out all at once as they drove.
Michael gave her a confused look. “You really didn’t?”
“Think about it, Michael. I was fourteen. Fourteen.”
“Well, didn’t Slick or somebody ever teach you?”
She shook her head.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Michael said. “What if you ran into the cops one day and had to get away? Driving would help you out.”
“Slick’s got it in his head that feet are faster than wheels,” Maria explained. “I don’t see why he thinks that. I mean, there’s no logic behind it, but, whatever, I guess. I can’t drive. Big deal.”
“No, no, it is a big deal,” Michael said, putting on the break and pulling the car over onto the shoulder. “Everyone should know how to drive.” When the car came to a complete stop, he said, “Alright, switch me seats.”
“What?” Maria shrieked.
“Take the wheel.”
Maria shook her head vigorously. “No, see, that’s a really bad idea. I’ve never driven anywhere, Michael. Ever. Not even around the block.”
“Well, you gotta learn sometime, then,” Michael pushed. “Now come on.”
She continued to shake her head and protest verbally, but even as she did that, she was sliding over Michael and he was sliding under her, and she soon found herself positioned in the driver’s seat anyway.
“I can’t do this,” she kept repeating. “I just can’t.”
“It isn’t that hard,” Michael told her again, making himself comfortable in the passenger’s seat. He reached for his seatbelt and hooked it, just to be safe.
“It is for me,” Maria said, glancing out onto the street at the passing traffic. “It is when you’ve never done it before.” She finally tore her eyes away from the traffic and looked back at him. “You know, this street kinda looks busy tonight, so maybe we should just go and drive around somewhere where things aren’t so . . .” She trailed off, and the sound of a car horn honking violently interrupted her. “Disorderly?”
“No, we’re doin’ this now,” Michael said, immediately dismissing the idea.
“No, we aren’t,” she protested. “Nobody just gets behind the wheel and drives down a busy street.”
“How do you think I learned?” Michael shot back. “Driver’s ed?” He chuckled. “Maria, I did the same thing when I was fifteen, and I survived.”
Maria sighed dramatically and then ran her hands through her hair. “Fine,” she muttered at last. “Fine, I’ll do it. Now, uh, which one’s the gas pedal?”
Michael suddenly wondered what he had gotten himself into. “It’s that one,” he said, pointing to the pedal on the right.
Maria nodded. “Right. So, the other one is the brake, right?”
He nodded slowly, wanting now more than ever to jump out of the car.
“And what’s the rest of this stuff?” she asked him, motioning to all of the other gadgets in the car.
Michael leaned over and pointed all of the most important features out to her one at a time, but quickly. “Steering wheel, turn signal, gears, speedometer, mirror. Got it?”
She turned to look at him, sending him an incredulous expression. “You are, like, the worst teacher ever!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “I know. Now drive.”
“This isn’t even my car,” Maria mumbled, slamming her foot down hard on the gas pedal. The car did not move. “What’s wrong?” she asked immediately, panicked. “What did I do? Why isn’t it moving?”
“Relax,” Michael told her, reaching over and changing the gears so that the car was in drive. “You had it in park.”
Maria smiled. “Oh. Duh.” Michael held back laughter as he watched her.
“Alright,” she said at last. “I’m gonna do this.” She focused on the road in front of her and slowly lowered her foot onto the gas pedal, and then she made her first mistake. She slammed down, hard.
She screamed as the car flew forward, and Michael had to contain his own scream. “Get over to the left!” he told her as calmly as he could, noticing that they were inches away from going into the ditch. “Turn the wheel a little!”
She did turn the wheel, only she turned it a lot, and they made a full turn right in the middle of the road.
“I said ‘a little’!” Michael shouted.
“Sorry,” she apologized. She’d managed to straighten the wheel back out now, but they were still barreling down the street at an even faster speed than Michael had been going.
“Let up on the gas a little!” Michael told her, noticing a stop light in the distance. When the car barely slowed, he said, “Okay, let up on the gas a lot!”
“I’m letting up,” Maria said. “I’m letting up.”
“No, you’re not,” Michael told her, dreading the busy intersection that was approaching faster with every second. “Holy shit, Maria, just brake!”
She moved her foot over to the left pedal and pressed it down slowly.
“Brake!” Michael shouted again. “Brake! Brake! Maria, BRAKE!”
“It’s not braking!” she shouted. “It’s not braking, Michael!” She let up on the brake all together, and the car coasted through the intersection at a relatively fast pace, narrowly missing hitting another car.
“Just keep driving,” Michael said. He found that he was gripping onto the dashboard in front of him so tightly that his hands were hurting.
“Am I doing okay, now?” Maria asked him.
Looking around, Michael noticed that something wasn’t right. It took him a minute to figure out what that was. “Shit, Maria, you’re in the wrong lane! Get over to the right!”
Maria jerked the wheel to the right, and Michael saw a vision them flying into the ditch. “Left!” he shouted. “Go left!”
She jerked the wheel to the left and then abruptly slammed on the brake right in the middle of the road. Luckily, no one was behind them.
“You can’t just stop right in the middle of the road!” Michael told her. “Put on the gas, and let’s go nice and slow the rest of the way.”
She nodded and put on the gas very slowly, inching along on the road until a car behind her started honking, impatient, and she started to go faster.
“How am I doing now?” she asked him.
“Better,” he told her, catching his breath. “You’re doin’ better.”
All at once, Michael could make out a huge truck coming up over the hill at an unbelievable speed. He felt his breath leaving him again when Maria began to panic.
“Oh, God, Michael, look at that thing!”
“Stay calm,” he told her, “Just, stay calm!” He was finding it hard to stay calm himself at the moment.
“I can’t do this!” Maria started shouting again. She squeezed her eyes shut and her hands left the wheel. Michael reached over and grabbed the wheel before the car went careening straight into the truck. “Eyes open!” he told her. “Eyes always open! And hands always on the wheel!”
Maria’s hand knocked the gear out of place as she tried to regain some sort of control, and Michael found that the car was now going backwards. “What the hell? Maria! You’re in reverse!”
“What? What? What’s that mean?”
The car behind them swerved around them, barely missing a collision. The person driving flipped them the finger as they drove on.
Michael reached over and quickly put the car into drive. “You’re fine now,” he told her. “Just give it some gas.”
She slammed her foot down on the accelerator again, and the car was flying down the street uncontrollably again.
“Maria!”
At last, though, they reached Motion. Michael felt relief wash over him when he saw the flashing neon lights and heard the reverberating music coming from inside.
“Should I park now?” Maria asked eagerly.
“Uh . . .” Michael didn’t know if that was such a good idea. Even though he knew this, though, he answered, “Sure.”
Maria had no idea what she was doing, but she pretended like she did, and she even revealed to him that she was kind of liking the whole driving aspect. “Maybe you could teach me again sometime,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe,” Michael said, though he didn’t have any plans to let Maria drive again anytime soon. He’d seen his life flash before his eyes one too many times within the last few minutes, and that was enough to make him fearful of a second drive.
After Michael helped Maria park the car in straight, they both got out of the car and surveyed the club. Motion looked like a cross between a rave and dance club and a rapper’s paradise. It didn’t look like they’d be playing the rock music that he liked so much, but . . . what the hell. He wasn’t here to party. His battered body would probably not allow him that. He was here because Maria needed to be, because she couldn’t stay with BlackCon right now, and because she couldn’t very well be nowhere with no one in her state.
“The line’s pretty long,” Maria commented, eyeing the winding trail of people that lead from the door all the way back behind the building. It made sense that there would be a lot of people at this place. It’d only opened up a short time ago.
“I’m not waitin’ to get in,” Michael said. “I’ll just throw a punch at whoever tries to stop me.”
“No,” Maria told him. “No more violence tonight. Look, we’ll just wait.”
Michael knew he should’ve known that violence was out of the question. He shouldn’t have even brought it up. He could be such a loser sometimes. He felt like apologizing, but he looked at Maria, and she seemed to have already forgotten about it. She was looking at the guy who was letting people in, and Michael could almost see her thinking.
“Unless . . .” she said quietly, trailing off.
Michael sighed. “Maria, I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t we go over all that seduction stuff out there on that street corner awhile back.”
Maria looked down at the clothes she was wearing and shrugged. “I guess I’m not really dressed to seduce, anyway. But still . . . I don’t wanna wait in that line any more than you do.” She cast another look back at the guy at the entrance. “It’s worth a shot, don’t you think?” She shrugged and headed off in the direction of the front of the line. Michael followed.
“Excuse me,” Maria said when she was in front of everyone else. “I was wondering if you could let my friend and me here,”—she motioned towards Michael, who was standing behind her with his hands in his pockets—“inside.”
The guy laughed. “For free? You’re dreamin’, baby.”
“No, we have money,” Maria reassured him. Then, as if reconsidering her statement, she turned back to face Michael. “We do have money, right?”
“Yeah,” Michael told her, reaching in his pocket for his wallet. He couldn’t believe that he was about to shell out cash for some club that probably didn’t even play rock music.
“See, we have money,” Maria told the guy, grabbing the cash from Michael. “Now will you let us in?”
“Why? So you can bang each other all night?”
Michael held in his laughter, though he knew Maria had a mortified expression plastered on her face by now. “Oh, there will be no banging involved at all!”
“Girlie, you just go wait in the back of the line like everybody else.”
Maria, though the people behind her were growing very impatient and beginning to shout angrily, was not at all about to give up. “Listen, buddy,” she said, leaning forward and placing her hands on his shoulders. “If you let me and my friend in right now, I might be able to promise you a little banging later tonight. What do you say?”
The guy tried to stand strong for a moment, but then he faltered. “Fine. Just go on in.”
“Thank you,” Maria said, prancing on inside. Michael followed her once again, ignoring the angry protests of those behind him.
“I gotta hand it to you, DeLuca,” Michael said, “that was pretty good.”
“I know,” Maria said, walking forward excitedly. “See, Michael, I don’t have much, but I do have this one thing that tends to make guys falter, and I know how to use it. Except for the street corner. I guess that’s just an exception.”
Michael had to agree with that. Even in her regular jeans and T-Shirt, she might have managed to make him give in, too.
“Wow,” Maria commented when they’d finally made their way into the club. “Look at this place!”
Michael looked around. It was quite impressive, for a place that played rap and techno. He and Maria were standing on a tall balcony that had stairs leading down to the lower level on either side. The lower level consisted of a huge dance floor lined by tables all around and a few couches in the corners. There was one more level, too, a level that was even higher than Michael and Maria were now. It consisted of one gigantic bar and a bunch of tables and chairs, and it seemed as if the club’s classier group was conjuring up there. There were neon lights and lasers and disco balls and so many other lights that Michael was thinking his might be sick sometime soon.
What am I doing here? he asked himself. What the hell am I doing here?
He looked to Maria, and he knew the answers to his questions.
LOVE IS MICHAEL AND MARIA.
-
April
- Roswell Fanatic
- Posts: 1557
- Joined: Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:32 am
- Location: Somewhere. Anywhere.
- Contact:
Part 11
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"That guy thinks he’s cool,” Maria commented, pointing to a total loser who was trying to bust a move right out in the middle of a dance floor. A crowd was forming around him, but they weren’t cheering him on. They were laughing at him, but he couldn’t seem to tell the difference.
“But he isn’t,” Michael said. “He’s such a nerd.”
“I kinda feel sorry for him, though,” Maria said, taking a sip of her soda. (She’d insisted on staying away from the alcohol.) “Nobody dances with nerds at high school dances or at parties, so they never really learn how. It’s not their fault that they were given bad teeth and even worse acne.”
Michael shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “Don’t you think that if they really wanted to get outta nerd status they’d get orthodontic work and dermatology treatments?”
“Lots of them can’t afford it,” Maria reminded him. “See, the only reason why I was even semi-popular was because my mom could afford things like that.”
“You had acne?” Michael asked, unable to believe that the girl in front of him now had once had bad skin.
“Yes,” she said, “and bad teeth and unmanageable hair and everything else. But my mom paid for everything that would help me, and I wasn’t picked on as much as I could have been. I only went through my awkward phase for about a year, though, so I guess I was lucky. What about you?”
“Me?” Michael could barely even remember the days of his childhood now. They seemed so far away and distant. It seemed like the only part of his life he could remember was from eighteen years on, from the day he joined Darkstreet.
“I was never a geek,” he said at last. “I was always pretty cool. Kinda the bully for awhile, though.”
“Of course,” Maria muttered.
“But I grew outta that, just like you grew outta your awkward phase,” he said. “But everyone was still pretty scared of me. I was a badass. A rebel, and I wasn’t afraid to pound anybody who got in my way.”
“Gee,” Maria said sarcastically, “You’ve certainly changed.”
“I have,” Michael said, “believe it or not. I’m a lot better person now than I was back then.”
“Let’s not get talking about what kind of people we are,” Maria suggested. “I think I’ve already done enough of that. Now,”—she pointed to the loser out on the dance floor—“I really do feel sorry for the guy, but it’s just hilarious how bad he sucks.”
“Yeah,” Michael agreed, laughing a little. “He should just quit now.”
As if on cue, the guy stopped dancing, took a bow, and walked away, unaware that the cheering that he thought he was hearing was only laughing and taunting.
“Wow,” Michael said, “I really have an effect on people.”
Maria grunted. “You wish, Guerin.” She stared at him for several long seconds, and Michael had to wonder what exactly it was that she was thinking.
“You know what?” she said at last. “You and I need a place to meet so that I don’t have to come sneaking on over to Darkstreet territory again.”
“But it’s okay for me to head over into your side of town?”
“Yeah,” she replied simply with a nod. “It’s different with you. You’re a guy, and I’m just this little girl, and it’s just not safe for me. And besides, everyone knows that you roam around this city like you own it. All of it. It’d look weird if someone caught me all alone in your territory.”
Michael had to agree that she had a point. “Alright, I get it. We can meet on that street corner that you were at that one time. You know, kinda on the borderline?”
“Oh, yeah, the one where I was trying to be a hooker,” Maria said knowingly. “I guess that would work. As long as no jackasses try to pick me up while I’m there.”
“They won’t,” Michael reassured her. “I won’t let them.”
Something flashed across her eyes, and it looked a lot like gratitude, but Michael couldn’t be sure.
All at once, the DJ started to switch up the songs, and a high tempo rap song came on over the speakers. A thrilled expression came across Maria’s face, and she stood up. “Oh my God! I love this song!” she exclaimed. “Come on, Michael. Let’s go dance!”
“Uh, that’s alright, you just go,” Michael told her, leaning back in his seat and curling his fingers around his drink. “I’m not much of a dancer.”
Maria sighed. “Fine.” She danced her way out onto the floor and started dancing, and she was soon surrounded by a group of people that she didn’t even know but were liking the way she was dancing and wanted to join.
At first, Michael wasn’t even watching her, but then he allowed himself one glance, and everything changed. With that one glance, his whole world was changed and shaken upside down.
She was everywhere. She was uncontrollable on her legs, and she was wild on the floor, and she was explosive in the center of a forming circle. She was the exact definition of perpetual motion. Her hips swayed, her arms circled, her shoulders shook, her body moved, and she just kept dancing like she’d forgotten about every other trouble and problem in her life.
Michael watched, curiously at first as to why he was watching in the first place, and then intrigued, just waiting to see what she would do next. He was well aware that he was staring, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.
This girl . . . she was hot. He’d always known that, but she was more than just hot.
She was beautiful.
A loud whooping and hollering sound distracted Michael’s attention, and he found moved his gaze around the club for a brief instant. His eyes caught sight of four unmistakable figures who were making their way down the stairs onto the dance floor, shouting so loudly that everyone would know that they’d arrived.
BlackCon. Slick, VaLenti, Whitman, and VaLenti’s girlfriend. They were making their way towards Maria, but she didn’t even know that they were there.
Michael knew he had to leave. He didn’t want to, but he knew he had to. He allowed himself one last glance at Maria and then forced himself to go.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria was so absorbed in her dancing that she didn’t even know that someone was dancing behind her for quite some time, but when she felt someone’s hands wrap around her waist, she spun around in shock.
She had halfway expected to find that Michael had given in and decided to dance with her, and she was halfway expecting to find some complete stranger who thought he could funk it up with her when he didn’t even know her. She was not, however, expecting to find Slick, and that was exactly who she found.
“Slick!” she exclaimed, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. She froze in place, suddenly immobile. How long had he been here? Had he seen her talking with Michael?
“Hey, baby,” he said over the music. “Glad to see me?”
“When did you get here?” she asked him, leaving his question unanswered.
“Just now,” Slick told her. “Gotta check out the new club, you know. I’ll say, it’s pretty awesome. We weren’t expecting to see you here, though.”
“We?” Maria wondered who else was here.
“Yes, we,” Liz said, stepping out from behind Slick. “We as in me and Slick and Alex and Kyle!” She put emphasis on her boyfriend’s name. “Look at him! Standing! Walking! Dancing!”
Maria tried to smile. “That’s great,” she said quietly. Honestly, it was great, but she was so overwhelmed by their sudden appearance that she could hardly think.
Michael, Maria suddenly remembered. She turned back in the direction of their booth, searching for him.
He was gone.
“Baby, let’s dance.” Maria felt Slick’s hands encircle her stomach again, pulling her to him as he begin to move with the music.
It was weird. The whole purpose of this night had been to loosen up, and now that Slick and the others had showed up, she only felt uptight again.
"That guy thinks he’s cool,” Maria commented, pointing to a total loser who was trying to bust a move right out in the middle of a dance floor. A crowd was forming around him, but they weren’t cheering him on. They were laughing at him, but he couldn’t seem to tell the difference.
“But he isn’t,” Michael said. “He’s such a nerd.”
“I kinda feel sorry for him, though,” Maria said, taking a sip of her soda. (She’d insisted on staying away from the alcohol.) “Nobody dances with nerds at high school dances or at parties, so they never really learn how. It’s not their fault that they were given bad teeth and even worse acne.”
Michael shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “Don’t you think that if they really wanted to get outta nerd status they’d get orthodontic work and dermatology treatments?”
“Lots of them can’t afford it,” Maria reminded him. “See, the only reason why I was even semi-popular was because my mom could afford things like that.”
“You had acne?” Michael asked, unable to believe that the girl in front of him now had once had bad skin.
“Yes,” she said, “and bad teeth and unmanageable hair and everything else. But my mom paid for everything that would help me, and I wasn’t picked on as much as I could have been. I only went through my awkward phase for about a year, though, so I guess I was lucky. What about you?”
“Me?” Michael could barely even remember the days of his childhood now. They seemed so far away and distant. It seemed like the only part of his life he could remember was from eighteen years on, from the day he joined Darkstreet.
“I was never a geek,” he said at last. “I was always pretty cool. Kinda the bully for awhile, though.”
“Of course,” Maria muttered.
“But I grew outta that, just like you grew outta your awkward phase,” he said. “But everyone was still pretty scared of me. I was a badass. A rebel, and I wasn’t afraid to pound anybody who got in my way.”
“Gee,” Maria said sarcastically, “You’ve certainly changed.”
“I have,” Michael said, “believe it or not. I’m a lot better person now than I was back then.”
“Let’s not get talking about what kind of people we are,” Maria suggested. “I think I’ve already done enough of that. Now,”—she pointed to the loser out on the dance floor—“I really do feel sorry for the guy, but it’s just hilarious how bad he sucks.”
“Yeah,” Michael agreed, laughing a little. “He should just quit now.”
As if on cue, the guy stopped dancing, took a bow, and walked away, unaware that the cheering that he thought he was hearing was only laughing and taunting.
“Wow,” Michael said, “I really have an effect on people.”
Maria grunted. “You wish, Guerin.” She stared at him for several long seconds, and Michael had to wonder what exactly it was that she was thinking.
“You know what?” she said at last. “You and I need a place to meet so that I don’t have to come sneaking on over to Darkstreet territory again.”
“But it’s okay for me to head over into your side of town?”
“Yeah,” she replied simply with a nod. “It’s different with you. You’re a guy, and I’m just this little girl, and it’s just not safe for me. And besides, everyone knows that you roam around this city like you own it. All of it. It’d look weird if someone caught me all alone in your territory.”
Michael had to agree that she had a point. “Alright, I get it. We can meet on that street corner that you were at that one time. You know, kinda on the borderline?”
“Oh, yeah, the one where I was trying to be a hooker,” Maria said knowingly. “I guess that would work. As long as no jackasses try to pick me up while I’m there.”
“They won’t,” Michael reassured her. “I won’t let them.”
Something flashed across her eyes, and it looked a lot like gratitude, but Michael couldn’t be sure.
All at once, the DJ started to switch up the songs, and a high tempo rap song came on over the speakers. A thrilled expression came across Maria’s face, and she stood up. “Oh my God! I love this song!” she exclaimed. “Come on, Michael. Let’s go dance!”
“Uh, that’s alright, you just go,” Michael told her, leaning back in his seat and curling his fingers around his drink. “I’m not much of a dancer.”
Maria sighed. “Fine.” She danced her way out onto the floor and started dancing, and she was soon surrounded by a group of people that she didn’t even know but were liking the way she was dancing and wanted to join.
At first, Michael wasn’t even watching her, but then he allowed himself one glance, and everything changed. With that one glance, his whole world was changed and shaken upside down.
She was everywhere. She was uncontrollable on her legs, and she was wild on the floor, and she was explosive in the center of a forming circle. She was the exact definition of perpetual motion. Her hips swayed, her arms circled, her shoulders shook, her body moved, and she just kept dancing like she’d forgotten about every other trouble and problem in her life.
Michael watched, curiously at first as to why he was watching in the first place, and then intrigued, just waiting to see what she would do next. He was well aware that he was staring, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.
This girl . . . she was hot. He’d always known that, but she was more than just hot.
She was beautiful.
A loud whooping and hollering sound distracted Michael’s attention, and he found moved his gaze around the club for a brief instant. His eyes caught sight of four unmistakable figures who were making their way down the stairs onto the dance floor, shouting so loudly that everyone would know that they’d arrived.
BlackCon. Slick, VaLenti, Whitman, and VaLenti’s girlfriend. They were making their way towards Maria, but she didn’t even know that they were there.
Michael knew he had to leave. He didn’t want to, but he knew he had to. He allowed himself one last glance at Maria and then forced himself to go.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria was so absorbed in her dancing that she didn’t even know that someone was dancing behind her for quite some time, but when she felt someone’s hands wrap around her waist, she spun around in shock.
She had halfway expected to find that Michael had given in and decided to dance with her, and she was halfway expecting to find some complete stranger who thought he could funk it up with her when he didn’t even know her. She was not, however, expecting to find Slick, and that was exactly who she found.
“Slick!” she exclaimed, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. She froze in place, suddenly immobile. How long had he been here? Had he seen her talking with Michael?
“Hey, baby,” he said over the music. “Glad to see me?”
“When did you get here?” she asked him, leaving his question unanswered.
“Just now,” Slick told her. “Gotta check out the new club, you know. I’ll say, it’s pretty awesome. We weren’t expecting to see you here, though.”
“We?” Maria wondered who else was here.
“Yes, we,” Liz said, stepping out from behind Slick. “We as in me and Slick and Alex and Kyle!” She put emphasis on her boyfriend’s name. “Look at him! Standing! Walking! Dancing!”
Maria tried to smile. “That’s great,” she said quietly. Honestly, it was great, but she was so overwhelmed by their sudden appearance that she could hardly think.
Michael, Maria suddenly remembered. She turned back in the direction of their booth, searching for him.
He was gone.
“Baby, let’s dance.” Maria felt Slick’s hands encircle her stomach again, pulling her to him as he begin to move with the music.
It was weird. The whole purpose of this night had been to loosen up, and now that Slick and the others had showed up, she only felt uptight again.
LOVE IS MICHAEL AND MARIA.
-
April
- Roswell Fanatic
- Posts: 1557
- Joined: Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:32 am
- Location: Somewhere. Anywhere.
- Contact:
Part 12
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“You need sleep, hun.”
Maria yawned, knowing that Liz was right. They’d been out all night, and she was beginning to feel like she could hardly stand on her own to feet anymore.
“You should go home and rest up,” Liz suggested.
“I should,” Maria agreed with a nod. She didn’t bother telling Liz that she was afraid of what she might dream if she did manage to get to sleep.
“I hate how they just roam around here like this place is theirs,” Alex was saying.
“Who?” Liz asked.
“Darkstreet,” Alex said, pointing to a few people off in the distance. “They think they’re so great.”
“If they were so great, they would’ve defeated us years ago,” Slick reminded him. “We’ll put ‘em in their place one of these days. Maybe even tonight.”
“Please, not another fight,” Maria groaned. She couldn’t stand the thought of more violence. “Slick, you’re becoming addicted or something.”
“I’m not addicted,” Slick said. “I’m just determined to win. And I’m gonna. Someday.”
“I think we should fight ‘em tonight,” Kyle piped up. “I’d love the chance to even the score with Guerin.”
Maria tensed when she heard Kyle mention his name, but she tried not to show it.
“I’d fight with you,” Alex put in. “I swear to God, I am gonna kill Max Evans some night.”
Liz laughed. “Keep workin’ on those muscles, Alex, and you just might.”
“Thanks,” Alex said sarcastically.
“Okay, so we’re fightin’ ‘em tonight,” Slick said, licking his lips as if anticipating the whole ordeal. “I bet we’ll have a real fun time.”
Maria sighed. She hated this. She hated all of this so much.
The crib was pretty deserted when they got back. Everyone was either out having breakfast or sleeping off hangovers. Maria headed straight for the shower. She’d been dancing all night, and she felt disgusting and dirty.
She stood there and let the warm water spill over her for what seemed like an eternity. She felt her eyes falling closed, and she mentally reminded herself of the dangers of falling asleep in the shower or bathtub, but she disregarded them and let her eyes shut anyway.
All at once, though, someone pulled the shower curtain back. Maria gasped and held her hands to her exposed body, and she wasn’t at all surprised to see that it was Slick. She wanted to scream at him for opening the curtain and looking in on her, but that wasn’t her place.
“You’ve been in here for awhile,” Slick told her. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine,” Maria told him quickly. “Could you hand me my towel?”
He grabbed her towel and passed it to her, letting his eyes linger on her nude body for a few seconds as she did so. Maria turned off the water as quickly as she could and wrapped her towel around herself in a hurry, grateful for some sort of cover from his gaze. It wasn’t as if Slick hadn’t seen her body before. He had, but she still didn’t care for him to.
“I think I’m gonna go to bed now,” she told him, stepping out of the shower, a puddle of water instantly forming at her feet. She tried to push past him, but he grabbed onto her shoulders and stopped her.
“I want you,” he whispered in her ear, running his hands over her bare shoulders. “God, I want you, Maria.” He pressed his lips down hard onto her neck and brought his hands around to cup her breasts. Maria had to restrain herself from running. Why the hell did guys always touch her like this? Why did they think they could?
“Slick,” she said quietly, using her hands to remove his. “I’m really tired.” She gave him an apologetic look and left the room, practically sprinting down the hallway toward her bedroom. She closed the door and locked it into place.
When she was alone, she let herself slump against the door, sliding down to the floor. She wanted to be anywhere but here right now, anywhere but with these people.
She wanted to be with Michael, and she knew it. She didn’t know why being around him felt so good. Maybe it was because he didn’t treat her like an object he could possess, or maybe it was because he understood her somehow.
Well, whatever the reason was, she wanted to be hanging out with him right now, because he made her laugh, and he made her smile, and he made her believe that things were going to be okay.
“Don’t sleep too long, Maria,” Slick said as he passed her room on the way to his. “Remember, we’ve got a showdown tonight.”
“Great . . .” Maria held her head in her hands. Didn’t these fights ever stop?
So she’d be tagging along tonight, though she wouldn’t be doing anything important. She’d play the role of the spectator who sat in the shadows and watched as she always did, and she would see Michael again.
But not in the way that she wished to see him.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael had been trying to get to sleep for hours now. He’d tried everything he could think of: counting sheep, the forty-winks trick, even trying to tire himself out by exercise, but nothing worked. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her dancing at Motion, and every time he tried to clear his mind, he started thinking about her.
He wasn’t supposed to think that she was beautiful. He could think that she was hot. That was fine, because one would have to be blind not to think that, but he couldn’t think that she was beautiful, because beautiful was crossing the line. Beautiful was venturing into completely new and different territory. Beautiful was meaningful.
She was BlackCon, and, on top of that, she was only seventeen!
Michael was laying there thinking about all of this when Max threw open the door and burst into his room, a look of both worry and excitement etched into his features.
“Guess who decided to stop by?”
“Who?” Michael asked in return, struggling to sit up after laying down for so long now.
“Fuckin’ BlackCon,” Max answered, throwing Michael his gun.
“BlackCon . . .” Michael echoed, trailing off. The first thought that came to mind when he heard the very title BlackCon was of Maria.
“Yeah. You comin’?” Max was already headed out the door, and Michael reluctantly got up to follow. He wasn’t sure if he should fight tonight or not. He was very, very distracted at the moment after having all of those dancing Maria thoughts floating around his brain, but he’d skipped out on more than his fair share of fights lately. He didn’t want to give anyone anything to be suspicious about.
When Michael arrived outside, he saw that the fight had already started. He had to hold back a laugh when he saw Jonathon trying to take on Kyle VaLenti, just to impress Isabel. That dude was gonna get the pulp beat out of him.
As usual, Slick and Nix weren’t fighting each other, but they were both glaring at the other like they knew they should. Max and Whitman were fighting each other again, too, apparently unable to back down. But something was different this time. Max was winning. He had Whitman pinned down on the ground and was throwing punches right and left. Whitman was taking it too bad to even try to fight back.
“Alex!” He heard a familiar voice shouting. “Alex!”
Michael shifted his gaze and saw Maria running for her friend. He wondered at first what the hell she was doing, and when he saw her grab Max by the back of his shirt, he knew. She was trying to protect Alex as best she could.
But she was no match for Max. He immediately turned around and threw her to the ground hard, then returned to beating on Whitman. The guy was coughing up blood now, and his entire face had become one red smear.
“Alex!” Maria kept shouting, struggling to get to her feet again.
What the hell am I doing? Michael wondered to himself as he stepped forward, pushing away anybody who tried to get in his way. What the freakin’ hell am I doing?
Maria reached for Max again, and he spun around, prepared to throw her to the ground again, but this time, Michael swung and hit him in the face before he could, sending his best friend flying to the ground beside Whitman with a confused look on his face.
“I’m sorry, man,” Michael said immediately, grabbing his hand and helping him up. “I thought you were someone else beatin’ on Tess or something.” He glanced quickly toward Maria, wondering if she and Tess could look at all alike and then returned his attention to Max. “I’m sorry, man.”
