Chapter Twenty
One week later…
“What a fuckin’ week, amirite?” Marisol asked as she clocked in. She hung her backpack on the hook next to their ancient time machine and began digging through it. “That econ test scrambled my brains, but I still remembered to grab that top you wanted to borrow for your date tonight. Why? Cuz I’m amazing.”
“You are amazing,” Elena agreed, catching the blouse her friend tossed to her. “And I’m sure you aced that bitch.”
She’d only come in tonight to cover the first part of Marisol’s shift which meant she finally had a night off. A night off that she should be excited about but was more anxious than anything.
After a hectic week at the garage, plus covering shifts at Medina’s, her hot bikers were finally taking her out again. It was well past time too. They may have seen each other every single day but it wasn’t enough. The frustrating situation was both a blessing and a curse. Without the opportunity for many private moments in the busy garage—other than that unforgettable round robin in the locked records room—the four of them talked.
The four of them had gotten to know one another; their conversations ranging from childhood stories to which eighties hair band had the best videos. They’d even convinced her to share a few of her favorite fantasies. Once the sexting line had been crossed, there’d been no going back. If they’d all had a chance to get naked this last week, she wouldn’t know the important stuff…like their official ranking of breakfast cereals.
On the flip side, if they’d been able to finish what they’d started, Elena wouldn’t have had to drop almost thirty bucks for another family pack of batteries. She had no idea when batteries had gotten so expensive but buying them in bulk helped. Apparently, she could outlast the Energizer Bunny when hopped up on unrequited-fucking-energy— UFE for future reference .
Her bikers were turning her into a sex crazed lunatic.
“Hold up,” her friend walked around the counter and tugged at one of the curls poking out of Elena’s wobbly bun. “Somethings wrong. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” she grumbled, leaning down on the counter. There was no easy way to explain the tug-of-war happening between her heart and her head. “It’s…confusing.”
“What’s so confusing about it?” Marisol asked. “I thought you liked them. Did something happen?”
“Kinda,” she answered with a groan of despair. There was no denying she was in a pickle. She’d bitten off way more than she could chew this time. She glanced up. “And I do like them. No, scratch that. I more than like them.”
“O-kaaaaaay.” Marisol drawled, giving her a look. “Where’s the problem? They’re obsessed with you, they’re hot, and you ‘more than like them.’ I don’t see what the issue is. They make you happy. You light up like a goddamn Christmas tree around them.”
“I do?”
“Fuck yeah, you do,” her bestie said with a laugh that trailed into a grimace. “It’s really cute but, I’m not going to lie, it’s making me a little jealous.”
“The guys have already offered to set you up,” Elena reminded her again. A couple mechanics at the garage had approached Pax, hoping for help in setting up a blind date but so far, her friend had been resistant.
“Pfft,” Marisol snorted. “I don’t have the time to see one man much less multiple. With school, this place, and the family, I’m tapped out. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Plus, can you imagine me trying to pull that shit off with my mom. She may be okay with you getting triple-dicked but she sure as hell would have a problem if I tried it.”
“Triple-dicked?” she snickered, unable to help herself.
“What would you call it?” Marisol defended with a look. “There’s three dicks.”
“Touche’,” Elena replied with a nod. “So, no setting you up. Got it.”
“Ugh,” the other woman groaned, her hand going to her lower belly. “The Tylenol I took earlier needs to kick in before these cramps take me out.”
“Yikes.” While she knew the feeling, it wasn’t something Elena had had to deal with in the last few years. The birth control she took daily made her skip the normal monthly hell that women went through. It was a major bonus in her opinion.
“This month has been awful. My hormones are making me rage and I’m angry at everything.” Marisol turned to glare at the receipt machine on the counter, “I’ll let you know now, if that printer decides to fuck with me again, IT’S ON. I will take it out to the street and Office Space it to hell and back.”
“Wow,” Elena blinked, completely distracted from the crisis she was having in her head a few seconds ago. She needed to give everyone a heads-up not to mess with Marisol today. Her friend looked ready to stomp the fuck out of that poor, unsuspecting printer.
“I’m going to go warn Ricky before he has a chance to do anything that he’d normally do, okay?”
“Wait a minute,” Marisol said, grabbing the corner of Elena’s sleeve before she could escape. “First, you’re going to tell me what’s going on. One minute you’re smiling and the next, you look like someone ran over your dog.”
“I don’t have a dog,” she sighed, sinking into the lone chair they had behind the counter. She really didn’t want to have this conversation.
“What’s the deal?”
Instead of answering, Elena ducked her head down to rest on the counter and shrugged.
“Are you freaking out over how they’re making you feel, is that it? Marisol nudged her with an elbow. “Because I know you and I know that big feelings scare the shit out of you.”
Elena grumbled back a smooshed harumph without moving, her face still smashed against the counter. The clean scent of Fabuloso tickled her nose as she thought about her three bikers.
Marisol was a little right.
Pax, Tanner, and Vinyl stirred emotions in Elena that she’d never felt before. It was terrifying. She wasn’t sure how it’d happened, but the guys had wiggled themselves into her life. And they’d done it with an ease that she still found a little frightening. Since that first date, they’d established a comfortable routine she still found surreal sometimes. The three of them picked her up every morning for work—despite her car being fixed—and once they got to the shop, she saw them throughout the entire day. It had surprised her at first but now she was looking forward to the encounters. An hour didn’t go by that one of them didn’t swing by to check on her in the office. Sometimes they’d come in with a made-up task, other times they’d blatantly admit their visits were manufactured just to see her again. It was so sweet it should have made her nauseous, not blush like a cartoon character with hearts for eyes. It also didn’t escape her notice that their behavior was pretty much a carbon copy of what Taffy had to deal with when it came to Pax’s fathers. The only difference was that Taffy only had two men fawning over her while Elena had three.
