Forever Now (Forever - Book 1) (6 page)

“West Side Story,” I said. “He’s Chino.”

“He?” Dahlia asked me, grinning madly, as if I had told her I was having an affair with Liam Hemsworth. “Your boyfriend?”

“Yes,” was on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to lie to her, play out all my fantasies about Cruz.
Yes, he’s my boyfriend. We’re passionately in love, and he wants to marry me
, I wanted to say. But Dahlia was my best friend, my only friend, and I couldn’t lie to her about Cruz. I could lie about my mother, but not about Cruz.

“Nah, I don’t have a boyfriend. He’s just someone I know,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” she said, winking at me. “Tess and Chino sitting in tree,” she sang.

I giggled. It was the first time someone thought I could have a boyfriend, and it made me feel great.

“K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” she sang even louder.

Everyone was staring now. For the first time in my life, I didn’t care, because it was about Cruz. With him in my life, I felt stronger, more like a whole person.

“I’d go with you,” Dahlia told me as we walked to our next class. “But I have this stupid cheerleading thing. There’s always a party, you know. Hey, if you’re not busy with Chino next week, can you go with me? I would have a lot more fun with you there.”

A cheerleading party.

Me.

It was like she was asking me to go with her to an island of cannibals while I wore a meat suit. Who was I kidding? A cheerleading party was exactly like an island of cannibals, and for sure if I were there, they would treat me like I was wearing a meat suit. I would be eaten alive.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll have to check my schedule.”

I didn’t actually have a schedule. Since I never went anywhere, there wasn’t much need for calendars in my life. But I didn’t want Dahlia to know that cheerleaders terrified me, and I didn’t want her to realize that I was invisible girl at school and that it was total popular-girl suicide to hang out with me.

“No worries,” she said. “And we can get chili cheese fries, after. Did I tell you I got a car? A Toyota Corolla. Not the coolest car in the lot, but my dad promised to paint it purple.”

***

I was covered in baby upchuck. I was also twenty-five dollars richer, so I couldn’t complain too much about the puke. But I needed to change fast out of my barf babysitting clothes in order to catch the bus to go to Cruz’s school or I would miss his play. What to wear to a perfect boy’s play? I didn’t exactly have an I-love-a-perfect-boy wardrobe.  I took a quick shower (picking up Cruz’s wet towels, first), sprayed on some perfume, pulled my hair back in a ponytail and threw on jeans and a turtleneck, even though it was ninety degrees out. I thought about makeup. I did have lip gloss and mascara, but I had only put them on twice before.

I decided not to brave the mascara wand, but I swiped on the gloss, grabbed my bus pass, and locked the door behind me.

I caught the bus just as it reached my corner, but it took longer to get to Cruz’s school than I had anticipated. By the time I arrived, the play had already started, and I had to stand in the back of the auditorium.

Cruz was right. He couldn’t sing or dance or act, but he was the most beautiful boy on stage. There was no way Maria would pick Tony over Chino, I thought. Any girl would pick Chino. Any blind girl would pick Chino.

It was that obvious.

Sure, Tony could act and sing and he looked a lot like Justin Timberlake, but Chino was Cruz. Cruz didn’t even need to say or sing a word. Just standing on stage, he had an electrical magnetism that drew everyone’s attention. He was simply a star.

The play ended in standing ovations and a roar of applause. I moved forward toward the stage with the crowd. It was bedlam with aggressive parents and their cell phone cameras, intent on taking as many pictures of their costume-wearing children as possible.

I wanted to congratulate Cruz, but I couldn’t get near him. He was surrounded by kids and parents trying to get close to him, to touch him, and tell him how wonderful he was. He made the rounds, shaking hands and hugging. He was the most popular member of the cast, most likely the most popular student at the school even though he had only been there about a month.

I stepped closer, and I got an elbow in the side from a girl with a Chanel bag, fake eyelashes, and shorts so short that I could see butt cheeks.

“Excuse me,” she said like she didn’t want me to excuse her at all. “Take a number, Nanook of the North. As if.”

She pushed ahead, managing to get close enough to Cruz to wrap her leg around his and hug him for all he was worth. She whispered something in his ear, and he nodded and grinned, embarrassed.