“No, problem,” Max said, holding his jaw. “Just take care of her for me, will you?” He pointed to Maria.
“Yeah, yeah,” Michael told him quickly. “I’ll take care of her.” He watched as Max left to beat on somebody else, and then he turned to Maria. He halfway smiled before grabbing her by the waist and pulling her around behind a dumpster. They both went hurtling to the ground, and she landed hard on her back. He landed on top of her.
“Sorry about that,” he apologized when they were completely out of sight. “I had to make it look a little realistic, you know.”
“I know,” she said, staring up into his eyes.
As he laid there on top of her, he couldn’t help staring down into her eyes as well, and he noticed for the first time how vibrantly green they were. They were bright and they sparkled and they pulled him in like two gigantic whirlpools that could even make him want to punch his best friend in the face.
They laid there like this for quite some time before Maria opened her mouth and spoke. “Please,” she said, “get me out of here.”
Keeping his eyes locked with hers, Michael stood up and extended his hand. She took it and he helped her stand up beside him. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t even care to wonder where she wanted to go. He just went with her.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Can I drive?”
Michael shot Maria a disbelieving look and shook his head. “No, you can’t.”
“Why not?” she asked him. “I did okay last time.”
Michael held in his laughter. “Maria, this is my car, and if something happens to it, then I’m paying for it.”
Maria sighed. “Alright, I guess I get your point.” She curled her knees up to her chest and looked out the window as Los Angeles flew right past her. Michael wondered what she was thinking. Was she thinking the same thing that he was right now? Was she wondering why on earth she was driving around with him? Was she wondering why he was leaving with her?
“So where are we going?” he asked her. “Pasadena maybe?”
“I don’t care,” she replied. “Just as long as we’re away.”
“Away from what? BlackCon?”
“Away from everything,” she told him. She turned in her seat so that she was facing him as he drove, and Michael had to force himself to keep his eyes on the road instead of looking over at her. “Don’t you ever just wanna go somewhere and not have to think about anything at all?” she asked him. “Don’t you ever just wanna leave and just be happy for a little while?”
“Yeah,” he replied, thinking back to their night at Motion. He’d been happy then. He was happy now.
He was happy because of her.
Happy? he asked himself. Beautiful? Why the hell am I thinkin’ like this?
“I could never be happy with them,” Maria admitted. “Never. They’re my friends, I guess, but that’s because they have to be. And they don’t understand me. None of them.”
“I sounds like all they do is stress you out,” Michael commented, taking a left that would lead him out of Los Angeles.
“They do,” she said, “especially Slick. He thinks that I’m his girlfriend or something.”
Michael tried not to be jealous of Slick in that moment. He tried not to think of how Slick was able to touch Maria and he wasn’t. He tried not to think of the things that he might’ve done with her over the years that he could never do.
“And it’s weird,” Maria continued. “You’d think that you would add to my stress, but . . . you don’t.”
“I don’t?” Michael asked her, curious as to why he didn’t.
“Yeah, for some reason, you just don’t.”
Michael hoped that was a good thing. It had to be. “Maybe that’s just ‘cause I’m just kinda here, you know. Just kinda here to help out and be a simple kind of guy.”
“You’re not simple,” Maria said, studying his features. “You’re actually kind of complicated.”
“How so?” Michael was curious again, this time wondering how on earth he was complicated.
“Well, you come off as this complete asshole who only thinks about himself,” Maria explained. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“But,” she added, “you’re really not. I think I probably realized that when you actually cared about what happened when I was younger with me and my dad. No one’s cared before, Michael. And then that ordeal at the bank . . . you protected me. You protected me from Rick, and you protected me from getting hurt, and after that was all over, you helped me get through it. You’re still helping me.”
“Okay, so I care and I protect and I help,” Michael said, summarizing everything that she’d just said. “You’re saying no one else does?”
“Right,” she told him, “and, honestly, Michael, I’m not even sure why you do. I can be pretty screwed up sometimes. Most people would’ve just given up on me by now.”
“You’re not screwed up,” Michael told her. “You’re just a little complex.”
“Same goes for you,” Maria said, “but you know what? I think I get you.”
“You think you do?” Michael asked her. He wanted her to get him. He wanted to let her in like he’d never wanted to let anyone else in before.
“Yeah, I do. I think I get you, because you and I are a lot alike.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess, except for the fact that you like rap and I think it’s complete bullshit.”
Maria smiled. “Besides that. Look at us now, Michael. I’m not the only one running away right now. You’re coming with me.”
Michael hadn’t thought about that. He’d been so convinced that he was only tagging along with her, just because he needed to be around her, but maybe there was more to it than just that. Maybe he was leaving with her because he needed to, because he couldn’t be around Darkstreet any longer. Maybe he wasn’t leaving just for her, but for himself as well.
“You’re going in the ditch,” Maria announced suddenly. Michael looked over to his right and saw that she was right. He’d been so absorbed in his thoughts that he’d started losing control of the wheel for a second there. He quickly straightened the car out and watched as they passed a sign that said “Thanks for visiting Los Angeles! Come back soon!”
“So have you decided where you wanna go?” Michael asked her. “Somewhere not too far away, I hope. After awhile, driving starts to seems sort of endless, you know.”
Maria was looking out the window again, her eyes slowly falling closed. “Endless can be a good thing.”
Michael had to agree with that. Endless could be a good thing, if, that is, it was and the type of endless where you didn’t have to deal with the chaos of gang life and also got to be with a beautiful girl.
Hot girl, Michael corrected himself. Hot, not beautiful. She can’t be beautiful. I can’t think that.
Despite his mental lecturing, he knew very well that he did think that and probably always would. He couldn’t stop thinking that.
Maria fell asleep in the car as they drove, and Michael finally had to pull over on the side of the road to catch some sleep of his own. He didn’t think he could keep his eyes open for another minute.
Before he fell asleep, he studied her sleeping form. A small smile had formed on her lips now. She looked happy.
He dreamt of her that night, and he was happy, too.
“You need sleep, hun.”
Maria yawned, knowing that Liz was right. They’d been out all night, and she was beginning to feel like she could hardly stand on her own to feet anymore.
“You should go home and rest up,” Liz suggested.
“I should,” Maria agreed with a nod. She didn’t bother telling Liz that she was afraid of what she might dream if she did manage to get to sleep.
“I hate how they just roam around here like this place is theirs,” Alex was saying.
“Who?” Liz asked.
“Darkstreet,” Alex said, pointing to a few people off in the distance. “They think they’re so great.”
“If they were so great, they would’ve defeated us years ago,” Slick reminded him. “We’ll put ‘em in their place one of these days. Maybe even tonight.”
“Please, not another fight,” Maria groaned. She couldn’t stand the thought of more violence. “Slick, you’re becoming addicted or something.”
“I’m not addicted,” Slick said. “I’m just determined to win. And I’m gonna. Someday.”
“I think we should fight ‘em tonight,” Kyle piped up. “I’d love the chance to even the score with Guerin.”
Maria tensed when she heard Kyle mention his name, but she tried not to show it.
“I’d fight with you,” Alex put in. “I swear to God, I am gonna kill Max Evans some night.”
Liz laughed. “Keep workin’ on those muscles, Alex, and you just might.”
“Thanks,” Alex said sarcastically.
“Okay, so we’re fightin’ ‘em tonight,” Slick said, licking his lips as if anticipating the whole ordeal. “I bet we’ll have a real fun time.”
Maria sighed. She hated this. She hated all of this so much.
The crib was pretty deserted when they got back. Everyone was either out having breakfast or sleeping off hangovers. Maria headed straight for the shower. She’d been dancing all night, and she felt disgusting and dirty.
She stood there and let the warm water spill over her for what seemed like an eternity. She felt her eyes falling closed, and she mentally reminded herself of the dangers of falling asleep in the shower or bathtub, but she disregarded them and let her eyes shut anyway.
All at once, though, someone pulled the shower curtain back. Maria gasped and held her hands to her exposed body, and she wasn’t at all surprised to see that it was Slick. She wanted to scream at him for opening the curtain and looking in on her, but that wasn’t her place.
“You’ve been in here for awhile,” Slick told her. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine,” Maria told him quickly. “Could you hand me my towel?”
He grabbed her towel and passed it to her, letting his eyes linger on her nude body for a few seconds as she did so. Maria turned off the water as quickly as she could and wrapped her towel around herself in a hurry, grateful for some sort of cover from his gaze. It wasn’t as if Slick hadn’t seen her body before. He had, but she still didn’t care for him to.
“I think I’m gonna go to bed now,” she told him, stepping out of the shower, a puddle of water instantly forming at her feet. She tried to push past him, but he grabbed onto her shoulders and stopped her.
“I want you,” he whispered in her ear, running his hands over her bare shoulders. “God, I want you, Maria.” He pressed his lips down hard onto her neck and brought his hands around to cup her breasts. Maria had to restrain herself from running. Why the hell did guys always touch her like this? Why did they think they could?
“Slick,” she said quietly, using her hands to remove his. “I’m really tired.” She gave him an apologetic look and left the room, practically sprinting down the hallway toward her bedroom. She closed the door and locked it into place.
When she was alone, she let herself slump against the door, sliding down to the floor. She wanted to be anywhere but here right now, anywhere but with these people.
She wanted to be with Michael, and she knew it. She didn’t know why being around him felt so good. Maybe it was because he didn’t treat her like an object he could possess, or maybe it was because he understood her somehow.
Well, whatever the reason was, she wanted to be hanging out with him right now, because he made her laugh, and he made her smile, and he made her believe that things were going to be okay.
“Don’t sleep too long, Maria,” Slick said as he passed her room on the way to his. “Remember, we’ve got a showdown tonight.”
“Great . . .” Maria held her head in her hands. Didn’t these fights ever stop?
So she’d be tagging along tonight, though she wouldn’t be doing anything important. She’d play the role of the spectator who sat in the shadows and watched as she always did, and she would see Michael again.
But not in the way that she wished to see him.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael had been trying to get to sleep for hours now. He’d tried everything he could think of: counting sheep, the forty-winks trick, even trying to tire himself out by exercise, but nothing worked. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her dancing at Motion, and every time he tried to clear his mind, he started thinking about her.
He wasn’t supposed to think that she was beautiful. He could think that she was hot. That was fine, because one would have to be blind not to think that, but he couldn’t think that she was beautiful, because beautiful was crossing the line. Beautiful was venturing into completely new and different territory. Beautiful was meaningful.
She was BlackCon, and, on top of that, she was only seventeen!
Michael was laying there thinking about all of this when Max threw open the door and burst into his room, a look of both worry and excitement etched into his features.
“Guess who decided to stop by?”
“Who?” Michael asked in return, struggling to sit up after laying down for so long now.
“Fuckin’ BlackCon,” Max answered, throwing Michael his gun.
“BlackCon . . .” Michael echoed, trailing off. The first thought that came to mind when he heard the very title BlackCon was of Maria.
“Yeah. You comin’?” Max was already headed out the door, and Michael reluctantly got up to follow. He wasn’t sure if he should fight tonight or not. He was very, very distracted at the moment after having all of those dancing Maria thoughts floating around his brain, but he’d skipped out on more than his fair share of fights lately. He didn’t want to give anyone anything to be suspicious about.
When Michael arrived outside, he saw that the fight had already started. He had to hold back a laugh when he saw Jonathon trying to take on Kyle VaLenti, just to impress Isabel. That dude was gonna get the pulp beat out of him.
As usual, Slick and Nix weren’t fighting each other, but they were both glaring at the other like they knew they should. Max and Whitman were fighting each other again, too, apparently unable to back down. But something was different this time. Max was winning. He had Whitman pinned down on the ground and was throwing punches right and left. Whitman was taking it too bad to even try to fight back.
“Alex!” He heard a familiar voice shouting. “Alex!”
Michael shifted his gaze and saw Maria running for her friend. He wondered at first what the hell she was doing, and when he saw her grab Max by the back of his shirt, he knew. She was trying to protect Alex as best she could.
But she was no match for Max. He immediately turned around and threw her to the ground hard, then returned to beating on Whitman. The guy was coughing up blood now, and his entire face had become one red smear.
“Alex!” Maria kept shouting, struggling to get to her feet again.
What the hell am I doing? Michael wondered to himself as he stepped forward, pushing away anybody who tried to get in his way. What the freakin’ hell am I doing?
Maria reached for Max again, and he spun around, prepared to throw her to the ground again, but this time, Michael swung and hit him in the face before he could, sending his best friend flying to the ground beside Whitman with a confused look on his face.
“I’m sorry, man,” Michael said immediately, grabbing his hand and helping him up. “I thought you were someone else beatin’ on Tess or something.” He glanced quickly toward Maria, wondering if she and Tess could look at all alike and then returned his attention to Max. “I’m sorry, man.”
“No, problem,” Max said, holding his jaw. “Just take care of her for me, will you?” He pointed to Maria.
“Yeah, yeah,” Michael told him quickly. “I’ll take care of her.” He watched as Max left to beat on somebody else, and then he turned to Maria. He halfway smiled before grabbing her by the waist and pulling her around behind a dumpster. They both went hurtling to the ground, and she landed hard on her back. He landed on top of her.
“Sorry about that,” he apologized when they were completely out of sight. “I had to make it look a little realistic, you know.”
“I know,” she said, staring up into his eyes.
As he laid there on top of her, he couldn’t help staring down into her eyes as well, and he noticed for the first time how vibrantly green they were. They were bright and they sparkled and they pulled him in like two gigantic whirlpools that could even make him want to punch his best friend in the face.
They laid there like this for quite some time before Maria opened her mouth and spoke. “Please,” she said, “get me out of here.”
Keeping his eyes locked with hers, Michael stood up and extended his hand. She took it and he helped her stand up beside him. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t even care to wonder where she wanted to go. He just went with her.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Can I drive?”
Michael shot Maria a disbelieving look and shook his head. “No, you can’t.”
“Why not?” she asked him. “I did okay last time.”
Michael held in his laughter. “Maria, this is my car, and if something happens to it, then I’m paying for it.”
Maria sighed. “Alright, I guess I get your point.” She curled her knees up to her chest and looked out the window as Los Angeles flew right past her. Michael wondered what she was thinking. Was she thinking the same thing that he was right now? Was she wondering why on earth she was driving around with him? Was she wondering why he was leaving with her?
“So where are we going?” he asked her. “Pasadena maybe?”
“I don’t care,” she replied. “Just as long as we’re away.”
“Away from what? BlackCon?”
“Away from everything,” she told him. She turned in her seat so that she was facing him as he drove, and Michael had to force himself to keep his eyes on the road instead of looking over at her. “Don’t you ever just wanna go somewhere and not have to think about anything at all?” she asked him. “Don’t you ever just wanna leave and just be happy for a little while?”
“Yeah,” he replied, thinking back to their night at Motion. He’d been happy then. He was happy now.
He was happy because of her.
Happy? he asked himself. Beautiful? Why the hell am I thinkin’ like this?
“I could never be happy with them,” Maria admitted. “Never. They’re my friends, I guess, but that’s because they have to be. And they don’t understand me. None of them.”
“I sounds like all they do is stress you out,” Michael commented, taking a left that would lead him out of Los Angeles.
“They do,” she said, “especially Slick. He thinks that I’m his girlfriend or something.”
Michael tried not to be jealous of Slick in that moment. He tried not to think of how Slick was able to touch Maria and he wasn’t. He tried not to think of the things that he might’ve done with her over the years that he could never do.
“And it’s weird,” Maria continued. “You’d think that you would add to my stress, but . . . you don’t.”
“I don’t?” Michael asked her, curious as to why he didn’t.
“Yeah, for some reason, you just don’t.”
Michael hoped that was a good thing. It had to be. “Maybe that’s just ‘cause I’m just kinda here, you know. Just kinda here to help out and be a simple kind of guy.”
“You’re not simple,” Maria said, studying his features. “You’re actually kind of complicated.”
“How so?” Michael was curious again, this time wondering how on earth he was complicated.
“Well, you come off as this complete asshole who only thinks about himself,” Maria explained. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“But,” she added, “you’re really not. I think I probably realized that when you actually cared about what happened when I was younger with me and my dad. No one’s cared before, Michael. And then that ordeal at the bank . . . you protected me. You protected me from Rick, and you protected me from getting hurt, and after that was all over, you helped me get through it. You’re still helping me.”
“Okay, so I care and I protect and I help,” Michael said, summarizing everything that she’d just said. “You’re saying no one else does?”
“Right,” she told him, “and, honestly, Michael, I’m not even sure why you do. I can be pretty screwed up sometimes. Most people would’ve just given up on me by now.”
“You’re not screwed up,” Michael told her. “You’re just a little complex.”
“Same goes for you,” Maria said, “but you know what? I think I get you.”
“You think you do?” Michael asked her. He wanted her to get him. He wanted to let her in like he’d never wanted to let anyone else in before.
“Yeah, I do. I think I get you, because you and I are a lot alike.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess, except for the fact that you like rap and I think it’s complete bullshit.”
Maria smiled. “Besides that. Look at us now, Michael. I’m not the only one running away right now. You’re coming with me.”
Michael hadn’t thought about that. He’d been so convinced that he was only tagging along with her, just because he needed to be around her, but maybe there was more to it than just that. Maybe he was leaving with her because he needed to, because he couldn’t be around Darkstreet any longer. Maybe he wasn’t leaving just for her, but for himself as well.
“You’re going in the ditch,” Maria announced suddenly. Michael looked over to his right and saw that she was right. He’d been so absorbed in his thoughts that he’d started losing control of the wheel for a second there. He quickly straightened the car out and watched as they passed a sign that said “Thanks for visiting Los Angeles! Come back soon!”
“So have you decided where you wanna go?” Michael asked her. “Somewhere not too far away, I hope. After awhile, driving starts to seems sort of endless, you know.”
Maria was looking out the window again, her eyes slowly falling closed. “Endless can be a good thing.”
Michael had to agree with that. Endless could be a good thing, if, that is, it was and the type of endless where you didn’t have to deal with the chaos of gang life and also got to be with a beautiful girl.
Hot girl, Michael corrected himself. Hot, not beautiful. She can’t be beautiful. I can’t think that.
Despite his mental lecturing, he knew very well that he did think that and probably always would. He couldn’t stop thinking that.
Maria fell asleep in the car as they drove, and Michael finally had to pull over on the side of the road to catch some sleep of his own. He didn’t think he could keep his eyes open for another minute.
Before he fell asleep, he studied her sleeping form. A small smile had formed on her lips now. She looked happy.
He dreamt of her that night, and he was happy, too.
LOVE IS MICHAEL AND MARIA.
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April
- Roswell Fanatic
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Part 13
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It was the brightly shining sun that woke Maria up finally. She forced her eyes open and immediately wanted to close them again. She was in a very unfamiliar car in a very unfamiliar place, and she was so confused as to why she didn’t want to go home.
She slowly looked over at Michael, who was still sleeping despite the bright light of the sun, and she knew why she didn’t want to go home. She was more at peace in this car and in this place with him then she ever could be with Slick and the others.
She struggled to sit up, finding it hard to move after sleeping in such a cramped compartment for so long. She opened the door and got out of the car as quietly as she could, needing room to stretch.
She watched as the cars passed by on the highway, wondering where the people in them were going. Were they going to visit grandparents in Memphis? Were they going to a high school reunion in Tucson? Were they going to Disney World?
Would she ever get the chance to go to those places?
“You’re not planning on hitching a ride out of the country, are you?” Michael had apparently heard her get out of the car and was up himself now.
Maria shook her head. “No, I’m not, and even if I was, I’d just ask you to take me. And you would.”
“What makes you so sure that I would?” Michael asked her, stretching his arms above his head and yawning as the last effects of sleep wore off of him.
“Because you help me, Michael,” she replied simply, taking a step toward him. “That’s what you do.”
Michael laughed a little. “I never thought I’d hear the world ‘help’ attached to my name.”
Maria smiled and shrugged a little. “I told you that you were complicated.”
Michael stared at her for several long seconds, and Maria couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking. When he did finally speak, he only said, “I wanna take you somewhere. Come on.” He motioned to the car with a jerk of his head and climbed back into the driver’s seat. Maria knew she should be wondering where exactly it was that he wanted to take her, but she honestly didn’t care. Just as long as it was away.
They drove for a while, and Maria took notice of the fact that they were heading back to LA. This bothered her for a little while, because LA was not away.
“Michael, where are you taking me?” she asked him finally when she saw familiar buildings and streets coming into view. “Why are we at the borderline?”
“Because,” he answered, “I wanna show you something that’s not complicated.”
“Well, everything on the borderline is complicated,” she told him matter-of-factly. “It’s all sex and drugs and rock and roll, and it’s just this big mass of complicated-ness.”
Michael smiled, pulling his car over on the side of the road. “Not all of it.” He opened the door and got out, and Maria did so as well. She was immediately greeted with the typical Los Angeles smell. It wasn’t until she’d gotten out of the city that she realized how awful it smelled.
She followed him wherever he went, but she wasn’t quite sure why. He was leading her through some sort of forest, and she was definitely not an outdoors type of girl. But she followed.
She was just about to ask him what the hell could possibly be in the middle of a tree-filled forest when the trees cleared and she walked right into the most exquisite place she’d ever seen.
She saw flowers everywhere, littering the ground in a display of the most beautiful colors and patterns. She saw the greenest of green grass and the clearest, water she’d ever seen. Sparkling water fell from a small waterfall into a tiny lake, creating one of the most peaceful sounds she’d ever heard.
“How did you know about this place?” she asked him, stepping toward the water, bending down to run her fingers through it, just to make sure that it was all real.
“Max and Tess come here sometimes when they wanna be alone,” Michael told her, squatting down beside her. “Nice, isn’t it?”
She nodded her head excitedly. “Very.” A rush of memories came flying at her as she stared at the place surrounding her. Memories of her mother’s garden, almost as beautiful as this. “My mom had a garden pretty much like this,” she told him. “Except, not with a waterfall, you know.”
Michael laughed a little.
“She loved it so much,” Maria continued, “and I did, too. I love this, Michael. It’s just so beautiful. I wish real life was just as beautiful.”
“It is,” Michael said quietly, almost as if he didn’t want her to hear him.
They sat in silence for a few seconds until Michael stood up, grabbing her wrist and pulling her up with him. “You wanna go swimming?” he asked her with an almost hopeful grin on his face.
She sighed. “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve got this mascara on, and it says that it’s totally waterproof, but you can never really be too careful with those types of things.”
Michael gave her a confused look, and she laughed. “I’m joking. I’ll go swimming, but I haven’t swam in years, so, if I drown, I’m blaming you.” She bent down and took off her shoes, watching as Michael did the same. He kept his eyes locked with hers the entire time.
His eyes were really brown. She hadn’t noticed that until now.
“I’m not taking my clothes off, though,” Maria announced, “so if you’re trying to seduce me, then you’re outta luck.”
“Damn,” Michael said sarcastically, snapping his fingers like he’d missed and opportunity. “There goes my plan.” He pulled his shirt over his head, and Maria tried not to stare at his tan, muscular chest.
“Maria, I think it’s only fair that, since I took my shirt off, you take off yours.”
Maria smiled. “Fine,” she said, letting her fingers play at the bottom of the large sweatshirt she was wearing. She loved joking around with him. “Fine, I will.” In one swift movement, she pulled her sweatshirt over her head, revealing a white tank-top underneath. “Ta-da!”
Michael shook his head. “You’re impossible, you know that?” He grabbed her hand, a move that surprised Maria but didn’t at all disappoint her. He led her up closer to the waterfall, and she had a feeling what he was planning to do. “Michael, I think I’ll just get in down on that end,” she said, motioning with her free hand to the place where his shirt and her sweatshirt lay discarded. “I think that’ll be a little safer for me.”
“Maybe so,” he agreed, continuing to lead her forward, “but this will be a lot more fun.”
Maria was getting nervous now. “No, I don’t think so. I think it’ll just be a lot more, uh, let’s see, deadly!”
“You’re not gonna die,” Michael promised her as they reached the top of the waterfall. “Look, it’s not even that high up.”
Maria shook her head persistently. “No, it is. It is for someone who’s had a fear of heights ever since she was five, Michael. It is.”
“You’ll be fine,” Michael insisted. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her to him. “Just hold on to me.”
She had to admit that holding onto the very shirtless man in front of her didn’t sound entirely bad.
“I can’t do this,” she kept telling him, although she found her arms finding their way to his shoulders. “I just can’t.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Michael reassured her. She thought she felt his hands rubbing the small of her back, but she figured in the end that she was just imagining it. “I protect, remember?”
She nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I know you protect, but if the fall alone just kills me, you can’t very well protect me from that.”
As he struggled to hold in his laughter, Maria found herself staring into his eyes once again. Brown eyes. Warm eyes. Not cruel, intimidating eyes that she’d once seen. Warm, brown eyes. Michael’s eyes.
“This can’t be safe,” she pointed out the obvious, beginning to weaken in her argument as she gazed at him.
Michael grinned a little, tightening his grip on her. “It isn’t.”
All at once, Maria felt herself falling over the edge, the air rushing out of her lungs in the form of a scream. She dug her nails into Michael’s shoulders so hard that she was sure it was painful, and the last thing she remembered as they hit the water was the feel of his arms wrapped tightly around her.
The water was cold, and when Maria came up for air, she was already shivering. Michael still had a tight hold on her, and she was glad for that, because he was warm.
Her mouth dropped open, and she wanted to speak, but she found words almost impossible at this point.
“You . . . you could’ve killed me,” she said between shivers. “That was . . . bad.”
Michael began to laugh. “Yeah, but it was fun, wasn’t it?”
She began to laugh right along with him. “Yeah, it was. But . . .” She trailed off when she felt him letting go of her body. She didn’t want him to. “But you still could’ve killed me,” she finished at last, just as Michael’s hands completely left her body. He grinned as he went under water to wet his hair again, and she tried not to show the effect that his simple grin was having on her right now. When he came up for air, she returned his grin with one of her own.
“I haven’t been swimming for a long time,” she told him again, swimming over closer to him, “but I still haven’t forgotten how.” She reached out and pushed Michael back down under the water by his shoulders. He hadn’t expected it, and when he finally got to the surface again, it was clear that he’d just swallowed a whole lot of water.
“Take that you homicidal maniac,” Maria teased.
“I’m the homicidal maniac?” Michael exclaimed. “You just tried to drown me!”
“And you tossed me off a freakin’ waterfall!” Maria shot back. “I guess we’re even.”
“No,” Michael said, shaking his head. “We’re not.”
That afternoon, Maria got to be the kid she was supposed to be. She got to laugh and she got to smile and she got to have fun, and she did this all with a man she was supposed to hate.
There was once instance that afternoon in which Maria realized that her attraction to Michael was more than just physical. He came up from under the water, surprising her and wrapping his hands around her waist, pressing her back to his chest. She’d been too stunned to even move, and even if she could’ve she wouldn’t. Being with him felt too comfortable. He had leaned down and whispered in her ear, then, so close that his warm breath tickled her skin.
“I love it when I see you happy.”
It was then that the realization came upon Maria that her attraction to Michael was more than physical. It was more than emotional, and it was more than spiritual.
It was all that mattered.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
That night, Michael Guerin was talking to himself, something he’d never ever done before in his life for the simple and practical reason that it was incredibly lame. He’d never imagined that he would one day be doing something so lame, but he was now. He had to, because he couldn’t discuss what was going through his head with anyone else. They wouldn’t accept it.
They didn’t need to.
“I love it when I see you happy? Could I be any more obvious?” Michael ran his fingers through his hair, spiking it up even more than it usually was as he paced around his bedroom. “She’s gonna know. She’s gonna know how I feel and she’s not gonna be happy about it.” He stood looking out his window, hoping that staring would somehow clear his mind, but it didn’t. He only kept on thinking about her, and his thoughts soon began to intensify.
He thought about her skin. Her smooth skin. She’d been wearing a tank top, true, but she’d come out of the water and right into his arms one time, and he was certain that he’d been able to feel her skin. Even if he wasn’t, he didn’t care. He’d felt her. He’d felt her body pressed up against his for whatever reason, and that feeling was driving him insane.
“I touched her too much,” he said, continuing to converse with himself only. “She doesn’t like to be touched.” Even as he said this, though, he kept remembering how she’d allowed him to touch her as they jumped into the water and numerous times after that, as well.
“She’s gonna think I was coming onto her. Well, I was, but . . .” He trailed off, silently wondering why she had this much of an effect on him, why the hell the very thought of her was driving him to talk to himself.
“Oh, fuck, the shirt thing,” he cursed, remembering how he’d been teasing her about taking off her shirt since he’d taken off his. “Why the hell did I say that? What the fuck was I thinking?”
Michael heard chuckling, and he looked around to see that Max was leaning against the doorframe, apparently quite amused by Michael’s conversation with himself.
“Hey, Max,” Michael said, trying to pull together any composure that he had left. “What’s up?”
Max shrugged. “Not much. Headin’ to work tonight. Gonna make the big bucks.”
Michael pretended to be happy for his friend. To some extent, he was, but, for the most part, he was just jealous. Jealous that Max was an okay guy.
“What’s up with you?” Max asked, reaching in his back pocket and pulling out a cigarette and his lighter. “It sounded like things were getting pretty intense in here.”
Michael laughed a little and tried to shrug the whole thing off. “Yeah, well, that’s me, you know. I’m a pretty intense guy.”
Max smirked. “That’s what Isabel said before you guys put an end to it. Now she’s tellin’ everyone your dick’s smaller than her thumb.”
A few weeks ago, Michael would’ve hunted Isabel down and fucked some sense into her for her untrue remarks, but now, he just didn’t really care. It was pointless.
“Isabel can go fuck Jonathon’s brains out for all I care,” Michael said. “That bitch and I were never really compatible anyway.”
Max blew a puff of smoke into the air. “Michael? Since when has compatibility counted in your book?”
Michael was beginning to feel like Max was investigating him. “It doesn’t,” he answered. “I just . . . I don’t know, Isabel and I were always different than you and Tess, and I just got sick of it.”
Max let go another cloud of smoke and shook his head. “You’re changing, Michael. You haven’t gone out to sell for awhile now, you disappear during all of our fights with BlackCon, you’re thinking about compatibility, and you’re up here talkin’ to yourself.”
“I wasn’t talking to myself,” Michael lied. “I was . . .” He trailed off, knowing quite well that the only way to get Max to leave was to lie to him. “Alright, you caught me,” he told him. “I’m writing a novel.”
A shocked expression came across Max’s features, and he almost dropped his cigarette. “You’re what?”
“I’m writing a novel,” Michael repeated. “A, uh . . . romance novel.”
