Forever Innocent Read online

  Chapter 6: Gavin

  The last damn tire was in the bin.

  Mario had already taken off, telling me to call him later if I wanted to shoot some pool. Bud was still inside, closing up.

  My back was screaming, and I stretched my arms high in the air, trying to head off a cramp. I wouldn’t need to work out tonight, and I’d be hurting tomorrow. But it felt good.

  Bud waited inside the back door. “Brace yourself for a lecture,” he said as he flipped the lock.

  Great. I passed on by him to head to the tiny break room, just a little closet where we had a fridge and a sink. I yanked a bottle of water from inside and chugged the whole thing in one long gulp. Bud had mostly been hands off as a boss. He brought me on two years ago when I was flat busted and going to have to drop out of school.

  I’d been hauling groceries but my car had crapped out and I couldn’t afford the parts. I sold the Camaro early on to pay for my first year of school, replacing it with junkers, but I’d run slowly in the hole with college expenses. Mario and I knew each other from the pool hall, being about matched for skill, and won money off each other at an even clip. He brought me to Bud, who hired me to rotate tires and change oil for twice the pay I earned as a sacker.

  Bud filled the doorway, stinking of grease and sweat and a long day.

  “So you gonna tell me to stay in school?” I asked.

  He wiped his hands on a rag, slowly, with deliberation. “I know you got a shit dad.”

  I exhaled in a rush. “Who the hell thinks that?”

  “Nobody had to say it. I can see it. Chip on your shoulder as big as my dick.”

  I snorted. He had a way with words, that Bud. “So you’re stepping in?”

  “Don’t get smart with me.” He pointed a finger at my nose with an intensity I’d never seen in him. “I got a boy at home.”

  “I didn’t know you had a son.”

  “Don’t talk about him much.” He fumbled in his overalls and pulled out a wallet. Like me, he had a single picture in the center. The boy in the shot was a man, full grown, but with a kid quality to him. His eyebrows were high in the air, like he was surprised, and his goofy grin was infectious.

  “He’s all grown, but he lives with me still. Thirty now, but his mind…” He pointed at his forehead. “His mind is like he’s about five.”

  I looked down at the picture again. I could see it.

  “Marci and me, bless her soul, we only had the one.” He turned the photo around. “Never could seem to get her pregnant again.” He tucked the wallet in his pocket. “Don’t get me wrong, Andy is enough. And now that she’s gone, I’m glad he’s with me. Gives me something to come home to.”

  I leaned on the fridge, staring at a big scratch across the freezer door. I wasn’t sure about his point, but I had a feeling it was coming.

  “What I’m saying is that if you’ve got the opportunity, you take it.” He cleared his throat. “When I hired you, you wanted your degree. You needed a job that got you the extra to get you through. I know you ain’t got nobody to fall back on. So don’t throw away what opportunity God gave you, ’cause the Big Guy don’t go around giving it to everybody.”

  He turned away and stormed across the empty bays.

  I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the cool fridge. I couldn’t tell how much of what Bud said was blowing smoke and how much he meant business. Maybe I could find some other way. I mean, if Corabelle was dropping astronomy, then that would be fine. I just had to make sure I didn’t run into her anywhere else. Lie low. Eyes to the ground.

  We were adults. We could do this. It was just the shock of it, seeing each other again after all those years.

  I pushed away and headed to the time clock to punch out. Bud was sitting at his desk by the front window, locking up the register.

  He turned to me as I passed through. “You all right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You going to give me your schedule so I can work you in?”

  I unlocked the door and pushed it open. “I’ll bring it tomorrow.”

  “Good.” He stood up to lock the door behind me.

  The gravel crunched beneath my boots as I headed toward my Harley, the only transportation I could manage these days, gas being what it was. Mario had found the body as a junker and I worked on the parts, building it piece by piece. I wondered if Corabelle had ever ridden a motorcycle, if she had had a chance in the intervening years.

