After the Before (15 page)

“Are you alright?” I ask her.

She fixes her eyes on me again and smiles, as if she had retold a fairytale, instead of all the awful things her night entailed. “I am now.”

She steps into me
, and her smell invades my sinuses; lavender mixed with the salt from the ocean, making me forget everything around me.

“I worry about you, Ja
s.” I whisper to her when she’s only an inch from my lips.

“I like it when you worry about me.” Her voice is teasing,
which turns me on.

“Is that right, mu
ñeca?” I’m trying to use my charm, but I’m not sure who’s winning. Her allure is working on me just as well.

“Yeah.”

Her lips are so close to mine, but she refuses to make the first move.

‘
What am I thinking?’

I
can’t ignore what I want, so I close the remaining distance to her waiting lips.

When they touch, everything in the world melts away
; the only person existing is her. I press my lips to hers a few times slowly, erotically. I know she’s into it when a small whimper escapes her. I let my tongue slide softly against her lower lip, letting her know I want to move things to the next level, waiting for her permission. She gives me the go ahead when she opens her mouth and finds my tongue with hers.

My entire body is overwhelmed; I’m shaking, holding her in my arms. I’m scared, at peace, elated, and horny as hell. She’s turning me on in ways I’ve never imagined
, and all she’s doing is kissing me. After a minute or two, hell, it could have been hours, she pulls back enough to see my face.

“You’re shaking.” she points out.

I smile. This feels so right. I’m more comfortable with Jasmine than I am with myself. “Don’t worry, cariño… I’m perfect.” I try to pull her back to me, but something flashes in her eyes. I see her rethinking this situation.

Instead of letting me kiss her again, she pulls away. I think this is where she’s going to tell me this has all been a huge mistake
, and that she can never see me again, but she only turns back to the water and steps in deeper.

“Jasmine, you’ve had too much to drink to be swimming in the ocean.”

She jumps into the next wave and yells, “You better come and save me then, Alex.” She pulls off her shirt before she disappears into another wave. One look is enough to send me in after her.

I jump in, pants included. “Jasmine, I’m serious.” I tell her sternly when I catch up to her.

When I finally make it to her, we are chest high in waves. Lucky for us, they’re mellow, only bobbing us up and down instead of splashing over our heads. She jumps through the water to me and finds my outstretched hand. I close my fingers around hers and hold on tight; no way am I losing her in this water. Her smile widens the closer I pull her to me. When her bare chest touches my bare chest, a firework explodes inside me. My breathing instantly speeds up, my heart bucks in my chest and then races into overdrive. I wrap my arms around her and hug her tighter, as if the tide will strip her away from me. Her breasts are pressed tight against my chest, and I trace my fingers up and down her back as she leans her head on my shoulder. I’m content enough to stand here with her in my arms all night.

I’m letting my mind w
ander to all the possibilities I know are impossible for us, when I notice small bumps on her back with my fingertips. They are very small, but I can feel them. At first, I play off that I haven’t even noticed them. When my finger prodding neglects to give me an answer, I pull back from her, searching her eyes for what I seek. She straightens up from my shoulder, a place I never wish her head would leave, to look at me curiously.

“What are th
ese bumps on your back?” I ask.

After the words sink in, her eyes widen in panic
. “Nothing.” She says and tries to pull away from me.

I hang onto her hand and pull her back. “What are they, Ja
s?”

“Nothing
! Really.” Her words are begging me to forget about it, as she still tries to pull away from me.

I hang onto her, pulling her with me when I climb out of the warm water
.

“Don’t lie to me, Jasmine.” I growl at her.

“Please, Alex, stop. Please.” Tears are running down her face as she pleads with me.

I make sure no one
is around before we exit the water completely; Jasmine lost her shirt to the sea when she stripped it off. Luckily, mine is still next to the fire somewhere.

When I finish looking off in the distance, partly for my shirt
, and partly bracing myself to see her half-naked body, I turn to her. What I see, even though she’s topless, is not her breasts, but the discolored marks that cover her body. My mouth drops open in disbelief. Her ribs and stomach are covered in bruises of different sizes.

“Turn around.”
I order her.

She
does it, even as tears still stream down her face, and now she has the hiccups to go along with them. When she finishes turning, I’m in more than shock; I am enraged. The raised bumps I was feeling on her back look like deep pockmarks, with what appear to be belt marks lying next to each of them. I furrow my brows, not knowing who would have done this to her? Next to each mark are the bruises. There must be more than a dozen. My heart wants to rip out of my chest; it’s constricting and pounding in an unfamiliar way. I know I want to pulverize whoever did this, but it’s more than that. I hurt because someone did this to her. My heart seizes seeing her like this and not being able to do anything to help her.

My voice is thick with emotion. “Ja
s…” I have to pause to swallow the lump in my throat. “Who did this to you?” Looking at the marks are too much for me. I pull her to me, where she’s happy to wrap her arms around my midsection and lay her head back on my chest.

She’s still crying when she answers. “I can’t tell you.”

Her words piss me off.
“
Why
?”

“I can’t
. Alex, I don’t feel so well.” She’s clinging to me, and I hang on to her just as tight.

“Alright, let me take you back to your room.” I pet her hair down.

“No!” She says, pulling me to her as hard as she can, as if she’s as afraid to let me go as I am of her. “Don’t leave me, please.”

“You want to stay with me?” I offer, knowing it’s not the best idea. We are both too drunk
and high to be making good decisions.

She nods into my chest.