Max began to laugh. “That’s so cheesy, man.”
“I know,” Michael agreed, “so that’s why I’m trying to keep it a secret. I was up here planning out my next chapter when I heard you laughing.”
“Are you serious about this?” Max asked, finding the concept too unbelievable to conceive. “You’re writing a romance novel?”
“I’m completely serious,” Michael lied. “You know, I don’t really think I’ve ever been so serious about anything in my life, Maxwell.”
Max shook his head. “Crazy,” he muttered. “I never knew writing was one of your passions.”
“Neither did I,” Michael told him, “but, now that I’ve started exploring it, I’ve found out that it’s the most passionate of my passions, Maxwell. Writing. Good old writing.”
Max sighed. “Well . . . what chapter are you on?”
“Chapter six,” Michael said immediately. “Yeah, chapter six. It’s getting pretty good, I think.”
“What’s it called?” Max asked.
“Uh . . . uh . . .” Michael now found himself at a loss for words, and he blurted out the first word that came to mind, the word that had been on his mind for a few days now. “Beautiful.”
Max immediately began to laugh again. “Dude! That’s so cheesy!”
Michael joined in a little. “Yeah, I guess so. Now, if you don’t mind, I need my writer’s time to think up the next plot twist, okay?”
Still laughing, and practically choking on his cigarette smoke, Max stumbled down the hallway. “You gotta let me read it when you’re done, okay man?”
“Yeah,” Michael told him. “You got it!” He closed the door as Max made his way down the hall and locked it into place. “Holy shit,” he cursed quietly. “I am so fucked up.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Across the borderline, Maria DeLuca was talking to herself as well. She hadn’t talked to herself since the first nights after her mother’s death and she’d needed to talk to herself to explain what had happened. She wasn’t embarrassed about it, but she closed her door so that no one heard her and thought she was completely strange.
“Am I crazy?” she asked herself. “He sliced my stomach once. He hurt me.” She reached down and touched the scar on her stomach, just to remind herself, but as soon as she touched it, she let her hand fall away. That was a different Michael Guerin. That was the cruel, intimidating Michael Guerin who’d been molded and formed into this hated villain that he’d discarded quite some time ago. “But he cares and he protects and he helps, too,” she said, remembering their conversation in the car. “God, why does he do that? He has no reason to.”
Maria ran her hands through her hair, wondering how the hell she’d gone from stressing out about whether she was a good person or not to stressing out about a guy.
In her mind, she pictured his naked chest, and she smiled. She imagined the feel of his hands wrapped around her waist holding her close to him, and her smile grew. “He was flirting,” she concluded. “That was definitely flirting. And I was flirting, too. I told him I’d take my shirt off, and, yeah, joking, but still . . . flirting.”
A knock on the door preceded Liz’s voice. “Hey, Maria, we’re hookin’ up the sound system downstairs and Kyle and Alex are heading down to the borderline to get some beer. They got the best beer down there.”
“Great,” Maria replied. She didn’t care to discuss beer. She was underage, and she didn’t drink anyway.
“So, it looks like we’re shapin’ it up to be breakin’ it down,” Liz continued. “You should come on down, ‘Ria.”
Maria made a face, hating the use of that nickname. “I don’t really feel like it, Liz.”
“You don’t feel like dancing?” Liz asked shock. “Girl, I know you, and I know that you always feel like dancing. Come on. I’m sure you’ve got some new move up your sleeve.”
“I don’t,” Maria lied, although she had dozens that she still needed to try out sometime. “Look, Liz, I just really wanna be alone right now, alright?”
There was silence on the other side of the door, and after several seconds, Maria her footsteps traipsing down the hallway. She could imagine the look on Liz’s face, the discourage, disappointed, maybe even hurt look on Liz’s face. Liz always took everything so seriously, and one little snap sometimes was the end of the world to her. She was supposed to be Maria’s best friend, but she could be so goddamned annoying at times. She would get over it, though. She would get over whatever she was feeling right now, and she would go downstairs and grind away with Kyle like there was no tomorrow, and when there actually was a tomorrow, she would come up to Maria’s room and hang out and talk about her boyfriend and about the Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez split, and she would think that everything was normal again, but Maria would always know better.
When she was sure that Liz was gone, Maria once again returned to her conversation. “Flirting . . . it was definitely a mutual flirting . . .”
It was the brightly shining sun that woke Maria up finally. She forced her eyes open and immediately wanted to close them again. She was in a very unfamiliar car in a very unfamiliar place, and she was so confused as to why she didn’t want to go home.
She slowly looked over at Michael, who was still sleeping despite the bright light of the sun, and she knew why she didn’t want to go home. She was more at peace in this car and in this place with him then she ever could be with Slick and the others.
She struggled to sit up, finding it hard to move after sleeping in such a cramped compartment for so long. She opened the door and got out of the car as quietly as she could, needing room to stretch.
She watched as the cars passed by on the highway, wondering where the people in them were going. Were they going to visit grandparents in Memphis? Were they going to a high school reunion in Tucson? Were they going to Disney World?
Would she ever get the chance to go to those places?
“You’re not planning on hitching a ride out of the country, are you?” Michael had apparently heard her get out of the car and was up himself now.
Maria shook her head. “No, I’m not, and even if I was, I’d just ask you to take me. And you would.”
“What makes you so sure that I would?” Michael asked her, stretching his arms above his head and yawning as the last effects of sleep wore off of him.
“Because you help me, Michael,” she replied simply, taking a step toward him. “That’s what you do.”
Michael laughed a little. “I never thought I’d hear the world ‘help’ attached to my name.”
Maria smiled and shrugged a little. “I told you that you were complicated.”
Michael stared at her for several long seconds, and Maria couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking. When he did finally speak, he only said, “I wanna take you somewhere. Come on.” He motioned to the car with a jerk of his head and climbed back into the driver’s seat. Maria knew she should be wondering where exactly it was that he wanted to take her, but she honestly didn’t care. Just as long as it was away.
They drove for a while, and Maria took notice of the fact that they were heading back to LA. This bothered her for a little while, because LA was not away.
“Michael, where are you taking me?” she asked him finally when she saw familiar buildings and streets coming into view. “Why are we at the borderline?”
“Because,” he answered, “I wanna show you something that’s not complicated.”
“Well, everything on the borderline is complicated,” she told him matter-of-factly. “It’s all sex and drugs and rock and roll, and it’s just this big mass of complicated-ness.”
Michael smiled, pulling his car over on the side of the road. “Not all of it.” He opened the door and got out, and Maria did so as well. She was immediately greeted with the typical Los Angeles smell. It wasn’t until she’d gotten out of the city that she realized how awful it smelled.
She followed him wherever he went, but she wasn’t quite sure why. He was leading her through some sort of forest, and she was definitely not an outdoors type of girl. But she followed.
She was just about to ask him what the hell could possibly be in the middle of a tree-filled forest when the trees cleared and she walked right into the most exquisite place she’d ever seen.
She saw flowers everywhere, littering the ground in a display of the most beautiful colors and patterns. She saw the greenest of green grass and the clearest, water she’d ever seen. Sparkling water fell from a small waterfall into a tiny lake, creating one of the most peaceful sounds she’d ever heard.
“How did you know about this place?” she asked him, stepping toward the water, bending down to run her fingers through it, just to make sure that it was all real.
“Max and Tess come here sometimes when they wanna be alone,” Michael told her, squatting down beside her. “Nice, isn’t it?”
She nodded her head excitedly. “Very.” A rush of memories came flying at her as she stared at the place surrounding her. Memories of her mother’s garden, almost as beautiful as this. “My mom had a garden pretty much like this,” she told him. “Except, not with a waterfall, you know.”
Michael laughed a little.
“She loved it so much,” Maria continued, “and I did, too. I love this, Michael. It’s just so beautiful. I wish real life was just as beautiful.”
“It is,” Michael said quietly, almost as if he didn’t want her to hear him.
They sat in silence for a few seconds until Michael stood up, grabbing her wrist and pulling her up with him. “You wanna go swimming?” he asked her with an almost hopeful grin on his face.
She sighed. “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve got this mascara on, and it says that it’s totally waterproof, but you can never really be too careful with those types of things.”
Michael gave her a confused look, and she laughed. “I’m joking. I’ll go swimming, but I haven’t swam in years, so, if I drown, I’m blaming you.” She bent down and took off her shoes, watching as Michael did the same. He kept his eyes locked with hers the entire time.
His eyes were really brown. She hadn’t noticed that until now.
“I’m not taking my clothes off, though,” Maria announced, “so if you’re trying to seduce me, then you’re outta luck.”
“Damn,” Michael said sarcastically, snapping his fingers like he’d missed and opportunity. “There goes my plan.” He pulled his shirt over his head, and Maria tried not to stare at his tan, muscular chest.
“Maria, I think it’s only fair that, since I took my shirt off, you take off yours.”
Maria smiled. “Fine,” she said, letting her fingers play at the bottom of the large sweatshirt she was wearing. She loved joking around with him. “Fine, I will.” In one swift movement, she pulled her sweatshirt over her head, revealing a white tank-top underneath. “Ta-da!”
Michael shook his head. “You’re impossible, you know that?” He grabbed her hand, a move that surprised Maria but didn’t at all disappoint her. He led her up closer to the waterfall, and she had a feeling what he was planning to do. “Michael, I think I’ll just get in down on that end,” she said, motioning with her free hand to the place where his shirt and her sweatshirt lay discarded. “I think that’ll be a little safer for me.”
“Maybe so,” he agreed, continuing to lead her forward, “but this will be a lot more fun.”
Maria was getting nervous now. “No, I don’t think so. I think it’ll just be a lot more, uh, let’s see, deadly!”
“You’re not gonna die,” Michael promised her as they reached the top of the waterfall. “Look, it’s not even that high up.”
Maria shook her head persistently. “No, it is. It is for someone who’s had a fear of heights ever since she was five, Michael. It is.”
“You’ll be fine,” Michael insisted. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her to him. “Just hold on to me.”
She had to admit that holding onto the very shirtless man in front of her didn’t sound entirely bad.
“I can’t do this,” she kept telling him, although she found her arms finding their way to his shoulders. “I just can’t.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Michael reassured her. She thought she felt his hands rubbing the small of her back, but she figured in the end that she was just imagining it. “I protect, remember?”
She nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I know you protect, but if the fall alone just kills me, you can’t very well protect me from that.”
As he struggled to hold in his laughter, Maria found herself staring into his eyes once again. Brown eyes. Warm eyes. Not cruel, intimidating eyes that she’d once seen. Warm, brown eyes. Michael’s eyes.
“This can’t be safe,” she pointed out the obvious, beginning to weaken in her argument as she gazed at him.
Michael grinned a little, tightening his grip on her. “It isn’t.”
All at once, Maria felt herself falling over the edge, the air rushing out of her lungs in the form of a scream. She dug her nails into Michael’s shoulders so hard that she was sure it was painful, and the last thing she remembered as they hit the water was the feel of his arms wrapped tightly around her.
The water was cold, and when Maria came up for air, she was already shivering. Michael still had a tight hold on her, and she was glad for that, because he was warm.
Her mouth dropped open, and she wanted to speak, but she found words almost impossible at this point.
“You . . . you could’ve killed me,” she said between shivers. “That was . . . bad.”
Michael began to laugh. “Yeah, but it was fun, wasn’t it?”
She began to laugh right along with him. “Yeah, it was. But . . .” She trailed off when she felt him letting go of her body. She didn’t want him to. “But you still could’ve killed me,” she finished at last, just as Michael’s hands completely left her body. He grinned as he went under water to wet his hair again, and she tried not to show the effect that his simple grin was having on her right now. When he came up for air, she returned his grin with one of her own.
“I haven’t been swimming for a long time,” she told him again, swimming over closer to him, “but I still haven’t forgotten how.” She reached out and pushed Michael back down under the water by his shoulders. He hadn’t expected it, and when he finally got to the surface again, it was clear that he’d just swallowed a whole lot of water.
“Take that you homicidal maniac,” Maria teased.
“I’m the homicidal maniac?” Michael exclaimed. “You just tried to drown me!”
“And you tossed me off a freakin’ waterfall!” Maria shot back. “I guess we’re even.”
“No,” Michael said, shaking his head. “We’re not.”
That afternoon, Maria got to be the kid she was supposed to be. She got to laugh and she got to smile and she got to have fun, and she did this all with a man she was supposed to hate.
There was once instance that afternoon in which Maria realized that her attraction to Michael was more than just physical. He came up from under the water, surprising her and wrapping his hands around her waist, pressing her back to his chest. She’d been too stunned to even move, and even if she could’ve she wouldn’t. Being with him felt too comfortable. He had leaned down and whispered in her ear, then, so close that his warm breath tickled her skin.
“I love it when I see you happy.”
It was then that the realization came upon Maria that her attraction to Michael was more than physical. It was more than emotional, and it was more than spiritual.
It was all that mattered.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
That night, Michael Guerin was talking to himself, something he’d never ever done before in his life for the simple and practical reason that it was incredibly lame. He’d never imagined that he would one day be doing something so lame, but he was now. He had to, because he couldn’t discuss what was going through his head with anyone else. They wouldn’t accept it.
They didn’t need to.
“I love it when I see you happy? Could I be any more obvious?” Michael ran his fingers through his hair, spiking it up even more than it usually was as he paced around his bedroom. “She’s gonna know. She’s gonna know how I feel and she’s not gonna be happy about it.” He stood looking out his window, hoping that staring would somehow clear his mind, but it didn’t. He only kept on thinking about her, and his thoughts soon began to intensify.
He thought about her skin. Her smooth skin. She’d been wearing a tank top, true, but she’d come out of the water and right into his arms one time, and he was certain that he’d been able to feel her skin. Even if he wasn’t, he didn’t care. He’d felt her. He’d felt her body pressed up against his for whatever reason, and that feeling was driving him insane.
“I touched her too much,” he said, continuing to converse with himself only. “She doesn’t like to be touched.” Even as he said this, though, he kept remembering how she’d allowed him to touch her as they jumped into the water and numerous times after that, as well.
“She’s gonna think I was coming onto her. Well, I was, but . . .” He trailed off, silently wondering why she had this much of an effect on him, why the hell the very thought of her was driving him to talk to himself.
“Oh, fuck, the shirt thing,” he cursed, remembering how he’d been teasing her about taking off her shirt since he’d taken off his. “Why the hell did I say that? What the fuck was I thinking?”
Michael heard chuckling, and he looked around to see that Max was leaning against the doorframe, apparently quite amused by Michael’s conversation with himself.
“Hey, Max,” Michael said, trying to pull together any composure that he had left. “What’s up?”
Max shrugged. “Not much. Headin’ to work tonight. Gonna make the big bucks.”
Michael pretended to be happy for his friend. To some extent, he was, but, for the most part, he was just jealous. Jealous that Max was an okay guy.
“What’s up with you?” Max asked, reaching in his back pocket and pulling out a cigarette and his lighter. “It sounded like things were getting pretty intense in here.”
Michael laughed a little and tried to shrug the whole thing off. “Yeah, well, that’s me, you know. I’m a pretty intense guy.”
Max smirked. “That’s what Isabel said before you guys put an end to it. Now she’s tellin’ everyone your dick’s smaller than her thumb.”
A few weeks ago, Michael would’ve hunted Isabel down and fucked some sense into her for her untrue remarks, but now, he just didn’t really care. It was pointless.
“Isabel can go fuck Jonathon’s brains out for all I care,” Michael said. “That bitch and I were never really compatible anyway.”
Max blew a puff of smoke into the air. “Michael? Since when has compatibility counted in your book?”
Michael was beginning to feel like Max was investigating him. “It doesn’t,” he answered. “I just . . . I don’t know, Isabel and I were always different than you and Tess, and I just got sick of it.”
Max let go another cloud of smoke and shook his head. “You’re changing, Michael. You haven’t gone out to sell for awhile now, you disappear during all of our fights with BlackCon, you’re thinking about compatibility, and you’re up here talkin’ to yourself.”
“I wasn’t talking to myself,” Michael lied. “I was . . .” He trailed off, knowing quite well that the only way to get Max to leave was to lie to him. “Alright, you caught me,” he told him. “I’m writing a novel.”
A shocked expression came across Max’s features, and he almost dropped his cigarette. “You’re what?”
“I’m writing a novel,” Michael repeated. “A, uh . . . romance novel.”
Max began to laugh. “That’s so cheesy, man.”
“I know,” Michael agreed, “so that’s why I’m trying to keep it a secret. I was up here planning out my next chapter when I heard you laughing.”
“Are you serious about this?” Max asked, finding the concept too unbelievable to conceive. “You’re writing a romance novel?”
“I’m completely serious,” Michael lied. “You know, I don’t really think I’ve ever been so serious about anything in my life, Maxwell.”
Max shook his head. “Crazy,” he muttered. “I never knew writing was one of your passions.”
“Neither did I,” Michael told him, “but, now that I’ve started exploring it, I’ve found out that it’s the most passionate of my passions, Maxwell. Writing. Good old writing.”
Max sighed. “Well . . . what chapter are you on?”
“Chapter six,” Michael said immediately. “Yeah, chapter six. It’s getting pretty good, I think.”
“What’s it called?” Max asked.
“Uh . . . uh . . .” Michael now found himself at a loss for words, and he blurted out the first word that came to mind, the word that had been on his mind for a few days now. “Beautiful.”
Max immediately began to laugh again. “Dude! That’s so cheesy!”
Michael joined in a little. “Yeah, I guess so. Now, if you don’t mind, I need my writer’s time to think up the next plot twist, okay?”
Still laughing, and practically choking on his cigarette smoke, Max stumbled down the hallway. “You gotta let me read it when you’re done, okay man?”
“Yeah,” Michael told him. “You got it!” He closed the door as Max made his way down the hall and locked it into place. “Holy shit,” he cursed quietly. “I am so fucked up.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Across the borderline, Maria DeLuca was talking to herself as well. She hadn’t talked to herself since the first nights after her mother’s death and she’d needed to talk to herself to explain what had happened. She wasn’t embarrassed about it, but she closed her door so that no one heard her and thought she was completely strange.
“Am I crazy?” she asked herself. “He sliced my stomach once. He hurt me.” She reached down and touched the scar on her stomach, just to remind herself, but as soon as she touched it, she let her hand fall away. That was a different Michael Guerin. That was the cruel, intimidating Michael Guerin who’d been molded and formed into this hated villain that he’d discarded quite some time ago. “But he cares and he protects and he helps, too,” she said, remembering their conversation in the car. “God, why does he do that? He has no reason to.”
Maria ran her hands through her hair, wondering how the hell she’d gone from stressing out about whether she was a good person or not to stressing out about a guy.
In her mind, she pictured his naked chest, and she smiled. She imagined the feel of his hands wrapped around her waist holding her close to him, and her smile grew. “He was flirting,” she concluded. “That was definitely flirting. And I was flirting, too. I told him I’d take my shirt off, and, yeah, joking, but still . . . flirting.”
A knock on the door preceded Liz’s voice. “Hey, Maria, we’re hookin’ up the sound system downstairs and Kyle and Alex are heading down to the borderline to get some beer. They got the best beer down there.”
“Great,” Maria replied. She didn’t care to discuss beer. She was underage, and she didn’t drink anyway.
“So, it looks like we’re shapin’ it up to be breakin’ it down,” Liz continued. “You should come on down, ‘Ria.”
Maria made a face, hating the use of that nickname. “I don’t really feel like it, Liz.”
“You don’t feel like dancing?” Liz asked shock. “Girl, I know you, and I know that you always feel like dancing. Come on. I’m sure you’ve got some new move up your sleeve.”
“I don’t,” Maria lied, although she had dozens that she still needed to try out sometime. “Look, Liz, I just really wanna be alone right now, alright?”
There was silence on the other side of the door, and after several seconds, Maria her footsteps traipsing down the hallway. She could imagine the look on Liz’s face, the discourage, disappointed, maybe even hurt look on Liz’s face. Liz always took everything so seriously, and one little snap sometimes was the end of the world to her. She was supposed to be Maria’s best friend, but she could be so goddamned annoying at times. She would get over it, though. She would get over whatever she was feeling right now, and she would go downstairs and grind away with Kyle like there was no tomorrow, and when there actually was a tomorrow, she would come up to Maria’s room and hang out and talk about her boyfriend and about the Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez split, and she would think that everything was normal again, but Maria would always know better.
When she was sure that Liz was gone, Maria once again returned to her conversation. “Flirting . . . it was definitely a mutual flirting . . .”
LOVE IS MICHAEL AND MARIA.
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April
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That night, Michael left the Darkstreet crib. He told Max that he needed an inspiration for the next chapter and that he wasn’t receiving that inspiration in the crib. Max laughed a little and bought everything Michael told him. Typical Max. He trusted too easily.
Michael made his way to the borderline for one reason and one reason only. He didn’t expect her to be there waiting for him, but he was hoping.
Numerous people stopped him, wondering if he was selling again tonight. He told them that he wasn’t and continued on his way, vaguely remembering how, just a few days ago, he would’ve jumped at the opportunity to make some cash for the most infamous of reasons. He could hardly even remember those times now. They seemed so very far away and distant, like he had been a completely different person doing completely different things. He knew he hadn’t done a complete 180 yet—people didn’t change overnight—but he was very aware that knowing Maria had definitely put things into perspective. She was his focus now, and she was different than anything else he’d ever had in his life.
He reached the familiar street corner, and she wasn’t there. He felt a little disappointed. Though he hadn’t expected to find her, he’d been desperately hoping for it.
I knew it, he thought. I scared her away today. I was too obvious. She knows how I feel. She got freaked out. Great. I really fucked things up.
He was standing there thinking about what a mess he’d probably made of things when he heard someone talking behind him.
“You think you can put a bullet in my stomach and just get away with it?”
Michael turned around slowly and faced Kyle VaLenti and Whitman. Whitman was backing off, but VaLenti was staring daggers at him. Michael knew the look that he saw in the man’s eyes. It was a look of pure vengeance. He’d seen it before many times, and he’d even held it in his own eyes on occasion.
He didn’t want to fight tonight. He didn’t know if he could. His injuries from the incident at the bank were much better, (he healed extremely fast) but he wasn’t sure if he was ready to fight yet, and he was exhausted, too. He still hadn’t gotten as much sleep as he needed. And VaLenti was not an easy fight. He never had been.
But Michael couldn’t back down. That wasn’t his style.
“Actually, VaLenti, I was thinkin’ I could,” he answered with as much bravado as he could master at the moment. “You see, the plan actually was to put that bullet in your stomach and for you to die.”
“Yeah? Well, guess what? I’m not dead.” VaLenti’s hands were curling into fists. “I’m back for my vengeance.”
Michael ducked just in time to miss a fist colliding with his jaw. When he straightened back up, he threw a punch of his own, but Kyle ducked his as well. Michael swung again, and this time he hit Kyle right on the face. Kyle fell back onto the ground from the impact but soon stood up again. Before Michael could even think about hitting him again, he felt a hand hit him hard on the back of his head. He turned around and saw that Whitman was joining in on the action. Michael sighed and grabbed him by his shoulders, tossing him aside. Whitman wasn’t his opponent. He was Max’s, and in the state he was since Max’s brutal beating, he wouldn’t be a worthy opponent anyway.
Kyle was standing again by now, and he used Michael’s momentary distraction to his advantage, elbowing him hard in the stomach. Michael doubled over as the searing feeling of pain that he hadn’t felt since that day at the bank hit him again. He definitely was not healed completely, and that was showing in this fight.
“That all you got, Guerin?” Kyle taunted, grabbing Michael by his hair to keep him still while he laid a punch right on his jaw. “It’s kinda weak, you know.” He hit him again, this time making contact with his eye. “You seem to be tiring out, and I could go on for another four hours.” He punched him in the stomach one more time and threw Michael to the ground with a satisfied smile. “Next time I see you,” he said, “I’ll kill you.” He kept his eyes locked with Michael’s until he and Alex rounded the corner in the direction of the Darkstreet crib.
Michael didn’t know Kyle VaLenti in the slightest, but he was pretty sure that the guy wasn’t just making idle threats. He was pissed off as hell, and he seemed stronger than ever.
Michael ignored the stares of everyone outside. He and Kyle had caused quite a commotion, and now people were looking at him strangely. Anyone who knew him was throughly surprised that he hadn’t won that fight.
Michael was surprised himself. He could only remember losing one fight, and that had been with Rick back at the bank.
Struggling to sit up, he felt the skin around his eye and then wiped a trickle of blood away that had been running from his nose. Damage. It was all damage. Damage from a fight he had lost.
He stood up with the little bit of remaining pride he had left and advanced back to the Darkstreet crib, dreading the reaction he would receive when he arrived back.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria was laying on her bed, reading an issue of Cosmopolitan, and she stumbled upon a quiz that was entitled “Is he flirting with you?”. Eagerly, she took the quiz, and she only came up with a confusing answer. Very vague and unclear. She smiled to herself, however, when she realized what she was doing. She was doing something girls her age did. She was reading a magazine. She was being girly, and she was thinking about a boy. She was being seventeen. She was being normal.
A short time later, though, she was reminded that she could not be a normal seventeen year old girl for long at the BlackCon crib. She heard a loud chorus of whoops and shouts that undoubtedly belonged to Alex and Kyle. She listened as the volume of the music was turned down downstairs, and she began to wonder what was so important that the members of BlackCon would turn kill the intensity.
“Finally fuckin’ put it to him,” Kyle was boasting.
His statement was followed by a round of cheers and congratulations. Maria found herself curious, and she abandoned the magazine on her bed. She took the stairs down to the first floor, catching bits and fragments of what Kyle was saying as she made her way down.
“He was weak . . . pitiful . . . hardly even a challenge.”
“I’m so glad you were successful,” Liz was saying. “I hate Guerin for what he did to you.”
Guerin. Maria immediately tensed at the sound of his name, and she practically rushed down the stairs to join in the conversation.
“What did you do, Kyle?” she asked him at once, fearing the worst. She found it hard to believe that someone might have been able to kill Michael. Michael was the strongest, bravest person she knew, and she happened to know that, though Kyle was strong, he wasn’t in the league of killing Michael.
“I ran into Guerin and beat the shit outta him, nice and quick,” Kyle announced to her proudly, “and he only hit me once.”
“It was awesome,” Alex chirped in. “Guerin didn’t even know what hit him. I’ve never seen him in such bad fighting condition.”
That’s because he’s hurt, Maria thought, and tired. He isn’t quite up to fighting standards yet. I know this. I’m not supposed to.
“So, did you . . .” Maria wasn’t sure how she was supposed to ask this question without showing her concern. “How bad did you hurt him?”
Kyle shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sure he’ll be back in the fight by tomorrow, but I did hurt him. I won. I won this fight.”
So he wasn’t dead. Maria felt relief wash over her. “Oh,” she said, trying to sound as disinterested as she could. “Well, that’s cool.”
All at once, Slick was beside her and he has his arm around her shoulders, hugging her to him. “Baby, I know it would’ve been nice if Kyle had been able to kill him. I know it wasn’t easy, what he did to you.”
What he did to me? Maria thought, confused. I can hardly even remember, now.
Concern crashed onto Liz’s features. “Maria, what did he do? He didn’t . . . he didn’t rape you, did he?”
“No, no, he didn’t,” Maria reassured her. She was suddenly regretting coming downstairs. “He cut my stomach a little. That’s all. Nothing big.”
Slick grunted. “I still want him dead.”
“Yeah,” Maria said, slipping out of his hold. “Everybody does. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’m just gonna get some sleep. I’m still really tired.” She hurried up the stairs to get away from everyone else, slamming the door shut to her bedroom and locking it into place.
She laid up there the entire day, sometimes sleeping, sometimes not, until she couldn’t take it any longer and she snuck out to head to the borderline that night.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
She approached the street corner that night and saw a familiar figure. He was tall and muscular, and his hair was untamed and unruly. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his jacket, because he felt most comfortable with them there, and just looking at him made her smile.
She didn’t know why he was here. Maybe it was for her. She hoped it was.
Maria stepped up behind Michael, and, as if sensing her presence, he turned around and stared down at her. The smile fell from her lips when she saw his face. He wasn’t hurt nearly as bad as he had been a few days ago with the bank incident, but he was hurt. He smiled in return and tried to act brave, but she knew everything wasn’t as it seemed to be. Michael Guerin was feeling anything but brave at the moment.
She grabbed his hand and pulled him back into a secluded and deserted alley gently because she noticed that his knuckles were bruised, too. He sat down against the wall, and she sat down in front of him, reluctantly letting go of his hand.
“It’s not that bad,” he told her quietly. “It doesn’t hurt that much.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t,” Maria said sarcastically.
“It really doesn’t,” he said, running his fingers over his slightly black eye. “Kyle didn’t beat me too bad.” He paused for a long time and sighed. “But he did beat me.”
“Don’t let that bother you,” Maria told him. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“No, it is,” he insisted. “It is to me.” He shook his head with a disgusted expression on his face. “What the hell is happening to me, Maria? A few weeks ago, I thought I was on top of it all. I was convinced that no one could ever beat me, ‘cause no one had ever beaten me before. I fought people all the time, Maria, and I can’t even remember ever getting one single bruise. Is that crazy or what?”
Maria shrugged. “I don’t know. Sounds a little unrealistic to me.”
“But it’s not,” he said. “If I got hurt, I don’t remember it, ‘cause I always won, Maria. I always won the battle, one way or another, and that’s all that really matters. I never lost to anyone, and I was never supposed to, and now I have. I’ve lost to Rick, and now I’ve lost to Kyle.”
“You didn’t lose,” Maria tried to tell him. “Look, you weren’t in the right condition to fight anyway. You really just shouldn’t let it bother you.” She felt like reaching out and taking his hand again, but she stopped herself.
“I can’t help it,” he said, looking down at his bruised knuckles. “It’s just driving me crazy. I feel like everyone else around me is just getting stronger and stronger, and I just keep getting weaker and weaker, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“You’re not weak.”
“No, I am. And the thing is, I’m not really scared, but I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed, and I’m weak.”
Maria didn’t know how to get through to him. “Would a weak man do what you did at the bank, Michael?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Michael said. “Maria, if I lose my strength, I’ve got nothing else to offer.”
“You have plenty else to offer.”
“Like what?”
“Like lots of things. Michael, there’s a lot more to you than what’s on the outside. There’s so much more to you than what people see. God, there’s more to you than even you see.”
“I could say the same about you,” Michael told her. “You think you’re a bad person, Maria.”