  The motor vibrated between my legs as the Harley roared to life. Something unfurled in me, coming down like I’d been coiled up. Staying in school was the right thing to do. Bud was right. I’d make it work.

  •*´`*•*´`*•

  I wasn’t particularly looking forward to Wednesday and astronomy class. My Harley cornered hard as I circled into my usual spot. Students needed to wise up to bikes. Way easier to park and no buses or schedules to worry with.

  A girl smiled at me, holding a couple books to her chest, long blond hair flowing down her back. I yanked off my helmet and dropped it in the saddlebag. Chicks and bikes. Secondary benefit, although not one I availed myself of, at least not with girls like her. I had no use for them. No matter how much precaution you took, things could go south. I had very precise taste in women these days, and sweet sorority girls didn’t qualify.

  As I secured the bag, Corabelle flashed back into my memory, her hair across a pillow. We lived together for two months, two sweet damn months, once we figured out we were staying in New Mexico to raise the baby. We had a little apartment, and hell, the whole town was helping us out. Low rent, used furniture. And I had her all to myself, all the time.

  We had this back window in the bedroom, big as the wall and no curtains, since it faced a crazy tall fence and nobody nowhere could see in. In the mornings, light would stream in. I’d wake Corabelle up for school, give her a glass of water, and a cracker if she was feeling queasy, but by then she was better, not as sick.

  Some mornings, she would look at me a certain way, and I’d know she was feeling all right, and I’d kiss her, and that connection would just charge through us like the sun blasting across the bed. It all got tied up together, loving on her and the beams of light on her hair, the swell of her belly and having all her skin to touch and look at. Mine. She’d been mine. We’d been crazy with it.

  Enough.

  I slung my pack over my shoulder and shoved sunglasses on my face. Keep it down. Even if she had dropped my class, she probably was walking to some other morning course. Seeing her would not improve my mood.

  The jaunt to the engineering hall was mercifully short. I skipped the stairwell where we talked two days ago and hustled all the way to the other end of the building. Then I realized I was being stupid and went back down the hall, opened the damn door, and went up the damn stairs. I was acting like a sentimental ten-year-old girl, and I knew what they were like. My little sister had been ten when I took off.

  My jaw tightened as I passed the spot where I caught Corabelle on the rail. She felt so different, lean and strong. The last months we’d been together she’d been pregnant. I’d forgotten her body.

  Like hell I had.

  The door yielded to my shove and swung open with another slam. At least there weren’t any moon-eyed girls this time. The classroom door was propped open, so I headed in and plunked down at the end of a center row.

  “I don’t think that one’s yours,” a girl said, raising her eyebrows at my sunglasses.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We got assigned seats by the TAs.”

  Shit. I stood up and looked around. Students dotted random chairs. Up at the podium, one of the TAs pointed a guy to a row. She must have the chart.

  I strode up to her and yanked off my sunglasses. “Mays,” I barked.

  She jumped a little. “What?”

  “Mays. Where do I sit?”

  Her face bloomed red as she consulted the page. “Fifth row, tenth seat.”

  I turned
away to head back, but then stopped. Corabelle was in the doorway, watching me with anger and disgust. My fist clenched, then relaxed, then clenched again. She’d seen me acting like an asshole. Whatever. I’m sure it made ditching me easier.

  She took tentative steps along the back aisle, and I could see in her face how much she didn’t want to be here. I guessed she wasn’t able to drop the class. Didn’t surprise me really. Of all the years I’d been enrolled at UCSD, this one had been the worst in terms of getting the classes I requested.

  I sank into my seat, unable to take my eyes off her. So much for lying low. She seemed a little lost, but some girl with pink hair pointed her toward the podium. Corabelle took the long way around to the other side of the room rather than pass me again. She asked the blond TA about her seat.

  The pink chick watched me with distrust the whole time. I figured she had to be a friend of hers. She held that stare so long that I finally waved.