It was a good time to turn around and catch the next bus back home. Why was I even there? I wasn’t part of Cruz’s crowd. Sure, he lived with me and ate mac and cheese with me, but I was nowhere close to being in his social circle.

He was Bora Bora, and I was Siberia. He was Jay Z, and I was Urkel. His cool factor was off the charts, and my cool factor was minus three.

I turned around and took a step towards the door, when I caught another elbow. I snapped my head around, ready for a fight.

“Hey, where are you going? Was I that bad?” Cruz put his hand on the small of my back and urged me towards the door.

“What? No!” I tried to say, but with his hand on me like that, I’m pretty sure it came out: “Gurgle. Gurgle. Sputter. Gack.”

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “I don’t want to go to this thing alone. You can be my good luck charm.”

“Where?” He held the door open for me, and I stepped through it.

“Neiman Marcus. My interview. If it goes well, I’ll spring for a steak.”

“Steak,” I said. “Yeah, right.”

“A hamburger on the dollar menu, then,” he said.

We took the bus to Fashion Valley mall. Cruz seemed to have forgotten that he had just been in a play and got a standing ovation. He seemed to forget, too, that he was officially a high school dropout. One minute he was the center of attention and the next minute he was alone on a bus with me.

“Are you nervous about your interview?” I asked him.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I hope I get it,” he said. “But I was told it’s kind of a sure thing. It’s just until, you know, I become a model.”

“I think you’ll be a great model,” I said.

“You do?”

“Yes.” Duh. He was a walking magazine ad. Didn’t he realize that?

***

I had never been to Neiman Marcus before. There was no reason to. I couldn’t afford anything in the store. Also, I couldn’t fit in anything in the store.

Neiman Marcus was a department store for very, very rich, skinny people. Their customer base was Miley Cyrus or nothing.

“Holy cow,” I said. I was looking straight up at the crystal chandeliers. My mouth had dropped open, and I had stopped blinking. “Talk about hoity-toity. This place is Versailles.”

“What’s Versailles?” Cruz asked. “Never mind. How do I look?”

He wore tight jeans, shiny shoes, and a button-down shirt. He was breathtaking, of course.

“Perfect,” I said.

“Do I fit in? Would you buy men’s cologne from me?”

I would have bought fermented cheese from him. I would have bought a barbed-wire bra from him. He was going to get really rich from commissions.

“I think so,” I said.

He looked over at the men’s cologne department. “I see her,” he told me. “Stay around here. I’ll come back after the interview, and we’ll go for our hamburger.”

I watched him head towards the cologne, and I milled about, looking at price tags. Holy smokes, who could imagine skinny jeans could cost twelve-hundred dollars? Were they made of diamonds?

“May I help you?” Elvira the vampire lady, dressed all in black from her head to her toes was giving me the stink eye. Her “may I help you” was really “what the hell are you doing here?”

“Just browsing,” I said.

She arched her eyebrow and sniffed.

“Perhaps I can help with your browsing. Perhaps I could suggest JCPenny. It’s at the other end of the mall.”

Usually—I mean for my entire life—her attitude would make me say, “I’m sorry” and run out of the store with my tail between my legs. But like
Alien,
something had wormed its way into me and had started to transform me. I don’t know if it was the fact that I had come there with a gorgeous boy who was going to get a hamburger with me after, or if it was the fact that I had a new friend, who was crazy and fun and popular, too.

Whatever the cause, I didn’t run away from Elvira, the vampire saleslady. Instead, I took the diamond skinny jeans off the rack and handed them to her.

“I think I’ll try this on,” I said with a slight English accent to make me sound Neiman Marcus snobby. “Start a dressing room for me, will you?”

Our eyes locked, like we were having a staring match. I had never had a staring match before, but I was sure I wouldn’t blink. There was no way I was going to let Elvira win. Obviously, I wasn’t going to buy the jeans. Even if I sold our house—if we owned it and didn’t rent it—I couldn’t have afforded the jeans. Besides that, I couldn’t fit my arm into it, let alone a leg.

But I wasn’t going to let Elvira know that. So I didn’t blink. I didn’t back down.

