Chapter 19 #9
“I can’t even see your old one at all,” I told him, still inspecting the great, beautiful wings and the eccentric-looking crest on its head.
“This is amazing, Rey.” I wanted to touch it, but the skin was still a little irritated, and I didn’t want to be the one to accidentally scratch it and mess it up before it was healed.
“Seriously, way better than that cross you had before. What made you decide to get that?”
The German eyed me as he scooted back into place and tugged his shirtsleeve back down. “Someone told me I can’t take back what I’ve done, but what I do from now on is what matters. It seemed fitting.”
Damn it. I hated when he actually listened to me, but I smiled anyway and dropped the subject when he didn’t meet my eyes. All right. “Are you ready to go to bed?”
“I’m going to stay up and watch a movie on here,” he explained, gesturing to his tablet. With the bed above shadowing half of everything below, I couldn’t see his face well. “Would you want to watch it?”
Was I sleepy? Yes. But…
“Sure, at least until I start to fall asleep,” I agreed.
He slid over all of half an inch and angled his upper body toward me.
Well. Scooting in next to him close enough so that our elbows were touching, Kulti propped the tablet back onto his bent knees as I tucked the hem of my shirt between my thighs.
It had ridden up, but it wasn’t like he could see my underwear, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen just as much of my legs practically every other day we’d hung out.
I fixed the pillow behind my back and eased onto the bed so that my shoulder touched his bicep.
“What are we watching?” I asked.
Apparently the man wasn’t a cheapskate because we didn’t go with a Netflix movie; instead he bought a digital copy of some newly released suspense thriller.
I’d guess that I probably made it twenty minutes into the movie before I fell asleep. With his body heat on one side, even through the barrier of the sheet he had pulled over himself and the comfortable bed beneath me, I was out.
I woke up to find that my bent knees had fallen over and were resting on Kulti’s hip, my shirt had somehow ridden up past my hips, leaving my underwear out for anyone to see.
My hands were crossed over my chest and tucked into my armpits, and the entire right side of my body was huddled into the left side of the German.
I sat up and gave him a sleepy yawn. “I’m going to bed.” I squeezed his bent knee before throwing my legs over the side. “Good night, Rey.”
“Sweet dreams.”
Sweet dreams? Had that really just come out of his mouth? I thought I might have fallen asleep with a smile on my face thinking of him using those words.
“You’re wearing a dress.”
I turned around and frowned, my hands smoothing down the front of the blue sundress I’d put on five minutes before. “Yes.” It was going to be bad enough when my parents saw my outfit. They acted like they’d never seen me in anything besides sweatpants or shorts.
Now I had to hear it from the German too.
He stood in the doorway in the same jeans he’d had on when we left for Austin. He’d added a black checkered and blue shirt and his tennis shoes.
I smiled.
He didn’t say anything. He only kept looking at me as if he hadn’t seen me in less clothing plenty of times, even though that made me sound like a nudist. I twitched.
“What? I dress up sometimes. Birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s.
” I pulled on the hem of the light dress that almost reached my knees… if I hunched over and yanked.
His gaze slid back up to my face after watching me fiddle with the skirt, and he blinked, slow, slow, slow. “You have makeup on.”
“I wear makeup.” Not much but enough.
“No heels?” He glanced at my feet, which were in a pair of black suede ankle boots my parents had bought me for my birthday a couple years ago.
“Trust me, you’d end up spending the night peeling me off the floor or laughing when I walk around like a newborn baby giraffe.” I smiled at him.
His eyes flicked up to mine, and a small smile cracked the corners of his mouth. “You’re good at everything.”
I snorted. “I wish. I’ll make you a list later of all the things I’m horrible at.” I grabbed my purse off the corner of the bed and pulled it over my head. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yes,” he answered, dropping his gaze to the scooped neckline of my dress for a split second.
I had freckles on my chest, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen those before.
I pushed the acknowledgment of him staring out of my head and drew in a breath to relax.
That morning, he’d woken up when I’d been half naked again, only wearing a sports bra and underwear, and he hadn’t said a word as I pulled the rest of my clothes on.
Sure, I could have gone into the bathroom to change, but I kept the same thought in my head that I had from the beginning.
