Charlee shook her head, staring at Hector, her stomach dropping because she knew now where this was going. “No.”
His relieved expression both confirmed it and mortified her, but she dare not show it. “Can we keep it that way?” His eyes met hers, and for a moment, she saw that tenderness she’d seen Friday night, but he glanced away quickly. “I mean I just don’t want things to get weird, you know?” He shrugged, looking back at her with a forced smirk, but his eyes were vacant now—cold. “Shit happens when you’re drinking and not thinking straight. People do things they shouldn’t. That’s all it was. But if you’re cool with it, we can pretend it never happened.”
Not falling apart. Not falling apart.
Feeling the air sucked out of her, she took a moment to gather her wits. As the realization of what he’d just said sunk in, the knots in her stomach unraveled into angry flaying whips. Just like last year, she’d been completely off the mark. Hector was no better than the other jerk who’d humiliated her so callously. Feeling a sudden rebellion like none she’d ever felt, Charlee smiled and began to move because she couldn’t stand there staring into those cold unfeeling eyes for even another second. “Not to worry, Hector. Your party wasn’t the only one I went to last weekend. I’d already forgotten about that.”
That sparked something in those unfeeling eyes, and the smirk he’d worn earlier was wiped clean. She could tell she’d stunned him into silence. Yeah, take that.
“Is that right?” He finally said as he walked alongside her.
She smiled as naturally as she could and fought the urge to stop right there and tell him off, but she didn’t. Instead she glanced at his hardened stare. It was the same one she’d seen last week when she checkmated his ass. Only instead of intimidating her as it had last week, this time it made her feel a little better.
Good. He probably expected her to be mortified or react the way she really wanted to and confirm that she really was different, just like he’d told her that night: different from all the whores he was usually with—prove what he’d obviously figured out that night. That he was the first guy she’d made out with ever. He’d messed with a prissy little virgin who was probably expecting much more from him now than all those other girls. Well, she’d be damned if she’d give him the pleasure. “Yep, I had an exhausting weekend.”
Charlee realized she was overcompensating—being rash. Drew could call it whatever the hell she wanted, but she was done being the martyr. From that moment on as she hurried up the stairs feeling the slow boil in her veins with a silent, brooding, Hector beside her, she vowed never to let heartless jerks bring her down again.
Hector opened the door for her, and she strutted by him, doing her best to ignore the scent of his cologne because the memory it induced nearly choked her. As soon as she entered the lab, she zeroed in on Damian, knowing from experience a game against him would take just as long as she intended on being there: long enough so that it wasn’t too obvious she wanted nothing more than to run out of there and as far away from Hector as she could A.S.A.P., but not too lengthy, because she wasn’t sure how much longer the indifferent act would hold up.
As expected, she played a crap game. It was impossible to concentrate while trying to disguise how she was feeling. Keeping her eyes off Hector hadn’t been difficult. She’d been terrified the entire time to even glance his way. The moment that Damian won, she shook his hand with a smile. “Good game.”
She gathered her things, relieved that she could finally get out of there, and made her way to the door.
“You’re leaving already?” Walter asked curiously.
He was sitting at a table with Hector and two other guys. Charlee allowed herself a quick glance at Hector after smiling and nodding at Walter. The hardened expression from earlier was still plastered on his face and that perfectly defined jaw from his flexing. “Yep,” she said, looking Hector directly in the eyes and continued to smile. “I’m going out, so I gotta go get ready. Have a good one, guys.” She waved at them with her fingers in that playful way she’d seen other girls do and walked out.
As she walked down the stairs of the building, she almost expected him to come after her, but, of course, he didn’t. Feeling the hot tears already burn in her eyes and the boulder-sized knot in her throat swell impossibly bigger, she began walking faster. “Fucking bastard. Fucking bastard!”
With her chest already heaving, even as she tried to hold it all in, Charlee was only grateful now that Fridays were the one day she and Drew always took separate cars. The second she got in the car, Charlee slammed the door shut, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed.