  Corabelle looked at my row, and I realized we were going to be close to each other. My last name and Corabelle’s were only six letters apart, and in our hometown, we often were seated close together in school. With barely a hundred people in the class, I wasn’t surprised when she ended up just a few seats down.

  She didn’t look at me, and I knew I had to stop staring. I shoved my sunglasses back on my face, not caring if it made me look emo or that the room was really too dark to see.

  The professor came in and powered on the projectors. Students began piling through the door, wandering around, some forgetting exactly where they sat and having to shift around. The girl with the chart straightened everyone out. It looked to be the way she was taking roll, also typical. My enthusiasm for the class was all but gone.

  Robert, the TA for my group, went up to the girl TA and they compared lists to the chart. Robert crossed a name off his list and the girl wrote it on hers. That gave me an idea. If I told Robert I had to work on Thursdays, maybe he’d put me in another group. That way, Corabelle and I would only have to suffer being near each other during lectures. And who knows, maybe I could skip half of them and still pull a decent grade. It would be a lot easier going to the star parties knowing I wouldn’t have to be up there with her.

  I’d catch up with the TA after class and make that happen.

  Chapter 7: Corabelle

  I tied my Cool Beans apron around my waist and yanked my hair into a serviceable ponytail. With a year’s worth of seniority, which at a coffee shop was plenty, I’d been able to take off the first two days of class, but now work beckoned.

  Jenny dumped the tip jar onto one of the tables, sorting through the change to trade for paper. “I forgot how cheap the students were.”

  I nodded, snagging the empty tip jar on my way to the counter. “We’re bottom-feeders.”

  The shop was mostly empty, just a couple students with noise-canceling headphones working on laptops in the corners. One of them was a big-time regular, a clearly impoverished student who always bought one tea bag then asked for so many mugs of hot water that he had to be drinking nothing but wet sugar in the end. A couple of my coworkers teased me about him, saying he only came for me, but I didn’t see it. He always ordered, then asked for more water, and that was it. Not like it mattered. Dating was out, and with Gavin around, I’d be way too riled up to pay attention to anyone else.

  Jenny came up behind me to the register, dumping in a pile of pennies. “First star party is tonight! You ready?”

  “I’ll have to bust my butt to get there.” Now that my labs were on Wednesday, I had to take morning classes, put in my afternoon shift, and race back to campus. “Thank goodness it’s only every other week.”

  “Tomorrow is my date with destiny and the lumberjack.” Jenny braced her elbows on the counter.

  “You mean Robert?”

  “I like him better as the lumberjack.” She stared up at the ceiling. “I like to think beneath those plaid sleeves lies raw muscle.”

  Hardly. I had more bulk than that boy. But it was Jenny’s dream. “Did you break it off with hipster dude?”

  Jenny popped up and untied her apron. “No way. Never jump ship until you have a lifeboat.”

  I dropped some change into the empty tip jar to get it started. “Jenny’s life axioms. They are my favorite thing about you, you know.”

  She stuffed her apron in the cabinet below the register. “Good. ‘Cuz I’ve got a million of ‘em. Are you excited? Tonight you will be at one of the most romantic spots in San Diego, on top of a building overlooking the ocean, gazing at the stars.”

  “If we can even see them in the city.”

  Jenny shoved me playfully. “Can’t you be romantic for at least a minute?”

  “You wouldn’t want me romantic. I’d steal all your men.”

  “As if!” Jenny laughed, then sobered. “Actually, maybe I do like you because you are a safe wingman. You never look at them.” She snatched her purse from the cabinet and slammed it shut. “You HAVE to call me and tell me what it’s like up there. I’ll want to know exactly how to dress.”

  “Lumberjack will be busy, you know. Instructing.” I sorted through the customer numbers on little wire stands, organizing them into neat lines.

  “I’ll make sure he notices me.” She headed for the door. “You better text me!”

  The shop seemed quieter after she left, less colorful and bright. I didn’t think I ever lit up a room quite like Jenny could. I sank onto a stool, knowing I should get to the tasks I had to perform before a rush hit, but really, for the first time, I let it sink in that I was still in class with Gavin.