“Turn around.” She looks at me puzzled. “Unless you want to go topless with me in front of everyone, I have to get you my shirt.”

She laughs through the rest of her tears. Wiping her face, she turns around, looking at me over her shoulder. She’s so gorgeous
, but my eyes are glued to the wounds that litter her back. The sight boils my blood.

I snag my shirt and tell everyone I’m heading back. I pull Carlos aside and give him a job to do before I make it back to the hotel. “I need you to go to my room and make sure Andrew isn’t there. If he is, get rid of him. I don’t give a shit where he stays, it
’s just not going to be in my room for the rest of the week. Tell him to have his shit out in twenty minutes.”

“Alright
. Anything else?”

“Yeah, tell him that he’s lucky I don’t beat the living mierda out of him.” Carlos looks at me
with questions, but says nothing else.

“I’m on it, jefe.” Carlos yells at the other members that are still with us
, and they head off, running down the beach to our hotel room.

When I return to Jasmine, she is lost in the stars. Her skins lustrous against the moon in the sky,
and out of all the women I’ve been with, she is the most beautiful one I have ever seen. How did I not notice her when we were younger?

“Ja
s?”

She turns around
with her arms folded across her chest. Our eyes lock and neither of us look away. She lifts her arms above her head, beckoning me to pull the shirt on for her. I lift it up over her head, slipping her arms in the holes, and pull it down slowly, letting my knuckles trace the rivets of her ribs. I feel her body respond to my touch.

“Come on. Let’s get you back to the room.” I put my arm around her waist and help her walk back.

She begins to giggle half way there. She’s definitely three sheets to the wind. “I can’t believe this is happening. I mean, is it?” Her words are more slurred than they were earlier. More of the alcohol must be kicking in.              

“What?” I ask her.

“You, me… this?” She’s talking with her hands, pointing at me, herself, and then twirling her finger in the air, motioning to everything around us.

“Yeah, I
think it is, and I know what you mean.”

We reach the hotel
, well after curfew, at about three in the morning. We sneak past the one person at the front desk, and the rest of the place is like a cemetery; quiet and dead.

We reach my room and I pray that Carlos took care of Andrew, because if I open this door and find him here, I will be glad to show him out
… out the window.

The light clicks to green when I slide my card into the key slot,
and open the door. I enter first, hanging onto Jasmine’s fingers with my own, making sure Andrew is not here before I let her in completely.

When I see his bed a mess and all of his stuff gone, I know that Carlos came through for me. Where he has moved is not my concern
, at least not until I go to find him for what he did to Jasmine.

“Come here, querido.” I pull her against me and kiss her. She sinks into my arms
, and I can feel the heaviness of her drunken state. “Let’s get you out of your wet clothes.”

I turn to my dresser and pull out a clean pair of boxers and wife beater tank top. She takes them from me with a lazy smile. I think it’s all she can muster at this point.

“Thanks.” She says.

“You want to change in the bathroom?”

“No.” She says, softly. “I can change here.”

I turn around and let her dress. Yes, I
can be a gentleman, even as I want to watch.

When she’s done, she slides her arms around my waist and runs her fingers over my bare chest and stomach, while her chest presses firmly to my back. I take her hands and squeeze them before I turn around to kiss her again. I get the feeling that she wouldn’t mind me holding her all night long.

Leading her to the bed, I pull back the covers. I slip her legs under them before I pull them up to her chin. Thoughts of where I’m going to sleep run through my head. There’s no way in hell I’m sleeping in that piece of mierda’s bed, and I don’t expect Jasmine to let me sleep with her. She seems to sense my distress and slides to the opposite side of the bed, inviting me in. I’m still sopping wet, so I grab a pair of briefs and slip out of my wet clothes, pulling the clean ones on.

I turn to find Jasmine watching me, my bare backside exposed to her before I pull the briefs up and in place. I smile in return and climb into bed with her. I want to keep sex the furthest from my mind
. I do want to have sex with her, I mean, do I ever, but we’ve both had too much drink and smoke tonight, and when I make love to her, I want her to have all her senses. I want us both to be able to feel and remember every second of it, and right now, that may not be possible.

So instead, I pull her onto my chest
and she snuggles up to me the way I’ve been dreaming of since I laid eyes on her at school. Something changed for me the instant I saw her. She became more to me than a childhood friend, and I am still sorting through those feelings, and nowhere near admitting them aloud to anyone, even myself. Having her here in my arms makes me feel like my dreams could come true. I kiss the top of her head and run my fingers through her hair. After the third pass, I feel a lump by her temple.

I run my fingers over it again and she
jumps.

Panic rises in me again. I pull her hair aside and find a large gash, covered by the way she’s been styling her hair.

“Jasmine.” I whisper to her, my voice actually cracking around her name. “Who’s doing this to you?”

I’m not sure if she’s going to answer me, she appears asleep. She begins to talk to me, half-asleep. I’m not even sure she realizes she’s talking. “I’m not supposed to tell. I’m not supposed to talk to you.” She says, confusing me
even more.

“What?”

“She said not to talk to you and I did. It’s my fault.”

“This happened to you because of me?” My heart drops to my
stomach.

“No, because I wouldn’t stop talking to you, I couldn’t stop talking to you. I tried
, really, I did. I tried to date Andrew, but he wasn’t the one I wanted… I just wanted you.” Her eyes flutter open to look at my face. “I know you’ll think I’m being ridiculous, but I have known you for so long Alex, and no matter what has happened to us over the last few years, I still see the same person you were to me before, and I love with you, Alex.”