~*~
It took every ounce of self-restraint to not go after her. Hell, it took everything in him to keep his comments about her exhausting weekend to himself. That had to be a lie. Either that or he misunderstood. She could’ve been talking about the Special Olympics thing. She wasn’t that type of girl. He knew this, even if she had very easily given into him that night. It was just kissing. She wouldn’t have let him do more. Would she?
Your party wasn’t the only I went to last weekend. I’d already forgotten about that. “Bullshit,” Hector muttered, fisting his hand on the table. Not a day had gone by since that night that he hadn’t thought about it—thought about her.
“What?” Walter asked, looking up from the chessboard. “That’s a fair move.”
Hector hadn’t even been looking at the board in front of him. He glanced down now, glad to see that in just a few moves Walter would have him. He knew he wouldn’t be in a mood to play before he’d even driven down there, and he certainly wasn’t after talking to Charlee. He moved his rook ignoring Walter’s comment. A few minutes later, the game was over.
“So she’s coming over tomorrow afternoon to check out the robot.” Walter smiled, sitting back in his seat. “I finally perfected it again, and I set up a few things I could do to demonstrate it to her. This should be good.”
Hector stared at him, continuing to grind his teeth like he’d been doing ever since he’d talked to Charlee. She was the last thing he wanted to talk about right now, but he knew this wouldn’t be the case with Walter. She was all he ever wanted to talk about. That’s why all week after Sunday, he kept the workouts with Walter to just that. He’d set Walter up then walk away before he could start talking. Avoiding any talk of her had been fairly easy that week since the only time he’d see Walter was at the gym. All week he’d debated with himself whether to do the right thing or not. He’d hoped that giving it a few days before seeing her again would take the strain off, but he’d been wrong—so wrong.
He expected her to be pissed or even hurt, not that he’d looked forward to that. He just thought it was inevitable. If he’d known this would be the reaction he’d get, he might’ve told her the truth. Here he held back telling her that Walter was his only reason for holding back, that if it weren’t for Walter, he’d for the first time since he discovered girls, felt the desire to delve into something deeper than just a physical relationship with one—a desire that up until now had completely eluded him.
If he’d told her the truth and she felt the same way, which he’d been certain she would, he was afraid she might take matters in her own hands and break Walter’s heart. Hector had no doubt that the poor sap would be disappointed in the end anyway, but he’d be damned if he was going to play a part in it.
Her reaction however had baffled him. Though he didn’t buy it completely, she’d basically told him she felt just the opposite. Not only had their time in that room together that night been forgettable, according to her “exhausting weekend” comment, he was also supposed to believe she’d gone out and done the same or more with someone else already. As much as he refused to believe that, it was fucking galling.
She’d stopped in the middle of what they were doing that night to specifically point out that she was different, damn it! And she didn’t even have to. He already knew it. She wasn’t the kind of girl who would do that with him then go out and do the same thing with someone else the next day.
Hector knew it was pointless to over analyze it now, because it didn’t make a difference. Whether or not it was true, it’s what she wanted him to believe for whatever reason: that she had no qualms about pretending that night never happened.
Curious and because he needed to stop grinding his teeth before he broke one, Hector asked Walter about something else that shouldn’t matter. “Did you mention her hanging out for a movie after?”
It shouldn’t matter, but Hector wanted to know now if Charlee was not only going out tonight but again tomorrow night like she’d apparently done last week.
Walter frowned. “No, not yet. I’ll wait until tomorrow.” With a frustrated shrug, he added. “I’ll probably chicken out.”
The irritation was more than Hector could bear. He knew it wasn’t Walter’s fault, but that’s where he channeled his frustration. As ridiculous as it sounded, if Walter could grow a pair, he may just keep Charlee from going out tomorrow and stay there with him where Hector knew nothing would be happening. Walter couldn’t even get the nerve up to ask her to watch a movie with him. There was no way the guy would be making any kind of move.