She still couldn’t believe it. Even now, after multiple Hallmark worthy moments with her men, she still wanted to pinch herself.
It was as if she were starring in a real-life daydream…as long as she ignored all the judgy bitches that seemed to be popping out of the woodwork lately.
Since going public, the general atmosphere around her had slowly changed. At first, it wasn’t very noticeable, just a niggling feeling that she was the topic of discussion. Which was pretty much what she expected, at least to some degree. Now, after a full week of disgusted looks and harsh whispers, it wasn’t getting any better. If anything, it was getting worse. There were even more glares and nasty whispers when Elena walked by, and they’d given up any pretense of politeness.
The funny thing was that none of that bullshit really bothered her. Other than the select group of humans she cared about, she generally didn’t give a fuck if she was liked or not. When it came to the Medinas though, things were different.
“This is all my fault,” Elena whispered, wishing she could think of a fix that wasn’t going to end up breaking her heart in the long run.
“What’s your fault?” Marisol’s brows scrunched together in question.
“This,” she answered, swinging her arm in the direction of the empty taco shop. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it, ‘Sol. This place has been dead all week.”
“And?”
“Seriously?” She tossed her hands in the air. “Before word got out about me and the guys, this place was taking orders twenty- four seven. This week nada. I’ve been shunned and I’m taking ya’ll with me.”
Her bestie rolled her eyes. “You haven’t been shunned.”
“Wha—are you kidding me right now?” Elena couldn’t believe her ears. There was no way her friend was that blind. Their drop in business was enough to give you whiplash.
“You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m not being dramatic!” she argued, her voice growing louder. “Vinyl dropped me off with a kiss on the cheek yesterday and there were audible gasps from the peanut gallery standing outside. Audible gasps, Sol. I was scared to even look at him today when he walked me here.”
“I heard about that,” Marisol admitted with a wince. “Ricky caught a bunch of old biddies gossiping when he went to grab me a cupcake.”
“See!” she pointed out, feeling even worse after hearing that. “I may as well have a big red A on my chest!”
“Wouldn’t it be three A’s?” Marisol teased with a goofy smile on her face. “One for each hottie you—”
“What’s with the yelling?” Ricky interrupted abruptly, popping through the big swinging door that led to the kitchen. He surveyed the small dining room. “I need to take care of someone?”
“Dear lordt,” Elena groaned, covering her eyes. If her bestie was about to murder her dumbass brother, she didn’t want to be called as a witness.
“Put that away!” Marisol snapped as her brother spun one of his knives around with a flourish. “And go back to the kitchen.”
“Run, Ricky,” Elena encouraged with a wave of her hands when he seemed to resist his sister’s orders. “Run while you can.”
“Oooof!”
“Too late,” she said, unable to keep from grimacing as the siblings went head-to-head. Marisol used her entire body, sharp elbows and all, to push him back through the door as he attempted to brace himself with a grumble.
“Damn, Sis,” he grunted as he slowly disappeared into the kitchen. “Ouch! No peenching !”
Elena bit her lip to keep from laughing as the siblings continued to annoy the fuck out of each other. It was only a few more seconds before Marisol won, successfully shoving Ricky past the threshold with a whoop of victory.
“Why you gotta be like that?” he yelled as the kitchen door swung back and forth between them.
“I told you before not to come up here twirling your knife,” Marisol hollered as she walked back to the register. “It scares the normals.”
“We’re not normal?” Elena asked her friend with a grin.
“Ummm…my family’s crazy and you have three boyfriends,” Marisol reminded her with an are-you-kidding-me look.
“I don’t have three boyfriends,” she argued, her stomach twisting at the lie.
Her best friend just stared at her silently, giving her a look she was more than familiar with.
“Okay fine,” Elena relented, her head falling back on her shoulders as she tried to figure out the best way to lay it all out. “I have three boyfriends—I think. I mean, we kiss and stuff, but we’ve never actually had ‘the’ talk. They’re just like…there.”
“Kiss and stuff?” Marisol repeated with raised brows as she leaned forward. “Tell me more.”
“Ugh!” Elena groaned, dropping her head back to the counter.
“You’re going to have a big bruise on your forehead if you keep that up.”
“I know,” she grumbled. There was probably already a mark there. “It doesn’t matter anyways. I can’t keep seeing them.”
“Why not?”
She pushed herself up from the counter. “Were you not here for the conversation we just had?”
“About the three scarlet A’s?” Marisol propped her shoulder against the wall that held their taco shop t-shirts. “Fuck those people. Who cares what they think?”
“I don’t,” she assured her friend with a shake of her head. “People have always had something to say about me, I’m used to it. This is different.”
“Don’t b—”
“It’s been slow before, Sol.” Elena waved a hand at the empty seats. The place was a ghost town. “But it’s never been this slow. We haven’t even made enough this week to cover my part-time check.
Marisol winced but stayed silent. There was no arguing against the truth.
“Customers are avoiding this place because of me.”
“You don’t know that.” Her bestie shook her head. “It could be slow because of the construction a few blocks down. We always have a lull when they block off parts of Mass. Or maybe it’s the protestors that keep popping up. Nobody wants to deal with those guys.”
“What if it’s not?” Elena looked out the large glass windows where people were walking by. She highly doubted the construction was the issue here. The amount of folks crowding the cracked sidewalks didn’t look any lighter than usual. “Can Medina’s afford to take that chance?”