“Yeah, well, yea for me, ‘cause I’m getting past that way of thinking,” she admitted. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve thought like that for awhile now, Michael. And guess what else? I actually allowed myself to be happy quite a bit this week. See how much progress I’ve made?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“So now we need to work on your progression,” Maria said. “That means no thinking that you’re weak, Michael, and no believing that you’re only strength. Got it?”
He seemed a little surprised that she was the one taking control of the situation now and also a little unsure of how to react to help.
“Besides,” she added, “only a strong person can deal with all of my whining and complaining.”
He laughed a little. “You’re strange, you know that.”
She nodded. “I know You’ve told me.”
They stared at each other for several long seconds, and Maria found her eyes drifting down to his lips. She wondered briefly what it would be like to feel his lips on hers, but she pushed the thought away at once. She couldn’t be thinking that when she was this close to him. Then she might be pushed to act on her thoughts, and who knows how that would end up.
“We need to laugh,” she announced suddenly. “We were happy yesterday, and we were laughing.”
“If I wanted to laugh, all I’d have to do was look at your face,” Michael joked.
“Oh, ha, ha, you’re funny, Michael,” Maria responded sarcastically. “Very funny. Okay, but, seriously, we need to laugh again. There’s this place . . .” She trailed off and stood up, extending her hand to help him up. She was faintly reminded of a few nights back during the showdown with Darkstreet how he’d helped her up in a similar fashion. The simple memory brought a small smile to her lips. “There’s this place up in BlackCon territory,” she repeated, “and it’ll definitely make you laugh.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“A comedy club?” Michael shrieked when he and Maria had reached their destination. “A comedy club?”
She nodded excitedly. “Yep. See, I wasn’t lying when I said it’d make you laugh.”
“Comedy clubs don’t make me laugh, Maria,” Michael told her. “The comedians are always so stupid, and the managers are always so desperate for entertainment that they just hire anybody.
“No, this place is pretty good. They had this guy last time that had me laughing up a storm.”
Michael sighed. “I don’t know, Maria. These places kinda creep me out.”
“They creep you out?” Maria seemed to be lost. “How on earth do these places creep you out, Michael?”
“Oh, you know, the strange-colored beer, the waitresses with the uni-brows, the weird old couples who come in to get their weekly laughs.”
Maria gave him a confused look. “Beer? Uni-brows? Old couples?” She grunted and grabbed on to Michael’s shirt. “Come on, you loser.”
Inside, the lights were dimmed, and Michael could hardly see anything but the comedian on stage. Oh, well, he thought. It’s better this way. Now I don’t have to look at any old couples.
“You seen this guy?” Michael asked Maria, pointing to the guy up on stage.
“No,” she answered, shaking her head. Her hair brushed against his arm as she did so, and Michael took a moment to reflect on how close she was to him. “They have someone new every week I think.”
“I love sex,” the comedian was saying, “don’t get me wrong, but not with my wife. With her, it’s just this big hassle. You would think that after ten years, she would finally stop asking me if it was okay to suck my dick.” The crowd began to laugh a little, and Maria made a gross-out sound beside Michael. “I don’t wanna hear about this guy’s dick,” she said quietly.
“My wife . . . she just doesn’t get it. She’s always insisting on being on top. I keep telling her that it would be nice to change around a little, spice things up, you know, but she’s convinced that we can never throw off the routine. Routine? Sex shouldn’t be routine.”
“That’s right!” one man shouted from the audience.
“And she falls asleep,” the comedian continued. When he said this, several men in the audience made a disgusted sound. Michael couldn’t help but join in a little, remembering the time that Isabel had been “too tired to even keep her eyes open”. With Isabel, that was extremely tired.
“This woman, this woman who absolutely demands to be on top falls asleep on me all the fuckin’ time! If she’s gone saddle me up, she’s at least gotta finish the ride, right?”
“Damn right!” a chorus of men shouted.
Maria sighed. “God, I didn’t know this guy was only talk about sex,” she said.
Michael looked over at her, barely able to make out her features in the dark light. “That’s okay,” he told her. “I don’t mind.”
Maria sighed again. “Men. All alike.”
“So this is my wife in bed . . . she asks me what to do with her hands, she has no clue what to do with her mouth, she doesn’t ever wanna do anything a bit risky, and she falls asleep. But what really drives me completely insane is when she starts criticizing my cock. The first time we had sex, she took one look at it and said, ‘Where’s the rest of it?’”
The crowd erupted in laughter, and Michael found himself laughing right along with them. He even thought he heard Maria laughing a little.
“And then,” the comedian continued, “she suggested watering it so that it would grow! It’s not a fuckin’ plant!”
More laughs.
“And it seems like the minute I pop it out at her, she’s wantin’ to cuddle. We’re half-way done, and she asks me to hold her. Baby, I got news for you and all women out there. Men don’t ever wanna cuddle! They just wanna stick their dick in you and fuck you to death, alright?”
“Is that true?” Maria asked Michael.
“Uh, um . . .” Michael thought back to Isabel and all of the other girls he’d been with in her life. “Sometimes.”
“One time a week,” the comedian went on, “one time a week ‘cause that’s all I’m allowed anymore, and when we actually get goin’, she’s either wanted to cuddle or slumped over her pillow with drool comin’ out of her mouth. Yeah, that’s attractive.” He paused as the audience laughed some more, and then went back to muttering, “One time a week. One lame-ass time a week. How many times do you out there have sex a week, huh? More than one, I’m bettin’.”
“Five!” one man shouted.
“Ten!” another put in.
“Fifty!” Holy shit.
“What about you two?” the comedian asked, motioning towards Michael and Maria. “You look like a nice young couple. How about you?”
All at once, Michael felt a spotlight looking down upon both him and Maria, and he couldn’t even speak. “Uh, we don’t . . . we’re not . . .”
“We are not a couple,” Maria clarified.
“Well, you don’t have to be a couple to have sex,” the comedian reminded her. “Just ask my paper girl.”
The crowd erupted in laughter again, and Michael was relieved when he felt the spotlight taken off of him. He turned to Maria, and though he couldn’t see her very well, he knew she must be smiling.
“That’s was embarrassing, huh?” she said quietly.
“Yeah,” Michael agreed. “You know, you don’t seem to be having fun, Maria.”
She sighed. “It’s just, I can hear about sex all the time back at the crib. It gets old you know.”
“Then we’ll go,” Michael told her. He stood up and slid out of his seat, and they left the club the way they’d come in.
Maria had to leave after that. She admitted to Michael that she’d sneaked out of the crib and that she didn’t really want Slick to come looking for her. They said their goodbyes and began to walk off in separate directions when Michael realized he’d forgotten something. “Maria!” he shouted, turning around. She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to face him. “Tomorrow,” he said, “same time. Alright?”
She smiled a little. “Alright.”
That night, Michael left the Darkstreet crib. He told Max that he needed an inspiration for the next chapter and that he wasn’t receiving that inspiration in the crib. Max laughed a little and bought everything Michael told him. Typical Max. He trusted too easily.
Michael made his way to the borderline for one reason and one reason only. He didn’t expect her to be there waiting for him, but he was hoping.
Numerous people stopped him, wondering if he was selling again tonight. He told them that he wasn’t and continued on his way, vaguely remembering how, just a few days ago, he would’ve jumped at the opportunity to make some cash for the most infamous of reasons. He could hardly even remember those times now. They seemed so very far away and distant, like he had been a completely different person doing completely different things. He knew he hadn’t done a complete 180 yet—people didn’t change overnight—but he was very aware that knowing Maria had definitely put things into perspective. She was his focus now, and she was different than anything else he’d ever had in his life.
He reached the familiar street corner, and she wasn’t there. He felt a little disappointed. Though he hadn’t expected to find her, he’d been desperately hoping for it.
I knew it, he thought. I scared her away today. I was too obvious. She knows how I feel. She got freaked out. Great. I really fucked things up.
He was standing there thinking about what a mess he’d probably made of things when he heard someone talking behind him.
“You think you can put a bullet in my stomach and just get away with it?”
Michael turned around slowly and faced Kyle VaLenti and Whitman. Whitman was backing off, but VaLenti was staring daggers at him. Michael knew the look that he saw in the man’s eyes. It was a look of pure vengeance. He’d seen it before many times, and he’d even held it in his own eyes on occasion.
He didn’t want to fight tonight. He didn’t know if he could. His injuries from the incident at the bank were much better, (he healed extremely fast) but he wasn’t sure if he was ready to fight yet, and he was exhausted, too. He still hadn’t gotten as much sleep as he needed. And VaLenti was not an easy fight. He never had been.
But Michael couldn’t back down. That wasn’t his style.
“Actually, VaLenti, I was thinkin’ I could,” he answered with as much bravado as he could master at the moment. “You see, the plan actually was to put that bullet in your stomach and for you to die.”
“Yeah? Well, guess what? I’m not dead.” VaLenti’s hands were curling into fists. “I’m back for my vengeance.”
Michael ducked just in time to miss a fist colliding with his jaw. When he straightened back up, he threw a punch of his own, but Kyle ducked his as well. Michael swung again, and this time he hit Kyle right on the face. Kyle fell back onto the ground from the impact but soon stood up again. Before Michael could even think about hitting him again, he felt a hand hit him hard on the back of his head. He turned around and saw that Whitman was joining in on the action. Michael sighed and grabbed him by his shoulders, tossing him aside. Whitman wasn’t his opponent. He was Max’s, and in the state he was since Max’s brutal beating, he wouldn’t be a worthy opponent anyway.
Kyle was standing again by now, and he used Michael’s momentary distraction to his advantage, elbowing him hard in the stomach. Michael doubled over as the searing feeling of pain that he hadn’t felt since that day at the bank hit him again. He definitely was not healed completely, and that was showing in this fight.
“That all you got, Guerin?” Kyle taunted, grabbing Michael by his hair to keep him still while he laid a punch right on his jaw. “It’s kinda weak, you know.” He hit him again, this time making contact with his eye. “You seem to be tiring out, and I could go on for another four hours.” He punched him in the stomach one more time and threw Michael to the ground with a satisfied smile. “Next time I see you,” he said, “I’ll kill you.” He kept his eyes locked with Michael’s until he and Alex rounded the corner in the direction of the Darkstreet crib.
Michael didn’t know Kyle VaLenti in the slightest, but he was pretty sure that the guy wasn’t just making idle threats. He was pissed off as hell, and he seemed stronger than ever.
Michael ignored the stares of everyone outside. He and Kyle had caused quite a commotion, and now people were looking at him strangely. Anyone who knew him was throughly surprised that he hadn’t won that fight.
Michael was surprised himself. He could only remember losing one fight, and that had been with Rick back at the bank.
Struggling to sit up, he felt the skin around his eye and then wiped a trickle of blood away that had been running from his nose. Damage. It was all damage. Damage from a fight he had lost.
He stood up with the little bit of remaining pride he had left and advanced back to the Darkstreet crib, dreading the reaction he would receive when he arrived back.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria was laying on her bed, reading an issue of Cosmopolitan, and she stumbled upon a quiz that was entitled “Is he flirting with you?”. Eagerly, she took the quiz, and she only came up with a confusing answer. Very vague and unclear. She smiled to herself, however, when she realized what she was doing. She was doing something girls her age did. She was reading a magazine. She was being girly, and she was thinking about a boy. She was being seventeen. She was being normal.
A short time later, though, she was reminded that she could not be a normal seventeen year old girl for long at the BlackCon crib. She heard a loud chorus of whoops and shouts that undoubtedly belonged to Alex and Kyle. She listened as the volume of the music was turned down downstairs, and she began to wonder what was so important that the members of BlackCon would turn kill the intensity.
“Finally fuckin’ put it to him,” Kyle was boasting.
His statement was followed by a round of cheers and congratulations. Maria found herself curious, and she abandoned the magazine on her bed. She took the stairs down to the first floor, catching bits and fragments of what Kyle was saying as she made her way down.
“He was weak . . . pitiful . . . hardly even a challenge.”
“I’m so glad you were successful,” Liz was saying. “I hate Guerin for what he did to you.”
Guerin. Maria immediately tensed at the sound of his name, and she practically rushed down the stairs to join in the conversation.
“What did you do, Kyle?” she asked him at once, fearing the worst. She found it hard to believe that someone might have been able to kill Michael. Michael was the strongest, bravest person she knew, and she happened to know that, though Kyle was strong, he wasn’t in the league of killing Michael.
“I ran into Guerin and beat the shit outta him, nice and quick,” Kyle announced to her proudly, “and he only hit me once.”
“It was awesome,” Alex chirped in. “Guerin didn’t even know what hit him. I’ve never seen him in such bad fighting condition.”
That’s because he’s hurt, Maria thought, and tired. He isn’t quite up to fighting standards yet. I know this. I’m not supposed to.
“So, did you . . .” Maria wasn’t sure how she was supposed to ask this question without showing her concern. “How bad did you hurt him?”
Kyle shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sure he’ll be back in the fight by tomorrow, but I did hurt him. I won. I won this fight.”
So he wasn’t dead. Maria felt relief wash over her. “Oh,” she said, trying to sound as disinterested as she could. “Well, that’s cool.”
All at once, Slick was beside her and he has his arm around her shoulders, hugging her to him. “Baby, I know it would’ve been nice if Kyle had been able to kill him. I know it wasn’t easy, what he did to you.”
What he did to me? Maria thought, confused. I can hardly even remember, now.
Concern crashed onto Liz’s features. “Maria, what did he do? He didn’t . . . he didn’t rape you, did he?”
“No, no, he didn’t,” Maria reassured her. She was suddenly regretting coming downstairs. “He cut my stomach a little. That’s all. Nothing big.”
Slick grunted. “I still want him dead.”
“Yeah,” Maria said, slipping out of his hold. “Everybody does. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’m just gonna get some sleep. I’m still really tired.” She hurried up the stairs to get away from everyone else, slamming the door shut to her bedroom and locking it into place.
She laid up there the entire day, sometimes sleeping, sometimes not, until she couldn’t take it any longer and she snuck out to head to the borderline that night.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
She approached the street corner that night and saw a familiar figure. He was tall and muscular, and his hair was untamed and unruly. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his jacket, because he felt most comfortable with them there, and just looking at him made her smile.
She didn’t know why he was here. Maybe it was for her. She hoped it was.
Maria stepped up behind Michael, and, as if sensing her presence, he turned around and stared down at her. The smile fell from her lips when she saw his face. He wasn’t hurt nearly as bad as he had been a few days ago with the bank incident, but he was hurt. He smiled in return and tried to act brave, but she knew everything wasn’t as it seemed to be. Michael Guerin was feeling anything but brave at the moment.
She grabbed his hand and pulled him back into a secluded and deserted alley gently because she noticed that his knuckles were bruised, too. He sat down against the wall, and she sat down in front of him, reluctantly letting go of his hand.
“It’s not that bad,” he told her quietly. “It doesn’t hurt that much.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t,” Maria said sarcastically.
“It really doesn’t,” he said, running his fingers over his slightly black eye. “Kyle didn’t beat me too bad.” He paused for a long time and sighed. “But he did beat me.”
“Don’t let that bother you,” Maria told him. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“No, it is,” he insisted. “It is to me.” He shook his head with a disgusted expression on his face. “What the hell is happening to me, Maria? A few weeks ago, I thought I was on top of it all. I was convinced that no one could ever beat me, ‘cause no one had ever beaten me before. I fought people all the time, Maria, and I can’t even remember ever getting one single bruise. Is that crazy or what?”
Maria shrugged. “I don’t know. Sounds a little unrealistic to me.”
“But it’s not,” he said. “If I got hurt, I don’t remember it, ‘cause I always won, Maria. I always won the battle, one way or another, and that’s all that really matters. I never lost to anyone, and I was never supposed to, and now I have. I’ve lost to Rick, and now I’ve lost to Kyle.”
“You didn’t lose,” Maria tried to tell him. “Look, you weren’t in the right condition to fight anyway. You really just shouldn’t let it bother you.” She felt like reaching out and taking his hand again, but she stopped herself.
“I can’t help it,” he said, looking down at his bruised knuckles. “It’s just driving me crazy. I feel like everyone else around me is just getting stronger and stronger, and I just keep getting weaker and weaker, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“You’re not weak.”
“No, I am. And the thing is, I’m not really scared, but I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed, and I’m weak.”
Maria didn’t know how to get through to him. “Would a weak man do what you did at the bank, Michael?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Michael said. “Maria, if I lose my strength, I’ve got nothing else to offer.”
“You have plenty else to offer.”
“Like what?”
“Like lots of things. Michael, there’s a lot more to you than what’s on the outside. There’s so much more to you than what people see. God, there’s more to you than even you see.”
“I could say the same about you,” Michael told her. “You think you’re a bad person, Maria.”
“Yeah, well, yea for me, ‘cause I’m getting past that way of thinking,” she admitted. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve thought like that for awhile now, Michael. And guess what else? I actually allowed myself to be happy quite a bit this week. See how much progress I’ve made?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“So now we need to work on your progression,” Maria said. “That means no thinking that you’re weak, Michael, and no believing that you’re only strength. Got it?”
He seemed a little surprised that she was the one taking control of the situation now and also a little unsure of how to react to help.
“Besides,” she added, “only a strong person can deal with all of my whining and complaining.”
He laughed a little. “You’re strange, you know that.”
She nodded. “I know You’ve told me.”
They stared at each other for several long seconds, and Maria found her eyes drifting down to his lips. She wondered briefly what it would be like to feel his lips on hers, but she pushed the thought away at once. She couldn’t be thinking that when she was this close to him. Then she might be pushed to act on her thoughts, and who knows how that would end up.
“We need to laugh,” she announced suddenly. “We were happy yesterday, and we were laughing.”
“If I wanted to laugh, all I’d have to do was look at your face,” Michael joked.
“Oh, ha, ha, you’re funny, Michael,” Maria responded sarcastically. “Very funny. Okay, but, seriously, we need to laugh again. There’s this place . . .” She trailed off and stood up, extending her hand to help him up. She was faintly reminded of a few nights back during the showdown with Darkstreet how he’d helped her up in a similar fashion. The simple memory brought a small smile to her lips. “There’s this place up in BlackCon territory,” she repeated, “and it’ll definitely make you laugh.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“A comedy club?” Michael shrieked when he and Maria had reached their destination. “A comedy club?”
She nodded excitedly. “Yep. See, I wasn’t lying when I said it’d make you laugh.”
“Comedy clubs don’t make me laugh, Maria,” Michael told her. “The comedians are always so stupid, and the managers are always so desperate for entertainment that they just hire anybody.
“No, this place is pretty good. They had this guy last time that had me laughing up a storm.”
Michael sighed. “I don’t know, Maria. These places kinda creep me out.”
“They creep you out?” Maria seemed to be lost. “How on earth do these places creep you out, Michael?”
“Oh, you know, the strange-colored beer, the waitresses with the uni-brows, the weird old couples who come in to get their weekly laughs.”
Maria gave him a confused look. “Beer? Uni-brows? Old couples?” She grunted and grabbed on to Michael’s shirt. “Come on, you loser.”
Inside, the lights were dimmed, and Michael could hardly see anything but the comedian on stage. Oh, well, he thought. It’s better this way. Now I don’t have to look at any old couples.
“You seen this guy?” Michael asked Maria, pointing to the guy up on stage.
“No,” she answered, shaking her head. Her hair brushed against his arm as she did so, and Michael took a moment to reflect on how close she was to him. “They have someone new every week I think.”
“I love sex,” the comedian was saying, “don’t get me wrong, but not with my wife. With her, it’s just this big hassle. You would think that after ten years, she would finally stop asking me if it was okay to suck my dick.” The crowd began to laugh a little, and Maria made a gross-out sound beside Michael. “I don’t wanna hear about this guy’s dick,” she said quietly.
“My wife . . . she just doesn’t get it. She’s always insisting on being on top. I keep telling her that it would be nice to change around a little, spice things up, you know, but she’s convinced that we can never throw off the routine. Routine? Sex shouldn’t be routine.”
“That’s right!” one man shouted from the audience.
“And she falls asleep,” the comedian continued. When he said this, several men in the audience made a disgusted sound. Michael couldn’t help but join in a little, remembering the time that Isabel had been “too tired to even keep her eyes open”. With Isabel, that was extremely tired.
“This woman, this woman who absolutely demands to be on top falls asleep on me all the fuckin’ time! If she’s gone saddle me up, she’s at least gotta finish the ride, right?”
“Damn right!” a chorus of men shouted.
Maria sighed. “God, I didn’t know this guy was only talk about sex,” she said.
Michael looked over at her, barely able to make out her features in the dark light. “That’s okay,” he told her. “I don’t mind.”
Maria sighed again. “Men. All alike.”
“So this is my wife in bed . . . she asks me what to do with her hands, she has no clue what to do with her mouth, she doesn’t ever wanna do anything a bit risky, and she falls asleep. But what really drives me completely insane is when she starts criticizing my cock. The first time we had sex, she took one look at it and said, ‘Where’s the rest of it?’”
The crowd erupted in laughter, and Michael found himself laughing right along with them. He even thought he heard Maria laughing a little.
“And then,” the comedian continued, “she suggested watering it so that it would grow! It’s not a fuckin’ plant!”
More laughs.
“And it seems like the minute I pop it out at her, she’s wantin’ to cuddle. We’re half-way done, and she asks me to hold her. Baby, I got news for you and all women out there. Men don’t ever wanna cuddle! They just wanna stick their dick in you and fuck you to death, alright?”
“Is that true?” Maria asked Michael.
“Uh, um . . .” Michael thought back to Isabel and all of the other girls he’d been with in her life. “Sometimes.”
“One time a week,” the comedian went on, “one time a week ‘cause that’s all I’m allowed anymore, and when we actually get goin’, she’s either wanted to cuddle or slumped over her pillow with drool comin’ out of her mouth. Yeah, that’s attractive.” He paused as the audience laughed some more, and then went back to muttering, “One time a week. One lame-ass time a week. How many times do you out there have sex a week, huh? More than one, I’m bettin’.”
“Five!” one man shouted.
“Ten!” another put in.
“Fifty!” Holy shit.
“What about you two?” the comedian asked, motioning towards Michael and Maria. “You look like a nice young couple. How about you?”
All at once, Michael felt a spotlight looking down upon both him and Maria, and he couldn’t even speak. “Uh, we don’t . . . we’re not . . .”
“We are not a couple,” Maria clarified.
“Well, you don’t have to be a couple to have sex,” the comedian reminded her. “Just ask my paper girl.”
The crowd erupted in laughter again, and Michael was relieved when he felt the spotlight taken off of him. He turned to Maria, and though he couldn’t see her very well, he knew she must be smiling.
“That’s was embarrassing, huh?” she said quietly.
“Yeah,” Michael agreed. “You know, you don’t seem to be having fun, Maria.”
She sighed. “It’s just, I can hear about sex all the time back at the crib. It gets old you know.”
“Then we’ll go,” Michael told her. He stood up and slid out of his seat, and they left the club the way they’d come in.
Maria had to leave after that. She admitted to Michael that she’d sneaked out of the crib and that she didn’t really want Slick to come looking for her. They said their goodbyes and began to walk off in separate directions when Michael realized he’d forgotten something. “Maria!” he shouted, turning around. She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to face him. “Tomorrow,” he said, “same time. Alright?”
She smiled a little. “Alright.”
LOVE IS MICHAEL AND MARIA.
-
April
- Roswell Fanatic
- Posts: 1557
- Joined: Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:32 am
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Thanks again for the feedback. Just to let you know . . . the kiss is coming. Eventually. I'm such a tease, I know! 
I just like to have a strong lead-up to the first kiss. Stay tuned.
“Hey. Where were you?”
Maria sighed and draped her coat over the couch. Questions, questions, questions. Everyone always questioned her on where she was going and why. They always felt they had the right to know. Liz definitely always felt that way.
“Just out,” Maria told her.
“You’re going out a lot lately,” Liz said. “Is there something I should know?”
Maria had to resist the urge to stomp on up the stairs and get away from her supposed best friend. She was so damn nosy sometimes.
“Liz, stop the motherly act, okay? It’s getting old.”
A hurt expression crashed over Liz’s features. “I’m sorry. I was just joking.” She sighed and let her gaze drop to the floor. “I think you hate me, Maria.”
“I don’t hate you,” Maria told her, and she knew that she didn’t. Liz got on her nerves a lot, but Maria could never hate her. “Look, I’m sorry for snapping at you.”
“I’m sorry for being so nosy,” Liz apologized. “It’s your life. I guess I just want to be a part of it.”
“Let’s just forget about it,” Maria suggested. “Okay?”
Liz nodded, and two voices began to filter in and register in Maria’s mind. Tijuana and Jenna had soon joined Liz and Maria in the living room, and Maria found herself trapped in their pitiful conversation.
“You’re so lucky you got Kyle,” Tijuana was saying as she reached for a cigarette on the table. “I ain’t got no one.”
“I don’t, either,” Jenna added, “We don’t got anybody and you’ve got this guy that you’re totally in love with.”
“It’s so messed up,” Tijuana said. “I swear to God, if Jenna and I didn’t have to prostitute, we might actually stand a chance at getting somebody, too.”
Liz smiled. “You guys will find someone someday. I promise.”
Jenna grunted. “The problem is there ain’t no hot guys in BlackCon, and if they are hot, they’re taken. Like Slick.” She cast a glance at Maria and shook her head enviously. “You’re so lucky.”
“Slick and I aren’t together,” Maria told her. “He just wants us to be.”
“And you don’t wanna be?” Tijuana asked in shock.
“I don’t,” Maria told her honestly. “Call me old fashioned, but I guess I’m still looking for my Prince Charming, my knight in shining armor, you know.” She saw a vision of Michael flash across her mind when she spoke, and she knew she’d already found him, but that it was impossible.
“I get that,” Jenna said, “or at least I think I do. I want somebody who wants me for me and not for my body. And I want somebody hot, too.”
Tijuana smiled a little. “I know who I want,” she said.
“Who?” Liz asked, interested. “Who, Tijuana?”
Tijuana sighed a sort of dreamy sigh. “Michael Guerin.”
Michael.
“What?” Liz shrieked. “Are you forgetting that he tried to kill Kyle and that he’d kill you in a heartbeat?”
“Liz, are you overlooking his sex appeal? That guy has got it so fuckin’ goin’ on . . . I’d bed him on the spot.”
“That’s sick,” Liz said. “He’s an asshole. I hate him. We all hate him.”
“Look, I never said his personality was anything to brag about, but you guys have got to admit it: he’s a god.”
Jenna laughed a little. “Well, I don’t think I’d go that far, but, yeah, he’s pretty damn fine.”
Liz sighed. “Alright, fine, I guess I agree with you guys, but his personality just ruins him. You don’t know how badly I want him dead right now.”
Michael? Dead? No . . .
“I think I’m gonna head up to my room,” Maria announced, wanting desperately to be away from this conversation. “I’ll see you guys later.”
“Wait,” Tijuana said as Maria began to walk off. “What do you think about him, Maria? Too hot for words, right?”
Maria felt a complete feeling of uncomfortableness wash over her. “I . . .” She mentally tried to think of a way out of this situation, and she avoided their eyes when she spoke so that they couldn’t tell that she was lying. “I don’t know. I don’t even know the guy.” With that, she spun and practically ran up to her bedroom. Once inside, she let herself fall onto her bed, wondering why it always seemed like people were talking about either Michael’s death or his sex appeal.
At this point, she was in too deep to talk about either one.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael pulled his car up to the corner and saw Maria on their street corner the next night, sitting on a bench next to some homeless guy. The guy appeared to be flirting with her, and Michael had to laugh a little at the disgusted expression on Maria’s face. When she saw Michael get out of the car, she ran to him with a smile on her face.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she told him. “That guy was so hitting on me.”
“I noticed.” He took a moment to silently admire the tight hip-hugger jeans and navy blue shirt that clung to her body. Nice.
“Where are we going tonight, Michael?” she asked him excitedly. “Away?”
She sounded so young and so innocent. If Michael hadn’t known any better, he might have thought that, at this moment, just for this short moment, she was a normal teenage girl, and if he’d been able to let himself give into his feelings, he might have felt like he had been on a date with her in some sense.
“Of course we’re going away,” Michael told her. “We always go away.”
She nodded, keeping her eyes locked with his. For a second, Michael began to wonder if she could see into his soul and see how he felt about her.
“I like away,” she told him quietly before going around to the passenger’s side of the car.
They drove until they reached a place in LA that Maria remembered from long ago.
“The carnival,” she commented. “My mom used to take me here.”
“I’ve never been here,” Michael admitted, “but I figured I better check it out while it’s still going on.”
Maria giggled a little. “You know, it’s kinda cheesy, Michael.”
He was lost. “How is this cheesy?”
“Oh, you know, you at a carnival, eating carnival food, playing carnival games, talking with carnival people.”
“How is that cheesy?”
“It’s just so simple, and . . .”
“And I’m not.”
Maria nodded. “Right.”
“Well,” Michael said, “I intend on enjoying myself tonight, whether it’s cheesy and simple or not. How about you?”
“Hell yeah, I do!” Maria exclaimed, practically jumping out of the car. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been to something like this?” She did a sort of happy dance as she continued forward. “Now, Michael, you have got to go on the Tapeworm with me.”
“The Tapeworm?” Michael echoed. “I think Max might’ve had one of those.”
“That’s sick, but it’s not that type of tapeworm Michael. It’s that.” She pointed directly to a gigantic roller coaster looming before them. “Doesn’t that look awesome?”
“Uh . . .” Michael could already feel his stomach churning. He had a thing about roller coasters. “Sure.”
“We’ve got to go on that,” Maria said, still doing her little happy dance, now adding a skip in between her moves, “and the Scrambler, ‘cause I’ve always loved the Scrambler, and that weird zippy thing, and that one whoosh ride, if they still have it, and . . .” She’d been so busy talking that she almost ran into the booth at the entrance where she was supposed to pay when it appeared in front of her. “Oh,” she said. “Michael, he needs money.”
Michael sighed, pulling a twenty and a ten out of his pocket. “You’re so lucky I pay for you to get into these places, DeLuca.”
“Places? No, I think you mean place. Singular. You’ve only paid for me to get into this place.”
“And Motion and the comedy club last night,” Michael reminded her. “You’re burning a hole in my pocket.”
Maria sighed, defeated in her argument. “Fine, you win. Places.”
“Here you go,” the man at the booth said, handing Michael a five back as change. “You have a nice night, now.” He smiled big, and Maria practically ran into the park. “That guy was so creepy,” she said once they were clearly past him. “God, he looked like a clown or something!”
“A clown?” Michael echoed in confusion. “What’s so bad about clowns?”
“Only everything,” Maria said as she found a spot in line for the Tapeworm. “The big red Rudolph nose, the weird make-up, the curly orange hair, the polka-dot pants.”