  He looked so different with his sunglasses and black clothes. He’d changed since high school, no doubt. I didn’t know him anymore.

  Tea-bag boy got up from his table and brought his empty cup to the counter. “Can I get some more hot water?”

  I nodded, turning with the mug. As the steam curled up toward my face, I wondered if maybe I had been wrong to stay completely away from dating. If I had some other person in my life, Gavin probably wouldn’t have such an impact. This guy seemed normal.

  Smile. Turn around and be nice. Give yourself something else to think about. I picked up the mug and carried it back to the counter. The boy wore a white shirt and cargo shorts. His hair was shaggy and dirty blond, his eyes hazel. When I didn’t let go of the mug, he raised his eyebrows. “You okay?”

  “Sorry. Here you go.” God, I’d messed up already.

  “Thanks.” He took the mug and headed back to his seat.

  Some start. I watched him walk away, a little on the lean side, but intriguing and deep, like he could be an indie musician or maybe someone who wrote dark stories. There was an intensity in him, just below the surface of his laid-back ease.

  He sat down and looked back at me, catching my stare.

  I whirled around. Hell. I was mucking this up something awful. I sat on the stool and began a mindless task, picking up a bottle of syrup for Italian sodas and wiping it down with a damp cloth.

  Fact was, I’d never dated, ever. Gavin was my best friend from before I could remember. We grew up together, and our relationship transitioned from talking about cartoons and games to who was starting to pair off and how far they were going.

  My first kiss had been when I was twelve. We watched Hello, Dolly! and I was full of romantic expectation. I asked Gavin what it must have been like for those couples to kiss, and he hadn’t said a word, but took my hand and led me to my room, then my closet, shutting the door behind us.

  A little light came in through the slats, crossing his face with fine lines. “What are we doing?” I whispered, even though I had known, my belly fluttering.

  He placed a palm against each of my cheeks and leaned in, brushing his lips against mine.

  The closet burst into color like the Fourth of July, sparks flying behind my eyes. I closed them without knowing I should.

  Gavin leaned back. “Do you think we did that right?”

  I put my hands on top
of his and nodded. Something started that day. This happiness I always felt around him changed from something simple to a yearning, and I didn’t know what for.

  But we kept kissing, a lot, more and more. In fact, with that head start, we jumped ahead of the curve for most of the things boys and girls did together.

  “Miss?”

  My head snapped up. Tea-bag boy was back.

  I hopped off the stool and set the syrup bottle down. I had never gotten past the first one.

  “Yes! Can I help you?”

  He didn’t answer right away, and I could see he only came up to talk to me. “I just thought,” he began and looked back at his table, as if it might give him a clue to what he was after, then turned back to me. “You seemed…something.”

  Panic rose in my chest. Jenny and the others had been right about him, and now I’d given him a reason to think I was interested. I had a hard time breathing, and I wondered why I had considered seeing anyone. It had just been too long since I felt this way, this crazy horrifying fear that I might be attracted to someone, that I might rely on them, and that they might just disappear.

  The boy tipped his head. “Are you okay?”

  “I —” Crap. I what? “I have to go turn something off.”

  I raced along the counter and burst through the door to the back room. God, god, god. What was wrong with me? Would I be ruined forever? I leaned against a wall, one hand to my chest. My coworker Jason was supposed to be here, to help. Where was he? I wasn’t up for being out there. I should be doing my setup work in the back.

  My chest had gone all tight. I knew what I should do, breathe slowly and relax, but instead I did the same thing as always and held my breath, making it worse, watching the spots flash in front of my eyes. Everything started going dark and my knees buckled. Without anything blocking my airflow, I knew I’d just sink to the floor, conk my head, and then come back around. I’d done it a thousand times in the last few years. It helped. For a few minutes, I always felt like I knew what it had been like for baby Finn, after the ventilator went off, and his little chest stopped moving up and down —