After what seemed like hours, she took the jeans from me. “Fine. I’ll set that right up,” she said, smiling. She turned on her high heel and walked away.

I broke out in a huge sweat, and I wiped my forehead with my sleeve. I thought I had better leave well enough alone and snuck out of Elvira’s department to make my way to the men’s cologne department. I wasn’t going to bother Cruz during his interview, but I didn’t think a little spying would be so bad. And I wanted to get as far away from Elvira as possible.

I found Cruz pretty quickly. He stood at the counter, speaking to an older lady, who stood on the other side of the counter, dressed all in black with long blond hair and a lot of makeup. Her face didn’t move when she talked, and she was the one doing all the talking.

Her lips were colored a deep red. Every few seconds, she would touch Cruz, as if she was punctuating her sentences. She touched his hand, then his arm, then his shoulder, and finally, she caressed his cheek with a long, pointy fingernail. It was more than flirting. It was possession.

It was: You get naked with me, and I’ll give you a job. It was wrong and unfair.

I shivered.

Suddenly, everything was clear. Suddenly, I understood what was really going on. I didn’t need to read Cruz’s mind. He didn’t have to tell me a thing. I knew how much the job meant to him, how much he felt he needed it.

I also knew he could spend months sleeping on friends’ couches. That way, he wouldn’t have to worry about paying for electricity, water, or anything. But that wouldn’t help
me
. I would need help, need someone to help take care of me, and so, here he was, standing stock still, listening intently to the old woman whose face didn’t move.

And he was nodding. He was telling her, yes.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to shout out to him to stop. But I didn’t. Something told me deep inside that I would humiliate him if I let him know that I knew what was happening. I didn’t want to embarrass him, especially now that I knew just how good he was.

I hovered over the belts, pretending to be fascinated by buckles, while I spied on Cruz out of the corner of my eye. The interview only took a few minutes, and then Cruz walked over to me.

“I’m going to have to take a rain check on our hamburger,” he said, studying the belts with more than normal curiosity. In fact, he wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just that the interview is going to continue—you know—when she’s done working.”

“Oh,” I said, checking out the belts, again. “No problem. I’ll catch a bus back.”

We didn’t say goodbye. We didn’t look at each other. There was an undercurrent of understanding between us, but we didn’t speak it out loud.

Going home on the bus at night alone was a dicey prospect. I sat up close to the bus driver, but that didn’t stop a guy in a knit cap and face tattoos from telling me I was pretty and that he liked my boobs.

I longed for a car of my own so I wouldn’t have to risk getting raped, kidnapped, or murdered on a bus at night. I longed for Mace, the tattoo guy, to leave me alone. I longed for Cruz to keep me company.

I didn’t long for a hamburger, though. I had lost my appetite.

***

I lay wide-awake in bed until two in the morning when I heard the front door finally open. I heard Cruz’s soft footsteps as he climbed the stairs and went directly into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

I waited in the dark of my bedroom for what seemed like forever. He was taking the world’s longest shower. Finally, the water was turned off, and then I heard it: a soft whimpering like a puppy or a wounded child.

I got out of bed and knocked on the bathroom door.

“Cruz, are you okay?” I asked.

No answer. The whimpering stopped, though.

“I’m coming in,” I announced through the door. “So, don’t be naked.”

I slowly turned the doorknob and opened the door. Inside, the bathroom was filled with steam. After it cleared slightly, I could make out Cruz’s form, sitting on the floor in the corner against the bathtub, wrapped in a towel, his head in his hands.

I sat on the floor next to him and pulled his head down to rest on my shoulder. I touched his arm, just a slight caress to calm him and make him feel better.

“I got the job,” he said. “Twenty-five hours a week.”

“That’s great,” I said.

He was quiet a long time, seemingly content to sit like that, his head on my shoulder, my hand on his arm.

“I had to go to her place.” He spoke so quietly, I wasn’t sure that he had actually spoken or if I had imagined it. But now I understood him, that he was as scared as I was, that the world was terrifying and hard, even for a perfectly beautiful boy who would probably become a famous model.

And I understood even more than that about Cruz. But it wasn’t something I could vocalize or even write down.