“You have a fear of clowns, don’t you?” He couldn’t hardly believe it.
“I have a fear of a lot of things, Michael,” she said, “clowns included. It’s a very strange but serious fear.” She pulled him forward in the line as more people were loaded on to the roller coaster. Michael stood in line with her, watching as the people on the ride were tossed up and down and around and around on that roller coaster. He could hear their screams, and he even thought he heard a few children crying.
“Uh, Maria,” he said when they were close to being let on. “You know how you have this fear of clowns? Well, I’ve kinda got a fear, too . . . of roller coasters.”
She turned around and stared at him, a shocked expression on her face. “You mean that you’re actually afraid of something?”
“No, not afraid,” he lied, still trying to keep up the notion that he wasn’t afraid of anything, “just nervous.”
“Roller coasters make you nervous, huh? That’s kind of funny.”
“No, it’s not, especially if you’ve had an uncle who retold a story at least a thousand times about going on a roller coaster and getting stuck upside down. The blood was rushing to his head for three freakin’ hours, Maria! I just really don’t think I should be going on this with my twenty-three year old body. I’m gettin’ old, you know.”
Maria grunted. “Yeah, right. Twenty-three is hardly old. Besides, you owe this to me.”
“Why?”
She gave him a look. “Because, a few days ago, I let you launch me off a waterfall.”
“That doesn’t mean I owe you,” Michael protested as the guy at the gate motioned for them to get onto the ride.
“Come on, Michael.” Maria grabbed him by his wrist and pulled him into one of the cars right at the front. “Look, it won’t be that bad.” She pulled a safety bar down in front of them both. “Look at this. Safety equipment and everything.”
“They wouldn’t put safety equipment on if there wasn’t a chance you can die,” he reminded her.
Maria began to laugh a little as the train filled up the rest of the way. “I still can’t believe that you’re afraid of this, Michael.”
“Not afraid,” he corrected. “Nervous.”
“Oh, right. Nervous.”
The coaster started off slow, and that was good for Michael. He was okay until it started picking up speed. “How fast does this thing go?” he asked Maria when he saw a loop in front of them that definitely had the possibility of making him sick.
“I don’t know,” she shouted back over the noise of the ride. “If I remember correctly, though, it’s pretty fast!”
“Oh,” Michael groaned. “Great.”
Maria let out a scream of happiness as they confronted the loop at an incredible speed. Michael kept his mouth closed and held on to the safety bar as tightly as he could.
“Oh, there’s this huge drop coming up, Michael!” Maria shouted as the roller coaster hooked on to a chain and began the ascent towards the top of a hill. “You’ll love it.”
“I’m sure I will.” Michael took one quick look down at the ground when they were close to the top and immediately wished he hadn’t. “Maria, aren’t you afraid of heights?”
“Yeah,” she answered, “but not as long as I’m secure in this little . . .” Her sentence was lost in more shouts and whoops and hollers as the roller coaster plunged straight down. For a minute, Michael felt like his insides were being ripped away. He’d forgotten what it was like to be on a roller coaster, especially one that was this wild.
When the ride finally ended, Michael hurried off. He definitely wasn’t one for roller coasters.
“Wasn’t that awesome?” Maria was so happy as she bounced off the ride. She still had a huge smile on her face, and that was enough for Michael. She was happy, so he was happy.
“It was, uh . . . not as nerve-wracking as it could have been, but still . . .”
“Well, we didn’t get stuck, and you didn’t throw up, and you’re twenty-three year-old body’s still doing fine, right?”
Michael took a quick look at his arms and his legs. “Right.”
“Good,” Maria said. “Then I’d say we’re ready for the weird zippy thing.” She grabbed Michael’s hand and started pulling him in the direction of another ride. The zippy thing. That sure as hell didn’t sound tame.
“Great . . .”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
They spent some time waiting in line for the weird zippy thing and the whoosh ride, but when they were all over, Michael discovered that they’d been kind of fun. Not as crazy as he’d thought they would be and not as wild as they could have been. And he’d even had fun.
After that, he’d caved in and bought Maria a large popcorn and cotton candy. The girl really was burning a hole in his pocket, but he didn’t care. She was worth every cent and more.
“Michael, is this the sixth or seventh time you’ve played this?” Maria asked him as she ate away on her popcorn.
“I dunno,” Michael answered quickly as he tossed a ball forward and watched his horse advance greatly. He’d discovered this horse game fifteen minutes ago and hadn’t been able to stop playing it since then.
“You’re obsessed.”
“No, I just don’t like to lose.”
“Obviously. Oh, Michael, look! You are sort of winning!”
Michael glanced up only quickly, careful not to break his focus. “Come on!” he shouted, really starting to get into this. “Come on!” He threw more balls than he could count, and each time his horse moved forward. “Hell yeah!” he shouted when he crossed the finish line first. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
Maria laughed. “Michael, I’ve never seen you so passionate about something.”
He grinned. “Then you’ve obviously never seen me in bed.”
She slapped him on the shoulder playfully as the guy manning the booth handed him a big stuffed panda bear. Michael looked at the bear and grunted. “All that for this?”
“I think it’s cute,” Maria said, seizing the panda from him. “Oh, look at his little eyes. He looks like he got beat up.”
“Yeah, that’s real cute.”
“I think it is. What should we name him?”
“I don’t name stuffed animals,” he told her.
“Why? Is it too cheesy for you?”
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Well, newsflash, Michael: You’re at a carnival, and that makes you cheesy. So help me out here.”
Michael sighed. He couldn’t believe that he was doing this. Going to a carnival. Riding rides. Playing games. Trying to figure out a name for some stupid stuffed bear. And having fun while he was doing it.
“Uh, George,” he suggested.
She shook her head. “No, that’s too common. I’m thinking Hector.”
“Hector?” Michael shrieked. “You wanna scar him for life?”
Maria rolled her eyes. “Hector is a very sophisticated name.”
“He’s your bear,” Michael said. “Your call. But don’t blame me when he comes home crying because all the other bears tease him.”
“You’re such a loser,” she joked. “Come on, we gotta get to the Scrambler.”
“The Scrambler?” Michael wasn’t too sure about that. “I think my cousin broke his back on the Scrambler one time.”
She shook her head and sighed. “Michael, don’t get nervous on me again. We are going on the Scrambler one way or another.” Right after she spoke, the sound of thunder echoed throughout the air, followed by a crash of lightning. “Unless it starts storming,” she added.
Almost at once, it started to rain hard. Maria shrieked as she started to get wet trying desperately to cover up her hair. People started to run in every direction, and someone bumped into Maria, knocking her popcorn and cotton candy out of her hands and onto the ground.
“Let’s get to the car!” she shouted over the rain and the noise the other people were making.
They started running back to the car, and the rain started coming down harder. Michael heard Maria laughing and turned back to see that she’d just ran into some little girl and knocked her onto the already soaking wet ground. She kept going, and when they reached the car, they both climbed in eagerly, wanting to be out of the cold rain.
Michael took one glance at her and noticed how drenched she was. Her clothes were completely soaked and were clinging to her body now more than ever. It was too bad she hadn’t been wearing a white shirt . . .
“Oh, great, I bet my mascara’s running,” she said, pushing her wet hair back from her face.
“It’s not,” Michael told her. “You want a jacket?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Maria replied, rubbing her hands over her arms in an attempt to warm herself up a little bit. Michael reached back into the backseat and found his jacket. “Here,” he said, slipping it over her shoulders. His hands brushed her arm as he did this, and he felt every inch of his body begin to heat up. He hoped she didn’t notice the effect she had on him.
“Thanks,” she said meeting his eyes. They stared at each other for quite some time, and Michael even thought about kissing her, just to see what it would feel like, just to see how far into heaven it would take him.
But he didn’t, because there was still a part of him that, for whatever reason, believed he couldn’t.
He took her home late that night, and he thought she seemed a little reluctant to leave.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria smelled alcohol the minute she opened the door to the crib. The place reeked of it, and the people staggered around because of it. Maria’s plan was to go upstairs unnoticed, but someone was waiting for her when she stepped inside, and for once it wasn’t Liz.
“Where the hell have you been?” Slick asked her. He was clutching a glass of alcohol in his hand, and he was holding it so tightly that it looked like he was going to crush it with his bare hands.
“Just out,” she told him.
“Out where?” he prodded.
Maria couldn’t understand where this was coming from. “It . . . it doesn’t matter!” she said a little too loudly.
“You’re always out,” Slick said, taking a step towards her. “Where do you go, Maria?”
“I don’t have to tell you!” she shouted, fully aware of how loudly she was talking this time and not caring. “I don’t have to tell you anything!” She couldn’t believe how defiant she was being. She’d never spoken like this to Slick before. She’d never even thought about it. No one had. He was the leader.
“Yes you fuckin’ do!” Slick shouted back. The anger and rage was evident on his face and in his eyes, and when he crushed the glass in his hand, Maria knew how upset he was. Glass shattered, some falling to the floor, some embedding themselves in his hand.
“Slick, just calm down,” she told him. She was starting to become scared. She couldn’t remember ever being scared around Slick. Maybe a little uncomfortable, but never scared. “Look, I was just out dancing, okay? That’s where I’ve been going.”
“Alone.”
“Yes, alone. Sometimes I like to be alone.”
“You always like to be alone!” Slick shouted. “You never like to be with me, Maria! You never let me touch you anymore! Why don’t you let me touch you, Maria?”
She didn’t want him to touch her because she wanted another man to touch her. She was well aware of that. She wasn’t sure if she should feel ashamed about wanting to feel Michael’s hands on her or not, but she didn’t.
“You said you would be ready someday, Maria!” Slick continued to shout. He put his hands on her shoulders, pushing her up against the wall right next to the door. “When are you gonna be ready?”
His hands hurt. They dug into her shoulders hard. “Slick, you’re hurting me.”
“I wanna touch you!” he shouted. “I wanna touch you right now!” He let one of his hands trail down her stomach farther and farther until . . .
“Stop!” Maria shouted, pushing him away with strength she didn’t even know she had. “I don’t want you touching me, Slick!”
He almost seemed hurt, but he still seemed mad. Then he noticed something that Maria was wearing for the first time. “What’s that? Who’s jacket is that?”
Maria looked down at her arms and she realized that she was still wearing Michael’s jacket. How could she have been so stupid? “It’s . . . I don’t know. I found it. That’s all.” She lied.
“And what’s that?” Slick asked, motioning towards the panda bear she’d brought home with her from the carnival. She’d wanted to keep it only because Michael had won it.
“I thought it was cute. I bought it,” she lied. “Not everything is this big conspiracy, Slick.” Although this was, in a sense.
Slick shook his head. “I . . . I don’t know wha-what’s going on.” He began to stumble a little bit. God, he was so drunk. “I just wanna touch you.” He fell forward, practically on top of her, pressing his erection into her stomach. “You want me, huh?”
She gave him a sickened look. “No, I don’t.” It felt good to say it.
He didn’t seem to get it. “You want me inside of you, don’t you?” he said, leaning down and whispering in her ear.
Maria pushed him back a little, his drunken body offering no resistance. “You’re disgusting,” she told him coldly before sneaking out from underneath him. She made her way up the stairs as confidently as she could and didn’t even stop when she heard a thud that was undoubtedly Slick’s body falling to the floor. She didn’t care. Someone would find him soon and take care of him. They always did.
Maria set Hector the panda bear down on her bed. She smiled when she looked at him. He made her room look just a little nicer, and she was glad about that.
She didn’t take off Michael’s jacket as she made her way to her sorry excuse for a vanity and took out a brush, running it through her damp hair. She looked at herself in the mirror for awhile, and she decided that she was kind of pretty. Maybe Michael might think so.
Slick had just put the moves on her again in a very derogatory sort of way, and all she could do was think about Michael.
Though she didn’t want to, Maria at last slipped Michael’s jacket off. She found some dry clothes that would be suitable pajamas and put them on, discarding her soaked jeans and shirt on the floor beside her bed. She put his jacket back on when she was done changing, though, because it was warm and it was comforting, and, in a way, it was him. Just a little bit of him, but still, it was him.
She fell asleep in that jacket of his holding the stuffed animal he’d won, and she dreamt about him that night. She dreamt that he thought she was beautiful, and she wished he really did.
I just like to have a strong lead-up to the first kiss. Stay tuned.“Hey. Where were you?”
Maria sighed and draped her coat over the couch. Questions, questions, questions. Everyone always questioned her on where she was going and why. They always felt they had the right to know. Liz definitely always felt that way.
“Just out,” Maria told her.
“You’re going out a lot lately,” Liz said. “Is there something I should know?”
Maria had to resist the urge to stomp on up the stairs and get away from her supposed best friend. She was so damn nosy sometimes.
“Liz, stop the motherly act, okay? It’s getting old.”
A hurt expression crashed over Liz’s features. “I’m sorry. I was just joking.” She sighed and let her gaze drop to the floor. “I think you hate me, Maria.”
“I don’t hate you,” Maria told her, and she knew that she didn’t. Liz got on her nerves a lot, but Maria could never hate her. “Look, I’m sorry for snapping at you.”
“I’m sorry for being so nosy,” Liz apologized. “It’s your life. I guess I just want to be a part of it.”
“Let’s just forget about it,” Maria suggested. “Okay?”
Liz nodded, and two voices began to filter in and register in Maria’s mind. Tijuana and Jenna had soon joined Liz and Maria in the living room, and Maria found herself trapped in their pitiful conversation.
“You’re so lucky you got Kyle,” Tijuana was saying as she reached for a cigarette on the table. “I ain’t got no one.”
“I don’t, either,” Jenna added, “We don’t got anybody and you’ve got this guy that you’re totally in love with.”
“It’s so messed up,” Tijuana said. “I swear to God, if Jenna and I didn’t have to prostitute, we might actually stand a chance at getting somebody, too.”
Liz smiled. “You guys will find someone someday. I promise.”
Jenna grunted. “The problem is there ain’t no hot guys in BlackCon, and if they are hot, they’re taken. Like Slick.” She cast a glance at Maria and shook her head enviously. “You’re so lucky.”
“Slick and I aren’t together,” Maria told her. “He just wants us to be.”
“And you don’t wanna be?” Tijuana asked in shock.
“I don’t,” Maria told her honestly. “Call me old fashioned, but I guess I’m still looking for my Prince Charming, my knight in shining armor, you know.” She saw a vision of Michael flash across her mind when she spoke, and she knew she’d already found him, but that it was impossible.
“I get that,” Jenna said, “or at least I think I do. I want somebody who wants me for me and not for my body. And I want somebody hot, too.”
Tijuana smiled a little. “I know who I want,” she said.
“Who?” Liz asked, interested. “Who, Tijuana?”
Tijuana sighed a sort of dreamy sigh. “Michael Guerin.”
Michael.
“What?” Liz shrieked. “Are you forgetting that he tried to kill Kyle and that he’d kill you in a heartbeat?”
“Liz, are you overlooking his sex appeal? That guy has got it so fuckin’ goin’ on . . . I’d bed him on the spot.”
“That’s sick,” Liz said. “He’s an asshole. I hate him. We all hate him.”
“Look, I never said his personality was anything to brag about, but you guys have got to admit it: he’s a god.”
Jenna laughed a little. “Well, I don’t think I’d go that far, but, yeah, he’s pretty damn fine.”
Liz sighed. “Alright, fine, I guess I agree with you guys, but his personality just ruins him. You don’t know how badly I want him dead right now.”
Michael? Dead? No . . .
“I think I’m gonna head up to my room,” Maria announced, wanting desperately to be away from this conversation. “I’ll see you guys later.”
“Wait,” Tijuana said as Maria began to walk off. “What do you think about him, Maria? Too hot for words, right?”
Maria felt a complete feeling of uncomfortableness wash over her. “I . . .” She mentally tried to think of a way out of this situation, and she avoided their eyes when she spoke so that they couldn’t tell that she was lying. “I don’t know. I don’t even know the guy.” With that, she spun and practically ran up to her bedroom. Once inside, she let herself fall onto her bed, wondering why it always seemed like people were talking about either Michael’s death or his sex appeal.
At this point, she was in too deep to talk about either one.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael pulled his car up to the corner and saw Maria on their street corner the next night, sitting on a bench next to some homeless guy. The guy appeared to be flirting with her, and Michael had to laugh a little at the disgusted expression on Maria’s face. When she saw Michael get out of the car, she ran to him with a smile on her face.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she told him. “That guy was so hitting on me.”
“I noticed.” He took a moment to silently admire the tight hip-hugger jeans and navy blue shirt that clung to her body. Nice.
“Where are we going tonight, Michael?” she asked him excitedly. “Away?”
She sounded so young and so innocent. If Michael hadn’t known any better, he might have thought that, at this moment, just for this short moment, she was a normal teenage girl, and if he’d been able to let himself give into his feelings, he might have felt like he had been on a date with her in some sense.
“Of course we’re going away,” Michael told her. “We always go away.”
She nodded, keeping her eyes locked with his. For a second, Michael began to wonder if she could see into his soul and see how he felt about her.
“I like away,” she told him quietly before going around to the passenger’s side of the car.
They drove until they reached a place in LA that Maria remembered from long ago.
“The carnival,” she commented. “My mom used to take me here.”
“I’ve never been here,” Michael admitted, “but I figured I better check it out while it’s still going on.”
Maria giggled a little. “You know, it’s kinda cheesy, Michael.”
He was lost. “How is this cheesy?”
“Oh, you know, you at a carnival, eating carnival food, playing carnival games, talking with carnival people.”
“How is that cheesy?”
“It’s just so simple, and . . .”
“And I’m not.”
Maria nodded. “Right.”
“Well,” Michael said, “I intend on enjoying myself tonight, whether it’s cheesy and simple or not. How about you?”
“Hell yeah, I do!” Maria exclaimed, practically jumping out of the car. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been to something like this?” She did a sort of happy dance as she continued forward. “Now, Michael, you have got to go on the Tapeworm with me.”
“The Tapeworm?” Michael echoed. “I think Max might’ve had one of those.”
“That’s sick, but it’s not that type of tapeworm Michael. It’s that.” She pointed directly to a gigantic roller coaster looming before them. “Doesn’t that look awesome?”
“Uh . . .” Michael could already feel his stomach churning. He had a thing about roller coasters. “Sure.”
“We’ve got to go on that,” Maria said, still doing her little happy dance, now adding a skip in between her moves, “and the Scrambler, ‘cause I’ve always loved the Scrambler, and that weird zippy thing, and that one whoosh ride, if they still have it, and . . .” She’d been so busy talking that she almost ran into the booth at the entrance where she was supposed to pay when it appeared in front of her. “Oh,” she said. “Michael, he needs money.”
Michael sighed, pulling a twenty and a ten out of his pocket. “You’re so lucky I pay for you to get into these places, DeLuca.”
“Places? No, I think you mean place. Singular. You’ve only paid for me to get into this place.”
“And Motion and the comedy club last night,” Michael reminded her. “You’re burning a hole in my pocket.”
Maria sighed, defeated in her argument. “Fine, you win. Places.”
“Here you go,” the man at the booth said, handing Michael a five back as change. “You have a nice night, now.” He smiled big, and Maria practically ran into the park. “That guy was so creepy,” she said once they were clearly past him. “God, he looked like a clown or something!”
“A clown?” Michael echoed in confusion. “What’s so bad about clowns?”
“Only everything,” Maria said as she found a spot in line for the Tapeworm. “The big red Rudolph nose, the weird make-up, the curly orange hair, the polka-dot pants.”
“You have a fear of clowns, don’t you?” He couldn’t hardly believe it.
“I have a fear of a lot of things, Michael,” she said, “clowns included. It’s a very strange but serious fear.” She pulled him forward in the line as more people were loaded on to the roller coaster. Michael stood in line with her, watching as the people on the ride were tossed up and down and around and around on that roller coaster. He could hear their screams, and he even thought he heard a few children crying.
“Uh, Maria,” he said when they were close to being let on. “You know how you have this fear of clowns? Well, I’ve kinda got a fear, too . . . of roller coasters.”
She turned around and stared at him, a shocked expression on her face. “You mean that you’re actually afraid of something?”
“No, not afraid,” he lied, still trying to keep up the notion that he wasn’t afraid of anything, “just nervous.”
“Roller coasters make you nervous, huh? That’s kind of funny.”
“No, it’s not, especially if you’ve had an uncle who retold a story at least a thousand times about going on a roller coaster and getting stuck upside down. The blood was rushing to his head for three freakin’ hours, Maria! I just really don’t think I should be going on this with my twenty-three year old body. I’m gettin’ old, you know.”
Maria grunted. “Yeah, right. Twenty-three is hardly old. Besides, you owe this to me.”
“Why?”
She gave him a look. “Because, a few days ago, I let you launch me off a waterfall.”
“That doesn’t mean I owe you,” Michael protested as the guy at the gate motioned for them to get onto the ride.
“Come on, Michael.” Maria grabbed him by his wrist and pulled him into one of the cars right at the front. “Look, it won’t be that bad.” She pulled a safety bar down in front of them both. “Look at this. Safety equipment and everything.”
“They wouldn’t put safety equipment on if there wasn’t a chance you can die,” he reminded her.
Maria began to laugh a little as the train filled up the rest of the way. “I still can’t believe that you’re afraid of this, Michael.”
“Not afraid,” he corrected. “Nervous.”
“Oh, right. Nervous.”
The coaster started off slow, and that was good for Michael. He was okay until it started picking up speed. “How fast does this thing go?” he asked Maria when he saw a loop in front of them that definitely had the possibility of making him sick.
“I don’t know,” she shouted back over the noise of the ride. “If I remember correctly, though, it’s pretty fast!”
“Oh,” Michael groaned. “Great.”
Maria let out a scream of happiness as they confronted the loop at an incredible speed. Michael kept his mouth closed and held on to the safety bar as tightly as he could.
“Oh, there’s this huge drop coming up, Michael!” Maria shouted as the roller coaster hooked on to a chain and began the ascent towards the top of a hill. “You’ll love it.”
“I’m sure I will.” Michael took one quick look down at the ground when they were close to the top and immediately wished he hadn’t. “Maria, aren’t you afraid of heights?”
“Yeah,” she answered, “but not as long as I’m secure in this little . . .” Her sentence was lost in more shouts and whoops and hollers as the roller coaster plunged straight down. For a minute, Michael felt like his insides were being ripped away. He’d forgotten what it was like to be on a roller coaster, especially one that was this wild.
When the ride finally ended, Michael hurried off. He definitely wasn’t one for roller coasters.
“Wasn’t that awesome?” Maria was so happy as she bounced off the ride. She still had a huge smile on her face, and that was enough for Michael. She was happy, so he was happy.
“It was, uh . . . not as nerve-wracking as it could have been, but still . . .”
“Well, we didn’t get stuck, and you didn’t throw up, and you’re twenty-three year-old body’s still doing fine, right?”
Michael took a quick look at his arms and his legs. “Right.”
“Good,” Maria said. “Then I’d say we’re ready for the weird zippy thing.” She grabbed Michael’s hand and started pulling him in the direction of another ride. The zippy thing. That sure as hell didn’t sound tame.
“Great . . .”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
They spent some time waiting in line for the weird zippy thing and the whoosh ride, but when they were all over, Michael discovered that they’d been kind of fun. Not as crazy as he’d thought they would be and not as wild as they could have been. And he’d even had fun.
After that, he’d caved in and bought Maria a large popcorn and cotton candy. The girl really was burning a hole in his pocket, but he didn’t care. She was worth every cent and more.
“Michael, is this the sixth or seventh time you’ve played this?” Maria asked him as she ate away on her popcorn.
“I dunno,” Michael answered quickly as he tossed a ball forward and watched his horse advance greatly. He’d discovered this horse game fifteen minutes ago and hadn’t been able to stop playing it since then.
“You’re obsessed.”
“No, I just don’t like to lose.”
“Obviously. Oh, Michael, look! You are sort of winning!”
Michael glanced up only quickly, careful not to break his focus. “Come on!” he shouted, really starting to get into this. “Come on!” He threw more balls than he could count, and each time his horse moved forward. “Hell yeah!” he shouted when he crossed the finish line first. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
Maria laughed. “Michael, I’ve never seen you so passionate about something.”
He grinned. “Then you’ve obviously never seen me in bed.”
She slapped him on the shoulder playfully as the guy manning the booth handed him a big stuffed panda bear. Michael looked at the bear and grunted. “All that for this?”
“I think it’s cute,” Maria said, seizing the panda from him. “Oh, look at his little eyes. He looks like he got beat up.”
“Yeah, that’s real cute.”
“I think it is. What should we name him?”
“I don’t name stuffed animals,” he told her.
“Why? Is it too cheesy for you?”
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Well, newsflash, Michael: You’re at a carnival, and that makes you cheesy. So help me out here.”
Michael sighed. He couldn’t believe that he was doing this. Going to a carnival. Riding rides. Playing games. Trying to figure out a name for some stupid stuffed bear. And having fun while he was doing it.
“Uh, George,” he suggested.
She shook her head. “No, that’s too common. I’m thinking Hector.”
“Hector?” Michael shrieked. “You wanna scar him for life?”
Maria rolled her eyes. “Hector is a very sophisticated name.”
“He’s your bear,” Michael said. “Your call. But don’t blame me when he comes home crying because all the other bears tease him.”
“You’re such a loser,” she joked. “Come on, we gotta get to the Scrambler.”
“The Scrambler?” Michael wasn’t too sure about that. “I think my cousin broke his back on the Scrambler one time.”
She shook her head and sighed. “Michael, don’t get nervous on me again. We are going on the Scrambler one way or another.” Right after she spoke, the sound of thunder echoed throughout the air, followed by a crash of lightning. “Unless it starts storming,” she added.
Almost at once, it started to rain hard. Maria shrieked as she started to get wet trying desperately to cover up her hair. People started to run in every direction, and someone bumped into Maria, knocking her popcorn and cotton candy out of her hands and onto the ground.
“Let’s get to the car!” she shouted over the rain and the noise the other people were making.
They started running back to the car, and the rain started coming down harder. Michael heard Maria laughing and turned back to see that she’d just ran into some little girl and knocked her onto the already soaking wet ground. She kept going, and when they reached the car, they both climbed in eagerly, wanting to be out of the cold rain.
Michael took one glance at her and noticed how drenched she was. Her clothes were completely soaked and were clinging to her body now more than ever. It was too bad she hadn’t been wearing a white shirt . . .
“Oh, great, I bet my mascara’s running,” she said, pushing her wet hair back from her face.
“It’s not,” Michael told her. “You want a jacket?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Maria replied, rubbing her hands over her arms in an attempt to warm herself up a little bit. Michael reached back into the backseat and found his jacket. “Here,” he said, slipping it over her shoulders. His hands brushed her arm as he did this, and he felt every inch of his body begin to heat up. He hoped she didn’t notice the effect she had on him.
“Thanks,” she said meeting his eyes. They stared at each other for quite some time, and Michael even thought about kissing her, just to see what it would feel like, just to see how far into heaven it would take him.
But he didn’t, because there was still a part of him that, for whatever reason, believed he couldn’t.
He took her home late that night, and he thought she seemed a little reluctant to leave.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria smelled alcohol the minute she opened the door to the crib. The place reeked of it, and the people staggered around because of it. Maria’s plan was to go upstairs unnoticed, but someone was waiting for her when she stepped inside, and for once it wasn’t Liz.
“Where the hell have you been?” Slick asked her. He was clutching a glass of alcohol in his hand, and he was holding it so tightly that it looked like he was going to crush it with his bare hands.
“Just out,” she told him.
“Out where?” he prodded.
Maria couldn’t understand where this was coming from. “It . . . it doesn’t matter!” she said a little too loudly.
“You’re always out,” Slick said, taking a step towards her. “Where do you go, Maria?”
“I don’t have to tell you!” she shouted, fully aware of how loudly she was talking this time and not caring. “I don’t have to tell you anything!” She couldn’t believe how defiant she was being. She’d never spoken like this to Slick before. She’d never even thought about it. No one had. He was the leader.
“Yes you fuckin’ do!” Slick shouted back. The anger and rage was evident on his face and in his eyes, and when he crushed the glass in his hand, Maria knew how upset he was. Glass shattered, some falling to the floor, some embedding themselves in his hand.
“Slick, just calm down,” she told him. She was starting to become scared. She couldn’t remember ever being scared around Slick. Maybe a little uncomfortable, but never scared. “Look, I was just out dancing, okay? That’s where I’ve been going.”
“Alone.”
“Yes, alone. Sometimes I like to be alone.”
“You always like to be alone!” Slick shouted. “You never like to be with me, Maria! You never let me touch you anymore! Why don’t you let me touch you, Maria?”
She didn’t want him to touch her because she wanted another man to touch her. She was well aware of that. She wasn’t sure if she should feel ashamed about wanting to feel Michael’s hands on her or not, but she didn’t.
“You said you would be ready someday, Maria!” Slick continued to shout. He put his hands on her shoulders, pushing her up against the wall right next to the door. “When are you gonna be ready?”
His hands hurt. They dug into her shoulders hard. “Slick, you’re hurting me.”
“I wanna touch you!” he shouted. “I wanna touch you right now!” He let one of his hands trail down her stomach farther and farther until . . .
“Stop!” Maria shouted, pushing him away with strength she didn’t even know she had. “I don’t want you touching me, Slick!”
He almost seemed hurt, but he still seemed mad. Then he noticed something that Maria was wearing for the first time. “What’s that? Who’s jacket is that?”
Maria looked down at her arms and she realized that she was still wearing Michael’s jacket. How could she have been so stupid? “It’s . . . I don’t know. I found it. That’s all.” She lied.
“And what’s that?” Slick asked, motioning towards the panda bear she’d brought home with her from the carnival. She’d wanted to keep it only because Michael had won it.
“I thought it was cute. I bought it,” she lied. “Not everything is this big conspiracy, Slick.” Although this was, in a sense.
Slick shook his head. “I . . . I don’t know wha-what’s going on.” He began to stumble a little bit. God, he was so drunk. “I just wanna touch you.” He fell forward, practically on top of her, pressing his erection into her stomach. “You want me, huh?”
She gave him a sickened look. “No, I don’t.” It felt good to say it.
He didn’t seem to get it. “You want me inside of you, don’t you?” he said, leaning down and whispering in her ear.
Maria pushed him back a little, his drunken body offering no resistance. “You’re disgusting,” she told him coldly before sneaking out from underneath him. She made her way up the stairs as confidently as she could and didn’t even stop when she heard a thud that was undoubtedly Slick’s body falling to the floor. She didn’t care. Someone would find him soon and take care of him. They always did.