I had nothing to be embarrassed about. I accepted my body as it was, and if I started acting all goofy about it now, well, that just looked stupid.
I wasn’t out to impress anyone.
Plus, it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen better—and hopefully worse—before.
Whatever.
I felt good, and I didn’t care how much crap I was about to get from everyone that enjoyed teasing me just because they could.
Sure enough, we found my parents, Ceci, and her friend in the living room waiting for us. It was my dad who made the first crack when he saw me.
In a dress shirt, slacks, and dress shoes, he must have forgotten he’d been acting like a timid little bear around the German because he immediately nudged my mom with his elbow. “Look, it’s a Christmas miracle. Sal put on real clothes.”
I exaggerated a laugh, making a face at him at the same time. “Funny.”
My mom came forward and squeezed my shoulder. “Look at how pretty you look when you wear a dress. If you dress like this more often, maybe you’d find a boyfriend again. ?No?”
Once upon a time, her comment would have really hurt my feelings. Actually, she’d said the same thing to me in the past at least a dozen times. If I dressed differently, if I put some effort into my appearance, if I didn’t play soccer, maybe I’d find someone….
Someone who didn’t know me at all and could only love me if I was half myself.
I forced a smile onto my face and patted my mom’s arm, ignoring the intense gaze coming from Kulti. “Maybe one day, Ma.”
“I’m just telling you because I love you,” she said in Spanish, picking up on how her comment irritated me. “You’re just as pretty as any other girl, Sal.”
“You’re all ugly. I’m hungry. Let’s go,” Dad said with a clap of his hands, his face too cheerful.
He knew. He knew how much Mom’s comments bothered me. Maybe they didn’t piss me off or make me cry, but they bothered me. The fact she was saying it in front of my friend didn’t help.
Staying in place, I smiled at my sister and her friend as they followed my parents out the door. Ceci hadn’t said a word to me, and I didn’t want to start crap with her tonight. I gritted my teeth and tamped down my emotions. Today was about my dad, not about my mom or Ceci.
Since we wouldn’t all fit into my mom’s sedan, Kulti and I drove separately. It was the same restaurant we’d gone to for the last three years, so I knew exactly where we were heading.
I had barely turned the ignition and driven to the corner of the block when the German spoke up. “I don’t like the way your mother speaks to you.”
My head snapped over to look at his face.
He on the other hand, he was busy facing forward. “Why do you let her belittle you in that way?”
“I….” I turned back to face out the windshield and tried to tell myself that this moment was real. “She’s my mom. I don’t know. I don’t want to hurt her feelings and tell her that her opinion doesn’t matter—”
“It shouldn’t,” he cut me off.
Well… “She just has a different view on how I should live my life, Rey. She always has. I’m not ever going to do what she wants me to do or be the person she wants me to be.
I don’t know. I just let her say whatever she wants to say, and I suck it up.
At the end of the day, I’m going to keep living the way I want, regardless of what she says or thinks. ”
Out of my peripheral vision, I could see his head turn. “She doesn’t support you playing?”
“She does, but she’d rather see me do something else with my life.”
“Does she understand how good you are?” he asked, completely freaking seriously.
I had to smile, his belief in me almost made up for my mom trying to guilt me into having a boyfriend and dressing up to feel like a woman. Blah. “You really think I’m good?”
“You could be faster.”
I knew he was only trying to piss me off by calling me slow.
I turned to look at him, outraged. “Are you serious?”
He ignored me. “But, yes, you are. Don’t get a big head about it. You still have quite a bit of room for improvement.” He paused. “She should be proud of you.”
I was torn between wanting to defend my mom and wanting to give him a hug for the nice things he was saying.
Instead I went with “She is proud of me. It’s just…
it’s hard for her with me, I guess. I know she loves me, Rey.
She goes to my games, wears my jerseys. She’s proud of me and my brother, but…
.” I scratched at my face, debating whether or not to tell him for a second.
It’d been years since the last time I told anyone.
Not even Jenny or Harlow knew. Marc and Simon did, but that was only because they’d been in our lives forever.
It hadn’t helped that Cordero had been the last person to talk to me about it, and he’d left a bad taste in my mouth.
Everyone should know, he’d said. He hadn’t liked when I told him no. No way.