Taming Cross (Love Inc.) (2 page)

It wasn't always like this—things so complicated between Lizzy, Suri, and I. For years Suri's parents called us the Three Musketeers, and we were friends. Just friends. I fucked it up first by getting a hard-on for Lizzy. Then Lizzy met Hunter West, they got engaged, and I put a cap on my feelings. Around the same time, Suri and her fiancé, Adam, had a messy split, and I was laid up in rehab, still half dead. I think Suri needed the distraction of me. I’m not gonna lie: I love her for it. I will always love her for it. But I don't love
this
. The expectation.

What the hell does she want?

I'm looking into her eyes, trying to think of something funny to make her smile, when Suri leans in and puts her palm on my chest.

“Cross,” she murmurs, looking earnestly up at me as her fingers move slowly over my shirt. “Did I do something wrong?”

I blink down at her. “No.”
Yes
—and this is it! I look at her hand on my chest and think about how wrong it is: the way I'm thinking about her tits, freed from her bra, squeezed by my fingers. The way some wicked part of me knows,
I could fuck her if I really tried
.

And damnit, wouldn't I like to?

I can't jerk off anymore—not since the crash. At first I thought it was the stroke or something messing with my junk, but then I went to Marchant's perv ranch and some chick named Loveless got me off in less than twenty seconds, so I know it's not the hardware. When I'm alone it's just...not happening. But when I'm with someone like Suri...

Gritting my teeth, I move her hand off my chest. I lay my right hand over her shoulder, looking into her eyes again, like maybe mine will tell this story for me. Her frown deepens and I clench my jaw.
C'mon, asshole, grow some balls.

“Suri,” I say, my voice dipping low and deep, “be careful how you touch me.” When her frown deepens, I heave a big breath. “Doing something stupid with you is the last thing I would want.” I swallow, feeling like that shell-less turtle again. “You're one of my best friends. I just want to be careful...”

Her hazel eyes are large and earnest. “You’re worried I might get hurt?”

I nod. “I'm…uh…I’m used to a lot of no strings sex. The problem is, right now, I'm not ready for anything...serious. Anything at all,” I add. “And Suri, you're hot.” It's just, it's all friendship and friendship boners. I don't want Suri in that way.

Suri's nodding like she's getting it, and I'm so relieved I feel like laughing. Then she wraps her arm around my neck, leans in close enough to kiss me, and lifts her delicate hand to stroke my cheek. My dick betrays me as she mashes her breasts against me.

“There's nothing to worry about, Cross. I know you can't make promises...and that's okay with me. What I feel for you—” She looks into my eyes. “What I feel for you is unexpected, but I love it.”

My lungs stop, mid-breath.
What?

Suri takes my hand and tugs me over to the bed. I follow mostly because I don't know what else to do. When she pushes me down onto my back, I let her climb on top of me. Because I'm a bastard and my cock is cheering like a Red Sox fan in 2004. Because it feels so good to have a woman's body hugging mine after so long without.

Then she leans down, cloaking me in the curtain of her hair, and she kisses me like I never thought Suri would kiss. Holy blueballs, I can't help but kiss her back! I squeeze her hip and grab her ass. I try to grab her ass. Both arms raise, both hands move to cup her taut ass-cheeks. But as my right hand grabs her through her silky dress, my left just hangs from my arm—dead weight.

That's all it takes to break the sex spell Suri has on me. I blink up at her, and the wrongness of it hits me even harder.

“
Suri.”
I'm panting as I crawl back toward the headboard. She crawls after me, but when she gets close enough that I can smell that damned perfume, I hold my right hand up. “Suri...”

Her lips part, and it's weird as hell to see her like this—like a vixen. She scoots a little closer, and my cock throbs painfully against my slacks.

“I told you Cross, I don't care about the details. I just...” She makes a funny little face—her shy face—but it's quickly transformed into something surer, something fierce. “I just want you, Cross. Is that really a bad thing?”

Jesus Christ.

I push myself up on my elbows, trying to think past the throbbing in my pants. “Suri, I'm not saying that it's
bad
.” I flick my right hand at her. “Look at you. You're gorgeous. Any man would want, you know. I'm a man, Suri, so yeah, I want to fuck you upside down and sideways. But you're my friend.”

I clench my jaw, because I’m imagining the upside down and sideways, but the fantasy disintegrates as I watch her eyes fill with tears. Somewhere in the last few months, Suri got a thing for
me
.

Lizzy tried to tell me once, but I didn’t take it seriously. Now I really wish I had.

Surri tucks her chin, looking down at the blankets, and I can see her lip tremble. I feel awful, so I reach for her. She crawls off the bed and steps back, toward the bathroom, and I feel slightly dizzy as I think,
I knew this night would suck.

How the fuck did this happen?
It doesn't matter, Cross. Just deal with it.

I get up off the bed and grab her hand. “Suri, you're my best friend. You and Lizzy.” She won't look at me, but that doesn't mean I'm going to quit talking. “But that's all that it should be. Do you think I want you to be just another fuck?” Her eyes widen, and she tries to jerk away, but I tighten my grip on her wrist and hold her gaze. “That's just it—you
wouldn't
be. But I'm not ready for this, Suri. It would be bad. It would end up being bad for
you
.”

Her gaze flicks up to mine. Her eyes are red and wet. “I don't know how I read this all so wrong.”

I grit my teeth. I don't know how, either. “I love you, Sur, you know I do, but we're friends first.”