Maria set Hector the panda bear down on her bed. She smiled when she looked at him. He made her room look just a little nicer, and she was glad about that.
She didn’t take off Michael’s jacket as she made her way to her sorry excuse for a vanity and took out a brush, running it through her damp hair. She looked at herself in the mirror for awhile, and she decided that she was kind of pretty. Maybe Michael might think so.
Slick had just put the moves on her again in a very derogatory sort of way, and all she could do was think about Michael.
Though she didn’t want to, Maria at last slipped Michael’s jacket off. She found some dry clothes that would be suitable pajamas and put them on, discarding her soaked jeans and shirt on the floor beside her bed. She put his jacket back on when she was done changing, though, because it was warm and it was comforting, and, in a way, it was him. Just a little bit of him, but still, it was him.
She fell asleep in that jacket of his holding the stuffed animal he’d won, and she dreamt about him that night. She dreamt that he thought she was beautiful, and she wished he really did.
LOVE IS MICHAEL AND MARIA.
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April
- Roswell Fanatic
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Michael went straight up to his bedroom when he got back to the Darkstreet crib that night. Max was working his new job as a security guard, so he didn’t have to stop and tell him what chapter he was on in his novel. His non-existent novel. Nix didn’t stop him to talk, either. He was still trying to get over the fact that Michael had lost two fights in the past week.
He heard voices coming from inside his room.
“It won’t zoom.”
“Make it zoom!”
What the hell? he asked himself opening the door. He wasn’t expecting to see Isabel completely naked on the bed, fondling her breasts and Jonathon taking pictures of her.
“Well, this is pretty sick,” he said, speaking only to Isabel.
“Get the fuck outta here, Mikey,” Isabel told him, pressing herself up into her own hands. “We’re busy.”
“Don’t you mean you’re busy? It doesn’t look like Jonathon’s doing much.”
“He’s taking the pictures,” Isabel said. “He’s gonna use them to get off later.”
Michael glanced at Jonathon, who was smiling like the complete idiot that he was. “Yeah,” Michael said again, “this is sick.”
“Well, if you wouldn’t have stopped fuckin’ me, you wouldn’t be missing out right now,” Isabel reminded him. “Jonathon! Are you getting that thing to work?”
“Isabel, I’m not missing out on anything,” Michael told her. “I’ve pretty much got a front row seat.”
“Yeah, and you know you like what you see,” Isabel said, still working her breasts with her fingers. “You know you miss it.”
“Actually, I don’t,” Michael told her, taking a seat in his chair. “You see, Isabel, you think you’re this goddess or something, but you’re not.”
“If I’m not, then nobody is. Jonathon! Is that thing gonna zoom in or not?”
Jonathon took one look at the camera and then back at Isabel, shaking his head. Isabel sighed and stopped touching herself. “All that for nothing, huh? That sucks. Speaking of sucks . . . hey, Jonathon! Take it out and come here!”
“Hey, here’s a thought,” Michael interrupted. “Maybe you could do this, uh, I don’t know, in your own room?”
“This is my room,” Isabel said matter-of-factly.
“Was,” Michael corrected. “It’s all mine now, so get out.”
Though Isabel was perceived to be this tough hard-ass girl, she was surprisingly willing at times. She’d always been the submissive one, something that had always disappointed Michael.
“Fine,” she said, giving him the nastiest look she could manage. She stood up and grabbed Jonathon by the arm, pulling him out the door without even dressing. “By the way, Michael,” she shouted when she was halfway down the hall, “I am a goddess! I wish you luck finding someone half as splendid as me!”
A picture of Maria flashed across his mind. He’d already found someone who made Isabel into nothing.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria started to both scream and laugh when she felt Michael’s hands wrap around her waist. “Don’t do it, Michael!” she warned him. “Don’t do it!”
Seconds later, she was in the water. When she came up to the surface, Michael was laughing. “You think that’s funny, huh?” she asked him. She reached out and tugged on his leg, causing him to lose his footing and fall into the water as well. “How funny is it now?” she asked him when he came back up to the surface.
“Still funny,” Michael replied, seeking her out in the water. He grabbed onto her waist gently and lifted her up into the air again. “You’re so light, DeLuca, I could just keep throwing you like this and not even get tired.” Maria soon felt air flying past her and then water surrounding her body once again. Truthfully, she let Michael do this. She let him get a hold of her and throw her into the water, and then she’d wait for him to come find her again, because she loved the feel of his hands on her body. She loved it when he held her, even if it was only for a brief instant.
She’d come out to the secluded forest area with him tonight without a care in the world. Slick had asked her where she was going, and she had ignored him. For once in her life, she felt like she was in control. It felt so good. And Michael felt so good.
When she came up to the surface, she saw that Michael was inching his way over to her, taking his shirt off as he did so. She felt paralyzed in that moment. She couldn’t stop staring at him. She didn’t know if this was lust or what, but it was taking over her.
Lust didn’t take over. This wasn’t lust. This was something else.
“Don’t tell me you’re just gonna stand there and let me catch you,” he said as he got closer. The paralysis left Maria and she reminded herself that she had to keep Michael chasing her just a little bit.
“Well, I am at a slight disadvantage,” she said, swimming away from him slowly although she only wanted to be closer. “I’m not as tall as some people are, and my feet don’t touch the bottom.”
“My feet don’t touch, either,” Michael said, “in the deep parts, I mean.”
“Yeah, well, my feet hardly touch anywhere,” Maria said, taking Michael’s momentary distraction as a time to swim away. “So, as you can see, this little game of ours isn’t really fair.”
Michael was a fast swimmer, and he caught up with her in no time. Once again, he wrapped his hands around her waist. He held her a little longer this time, and, for awhile, Maria wasn’t even sure if he was going to let her go. When he did, she soared.
After about an hour of this, they got out of the water and sat down on dry land. It was a cold night, and Maria knew that, since she was soaked, she should be cold, but having Michael next to her made everything warm.
“I’m so glad we decided to come here tonight,” she told him. “Everything’s pretty awkward back with BlackCon.”
“How so?”
Maria sighed. “Oh, you know. Just Slick. He’s been all weird around me the whole day ‘cause of last night.”
“Last night?” Michael echoed in question. “What happened last night?”
“He was just really drunk,” she told him. “He kinda freaked out on me. He didn’t know what he was saying.”
“Did he hurt you?” Michael’s concern was evident on his face, almost written permanently in his features. Maria felt touched.
“No,” she cleared up, “no, he didn’t. But anyway, that’s one reason why things are awkward. Then there’s Liz.”
“I hate her,” Michael growled. “No offense. I know she’s your best friend and all, but . . .”
Maria grunted. “Oh, please. She’s my best friend because she has to be. I really don’t care if you hate her or not.”
“So why are things awkward with Parker?”
“She’s just annoying,” she told him. “She’s always either talking about Kyle or about you.”
“Me?” Michael seemed shocked. “Why the hell is Parker talking about me?”
“Because she hates you about as much as you hate her,” Maria told him. “You shot Kyle, remember?”
He nodded. “Okay, so she’s got a valid reason. Who else talks about me over there?”
Maria laughed a little, feeling like a teenager in high school gossiping to one of her friends. Except, this friend was a guy . . . a hot guy . . . a guy she wanted to the extreme . . .
“Everyone talks about you,” she said. “They either want you dead or in bed it seems.”
Michael laughed a little. “Now, I’m assuming that the girls are the ones who want me in bed, right?”
Maria shrugged. “Who knows with that bunch.”
Michael laughed harder.
“So as long we’re sharing information,” she said, scooting in a little closer to him just so that she could feel his body heat. “Does anybody talk about me over at Darkstreet?”
“Once in awhile,” he replied. “They don’t want you dead or anything. They just want you . . . well, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” she told him. She ran her fingers through her hair and then looked at her nails, all chipped away and broken. “I don’t know why they do, though. It’s not like I’m drop dead gorgeous or anything.”
Michael was silent for a brief moment, and then he quietly said, “Don’t be too sure about that.”
Maria wasn’t sure what to say to that. She wasn’t even sure if she was supposed to have heard him. “I’m diggin’ the whole compliment thing,” she finally said. “Keep ‘em comin’, Michael.”
Michael chuckled. “Why don’t you send one my way?”
“Okay,” she agreed. “You have really cool hair. I’ve been meaning to tell you that for awhile now.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that he was so hot that every time she saw him, she felt like she was going crazy. She couldn’t bring herself to let him know that he was making her dizzy just by sitting next to her without his shirt on.
“Most people think my hair’s stupid.”
“Most people are idiots.”
They sat together talking for quite some time, and Maria couldn’t remember anything feeling so natural and comfortable in her life before. When she was with Michael, all of her troubles and problems just disappeared. She couldn’t even think about anything but him.
She was desperate to get closer to him.
“I’m kinda cold,” she told him quietly as the wind began to pick up, even though she wasn’t.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He opened his arms, and she scooted closer to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and resting her head against his chest. She smiled when she heard his heart beating.
She felt so happy. She felt like he was her boyfriend, even though he wasn’t. She felt like he was her knight in shining armor who came every night to rescue her from the terrors of a gang life. It all felt unreal.
“Are you tired?” he asked her later as he began to lay down on the ground, still keeping her in his arms.
“A little,” she replied, shifting so that she was laying directly on top of his body, her arms still wrapped around his neck tightly, unwilling to let go.
“Do you want me to take you home?”
“No,” she answered, her breath almost coming out in a whisper. “I wanna stay with you.”
Later that night, she fell asleep in his arms while one of his hands buried itself in her hair and the other caressed her back. It had to be the coldest night of the year so far, but she felt so warm and so safe knowing that Michael Guerin cared about her. Even if he wasn’t crazy about her like she was about him, he cared about her.
That had to mean something, right?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael felt her right when he woke up. She seemed to have molded herself to his body overnight. She was hanging onto him so tightly, and he was pretty sure that this could not be good for his circulation, but he didn’t care. He laid there with her for an hour, refusing to move until she woke up, refusing to disturb her. When she did wake up, she made no effort to leave him for quite some time. At last though, she did let go of him and sit up and yawn, but she still stayed close to him. She stood up and stretched her arms above her head, revealing a tiny patch of her smooth stomach as she did so. Michael wanted to reach out and run his fingers across her skin. His fingers were itching with the desire.
It took them a long time to actually get moving and leave their away place. They headed out onto the borderline, and Michael wanted to put his arm around her, too, just to feel like he was her boyfriend, just to show that they were a couple, but there was only one problem: they weren’t.
“Look at that,” Maria commented as her eye caught sight of a beautiful dress in a display set up in a store across the street. “Michael, look at that!” She ran across the street, cutting through traffic and barely missing being hit by a car, and Michael followed her. “Look! Isn’t that beautiful?” she exclaimed when they stood outside the store’s window.
“I don’t know, Maria. I’m not the best judge of fashion,” he said. Even as he said this though, he looked over the dress. It was long and gold and low-cut and it shone like the sun. He could just imagine what she would look like in that dress, the way it would cling tight, the way it would adjust itself to form the shape of her perfectly perfect body.
“I wonder how much it is,” Maria said. “You don’t find things like this around here.” She hurried in the store and found one of the workers. When she asked how much the dress cost, though, a look of sadness flashed across her features. 189 dollars. It was far too expensive.
“Damn,” she muttered as she left the store. “I guess I’m not rich enough for that place. The only nice store in this part of town, and it’s too nice for me.”
Michael found himself looking over his shoulder at the dress in the window and then back at Maria over and over again as he walked away. Maria deserved that dress.
189 dollars, he thought. Where the hell could I find that much money?
He told Maria to meet him back at the street corner by 4:00 in the afternoon. She didn’t ask why. She just agreed.
He’d have the money and the dress by then.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When Michael arrived back at the crib, he saw exactly what he wanted to see. He saw Isabel sitting on the couch in the living room . . . counting her money.
“That’s a nice wad of cash, Is,” Michael said, sitting down beside her. “Where’d you get it? Not that I care.”
Isabel gave him a look. “Not that I care to tell you, but if you must know, I was workin’ the mean streets last night. What can I say? I’m good.”
“So how much did you make?” he asked her. “Fifty? Sixty?”
“Two-hundred.”
“Two-hundred?” Michael shrieked. “Isabel, how many guys did you fuck last night?”
She shrugged. “Lost count. Why? You jealous?”
“Not at all. Look, I was just thinking, maybe you might feel like giving me your two-hundred dollars. What do you think?”
Isabel gave him a halfway disgusted and halfway confused look. “Why the hell would I give you anything?”
“Because,” he answered, “by the gang standards, I have complete control over you.”
Isabel narrowed her eyes and slipped her money into her back pocket. “The only time you had control over me was when I was handcuffed to the bed.” She got up and started to walk out of the room, but Michael stopped her.
“Isabel, wait. Maybe we could make a deal.”
“Why the hell do you need this money so bad?” Isabel asked him twirling around wildly to face him. “It’s my money, Michael! I earned it.”
“Yeah, you let some guys bang you. That’s earning it.”
Her fists began to clench. “Do not piss me off, Michael, or I swear to God . . .”
“Relax, I’m just trying to make a deal,” he told her, taking a few steps forward. “Look, Isabel, if you give me this money, then I’ll make it my top priority to fuck you.”
Isabel seemed to be thinking about it momentarily, but then she shook her head. “No. No, ‘cause the last time I thought you were gonna fuck me, I ended up on the other side of a closed door.”
Michael smiled, remembering how Isabel had been so easily distracted.
“It ain’t funny, Guerin. It’s cruel.”
“Well, I won’t be cruel this time,” Michael told her. “I’ll be completely fair with you, Isabel. Now, come on.” She still seemed hesitant, but as he stepped closer, she seemed to be dropping her guard more and more by the second. Sex was Isabel’s biggest weakness. She craved it. Too much.
“You remember what it feels like, don’t you?” Michael asked her. “You remember my hands? You remember my lips?”
Isabel smiled a little bit. “Yeah, I remember something else, too.”
Michael smiled back. “Yeah, you do. So, what do you say? Sex—great, hot sex—in exchange for the money. We got a deal?”
Isabel sighed. “Yeah,” she said, reaching in her back pocket. “We got a deal.” She handed him the money and threw herself into his arms, rubbing herself up against him. “Now fuckin’ do me.”
Michael eyed the money, just to make sure she’d given him the full amount and shoved it in his back pocket, grinning as he did so. He pushed Isabel away from him, and she knew.
“But you said . . .”
“I lied.” He cut her off as he walked away.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
She waited for him, and he came. He told her that he couldn’t stay long. Nix was having some kind of meeting, he said, and he was expected to be there. She understood, though she couldn’t hide her disappointment.
He told her he had something for her. She couldn’t hide her surprise either when he handed her a large bag stuffed with tissue paper. He seemed a little embarrassed as he handed it over to her, and she suspected he was because he’d never given anyone a gift.
This had to mean something, too, didn’t it?
He told her to meet him back there that night around 9:00. He left in a rush as well before she could even open her present. She watched him go, and when he was gone, she reached into the bag and pulled out a sparkling gold dress, the one she’d been admiring earlier that day, the one that had been way out of her price range, far too nice for her.
189 dollars. He’d paid so much for this. How? Why?
Michael Guerin was full of surprises.
He heard voices coming from inside his room.
“It won’t zoom.”
“Make it zoom!”
What the hell? he asked himself opening the door. He wasn’t expecting to see Isabel completely naked on the bed, fondling her breasts and Jonathon taking pictures of her.
“Well, this is pretty sick,” he said, speaking only to Isabel.
“Get the fuck outta here, Mikey,” Isabel told him, pressing herself up into her own hands. “We’re busy.”
“Don’t you mean you’re busy? It doesn’t look like Jonathon’s doing much.”
“He’s taking the pictures,” Isabel said. “He’s gonna use them to get off later.”
Michael glanced at Jonathon, who was smiling like the complete idiot that he was. “Yeah,” Michael said again, “this is sick.”
“Well, if you wouldn’t have stopped fuckin’ me, you wouldn’t be missing out right now,” Isabel reminded him. “Jonathon! Are you getting that thing to work?”
“Isabel, I’m not missing out on anything,” Michael told her. “I’ve pretty much got a front row seat.”
“Yeah, and you know you like what you see,” Isabel said, still working her breasts with her fingers. “You know you miss it.”
“Actually, I don’t,” Michael told her, taking a seat in his chair. “You see, Isabel, you think you’re this goddess or something, but you’re not.”
“If I’m not, then nobody is. Jonathon! Is that thing gonna zoom in or not?”
Jonathon took one look at the camera and then back at Isabel, shaking his head. Isabel sighed and stopped touching herself. “All that for nothing, huh? That sucks. Speaking of sucks . . . hey, Jonathon! Take it out and come here!”
“Hey, here’s a thought,” Michael interrupted. “Maybe you could do this, uh, I don’t know, in your own room?”
“This is my room,” Isabel said matter-of-factly.
“Was,” Michael corrected. “It’s all mine now, so get out.”
Though Isabel was perceived to be this tough hard-ass girl, she was surprisingly willing at times. She’d always been the submissive one, something that had always disappointed Michael.
“Fine,” she said, giving him the nastiest look she could manage. She stood up and grabbed Jonathon by the arm, pulling him out the door without even dressing. “By the way, Michael,” she shouted when she was halfway down the hall, “I am a goddess! I wish you luck finding someone half as splendid as me!”
A picture of Maria flashed across his mind. He’d already found someone who made Isabel into nothing.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria started to both scream and laugh when she felt Michael’s hands wrap around her waist. “Don’t do it, Michael!” she warned him. “Don’t do it!”
Seconds later, she was in the water. When she came up to the surface, Michael was laughing. “You think that’s funny, huh?” she asked him. She reached out and tugged on his leg, causing him to lose his footing and fall into the water as well. “How funny is it now?” she asked him when he came back up to the surface.
“Still funny,” Michael replied, seeking her out in the water. He grabbed onto her waist gently and lifted her up into the air again. “You’re so light, DeLuca, I could just keep throwing you like this and not even get tired.” Maria soon felt air flying past her and then water surrounding her body once again. Truthfully, she let Michael do this. She let him get a hold of her and throw her into the water, and then she’d wait for him to come find her again, because she loved the feel of his hands on her body. She loved it when he held her, even if it was only for a brief instant.
She’d come out to the secluded forest area with him tonight without a care in the world. Slick had asked her where she was going, and she had ignored him. For once in her life, she felt like she was in control. It felt so good. And Michael felt so good.
When she came up to the surface, she saw that Michael was inching his way over to her, taking his shirt off as he did so. She felt paralyzed in that moment. She couldn’t stop staring at him. She didn’t know if this was lust or what, but it was taking over her.
Lust didn’t take over. This wasn’t lust. This was something else.
“Don’t tell me you’re just gonna stand there and let me catch you,” he said as he got closer. The paralysis left Maria and she reminded herself that she had to keep Michael chasing her just a little bit.
“Well, I am at a slight disadvantage,” she said, swimming away from him slowly although she only wanted to be closer. “I’m not as tall as some people are, and my feet don’t touch the bottom.”
“My feet don’t touch, either,” Michael said, “in the deep parts, I mean.”
“Yeah, well, my feet hardly touch anywhere,” Maria said, taking Michael’s momentary distraction as a time to swim away. “So, as you can see, this little game of ours isn’t really fair.”
Michael was a fast swimmer, and he caught up with her in no time. Once again, he wrapped his hands around her waist. He held her a little longer this time, and, for awhile, Maria wasn’t even sure if he was going to let her go. When he did, she soared.
After about an hour of this, they got out of the water and sat down on dry land. It was a cold night, and Maria knew that, since she was soaked, she should be cold, but having Michael next to her made everything warm.
“I’m so glad we decided to come here tonight,” she told him. “Everything’s pretty awkward back with BlackCon.”
“How so?”
Maria sighed. “Oh, you know. Just Slick. He’s been all weird around me the whole day ‘cause of last night.”
“Last night?” Michael echoed in question. “What happened last night?”
“He was just really drunk,” she told him. “He kinda freaked out on me. He didn’t know what he was saying.”
“Did he hurt you?” Michael’s concern was evident on his face, almost written permanently in his features. Maria felt touched.
“No,” she cleared up, “no, he didn’t. But anyway, that’s one reason why things are awkward. Then there’s Liz.”
“I hate her,” Michael growled. “No offense. I know she’s your best friend and all, but . . .”
Maria grunted. “Oh, please. She’s my best friend because she has to be. I really don’t care if you hate her or not.”
“So why are things awkward with Parker?”
“She’s just annoying,” she told him. “She’s always either talking about Kyle or about you.”
“Me?” Michael seemed shocked. “Why the hell is Parker talking about me?”
“Because she hates you about as much as you hate her,” Maria told him. “You shot Kyle, remember?”
He nodded. “Okay, so she’s got a valid reason. Who else talks about me over there?”
Maria laughed a little, feeling like a teenager in high school gossiping to one of her friends. Except, this friend was a guy . . . a hot guy . . . a guy she wanted to the extreme . . .
“Everyone talks about you,” she said. “They either want you dead or in bed it seems.”
Michael laughed a little. “Now, I’m assuming that the girls are the ones who want me in bed, right?”
Maria shrugged. “Who knows with that bunch.”
Michael laughed harder.
“So as long we’re sharing information,” she said, scooting in a little closer to him just so that she could feel his body heat. “Does anybody talk about me over at Darkstreet?”
“Once in awhile,” he replied. “They don’t want you dead or anything. They just want you . . . well, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” she told him. She ran her fingers through her hair and then looked at her nails, all chipped away and broken. “I don’t know why they do, though. It’s not like I’m drop dead gorgeous or anything.”
Michael was silent for a brief moment, and then he quietly said, “Don’t be too sure about that.”
Maria wasn’t sure what to say to that. She wasn’t even sure if she was supposed to have heard him. “I’m diggin’ the whole compliment thing,” she finally said. “Keep ‘em comin’, Michael.”
Michael chuckled. “Why don’t you send one my way?”
“Okay,” she agreed. “You have really cool hair. I’ve been meaning to tell you that for awhile now.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that he was so hot that every time she saw him, she felt like she was going crazy. She couldn’t bring herself to let him know that he was making her dizzy just by sitting next to her without his shirt on.
“Most people think my hair’s stupid.”
“Most people are idiots.”
They sat together talking for quite some time, and Maria couldn’t remember anything feeling so natural and comfortable in her life before. When she was with Michael, all of her troubles and problems just disappeared. She couldn’t even think about anything but him.
She was desperate to get closer to him.
“I’m kinda cold,” she told him quietly as the wind began to pick up, even though she wasn’t.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He opened his arms, and she scooted closer to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and resting her head against his chest. She smiled when she heard his heart beating.
She felt so happy. She felt like he was her boyfriend, even though he wasn’t. She felt like he was her knight in shining armor who came every night to rescue her from the terrors of a gang life. It all felt unreal.
“Are you tired?” he asked her later as he began to lay down on the ground, still keeping her in his arms.
“A little,” she replied, shifting so that she was laying directly on top of his body, her arms still wrapped around his neck tightly, unwilling to let go.
“Do you want me to take you home?”
“No,” she answered, her breath almost coming out in a whisper. “I wanna stay with you.”
Later that night, she fell asleep in his arms while one of his hands buried itself in her hair and the other caressed her back. It had to be the coldest night of the year so far, but she felt so warm and so safe knowing that Michael Guerin cared about her. Even if he wasn’t crazy about her like she was about him, he cared about her.
That had to mean something, right?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael felt her right when he woke up. She seemed to have molded herself to his body overnight. She was hanging onto him so tightly, and he was pretty sure that this could not be good for his circulation, but he didn’t care. He laid there with her for an hour, refusing to move until she woke up, refusing to disturb her. When she did wake up, she made no effort to leave him for quite some time. At last though, she did let go of him and sit up and yawn, but she still stayed close to him. She stood up and stretched her arms above her head, revealing a tiny patch of her smooth stomach as she did so. Michael wanted to reach out and run his fingers across her skin. His fingers were itching with the desire.
It took them a long time to actually get moving and leave their away place. They headed out onto the borderline, and Michael wanted to put his arm around her, too, just to feel like he was her boyfriend, just to show that they were a couple, but there was only one problem: they weren’t.
“Look at that,” Maria commented as her eye caught sight of a beautiful dress in a display set up in a store across the street. “Michael, look at that!” She ran across the street, cutting through traffic and barely missing being hit by a car, and Michael followed her. “Look! Isn’t that beautiful?” she exclaimed when they stood outside the store’s window.
“I don’t know, Maria. I’m not the best judge of fashion,” he said. Even as he said this though, he looked over the dress. It was long and gold and low-cut and it shone like the sun. He could just imagine what she would look like in that dress, the way it would cling tight, the way it would adjust itself to form the shape of her perfectly perfect body.
“I wonder how much it is,” Maria said. “You don’t find things like this around here.” She hurried in the store and found one of the workers. When she asked how much the dress cost, though, a look of sadness flashed across her features. 189 dollars. It was far too expensive.
“Damn,” she muttered as she left the store. “I guess I’m not rich enough for that place. The only nice store in this part of town, and it’s too nice for me.”
Michael found himself looking over his shoulder at the dress in the window and then back at Maria over and over again as he walked away. Maria deserved that dress.
189 dollars, he thought. Where the hell could I find that much money?
He told Maria to meet him back at the street corner by 4:00 in the afternoon. She didn’t ask why. She just agreed.
He’d have the money and the dress by then.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When Michael arrived back at the crib, he saw exactly what he wanted to see. He saw Isabel sitting on the couch in the living room . . . counting her money.
“That’s a nice wad of cash, Is,” Michael said, sitting down beside her. “Where’d you get it? Not that I care.”
Isabel gave him a look. “Not that I care to tell you, but if you must know, I was workin’ the mean streets last night. What can I say? I’m good.”
“So how much did you make?” he asked her. “Fifty? Sixty?”
“Two-hundred.”
“Two-hundred?” Michael shrieked. “Isabel, how many guys did you fuck last night?”
She shrugged. “Lost count. Why? You jealous?”
“Not at all. Look, I was just thinking, maybe you might feel like giving me your two-hundred dollars. What do you think?”
Isabel gave him a halfway disgusted and halfway confused look. “Why the hell would I give you anything?”
“Because,” he answered, “by the gang standards, I have complete control over you.”
Isabel narrowed her eyes and slipped her money into her back pocket. “The only time you had control over me was when I was handcuffed to the bed.” She got up and started to walk out of the room, but Michael stopped her.
“Isabel, wait. Maybe we could make a deal.”
“Why the hell do you need this money so bad?” Isabel asked him twirling around wildly to face him. “It’s my money, Michael! I earned it.”
“Yeah, you let some guys bang you. That’s earning it.”
Her fists began to clench. “Do not piss me off, Michael, or I swear to God . . .”
“Relax, I’m just trying to make a deal,” he told her, taking a few steps forward. “Look, Isabel, if you give me this money, then I’ll make it my top priority to fuck you.”
Isabel seemed to be thinking about it momentarily, but then she shook her head. “No. No, ‘cause the last time I thought you were gonna fuck me, I ended up on the other side of a closed door.”
Michael smiled, remembering how Isabel had been so easily distracted.
“It ain’t funny, Guerin. It’s cruel.”
“Well, I won’t be cruel this time,” Michael told her. “I’ll be completely fair with you, Isabel. Now, come on.” She still seemed hesitant, but as he stepped closer, she seemed to be dropping her guard more and more by the second. Sex was Isabel’s biggest weakness. She craved it. Too much.
“You remember what it feels like, don’t you?” Michael asked her. “You remember my hands? You remember my lips?”
Isabel smiled a little bit. “Yeah, I remember something else, too.”
Michael smiled back. “Yeah, you do. So, what do you say? Sex—great, hot sex—in exchange for the money. We got a deal?”
Isabel sighed. “Yeah,” she said, reaching in her back pocket. “We got a deal.” She handed him the money and threw herself into his arms, rubbing herself up against him. “Now fuckin’ do me.”
Michael eyed the money, just to make sure she’d given him the full amount and shoved it in his back pocket, grinning as he did so. He pushed Isabel away from him, and she knew.
“But you said . . .”
“I lied.” He cut her off as he walked away.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
She waited for him, and he came. He told her that he couldn’t stay long. Nix was having some kind of meeting, he said, and he was expected to be there. She understood, though she couldn’t hide her disappointment.
He told her he had something for her. She couldn’t hide her surprise either when he handed her a large bag stuffed with tissue paper. He seemed a little embarrassed as he handed it over to her, and she suspected he was because he’d never given anyone a gift.
This had to mean something, too, didn’t it?
He told her to meet him back there that night around 9:00. He left in a rush as well before she could even open her present. She watched him go, and when he was gone, she reached into the bag and pulled out a sparkling gold dress, the one she’d been admiring earlier that day, the one that had been way out of her price range, far too nice for her.
189 dollars. He’d paid so much for this. How? Why?
Michael Guerin was full of surprises.
LOVE IS MICHAEL AND MARIA.
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April
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new part
Okay, I just wanted to warn people that this next part may or may not be something you want to read if you're sensitive about sexual assualt and violence. If you get going and decide that you don't want to read this part, PM me and I will let you know what happens.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
That night, Slick knocked on Maria’s bedroom door. She knew it was him because it was loud and it was hard and it was drawn-out. That was the way Slick always knocked.
“We’re goin’ out,” he told her, “all of us. You should come.”
“I really don’t want to,” Maria told him honestly. She’d never dreamed of being so to the point with Slick in the past.
He sighed. “Fine. But everyone else is going.” He was silent, as if waiting to see if that would change her mind, but it didn’t in the slightest, so, finally, he left.
Maria waited for about ten minutes and then took a check of the house, just to make sure everyone was gone. When she was certain that she was alone, she went back up to her room and took the bag out from under her bed. She took out the gold dress, rubbing the material against her skin. In a sense, she felt like she was feeling Michael, because this was the gift he’d purchased. For her.
Why?
Maria stripped herself of her clothing until she was down to just her undergarments. She carefully slipped into the dress, cautionary as not to tear or rip the fabric. She didn’t want to damage this dress in any way. It was the single nicest thing she owned, and it was from Michael. That was everything to her.
It fit her just right, just the way that it should. Maria smoothed the dress down over her stomach and turned to look at herself in the mirror. She smiled when she saw herself. For the first time in her life, she saw herself how others saw her. She saw beauty. She was beautiful. At least for tonight.
She curled her hair for the first time in what had seemed like forever, letting it fall around her shoulders and frame her face. She took more time on her make-up than usual, trying hard to make sure that every little detail was perfect. She wanted to look as perfect as possible tonight.