“Dude, when are you gonna man up already?” Hector sat up a little and pointed at him. “You blew chance after chance last week. Now tomorrow, she’ll be there at your place, and your pansy ass is gonna blow that too?”
Immediately, Hector felt bad. Walter sat back in his chair, looking wounded, but before Hector could take it back or at least rephrase what he’d said, toning it down a little, Walter smiled brightly, sitting up again. “I hadn’t had the chance to tell you. I saw that guy again, and I went right up to him and Charlee.”
“What guy?”
Walter’s smile waned a little. “You know the one you knocked out on campus? He and his friends—”
“Yeah, Yeah, I know.” Now Hector did the sitting up a little. “When?”
Walter thought about it for a moment. “Monday, first thing in the morning, I saw Charlee sitting and talking with him right here on campus, and I walked right up to them,” he said proudly.
Hector didn’t think that he could feel any more irritated tonight than he already was, but he literally felt his body heat go up a few degrees. “She was sitting with him: the guy that nearly broke your ribs because you were defending her?”
Walter rolled his eyes a little. “Yeah, well, she said something about him not actually wanting to harm her or anything. That he’s just,” Walter lifted his fingers, air quoting Charlee, “‘pursuing her,’ but she did say he’s intimidating.”
“Intimidating? Like how?”
Hector had been called intimidating by girls before, but it was more of a compliment than anything negative. This guy wasn’t intimidating; he was a disrespectful little bitch, who didn’t fight fair.
“She didn’t really say, but when it started to sound like she might be taking up for the guy or making excuses for him, I told her the guy was a jerk, and she agreed.”
“Taking up for him?” There was no hiding Hector’s exasperation now. Walter had told him about the guy completely disrespecting her. He tried to put his hands on her even after she made it clear she didn’t want to be touched. “How’d she take up for him? What excuses did she make?”
Walter was beginning to seem frazzled. Hector got that he was trying to tell him about manning up and going right up to them even after the guy had beat on him once. They’d get back to that soon enough, but first Hector wanted to get this part straight.
“I don’t know, man. She just . . .”
Walter paused as if to try and recall exactly what she said, and Hector gave him all the time he needed, because he couldn’t imagine what excuses she could’ve been making for the idiot. Maybe Hector did have her all wrong. Maybe she was a stupid girl that made out with guys randomly and then flaunted it shamelessly.
“Oh, I remember now,” Walter finally said. “She didn’t exactly make excuses, but she said she didn’t think he was so bad—cruel! That’s the word she used. She said she didn’t think he was being cruel or something.” He shrugged, looking a little irritated himself now. “It just sounded almost as if she were saying that if the guy weren’t so aggressive or intimidating, he wouldn’t be so bad.”
Unbelievable. Hector couldn’t get past this. “So what? Now she’s gonna sit and chat with him like they’re buddies or something?”
“No, I don’t think so. She said he asked her to have coffee with him, and she did thank me for saving her again.”
Finally, Walter shed some relief on the situation. Hector didn’t even know why he cared. If what she said to him was true, she wasn’t anyone he’d ever take seriously, and maybe Walter shouldn’t either. He thought about maybe telling Walter what she’d said—warn him. But then he’d have to tell him how the subject even came up.
He let Walter tell him the rest of the story about how he so bravely walked up to her and asked her if she was ready. Hector held back rolling his eyes. If it had been him, Hector would’ve asked straight out and in the guy’s face if she needed him to kick his ass again, not walked up with some vague excuse to get her away from him without hurting the guy’s feelings.
Unaware that today would have taken so much out of him, Hector lay in bed that night, feeling completely drained. It was his own fault. He should’ve just done it first thing that week, not wait and let the anxiety of getting it over with build all week. Somehow he thought doing this would bring closure to the angst he’d been feeling and he could go back to feeling like he did before he’d met her—held her—kissed those sweet lips. Instead, all he could do was lie there and wonder who the fuck she was with tonight and what exactly she was doing with him.