More tears drip down her cheeks as her chin trembles, and I feel like a steaming pile of dog shit. “You want to be more with Lizzy,” she whispers.

“I don’t,” I grit my teeth as my heart pounds. It’s true, I got distracted by Lizzy a few months back, but that’s long over. “I don’t want anything with Lizzy.”

She shakes her head, then turns on her heel and marches into the bathroom.

For the next few minutes, I stand by the door, feeling helpless and heartless and frustrated. I consider knocking, but I can hear her sniffing and I wonder if she'd rather have her privacy. I rub my neck, which is still too tight.

I'm mulling that one over when I hear the door creak, and Suri steps out, looking calm and gathered. I reach for her hand, touching it for a moment before she draws away.

“Suri, I'm really fucking sorry.”

She holds up both hands. “I know, Cross. And it will be okay. I still want to go with you tonight, just as a friend. You really shouldn't have to face the firing squad alone.”

I shouldn't face the firing squad at all, but I’ve got things to settle with my dad. “I appreciate it. You'll never know how much. But I think it would be better if you just go home tonight. We'll talk tomorrow.”

I can see the moment that her eyes go cold. The moment that I lose a friend—just as surely as I lost Lizzy to Hunter. “Okay.” Her lips press flat. “Whatever you want.”

She walks briskly from the room, and I can't think of anything to stop her.

CHAPTER TWO

If you've never eaten ant eggs, you haven't lived. You only think I'm kidding. They taste...buttery. Buttery and crunchy and almost the texture of a boiled peanut. For not the first time, as I sit at one of the ragged picnic tables inside our little cafeteria, I think about Alec, the self-styled food critic who wrote columns for my college's newspaper. His favorite word to use in conversation was 'copious'. He broke his leg junior year, and for weeks afterward, Alec was laid up in his king-sized love nest, reviewing take-out food. Copious amounts of pepperoni pizza and greasy burgers. I smile a little at the memory. Like so many things from my past, it seems light years away from day-to-day life at St. Catherine's Clinic for Sick and Needy Children.

It's a weird place. Most of the time I'm here, taking care of children in this poverty-stricken Mexican neighborhood, nothing else exists. That includes memories.

I finish my rice and chicken, topped with the ant eggs that were a gift from
Señora
 
Maria, the mother of a little boy with cystic fibrosis. Victor's family has more money than most we see, which is probably the only reason he's alive today, at three. He had a rough winter, with a long hospitalization during which I couldn't give him any of his favorite ‘
pequeño
Victor’ back rubs.

Those are the worst times, I think as I walk my empty bowl over to a row of garbage cans with tubs for dirty dishes on the top. The times when the kids I love the most stop coming here for one reason or another, and I can't go visit them. Some of the nuns do house calls, but I can't. I can't ever leave St. Catherine's Clinic.

A lot of times, it’s not so bad. The building is short but wide, with several different areas so when I pass from, say, the clinic quadrant into the living quarters, I feel like I’m going somewhere. But I’m not. When I think of how long it’s been since I felt the sun on my skin, since I cranked up the music as I sped down an empty highway… Since I browsed the internet or read a book I chose for myself or got my hair done at a salon… I kind of want to scream. Okay, I do scream. Sometimes at night, I scream into my pillow. Then I remind myself I’m lucky. My story could have had a harsher ending. Actually, it probably should have. This life I have here, with the sisters, with the kids…it’s a fairy tale, compared to what could have been.

I place my metal spork atop the nearest trash can, in a little plastic bin of silverware to-be-done, and put my bowl in a bin for plates and bowls. I glance up at the clock on the wall over the self-serve bar, where cheap grub rests in brassy bowls that are either kept cold on ice or hot on electric plates. It's almost four o'clock, which means I have one more client before the day winds down and I prepare for evening prayers. I glance at one of the big, vertical windows that span one side of the room, wondering how hot it is outside right now. Wishing I could smell the sun-steamed grass.

I don't peer out the windows or even step close to them. Instead I head into the dingy, one-stall bathroom with its meager supply of toilet paper and take the three squares allotted for each use. When I first took refuge at the clinic—which is located in the same building as St. Catherine’s Convent, just inside the city limits of Guadalupe Victoria—I was appalled by the scarcity of supplies, but after more than half a year, I've learned how to make it work. As I do my business, I wonder how many squares I'd allow myself to use for a 'number one' if I were to make it back into the States. Maybe four, I decide. Anything more than that would probably feel wasteful. I wash my hands, and as I dry them on a rough rag, I tell myself to be thankful for what I have. Even if I never make it back to the U.S., I have a good life here.

You can’t be grateful and bitter at the same time. So says Sister Mary Carolina. So what am I grateful for? I stare at myself in the mirror, ticking things off inside my head. I’ve been blessed to learn massage therapy from Sister Mary. I’ve been able to make a difference in the lives of children. And, almost more importantly, I’m accepted here. Cherished, even. Which is so much more than I expected when I arrived.

I'm smiling as I step back into the empty cafeteria, already looking forward to my session with little Alexandria Perez, a one-year-old with a severe case of congenital torticollis. I'm passing by the garbage cans, glancing toward he windows, when I see a mirage from my past: Juan and Emanuel, eleven and twelve year olds the last time I saw them. What the heck are they doing here in Guadalupe Victoria.

I don't get to ask.

Light engulfs the room, and a sonic boom throws me back toward the wall.

CHAPTER THREE