A short time later, she started with the accessories. She dug deep in her closet and found a pair of marvelous gold sandals that she hadn’t worn for a long time, faintly remembered that her mother had worn shoes like that. She searched her room and found the perfect necklace, one that fell over her chest, accentuating the low neckline. She smiled, wondering how Michael would react when he saw her tonight.
She stood staring at herself in the mirror for a long time, loving that, right now, she loved herself, and then, she turned her back to the door, so she didn’t even see it open. She was too busy thinking about other things to hear anything else than her own thoughts, but she felt something else.
It wasn’t Slick. It wasn’t Liz. It wasn’t anyone from BlackCon, and it most definitely wasn’t Michael.
She turned around slowly, an invasion of fear cascading throughout her entire body when she met his eyes and saw him again.
“Maria!” he exclaimed excitedly with a huge smile on his face. “Come and give Daddy a hug.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael was a little surprised when he didn’t see Maria on the street corner. She was nearly always there before he was. He shrugged it off, though, and reminded himself that he was five minutes early himself. She’d be here soon, and when she was, his heart would stop. He would start feeling things that he only felt when he was with her.
He stood at the corner and waited.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“What are you doing here?” Maria demanded of him. “Why are you here?” She felt her fear doubling and tripling in its amount, threatening to engulf her completely. She stood strong, unwilling to let it.
“Honey, you don’t know how long I’ve been looking for you,” her father started. “Three years, Maria. Three years, and now I’ve finally found you.”
Maria felt herself starting to shake with the knowledge that, all this time, her father had been looking for her. “Just leave,” she told him sternly.
He put on a fake show of hurt at her words. “Why do you want me to leave?”
“Leave!” she shouted.
He shook his head. “I can’t do that, Maria. You mean everything to me.”
She knew that wasn’t true. Her body meant everything to him. It always had, even when she’d barely had one.
“I don’t want you here,” she said, fighting back her tears. She couldn’t let him see all the pain that was returning just by him being there.
Her father acted hurt again. “But I want to be here,” he said, stepping forward into the room. Maria stepped back. “I want to be with you.”
Oh, God, Maria thought. It’s all happening . . . again. She recognized the pattern. He had always told that he wanted to be with her before he . . .
“Maybe we can talk,” she suggested. “Maybe we can go downstairs and talk.” She knew she had to get out of this room. It was too small.
He shook his head. “I don’t think we should,” he said, reaching for the door. “I think that we should stay right up here, Maria.” Ever so slowly, he closed the door and locked it into place, smiling as if he enjoyed the fear that was so evidently showing in her eyes. “We have a lot to catch up on.”
“You’re crazy,” Maria told him.
He laughed a little and then started walking forward, his eyes looking over her body, her very different body. She kept backing up until she ran into the wall. A tear leaked out of her eye as she realized how trapped she was.
“I like your dress,” he said finally, reaching out a hand and running it over the material right around her stomach. She shivered and tried to back away at his touch. “Where’d you get it?”
A few more tears leaked out, and she didn’t speak. She didn’t think she could.
“I think I know who it was,” he said, stepping in closer, so close that she could feel his breath. “I think it was that boy that you’ve been running around with.”
“What?” Maria shrieked, suddenly finding her voice again. “You’ve been watching me?”
Her father shrugged. “Here and there. Now, Maria, that boyfriend of yours, I don’t believe that he’d like it that I’m here.”
Maria narrowed her eyes, staring daggers into him. “He’d kill you.”
Her father laughed. “Well, he would try. Did you forget, Maria?” He laughed hard. “Did you forget how strong I am?”
She’d never forget. She’d never forget how he pinned her down onto the bed so easily with just one hand while he violated her with the other.
“I don’t think he’d like it,” he continued, “if he knew that I was doing this.” All at once, he ran his hands around back and grabbed onto her ass. He smiled even bigger than he usually did when he noticed her discomfort.
“Stop!” Maria shouted. “Stop it!”
“Don’t you love me?”
“I hate you!”
He chuckled. “Don’t lie to yourself, Maria. You’ll always love me.”
She was starting to feel almost sick to her stomach. “Get away from me,” she told him.
He didn’t. Instead, he moved one hand up to cup one of her breast. “I bet you your boy wouldn’t like this either, Maria. But I don’t care.” All at once, he forced his lips onto hers. Maria squirmed in discomfort and tried to push him away any way that she could, but nothing worked. He was too strong.
“Let me go!” she shouted through sobs when he pulled away. “Get away from me!”
“Don’t cry, honey,” her father said, all at once throwing her down on top of her bed and falling down on top of her. “Daddy’s gonna make it all better.”
She cried harder as he let one hand move downward, underneath her dress as the other one held her wrists above her head. She literally screamed as he began to touch her. “STOP! STOP!”
He didn’t stop. He never had.
“I love you, Maria,” her father told her, removing his hand at last. He began to undo the buttons on his shirt until he was out of it completely. “I know you love me, too.”
“I hate you!” She shouted over and over again. “I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!”
“Stop yelling,” he said. “You’re not supposed to yell at your parents, Maria.”
A torrent of sobs racked her body as the realization came to her that this man was her father and that he always would be, and no matter what, she would never ever be able to truly say that she wasn’t his daughter.
“It’s time to catch up,” her father said. “We have a lot to do.” Without warning, he violently tore open the front of her beautiful dress.
Maria cried harder than she’d ever cried in her life and called out the one name of the one person who would help her now.
“MICHAEL!”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael looked around, fearful. It wasn’t his own fear. Of that much he was sure. He wasn’t afraid.
He felt fear twisting around in his gut, pounding away at his brain, throbbing in his fingertips. Something wasn’t right.
Glancing at his watch, he noticed that it was 9:05. Maria . . .
Michael took off down the street, first at a brisk walk, then a jog, and then a full-out run. Something wasn’t right, and he had the strangest feeling that it involved Maria somehow. He felt like he could feel what she was feeling, even though he couldn’t. It was all intuition.
He felt the fear growing and developing more and more as he ran, and he pushed himself farther, faster. He blew by anyone who was in his way as he hurried to the BlackCon crib. His lungs burned and his legs ached, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t let anything happen to her.
He heard screaming when he entered the house. Distinct screaming. Maria screaming.
No one seemed to be home. She was alone and defenseless against whatever was terrifying her so. He charged up the stairs and followed the sound of her screaming and crying to her bedroom. The door was closed and locked. He pushed on the door as hard as he could, slamming his weight against it over and over again. Finally, he kicked down the door.
He came upon a horrific sight in the bedroom. There was Maria, and there was a man, a much larger man. A gruesome man. He was sitting on top of her, pinning her down to the bed. He was in the process of undoing his pants, and he’d ripped the front top half of Maria’s dress open.
But he wasn’t too late.
“Michael,” Maria choked out. “Help me!”
Michael felt his heart break.
“Well, well, well,” the man said, standing up and re-zipping his pants, “I can’t say I didn’t expect you to show up. Always cleaning up her messes, aren’t you? Always fighting for her because she can’t?”
“Who the hell are you?” Michael asked him, wondering why this guy was talking like he knew him.
“Who the hell am I?” the man shrieked. “Who the hell am I? I’m the girl’s father!”
Her father? Her father? The same father who had . . .
“Oh God, Maria . . .” He rushed to her side, pushing her father out of the way.
“Help me, Michael,” she kept saying over and over again, sitting up and grabbing onto his hand. “Help me.”
“It’s okay. I’m here.” He took her into his arms and held her, momentarily forgetting about the other man in the room.
“Help me.”
“I’m here.”
The man—her father—coughed loudly as if to remind them of his presence. “We were in the middle of something, young man,” he said. “I’d suggest you leave so we can finish up.”
Michael reluctantly let Maria go and stood to face the other man. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The man laughed. “I know what this is all about. This is jealousy. You’re jealous of me. You’re jealous because it’s gonna be my dick in her cunt tonight.”
Michael curled his hand into a fist and swung, hitting the guy in the jaw and catching him by surprise, knocking him backwards against the wall. “I’ll kill you!” he shouted, hitting him again and again. “I’ll kill you! I’ll fuckin’ kill you if you lay one hand on her!”
All at once, Maria’s father blocked one of his punches, catching Michael off guard. He threw Michael to the ground hard and crouched down over him, throwing a few punches of his own.
“You think you can kill me?” he asked him with his ridiculous smile still plastered on his face. “You think you can keep her safe? You’re nothin’, boy!” He hit him again, and Michael was starting to feel the effects.
A rush of images came flooding at him . . . Rick, Kyle, and now this . . . images of victory lost.
With all of his strength, Michael pushed the larger man off of him. He rose to his feet, but so did Maria’s father, recovering very quickly as well.
Rick, Kyle, this . . .
Victory . . . lost . . .
Before Michael could react, he felt two hands on his shoulders, pushing him backwards into Maria’s mirror. He felt glass shatter beneath his back, tiny shards of glass embedding themselves in his skin.
“Michael!”
He heard Maria, and that kept him going. He pushed the larger man away from him straight back into the wall. He hit his head with a bang.
Michael could barely stand. The sharp pain of the glass in his back was almost too much.
“Michael! Behind you! There’s a knife behind you!” Maria was shouting. Michael looked back and, sure enough, sitting on her vanity just a few inches from where he’d collided with her mirror, there was a knife. He reached for it, but her father kneed him in the stomach, causing him to drop to the floor when his fingers were merely inches away. Michael felt exhausted. He didn’t even think he could stand. He’d been hurt way too much lately, and his body couldn’t handle this right now.
“This is pathetic,” Maria’s father was saying as he stood towering above him. “You’re not even givin’ me a decent fight, and here you were going on and on a few minutes ago about how you were gonna kill me.”
“I will kill you,” Michael promised him. “Lay one hand on her, and I’ll kill you.”
The man laughed, heading over to the bed, to Maria. “You’ve grown up, honey,” he was saying. “You’re so beautiful.” She backed away from him as far as she could, a look of complete and utter terror on her face. Her father reached out his hand for her . . .
Out of pure determination, will, and what he was well aware of was love, Michael forced himself up, charging forward and knocking the other man to the ground before he could touch her.
“Run, Maria!” he shouted, holding her father down. “Get out of here!”
“Michael!”
“Run! Maria, run! Maria!” Before he could say more, he felt a shard of glass being twisted around in his back. He screamed in agony and stood up, preparing to run out with her.
But he could barely stand. “Maria, go!” She was on her feet and heading towards the door, and Michael was ready to follow her when he felt something cutting through his stomach. Something sharp and something painful that caused his mouth to drop open and his eyes to grow wide the moment it made contact with him.
A knife.
“Perhaps it’s me,” her father said, “who’s gonna kill you.”
He fell to the floor, looking down at his stomach to see a knife sticking through him, the blood already seeping out.
“Michael!” She was calling to him.
He wanted to scream, and he wanted to cry, but, most of all, he wanted to get up and keep going for Maria.
But he couldn’t. It was all too much. He tried and he tried, but he just couldn’t.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria brought her hand to her mouth in shock as she looked at Michael. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Michael!”
“He can’t help you now,” her father said. He was approaching her, looking rather bruised and battered himself, but nowhere near as badly as Michael was.
“Maria . . . run . . .” Michael choked out.
She knew running wouldn’t work. Her father was fast. He would catch up with her. She searched around the room frantically for the heaviest thing she could find, and she found a lamp. She picked it up, feeling a new determination to overpower him, and hit him over the head with it before he had a chance to react. He stumbled and seemed dazed, but not at all unconscious the way she’d hoped he would. She hit him again, harder, and this time blood began to flow from his head. She hit him again and again until he fell to the floor in an unconscious heap and until the lamp was broken into nothingness.
Before she’d even had time to think about what she’d just accomplished, she remembered Michael. She knelt beside him on the floor. He was laying on the floor on his side with a knife sticking through his stomach and several large shards of glass poking into his back. He was holding his wound and rocking back and forth a little, a twisted look of agony written across his features. When he saw her, he reached out for her hand and gazed up into her eyes. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Maria started to cry even more when he asked that question. Why did he always care about her? He was laying on the floor probably dying, and he only cared that she was okay.
“I’ll be fine,” she promised him, even though she wasn’t sure she would be.
He smiled a little. “Good.”
Reluctantly, she let go of his hand and stood up, reaching for the phone beside her bed. “I’m gonna take care of you,” she told him quietly between cries. “I can do this.” She dialed 911 quickly, cursing when her fumbling, shaking fingers hit the wrong buttons on the first try.
“911 Emergency.”
“Yes, I need help,” she whimpered. “He’s hurt.”
“Who’s hurt?”
“My . . . my friend.” She glanced over at her father’s unconscious form and then back to Michael. “He was protecting me.”
“What happened?”
“He . . . he was stabbed. In the stomach. He’s hurt really bad.”
“Where are you now?”
Maria relayed the address to the operator quickly. “Hurry,” she begged of them. “Please, you have to hurry.”
“We’ll have someone over there right away.”
“Maria . . .”
Maria dropped the phone when she heard Michael saying something. “What? What is it?” she asked, kneeling down beside him immediately.
“He’s . . . he’s waking up.” He motioned with his head to the other figure in the room. Maria looked around and found a large ceramic unicorn that Liz had gotten her for her birthday last year. She’d never really liked it. She hit her father over the head with it to ensure that he stayed knocked out this time. She didn’t know if she was going to kill him with all of this hitting or not. She didn’t really care.
“We should get out of here,” Maria said. “In case he wakes up.” She quickly grabbed Michael’s jacket from where it was still sitting by Hector the Panda Bear and slipped it on quickly, just so that she didn’t feel so . . . open. She helped Michael to stand, and they slowly made their way out of the room.
“It hurts,” he was saying as they made their way down the stairs. He began to fall, and she couldn’t support his weight. She fell right along with him, sitting down right beside him on the stairs. He groaned when his back hit the stairs, sending the shards in a little deeper.
“Michael . . .”
“The police,” he said, cutting her off. “Call the police, Maria.”
She shook her head. “That can wait.” She needed to make sure that he was going to be okay. “Oh, God,” she said, wiping her tears away with her hands. “Michael, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
She wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t.
“It’s mine,” he said. “This is the third time . . . that I’ve lost.”
Before Maria could say anything to comfort him, she heard the sound of sirens. Seconds later, around six paramedics rushed inside. “We’re up here!” she shouted from the stairs. They hurried up the stairs and took Michael away from her. They hooked him up to medical equipment and put him on a stretcher so fast that Maria couldn’t even comprehend what was going on.
They let her go with him, even though she wasn’t family. They must have sensed that he was all she had.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
That night, Slick knocked on Maria’s bedroom door. She knew it was him because it was loud and it was hard and it was drawn-out. That was the way Slick always knocked.
“We’re goin’ out,” he told her, “all of us. You should come.”
“I really don’t want to,” Maria told him honestly. She’d never dreamed of being so to the point with Slick in the past.
He sighed. “Fine. But everyone else is going.” He was silent, as if waiting to see if that would change her mind, but it didn’t in the slightest, so, finally, he left.
Maria waited for about ten minutes and then took a check of the house, just to make sure everyone was gone. When she was certain that she was alone, she went back up to her room and took the bag out from under her bed. She took out the gold dress, rubbing the material against her skin. In a sense, she felt like she was feeling Michael, because this was the gift he’d purchased. For her.
Why?
Maria stripped herself of her clothing until she was down to just her undergarments. She carefully slipped into the dress, cautionary as not to tear or rip the fabric. She didn’t want to damage this dress in any way. It was the single nicest thing she owned, and it was from Michael. That was everything to her.
It fit her just right, just the way that it should. Maria smoothed the dress down over her stomach and turned to look at herself in the mirror. She smiled when she saw herself. For the first time in her life, she saw herself how others saw her. She saw beauty. She was beautiful. At least for tonight.
She curled her hair for the first time in what had seemed like forever, letting it fall around her shoulders and frame her face. She took more time on her make-up than usual, trying hard to make sure that every little detail was perfect. She wanted to look as perfect as possible tonight.
A short time later, she started with the accessories. She dug deep in her closet and found a pair of marvelous gold sandals that she hadn’t worn for a long time, faintly remembered that her mother had worn shoes like that. She searched her room and found the perfect necklace, one that fell over her chest, accentuating the low neckline. She smiled, wondering how Michael would react when he saw her tonight.
She stood staring at herself in the mirror for a long time, loving that, right now, she loved herself, and then, she turned her back to the door, so she didn’t even see it open. She was too busy thinking about other things to hear anything else than her own thoughts, but she felt something else.
It wasn’t Slick. It wasn’t Liz. It wasn’t anyone from BlackCon, and it most definitely wasn’t Michael.
She turned around slowly, an invasion of fear cascading throughout her entire body when she met his eyes and saw him again.
“Maria!” he exclaimed excitedly with a huge smile on his face. “Come and give Daddy a hug.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael was a little surprised when he didn’t see Maria on the street corner. She was nearly always there before he was. He shrugged it off, though, and reminded himself that he was five minutes early himself. She’d be here soon, and when she was, his heart would stop. He would start feeling things that he only felt when he was with her.
He stood at the corner and waited.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“What are you doing here?” Maria demanded of him. “Why are you here?” She felt her fear doubling and tripling in its amount, threatening to engulf her completely. She stood strong, unwilling to let it.
“Honey, you don’t know how long I’ve been looking for you,” her father started. “Three years, Maria. Three years, and now I’ve finally found you.”
Maria felt herself starting to shake with the knowledge that, all this time, her father had been looking for her. “Just leave,” she told him sternly.
He put on a fake show of hurt at her words. “Why do you want me to leave?”
“Leave!” she shouted.
He shook his head. “I can’t do that, Maria. You mean everything to me.”
She knew that wasn’t true. Her body meant everything to him. It always had, even when she’d barely had one.
“I don’t want you here,” she said, fighting back her tears. She couldn’t let him see all the pain that was returning just by him being there.
Her father acted hurt again. “But I want to be here,” he said, stepping forward into the room. Maria stepped back. “I want to be with you.”
Oh, God, Maria thought. It’s all happening . . . again. She recognized the pattern. He had always told that he wanted to be with her before he . . .
“Maybe we can talk,” she suggested. “Maybe we can go downstairs and talk.” She knew she had to get out of this room. It was too small.
He shook his head. “I don’t think we should,” he said, reaching for the door. “I think that we should stay right up here, Maria.” Ever so slowly, he closed the door and locked it into place, smiling as if he enjoyed the fear that was so evidently showing in her eyes. “We have a lot to catch up on.”
“You’re crazy,” Maria told him.
He laughed a little and then started walking forward, his eyes looking over her body, her very different body. She kept backing up until she ran into the wall. A tear leaked out of her eye as she realized how trapped she was.
“I like your dress,” he said finally, reaching out a hand and running it over the material right around her stomach. She shivered and tried to back away at his touch. “Where’d you get it?”
A few more tears leaked out, and she didn’t speak. She didn’t think she could.
“I think I know who it was,” he said, stepping in closer, so close that she could feel his breath. “I think it was that boy that you’ve been running around with.”
“What?” Maria shrieked, suddenly finding her voice again. “You’ve been watching me?”
Her father shrugged. “Here and there. Now, Maria, that boyfriend of yours, I don’t believe that he’d like it that I’m here.”
Maria narrowed her eyes, staring daggers into him. “He’d kill you.”
Her father laughed. “Well, he would try. Did you forget, Maria?” He laughed hard. “Did you forget how strong I am?”
She’d never forget. She’d never forget how he pinned her down onto the bed so easily with just one hand while he violated her with the other.
“I don’t think he’d like it,” he continued, “if he knew that I was doing this.” All at once, he ran his hands around back and grabbed onto her ass. He smiled even bigger than he usually did when he noticed her discomfort.
“Stop!” Maria shouted. “Stop it!”
“Don’t you love me?”
“I hate you!”
He chuckled. “Don’t lie to yourself, Maria. You’ll always love me.”
She was starting to feel almost sick to her stomach. “Get away from me,” she told him.
He didn’t. Instead, he moved one hand up to cup one of her breast. “I bet you your boy wouldn’t like this either, Maria. But I don’t care.” All at once, he forced his lips onto hers. Maria squirmed in discomfort and tried to push him away any way that she could, but nothing worked. He was too strong.
“Let me go!” she shouted through sobs when he pulled away. “Get away from me!”
“Don’t cry, honey,” her father said, all at once throwing her down on top of her bed and falling down on top of her. “Daddy’s gonna make it all better.”
She cried harder as he let one hand move downward, underneath her dress as the other one held her wrists above her head. She literally screamed as he began to touch her. “STOP! STOP!”
He didn’t stop. He never had.
“I love you, Maria,” her father told her, removing his hand at last. He began to undo the buttons on his shirt until he was out of it completely. “I know you love me, too.”
“I hate you!” She shouted over and over again. “I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!”
“Stop yelling,” he said. “You’re not supposed to yell at your parents, Maria.”
A torrent of sobs racked her body as the realization came to her that this man was her father and that he always would be, and no matter what, she would never ever be able to truly say that she wasn’t his daughter.
“It’s time to catch up,” her father said. “We have a lot to do.” Without warning, he violently tore open the front of her beautiful dress.
Maria cried harder than she’d ever cried in her life and called out the one name of the one person who would help her now.
“MICHAEL!”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael looked around, fearful. It wasn’t his own fear. Of that much he was sure. He wasn’t afraid.
He felt fear twisting around in his gut, pounding away at his brain, throbbing in his fingertips. Something wasn’t right.
Glancing at his watch, he noticed that it was 9:05. Maria . . .
Michael took off down the street, first at a brisk walk, then a jog, and then a full-out run. Something wasn’t right, and he had the strangest feeling that it involved Maria somehow. He felt like he could feel what she was feeling, even though he couldn’t. It was all intuition.
He felt the fear growing and developing more and more as he ran, and he pushed himself farther, faster. He blew by anyone who was in his way as he hurried to the BlackCon crib. His lungs burned and his legs ached, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t let anything happen to her.
He heard screaming when he entered the house. Distinct screaming. Maria screaming.
No one seemed to be home. She was alone and defenseless against whatever was terrifying her so. He charged up the stairs and followed the sound of her screaming and crying to her bedroom. The door was closed and locked. He pushed on the door as hard as he could, slamming his weight against it over and over again. Finally, he kicked down the door.
He came upon a horrific sight in the bedroom. There was Maria, and there was a man, a much larger man. A gruesome man. He was sitting on top of her, pinning her down to the bed. He was in the process of undoing his pants, and he’d ripped the front top half of Maria’s dress open.
But he wasn’t too late.
“Michael,” Maria choked out. “Help me!”
Michael felt his heart break.
“Well, well, well,” the man said, standing up and re-zipping his pants, “I can’t say I didn’t expect you to show up. Always cleaning up her messes, aren’t you? Always fighting for her because she can’t?”
“Who the hell are you?” Michael asked him, wondering why this guy was talking like he knew him.
“Who the hell am I?” the man shrieked. “Who the hell am I? I’m the girl’s father!”
Her father? Her father? The same father who had . . .
“Oh God, Maria . . .” He rushed to her side, pushing her father out of the way.
“Help me, Michael,” she kept saying over and over again, sitting up and grabbing onto his hand. “Help me.”
“It’s okay. I’m here.” He took her into his arms and held her, momentarily forgetting about the other man in the room.
“Help me.”
“I’m here.”
The man—her father—coughed loudly as if to remind them of his presence. “We were in the middle of something, young man,” he said. “I’d suggest you leave so we can finish up.”
Michael reluctantly let Maria go and stood to face the other man. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The man laughed. “I know what this is all about. This is jealousy. You’re jealous of me. You’re jealous because it’s gonna be my dick in her cunt tonight.”
Michael curled his hand into a fist and swung, hitting the guy in the jaw and catching him by surprise, knocking him backwards against the wall. “I’ll kill you!” he shouted, hitting him again and again. “I’ll kill you! I’ll fuckin’ kill you if you lay one hand on her!”
All at once, Maria’s father blocked one of his punches, catching Michael off guard. He threw Michael to the ground hard and crouched down over him, throwing a few punches of his own.
“You think you can kill me?” he asked him with his ridiculous smile still plastered on his face. “You think you can keep her safe? You’re nothin’, boy!” He hit him again, and Michael was starting to feel the effects.
A rush of images came flooding at him . . . Rick, Kyle, and now this . . . images of victory lost.
With all of his strength, Michael pushed the larger man off of him. He rose to his feet, but so did Maria’s father, recovering very quickly as well.
Rick, Kyle, this . . .
Victory . . . lost . . .
Before Michael could react, he felt two hands on his shoulders, pushing him backwards into Maria’s mirror. He felt glass shatter beneath his back, tiny shards of glass embedding themselves in his skin.
“Michael!”
He heard Maria, and that kept him going. He pushed the larger man away from him straight back into the wall. He hit his head with a bang.
Michael could barely stand. The sharp pain of the glass in his back was almost too much.
“Michael! Behind you! There’s a knife behind you!” Maria was shouting. Michael looked back and, sure enough, sitting on her vanity just a few inches from where he’d collided with her mirror, there was a knife. He reached for it, but her father kneed him in the stomach, causing him to drop to the floor when his fingers were merely inches away. Michael felt exhausted. He didn’t even think he could stand. He’d been hurt way too much lately, and his body couldn’t handle this right now.
“This is pathetic,” Maria’s father was saying as he stood towering above him. “You’re not even givin’ me a decent fight, and here you were going on and on a few minutes ago about how you were gonna kill me.”
“I will kill you,” Michael promised him. “Lay one hand on her, and I’ll kill you.”
The man laughed, heading over to the bed, to Maria. “You’ve grown up, honey,” he was saying. “You’re so beautiful.” She backed away from him as far as she could, a look of complete and utter terror on her face. Her father reached out his hand for her . . .
Out of pure determination, will, and what he was well aware of was love, Michael forced himself up, charging forward and knocking the other man to the ground before he could touch her.
“Run, Maria!” he shouted, holding her father down. “Get out of here!”
“Michael!”
“Run! Maria, run! Maria!” Before he could say more, he felt a shard of glass being twisted around in his back. He screamed in agony and stood up, preparing to run out with her.
But he could barely stand. “Maria, go!” She was on her feet and heading towards the door, and Michael was ready to follow her when he felt something cutting through his stomach. Something sharp and something painful that caused his mouth to drop open and his eyes to grow wide the moment it made contact with him.
A knife.
“Perhaps it’s me,” her father said, “who’s gonna kill you.”
He fell to the floor, looking down at his stomach to see a knife sticking through him, the blood already seeping out.
“Michael!” She was calling to him.
He wanted to scream, and he wanted to cry, but, most of all, he wanted to get up and keep going for Maria.
But he couldn’t. It was all too much. He tried and he tried, but he just couldn’t.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria brought her hand to her mouth in shock as she looked at Michael. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Michael!”
“He can’t help you now,” her father said. He was approaching her, looking rather bruised and battered himself, but nowhere near as badly as Michael was.
“Maria . . . run . . .” Michael choked out.
She knew running wouldn’t work. Her father was fast. He would catch up with her. She searched around the room frantically for the heaviest thing she could find, and she found a lamp. She picked it up, feeling a new determination to overpower him, and hit him over the head with it before he had a chance to react. He stumbled and seemed dazed, but not at all unconscious the way she’d hoped he would. She hit him again, harder, and this time blood began to flow from his head. She hit him again and again until he fell to the floor in an unconscious heap and until the lamp was broken into nothingness.
Before she’d even had time to think about what she’d just accomplished, she remembered Michael. She knelt beside him on the floor. He was laying on the floor on his side with a knife sticking through his stomach and several large shards of glass poking into his back. He was holding his wound and rocking back and forth a little, a twisted look of agony written across his features. When he saw her, he reached out for her hand and gazed up into her eyes. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Maria started to cry even more when he asked that question. Why did he always care about her? He was laying on the floor probably dying, and he only cared that she was okay.
“I’ll be fine,” she promised him, even though she wasn’t sure she would be.
He smiled a little. “Good.”
Reluctantly, she let go of his hand and stood up, reaching for the phone beside her bed. “I’m gonna take care of you,” she told him quietly between cries. “I can do this.” She dialed 911 quickly, cursing when her fumbling, shaking fingers hit the wrong buttons on the first try.
“911 Emergency.”
“Yes, I need help,” she whimpered. “He’s hurt.”
“Who’s hurt?”
“My . . . my friend.” She glanced over at her father’s unconscious form and then back to Michael. “He was protecting me.”
“What happened?”
“He . . . he was stabbed. In the stomach. He’s hurt really bad.”
“Where are you now?”
Maria relayed the address to the operator quickly. “Hurry,” she begged of them. “Please, you have to hurry.”
“We’ll have someone over there right away.”
“Maria . . .”
Maria dropped the phone when she heard Michael saying something. “What? What is it?” she asked, kneeling down beside him immediately.
“He’s . . . he’s waking up.” He motioned with his head to the other figure in the room. Maria looked around and found a large ceramic unicorn that Liz had gotten her for her birthday last year. She’d never really liked it. She hit her father over the head with it to ensure that he stayed knocked out this time. She didn’t know if she was going to kill him with all of this hitting or not. She didn’t really care.
“We should get out of here,” Maria said. “In case he wakes up.” She quickly grabbed Michael’s jacket from where it was still sitting by Hector the Panda Bear and slipped it on quickly, just so that she didn’t feel so . . . open. She helped Michael to stand, and they slowly made their way out of the room.
“It hurts,” he was saying as they made their way down the stairs. He began to fall, and she couldn’t support his weight. She fell right along with him, sitting down right beside him on the stairs. He groaned when his back hit the stairs, sending the shards in a little deeper.
“Michael . . .”
“The police,” he said, cutting her off. “Call the police, Maria.”
She shook her head. “That can wait.” She needed to make sure that he was going to be okay. “Oh, God,” she said, wiping her tears away with her hands. “Michael, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
She wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t.
“It’s mine,” he said. “This is the third time . . . that I’ve lost.”
Before Maria could say anything to comfort him, she heard the sound of sirens. Seconds later, around six paramedics rushed inside. “We’re up here!” she shouted from the stairs. They hurried up the stairs and took Michael away from her. They hooked him up to medical equipment and put him on a stretcher so fast that Maria couldn’t even comprehend what was going on.
They let her go with him, even though she wasn’t family. They must have sensed that he was all she had.
LOVE IS MICHAEL AND MARIA.
-
April
- Roswell Fanatic
- Posts: 1557
- Joined: Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:32 am
- Location: Somewhere. Anywhere.
- Contact:
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The first time that she noticed that his blood was on her hands was when she was sitting out in the hallway of the emergency room. She looked down at her hands and she saw his dark, crimson blood, the same blood that had been flowing from his wounds.
It was on her hands.
She went to the bathroom and washed her hands, but it wasn’t coming off.
It wasn’t coming off.
She forced herself to do something while the doctors took care of him. She called the police. She told them that there had been a man and that there had been a fight, but she didn’t tell them that it had been her father. They didn’t need to know that she was connected to him in any way.
After that, she went back and she waited, and that was probably the biggest mistake. She just sat there, and she started thinking about things too much. She thought about her father. She thought about what he’d tried to do, what he would have done if Michael hadn’t shown up. She started remembering every horrible night before her mother had been wise enough to divorce that man. She remembered her small, innocent, vulnerable body, and she remembered her father placing his hands on her and telling her not to scream. Her memories coalesced with the present, and an uncontrollable wave of sadness washed over her body. She started to cry, and she started thinking about Michael. She started thinking about the knife in his stomach and the glass in his back and the pain on his face, and she convinced herself that it was all her fault. She hadn’t been strong enough. She never was.
“Miss?”
Maria looked up, her eyes shimmering with tears and traces of them flowing down her cheeks. One of the doctors who had been working with Michael was standing beside her now.
“I have good news,” he said. “Your friend is going to be just fine.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” she whispered.
“He took a pretty bad beating, though,” the doctor continued, sitting down beside her. “I think it would be wise for you to report whatever happened.”
She nodded. “I did. I did.”
“I also think it would be wise for you to go home and get some rest,” the doctor continued. “Your friend won’t be awake for some time yet. You could come back and visit him tomorrow when he’s feeling better and when you’re rested up.”
Maria nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I will.” Inside, though, she was doubting if she would. How could she face Michael after all that had happened, after all that she’d done to him?
She had done this. It was her fault entirely, because she was weak and delicate and always so vulnerable . . .
It was just like her father had said. He always did this. He always cleaned up after her messes.
Maria stood up and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Thank you,” she told the doctor before making her way towards the exit.
Once outside, she wanted to turn and run back to the hospital. She was so alone, and there were so many people out that could hurt her. She tried to make herself invisible as she walked, and she avoided eye contact with anyone she passed. She didn’t want them to know that she was there, alone.
The police were on scene when she arrived back at the BlackCon crib. Slick and the others had arrived back, too, but they weren’t being allowed inside. They looked completely confused.
“Maria!” Slick shouted when he saw her. “What the hell is goin’ on?” He must have noticed the blood on her hands or something, because he suddenly changed his tone. “What happened, Maria?”
A small crowd had begun to form around Maria, and they were all asking questions at once.
“Where were you? What did you do?”
“Why are the police here? Do they know about the gang?”
“Why is there blood on your hands?”
Maria opened her mouth, and they all fell silent, eager for her explanation. “There . . . there was a man,” she stuttered. “He came upstairs and . . . there was a fight.”
“A man?” Slick echoed. He seemed genuinely concerned. “Did he hurt you?”
Maria met his eyes, and then looked at Liz, Kyle, and Alex. She didn’t want them to know that she’d been hurt, emotionally hurt. She didn’t want them to know how afraid she’d been, how scared she was, and how weak she’d always be.
“No, he didn’t,” she lied. “He tried, but . . . he didn’t.”
“Who was he?” Liz asked her.
Maria knew exactly who he was, and she hated him. “I have no idea,” she lied again.
“Well, whoever he was, he got away,” Kyle told her. “They’re looking over your room right now for evidence, and they won’t let us in the house.”
He got away. She should have called them earlier.
“I’m sure they’ll find him,” Liz reassured her, placing her hand on Maria’s shoulder.
Maria nodded. “Yeah, they will.” She wasn’t so sure, though.
“And you’re okay?” Slick asked her.
“I’m fine.” She kept lying. “It was nothing.”
She answered questions for the police. She gave them a description. She did everything they asked, but she never let on that the man they were looking for was her father.
They let them back into the house after that. Maria went back up to her bedroom despite others’ wishes. Liz helped her clean up the mess in there. They shampooed the carpet and got the blood off, and they started on repairing her broken mirror. Though Maria was grateful for her friend’s help, she was even more grateful when she left. Right now, she needed time to herself, even if the thought of being alone was frightening.
She took Michael’s jacket off and stood before herself in the fractured mirror. A few hours ago, her gold dress had been exquisite. Now, it was torn. A few hours ago, her make-up had been perfect. Now, it was smeared. A few hours ago, her hair had been bouncy. Now, it had fallen. A few hours ago, she had thought she was beautiful. Now, she thought she was revolting.
Maria tore off her expensive gold dress. Before this, she’d only been able to think of the fact that Michael had bought it for her, that he’d paid 189 dollars for it, for her. Now, she could only remember her father’s hands as they yanked away the material to reveal her body.
She tore the dress into little shreds and then opened up her window, throwing the shreds outside and watching as they landed in a mud puddle. Then she went into the bathroom and showered for an hour. It took her quite some time to rid herself of Michael’s blood on her hands, because, even when it was gone, she could still see it there.
Maria crawled into her bed early that next morning. She could hardly stand to be in her room, because, every time she looked around, she saw a battle playing out before her, a battle between Michael and her father. Every time she shifted in her bed, she felt her father shifting on top of her. Every time she looked down at the carpet, she saw a hint of blood that might never come out. Michael’s blood.
Maria didn’t sleep. She laid awake thinking about her life. She thought about all the times that people had told her that she was beautiful and never really meant it. She thought about all the times they touched her without her permission and consent. She thought about the way they would smile and she would not.
Her father, Rick from the bank, Slick, and everyone else who had ever shown any intention of wanting her when she never wanted them . . . they all blurred together until she could separate one being from the other.
That night, Maria realized that she had never been a bad person. She’d always been the victim, and she would always continue to be, because she was weak, delicate, and so very vulnerable.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Can I come in?”
Maria didn’t want to talk to Slick, but she figured she should. “Sure.”
He tried twisting the doorknob. “It’s locked.”
Maria reluctantly stood up and unlocked the door, letting him inside. “Sorry about that,” she said.
“That’s fine.” He walked around her room, taking a look at her damaged mirror. “You’re gonna have to get a new mirror,” he commented.
“Yeah.” The glass from that mirror had hurt Michael.
Slick’s eyes drifted down to the red stain on Maria’s carpet. “So, how bad did it get in here last night?”
She didn’t want to talk about last night. “It was nothing,” she told him again.
“And you fought him? All by yourself?”
Did he suspect something was off in her story? “Yes,” she lied, feeling bad about not giving Michael the credit he deserved. She would have, if she could have.
“Good for you.” Slick sat down on her bed and motioned for Maria to sit beside him. She did, feeling a little uncomfortable and uncertain. She tensed when he put his arm around her, pulling her to him. “I know things between us have been a little rough,” he said, “but they’re gonna get better. Okay?”
“Okay,” she replied, still wanting out of Slick’s hold. She knew he was only trying to do something nice and sweet, but she didn’t want anyone holding her right now. The only person she wanted to hold her was Michael, and she doubted he wanted to after what she’d done.
“I’m sorry, too,” Maria told him. “For calling the police. I didn’t mean for them to find out anything about us.”
“They didn’t find out anything,” Slick told her. “They were focused up in your room, and you don’t have any drugs or weapons up here.”
Maria felt relieved. At least she wasn’t going to be responsible for the downfall of BlackCon.
“We’re all goin’ to get some breakfast at Julio’s,” Slick told her. “You think you wanna come?”
“Yes,” she said immediately. She didn’t want to be here alone. “I’ll get changed real quick, okay, and then I’ll be down.”
He nodded in agreement and left her alone to change.
Maria really felt like being alone that day, like not having to talk to anyone or deal with anything, but she knew she couldn’t stay in that house alone. He would come back and find her, and Michael would not be there to protect her this time.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
For four days, Maria surrounded herself with people but was still very alone. For four days, she pretended that she was okay and cried in the shower so that no one would hear her. For four days, she didn’t sleep at all because she was afraid to. For four days, she made sure that she was never left alone, and for four days, she wondered about Michael. She thought about going to see him, but she never did. She was sure he would hate her for being so weak.
One evening, she was laying up in her room. One minute, she was looking at her brand new mirror, thinking of how the last one was shattered, and the next minute, her eyes were drifting closed before she could do anything about it. She was so tired.
She woke up a short time later and sat up straight in her bed. She listened, but she heard no noise.
Why was there no noise? Why couldn’t she hear laughing from downstairs and talking in the hallway? She always heard noise. Why was there no noise now?
Maria sprang out of bed and ran out her door. She looked back and forth down the hallway. No one. She ran into Slick’s bedroom. “Slick!” she called. “Slick!” He wasn’t there. She ran into Liz’s bedroom, calling for her. She wasn’t there, either. Kyle and Alex were gone. Everyone was gone.
Maria ran down the stairs so fast that she almost tripped and fell. She searched the kitchen and the living room. She tore through every closet, and, still, she found nothing. Worst of all, she checked the front door and found that it wasn’t locked. Anyone could be inside. Her father could . . .
Maria started back up the stairs, but she turned back around and headed back downstairs before she made it to the top. Her father would go looking for her in her room. He would know where to find her.
She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling utterly panicked. She knew she should run out the front door and get out of the house. She knew that was the sensible, reasonable thing to do, but she could hardly get her feet to move in that direction, terrified that if she opened the door, her father would be on the other side waiting for her.
So she continued to tear through the house like this, not getting anywhere. All at once, though, she felt two hands on her shoulders. She spun around to face her attacker, her breath catching and her fear skyrocketing.
She saw Michael.
He stared down at her with his comforting brown eyes and held onto her with his warm hands, and she couldn’t even speak for a moment. She stared up at him as her fear disintegrated, taking in the fact that he was standing in front of her. He was really there. His wounds were healing and he was standing and he was there . . .
“Michael?” she whispered in a question. She wasn’t even sure if it was him. Maybe he was just a figment of her imagination.
Suddenly, he pulled her to him and she flung her arms around him, holding onto him as tightly as she could. He was real. Nothing imagined and conjured could feel this right.
He pulled away after a long time and took her hand in his. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go upstairs.”
They went to her room. When Michael stepped inside, he didn’t even take a look at the blood stain on the carpet. He seemed completely comfortable and at ease. It was so Michael-like. He was so strong about everything.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Maria told him, closing her door. Right now, Michael was the only person in the world she would feel comfortable with in a room with the door closed.
“You wanna tell me why you were tearing through the house like a maniac?” he asked her right away. “You looked pretty scared.”
“No, I wasn’t scared,” she said, letting go of his hand. She sat down on the bed, and he stood by the door. She let out a deep sigh and admitted everything to him that she hadn’t been able to admit to anyone else for four long days. “I was terrified.” She looked at the stain on the carpet. “I’ve been terrified ever since that night.”
“I would think so.”
Maria took in a shaky breath, on the verge of tears. “The police didn’t get him,” she told Michael. “I called them too late, or they arrived here too late or something, because he was gone, and they haven’t found him yet. And I am terrified that he’s gonna come back.”
“He won’t come back.” Michael sounded so sure.
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can. He knows now that, not only does he have me to deal with, he’s gotta deal with you, too. That was pretty good how you just smashed that lamp over his head like that.”
Maria smiled a little bit. She’d forgotten what it felt like to smile. Leave it to Michael to make her feel at least a little happy, though. He’d been back in her life for all of two minutes, and things were already starting to feel a little better.
“How are you doing?” she asked him, standing up. “You’re the one who had a knife in his gut.”
Michael shrugged and stepped closer to her. “I’m okay,” he said. “I heal fast, so it’s not that bad.”
Maria knew that a stab wound could not be considered something that wasn’t that bad. “Can I see?” she asked him.
Slowly, Michael lifted the bottom of his shirt up to reveal a long and jagged scar on his stomach. She reached out and touched it gently and felt guilt rising up inside of her when she looked at it.
“I’m scarred,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
Maria gazed into his eyes and lifted up the bottom of her sweatshirt to reveal the scar on her own stomach. “So am I.”
Michael gazed at her scar and reached out to trace it with his fingers as well. “I did that,” he said.
She immediately regretted showing him that, reminding him of what he’d once been like. “That was a long time ago.”
He shook his head. “No, it wasn’t.”
Maria pulled her shirt back down, covering the scar on her stomach. Michael did the same, but that didn’t hide the fact that it was still there. “It is my fault, Michael,” she told him, “that you got hurt.”
He gave her a confused look. “What?”
“I know I was the victim. But that’s the problem. I’m always the victim, the poor, pitiful victim who can’t protect herself.”
“Maria . . .”
“I hurt you,” she told him simply, letting her gaze drop to the floor. She knew it was her father who had put that knife through him, but that didn’t change anything.
He stepped closer to her and placed his hand on her cheek, forcing her to look into his eyes. “You could never hurt me.”
She stared into his eyes, and she let all of her emotions just poor out. She let herself cry in front of him again, because he was the only person who would understand her tears. “I hate feeling like this,” she sobbed.
“Like what?” he asked, wiping away her tears with his thumb.
“Like, I don’t know, like confused,” she answered, running her hands through her hair. “Like confused and angry and guilty all at the same time.” She went and sat back down on her bed again, trying to collect herself. She didn’t want Michael to see her like this, but she couldn’t help it.
“I was so happy,” she said. “Just a few days ago, I was so happy, Michael. Things were going really good for me, and I was just starting to feel a little like a normal seventeen year old girl when my dad comes back, and now I’m terrified of every single thing, and I can’t sleep, and I can’t stop crying, and I just wanna be happy again.” Her tears fell harder and faster, and Michael sat down beside her, putting his arm around her and pulling her in to rest her head on his shoulder.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered in her ear. “I promise you, it’s gonna be okay.”
“I hate him!” she shouted, gripping onto his shoulder a little harder than she should have. “I hate him so much!”
Michael buried one of his hands in her hair and rested his chin on top of her head. “I know you do,” he said. “It’ll be okay.”
Maria felt her tears diminishing and her sadness dying off as Michael held her. Just being in his arms made her feel better. It was the only place on earth she wanted to be. “How can you be so strong?” she asked him. “How can you keep going?”
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “I guess I kind of feel like I have to.”
Maria took in a shaky breath as the last of her tears fell. “Well, I’m done being weak. I’m gonna be strong now, too.” She pulled away from him a little and sat up straight, looking into his eyes. “And I’m gonna be happy again.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Anytime you want, we can just go away.”
“Away,” she echoed, gazing into his eyes. “I love away.” As she spoke, the realization dawned on her that she wasn’t just talking about some place, some place that wasn’t BlackCon. She was talking about Michael, because, when she was with him, he always managed to take her away. Michael was away, and she loved away.
She loved Michael.
“You look tired,” he commented.
“I am. I haven’t slept, really. I’ve been too scared.”
Michael placed a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. “You should sleep.”
She nodded, never breaking eye-contact. “I know.”
He glanced towards the door and then back at her. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No!” she almost shouted. “No, please, stay.” She grabbed onto his hands, holding them within her own. “Could you just stay and hold me until I fall asleep?”
He nodded his silent agreement and stood up, pulling back the covers so that she could get in. He walked on over to the other side of the bed and crawled in behind her, wrapping his hands around her waist and pulling her closer to him. She turned around in his arms and snuggled deep into him, breathing in his scent as a familiar but recently lost feeling of comfort overtook her, a feeling that she only felt when she was with Michael.
The first time that she noticed that his blood was on her hands was when she was sitting out in the hallway of the emergency room. She looked down at her hands and she saw his dark, crimson blood, the same blood that had been flowing from his wounds.
It was on her hands.
She went to the bathroom and washed her hands, but it wasn’t coming off.
It wasn’t coming off.
She forced herself to do something while the doctors took care of him. She called the police. She told them that there had been a man and that there had been a fight, but she didn’t tell them that it had been her father. They didn’t need to know that she was connected to him in any way.
After that, she went back and she waited, and that was probably the biggest mistake. She just sat there, and she started thinking about things too much. She thought about her father. She thought about what he’d tried to do, what he would have done if Michael hadn’t shown up. She started remembering every horrible night before her mother had been wise enough to divorce that man. She remembered her small, innocent, vulnerable body, and she remembered her father placing his hands on her and telling her not to scream. Her memories coalesced with the present, and an uncontrollable wave of sadness washed over her body. She started to cry, and she started thinking about Michael. She started thinking about the knife in his stomach and the glass in his back and the pain on his face, and she convinced herself that it was all her fault. She hadn’t been strong enough. She never was.
“Miss?”
Maria looked up, her eyes shimmering with tears and traces of them flowing down her cheeks. One of the doctors who had been working with Michael was standing beside her now.
“I have good news,” he said. “Your friend is going to be just fine.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” she whispered.
“He took a pretty bad beating, though,” the doctor continued, sitting down beside her. “I think it would be wise for you to report whatever happened.”
She nodded. “I did. I did.”
“I also think it would be wise for you to go home and get some rest,” the doctor continued. “Your friend won’t be awake for some time yet. You could come back and visit him tomorrow when he’s feeling better and when you’re rested up.”
Maria nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I will.” Inside, though, she was doubting if she would. How could she face Michael after all that had happened, after all that she’d done to him?
She had done this. It was her fault entirely, because she was weak and delicate and always so vulnerable . . .
It was just like her father had said. He always did this. He always cleaned up after her messes.
Maria stood up and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Thank you,” she told the doctor before making her way towards the exit.
Once outside, she wanted to turn and run back to the hospital. She was so alone, and there were so many people out that could hurt her. She tried to make herself invisible as she walked, and she avoided eye contact with anyone she passed. She didn’t want them to know that she was there, alone.
The police were on scene when she arrived back at the BlackCon crib. Slick and the others had arrived back, too, but they weren’t being allowed inside. They looked completely confused.
“Maria!” Slick shouted when he saw her. “What the hell is goin’ on?” He must have noticed the blood on her hands or something, because he suddenly changed his tone. “What happened, Maria?”
A small crowd had begun to form around Maria, and they were all asking questions at once.
“Where were you? What did you do?”
“Why are the police here? Do they know about the gang?”
“Why is there blood on your hands?”
Maria opened her mouth, and they all fell silent, eager for her explanation. “There . . . there was a man,” she stuttered. “He came upstairs and . . . there was a fight.”
“A man?” Slick echoed. He seemed genuinely concerned. “Did he hurt you?”
Maria met his eyes, and then looked at Liz, Kyle, and Alex. She didn’t want them to know that she’d been hurt, emotionally hurt. She didn’t want them to know how afraid she’d been, how scared she was, and how weak she’d always be.
“No, he didn’t,” she lied. “He tried, but . . . he didn’t.”
“Who was he?” Liz asked her.
Maria knew exactly who he was, and she hated him. “I have no idea,” she lied again.
“Well, whoever he was, he got away,” Kyle told her. “They’re looking over your room right now for evidence, and they won’t let us in the house.”
He got away. She should have called them earlier.
“I’m sure they’ll find him,” Liz reassured her, placing her hand on Maria’s shoulder.
Maria nodded. “Yeah, they will.” She wasn’t so sure, though.
“And you’re okay?” Slick asked her.
“I’m fine.” She kept lying. “It was nothing.”
She answered questions for the police. She gave them a description. She did everything they asked, but she never let on that the man they were looking for was her father.
They let them back into the house after that. Maria went back up to her bedroom despite others’ wishes. Liz helped her clean up the mess in there. They shampooed the carpet and got the blood off, and they started on repairing her broken mirror. Though Maria was grateful for her friend’s help, she was even more grateful when she left. Right now, she needed time to herself, even if the thought of being alone was frightening.
She took Michael’s jacket off and stood before herself in the fractured mirror. A few hours ago, her gold dress had been exquisite. Now, it was torn. A few hours ago, her make-up had been perfect. Now, it was smeared. A few hours ago, her hair had been bouncy. Now, it had fallen. A few hours ago, she had thought she was beautiful. Now, she thought she was revolting.
Maria tore off her expensive gold dress. Before this, she’d only been able to think of the fact that Michael had bought it for her, that he’d paid 189 dollars for it, for her. Now, she could only remember her father’s hands as they yanked away the material to reveal her body.
She tore the dress into little shreds and then opened up her window, throwing the shreds outside and watching as they landed in a mud puddle. Then she went into the bathroom and showered for an hour. It took her quite some time to rid herself of Michael’s blood on her hands, because, even when it was gone, she could still see it there.
Maria crawled into her bed early that next morning. She could hardly stand to be in her room, because, every time she looked around, she saw a battle playing out before her, a battle between Michael and her father. Every time she shifted in her bed, she felt her father shifting on top of her. Every time she looked down at the carpet, she saw a hint of blood that might never come out. Michael’s blood.
Maria didn’t sleep. She laid awake thinking about her life. She thought about all the times that people had told her that she was beautiful and never really meant it. She thought about all the times they touched her without her permission and consent. She thought about the way they would smile and she would not.
Her father, Rick from the bank, Slick, and everyone else who had ever shown any intention of wanting her when she never wanted them . . . they all blurred together until she could separate one being from the other.
That night, Maria realized that she had never been a bad person. She’d always been the victim, and she would always continue to be, because she was weak, delicate, and so very vulnerable.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Can I come in?”
Maria didn’t want to talk to Slick, but she figured she should. “Sure.”
He tried twisting the doorknob. “It’s locked.”
Maria reluctantly stood up and unlocked the door, letting him inside. “Sorry about that,” she said.
“That’s fine.” He walked around her room, taking a look at her damaged mirror. “You’re gonna have to get a new mirror,” he commented.
“Yeah.” The glass from that mirror had hurt Michael.
Slick’s eyes drifted down to the red stain on Maria’s carpet. “So, how bad did it get in here last night?”
She didn’t want to talk about last night. “It was nothing,” she told him again.
“And you fought him? All by yourself?”
Did he suspect something was off in her story? “Yes,” she lied, feeling bad about not giving Michael the credit he deserved. She would have, if she could have.
“Good for you.” Slick sat down on her bed and motioned for Maria to sit beside him. She did, feeling a little uncomfortable and uncertain. She tensed when he put his arm around her, pulling her to him. “I know things between us have been a little rough,” he said, “but they’re gonna get better. Okay?”
“Okay,” she replied, still wanting out of Slick’s hold. She knew he was only trying to do something nice and sweet, but she didn’t want anyone holding her right now. The only person she wanted to hold her was Michael, and she doubted he wanted to after what she’d done.
“I’m sorry, too,” Maria told him. “For calling the police. I didn’t mean for them to find out anything about us.”
“They didn’t find out anything,” Slick told her. “They were focused up in your room, and you don’t have any drugs or weapons up here.”
Maria felt relieved. At least she wasn’t going to be responsible for the downfall of BlackCon.
“We’re all goin’ to get some breakfast at Julio’s,” Slick told her. “You think you wanna come?”
“Yes,” she said immediately. She didn’t want to be here alone. “I’ll get changed real quick, okay, and then I’ll be down.”
He nodded in agreement and left her alone to change.
Maria really felt like being alone that day, like not having to talk to anyone or deal with anything, but she knew she couldn’t stay in that house alone. He would come back and find her, and Michael would not be there to protect her this time.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
For four days, Maria surrounded herself with people but was still very alone. For four days, she pretended that she was okay and cried in the shower so that no one would hear her. For four days, she didn’t sleep at all because she was afraid to. For four days, she made sure that she was never left alone, and for four days, she wondered about Michael. She thought about going to see him, but she never did. She was sure he would hate her for being so weak.
One evening, she was laying up in her room. One minute, she was looking at her brand new mirror, thinking of how the last one was shattered, and the next minute, her eyes were drifting closed before she could do anything about it. She was so tired.
She woke up a short time later and sat up straight in her bed. She listened, but she heard no noise.
Why was there no noise? Why couldn’t she hear laughing from downstairs and talking in the hallway? She always heard noise. Why was there no noise now?
Maria sprang out of bed and ran out her door. She looked back and forth down the hallway. No one. She ran into Slick’s bedroom. “Slick!” she called. “Slick!” He wasn’t there. She ran into Liz’s bedroom, calling for her. She wasn’t there, either. Kyle and Alex were gone. Everyone was gone.
Maria ran down the stairs so fast that she almost tripped and fell. She searched the kitchen and the living room. She tore through every closet, and, still, she found nothing. Worst of all, she checked the front door and found that it wasn’t locked. Anyone could be inside. Her father could . . .
Maria started back up the stairs, but she turned back around and headed back downstairs before she made it to the top. Her father would go looking for her in her room. He would know where to find her.
She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling utterly panicked. She knew she should run out the front door and get out of the house. She knew that was the sensible, reasonable thing to do, but she could hardly get her feet to move in that direction, terrified that if she opened the door, her father would be on the other side waiting for her.
So she continued to tear through the house like this, not getting anywhere. All at once, though, she felt two hands on her shoulders. She spun around to face her attacker, her breath catching and her fear skyrocketing.
She saw Michael.
He stared down at her with his comforting brown eyes and held onto her with his warm hands, and she couldn’t even speak for a moment. She stared up at him as her fear disintegrated, taking in the fact that he was standing in front of her. He was really there. His wounds were healing and he was standing and he was there . . .
“Michael?” she whispered in a question. She wasn’t even sure if it was him. Maybe he was just a figment of her imagination.
Suddenly, he pulled her to him and she flung her arms around him, holding onto him as tightly as she could. He was real. Nothing imagined and conjured could feel this right.
He pulled away after a long time and took her hand in his. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go upstairs.”
They went to her room. When Michael stepped inside, he didn’t even take a look at the blood stain on the carpet. He seemed completely comfortable and at ease. It was so Michael-like. He was so strong about everything.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Maria told him, closing her door. Right now, Michael was the only person in the world she would feel comfortable with in a room with the door closed.
“You wanna tell me why you were tearing through the house like a maniac?” he asked her right away. “You looked pretty scared.”
“No, I wasn’t scared,” she said, letting go of his hand. She sat down on the bed, and he stood by the door. She let out a deep sigh and admitted everything to him that she hadn’t been able to admit to anyone else for four long days. “I was terrified.” She looked at the stain on the carpet. “I’ve been terrified ever since that night.”
“I would think so.”
Maria took in a shaky breath, on the verge of tears. “The police didn’t get him,” she told Michael. “I called them too late, or they arrived here too late or something, because he was gone, and they haven’t found him yet. And I am terrified that he’s gonna come back.”
“He won’t come back.” Michael sounded so sure.
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can. He knows now that, not only does he have me to deal with, he’s gotta deal with you, too. That was pretty good how you just smashed that lamp over his head like that.”
Maria smiled a little bit. She’d forgotten what it felt like to smile. Leave it to Michael to make her feel at least a little happy, though. He’d been back in her life for all of two minutes, and things were already starting to feel a little better.
“How are you doing?” she asked him, standing up. “You’re the one who had a knife in his gut.”
Michael shrugged and stepped closer to her. “I’m okay,” he said. “I heal fast, so it’s not that bad.”
Maria knew that a stab wound could not be considered something that wasn’t that bad. “Can I see?” she asked him.
Slowly, Michael lifted the bottom of his shirt up to reveal a long and jagged scar on his stomach. She reached out and touched it gently and felt guilt rising up inside of her when she looked at it.
“I’m scarred,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
Maria gazed into his eyes and lifted up the bottom of her sweatshirt to reveal the scar on her own stomach. “So am I.”
Michael gazed at her scar and reached out to trace it with his fingers as well. “I did that,” he said.
She immediately regretted showing him that, reminding him of what he’d once been like. “That was a long time ago.”
He shook his head. “No, it wasn’t.”
Maria pulled her shirt back down, covering the scar on her stomach. Michael did the same, but that didn’t hide the fact that it was still there. “It is my fault, Michael,” she told him, “that you got hurt.”
He gave her a confused look. “What?”
“I know I was the victim. But that’s the problem. I’m always the victim, the poor, pitiful victim who can’t protect herself.”
“Maria . . .”
“I hurt you,” she told him simply, letting her gaze drop to the floor. She knew it was her father who had put that knife through him, but that didn’t change anything.
He stepped closer to her and placed his hand on her cheek, forcing her to look into his eyes. “You could never hurt me.”
She stared into his eyes, and she let all of her emotions just poor out. She let herself cry in front of him again, because he was the only person who would understand her tears. “I hate feeling like this,” she sobbed.
“Like what?” he asked, wiping away her tears with his thumb.
“Like, I don’t know, like confused,” she answered, running her hands through her hair. “Like confused and angry and guilty all at the same time.” She went and sat back down on her bed again, trying to collect herself. She didn’t want Michael to see her like this, but she couldn’t help it.
“I was so happy,” she said. “Just a few days ago, I was so happy, Michael. Things were going really good for me, and I was just starting to feel a little like a normal seventeen year old girl when my dad comes back, and now I’m terrified of every single thing, and I can’t sleep, and I can’t stop crying, and I just wanna be happy again.” Her tears fell harder and faster, and Michael sat down beside her, putting his arm around her and pulling her in to rest her head on his shoulder.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered in her ear. “I promise you, it’s gonna be okay.”
“I hate him!” she shouted, gripping onto his shoulder a little harder than she should have. “I hate him so much!”
Michael buried one of his hands in her hair and rested his chin on top of her head. “I know you do,” he said. “It’ll be okay.”
Maria felt her tears diminishing and her sadness dying off as Michael held her. Just being in his arms made her feel better. It was the only place on earth she wanted to be. “How can you be so strong?” she asked him. “How can you keep going?”
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “I guess I kind of feel like I have to.”
Maria took in a shaky breath as the last of her tears fell. “Well, I’m done being weak. I’m gonna be strong now, too.” She pulled away from him a little and sat up straight, looking into his eyes. “And I’m gonna be happy again.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Anytime you want, we can just go away.”
“Away,” she echoed, gazing into his eyes. “I love away.” As she spoke, the realization dawned on her that she wasn’t just talking about some place, some place that wasn’t BlackCon. She was talking about Michael, because, when she was with him, he always managed to take her away. Michael was away, and she loved away.
She loved Michael.
“You look tired,” he commented.
“I am. I haven’t slept, really. I’ve been too scared.”
Michael placed a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. “You should sleep.”
She nodded, never breaking eye-contact. “I know.”
He glanced towards the door and then back at her. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No!” she almost shouted. “No, please, stay.” She grabbed onto his hands, holding them within her own. “Could you just stay and hold me until I fall asleep?”
He nodded his silent agreement and stood up, pulling back the covers so that she could get in. He walked on over to the other side of the bed and crawled in behind her, wrapping his hands around her waist and pulling her closer to him. She turned around in his arms and snuggled deep into him, breathing in his scent as a familiar but recently lost feeling of comfort overtook her, a feeling that she only felt when she was with Michael.
LOVE IS MICHAEL AND MARIA.