Hector (6 page)

Hector was still stuck on the odd name.
Charlee?
“She’s cute,” he said,
following Walter’s gaze.

More like
okay,
and he left out what else he was
thinking
,
if
you’re into white girls
. Hector wasn’t, never had been, especially ones
this
snowy white. The neighborhood he
grew up in and the schools he’d attended his whole life had maybe a handful of
them. He had nothing against them; he just didn’t think he could relate.
Everyone he hung out with was Hispanic, and so he was attracted mainly to
Hispanic girls. He liked his girls with a little color, and, by that, he didn’t
mean bright red on white. He was into dark hair, dark eyes, and the darker the
better—like Lisa. He pushed away the annoying thoughts of Lisa blowing him off
so easily.

“She’s amazing,” Walter was still gazing in her direction. “And
she’s always nice to me. Like today she always says hi and even made sure I
knew where the team was sitting. Stuff like that.”

Hector was about to comment on that: say something like maybe she
liked Walter too. Though it was obvious she was
just
being nice. No way could she or
anyone
be into Walter. The guy was a mess. And his ridiculous muted
confidence bullshit only made things worse, but then it hit him. “You’re on the
team?
U.S. under 20?”

“Yeah,” Walter turned back to Hector. “So is Charlee. We’re on
the team at East Side too.” Walter looked around and lowered his voice.
“Personally, I don’t think a speed knockout tournament is the way to go about
looking for a replacement on the team. But we’d made it into the Junior World
Olympiad just before the whole cheating scandal broke, and we had to drop that
player. Luckily, they didn’t punish the whole team by disqualifying the team,
but they did give us only so much time to fill that spot. With a regular
tournament taking days, we had no choice but to do a one-day knockout
tournament.”

Hector tried not to stare at Walter’s bushy eyebrows as Walter
peered at him. Did the guy not realize a near unibrow was not an attractive
quality to girls? “You really think you have a shot at this?”

Again, shrugging off any signs of nervousness, Hector glanced
away at the crowd growing larger with every minute they stood there. “Sure, why
not?”

He wouldn’t tell Walter that speed chess was his specialty. He
knew a lot of serious players looked down on speed chess as if it weren’t as
dignified as playing the six-hour games. Walter’s lowered-voice comment about
this not being the greatest way to pick up the best player to fill the open
spot on the team, was all Hector needed to know—Walter was one of those chess
snobs.

Looking around again for Sam and not seeing him anywhere, Hector
knew he had to get on with it and get registered. Sam had said he’d be there to
walk him through the whole thing, but it looked like he was on his own now.
With a deep breath, he turned back to Walter. “Well, I better get going if I’m
gonna do this.
Right?”

Walter smiled.
“Best of luck.
If you’re
anywhere near as good at this as you are at knockout punches, you should do
well.”

With that, Hector nodded and started through the crowd, his heart
already beginning to thump anxiously.

Chapter 3

From the moment Charlee had spotted Hector with Walter
in the parking lot, her heart had gone wild and her entire body literally went
warm everywhere. In the past week, her fantasies about this guy had crossed over
to another level. The times she touched herself privately now had become more
often with him being whom she pictured doing the touching. But she told herself
it was only because she truly thought she’d never see him again. And when she
Googled
her fantasies, she was reassured that erotic
fantasies like the ones she’d been having were perfectly normal. But now,
seeing him again, she felt almost mortified as if he could read her filthy
thoughts. It was irrational, she knew, and though she hadn’t been able to
resist looking at him, she’d barely been able to for very long because of those
damn fantasies.

Charlee hadn’t even told Drew about them, and she normally told
her everything. She’d considered telling her this past weekend when she and
Drew had drank a couple of wine coolers and Drew made a few confessions of her
own. But even Drew’s confession wasn’t bad enough. Basically, Drew had been one
of those dumb girls in high school and actually sent her ex-boyfriend a photo
of her boobs when she’d always said she would never do such a thing. She said
she’d felt so stupid after sending it, and that’s why she never even told
Charlee about it until now.

That still wasn’t bad enough for Charlee to share what she’d
always thought was a little freaky about
herself
. Even
now, Charlee felt the heat creep up her spine at the very thought of sharing this
with anyone. She’d been around the guy for all of five minutes, and already late
at night with her door locked deep under her blankets and in her freaky mind, he
was doing to her things she’d only read about and caught glimpses of when she
accidently went into a porn site on her computer.

She reasoned that it was because he was quite possibly the most
gorgeous guy she’d ever seen. Why not choose him if she was going to fantasize
about anyone? As the days passed since she’d seen him last and the details of
his looks were beginning to get fuzzy, she’d come to the conclusion that she
was probably building him up to be more amazing than in reality. But seeing him
again today only confirmed something she hadn’t thought possible—he was even
more perfect than she remembered.

Sitting there now, watching him from across the room, she felt
almost
starstruck
. It was as if the star of one of
her favorite shows, or in
Charlee’s
case her scandalous
fantasies, was right here just a few yards away, and he was even more beautiful
in person. Her eyes gazed downward from his face to that body. As Drew had so
eloquently put it earlier, “The guy was built like a brick shithouse.”
Apparently that was a good thing—a
very
good thing indeed. Just watching him even from this distance made her gulp.

Not only was she sitting here shamefully intrigued by a guy based
on his looks alone but there was something new adding to her excitement. It was
rare. No. It was
unheard of,
at least
in her experience, to see a guy like him at a chess tournament, but not only
was he here as a spectator it appeared he might actually be a contender. Her
jaw had nearly hit her knees when she saw Walter walk back to a confused-looking
Hector and walked with him over to the registration tables. Just as mystifying
was the fact that someone like Hector would be hanging around the likes of
Walter.

Walter was obviously not competing, so there was only one other
explanation: Hector was a chess player—one good enough to be competing here.
Geez!
Why did that excite her so?

“Take a picture, why don’t you?” Drew said, nudging her.

Charlee straightened out in her seat, immediately tearing her
eyes away from Walter and Hector.
“Hmm?”
She glanced
around casually, trying to appear completely unaware of what Drew meant.

“Oh, stop,” Drew giggled. “You haven’t taken your eyes off him
since we got here.” Drew turned her head to Walter and Hector’s direction.
“Can’t say I blame you.
Mr.
Muy
Caliente
is quite the eye candy.” Drew leaned in and whispered but
not soft enough. “You know what they say about Latin lovers.”

Charlee nudged her and glanced around, feeling a little alarmed.
“Will you stop? O.M.G., someone’s gonna hear you.”

“So what?”
Drew looked around at the
people sitting near them with that feisty little glare of hers. “Who cares?”
She turned her attention back to Mr.
Muy
Caliente
and
clucked her tongue. “You think he’s here to compete?”

“Looks like it,” Charlee said, glad that she had reason to gaze
at him again. “That’s where you register to get your badge and number.”

They’d already established earlier that Hector was the same
delicious
guy that had knocked Ross out,
but Charlee hadn’t told Drew much else about him, not even what little Walter
had told her about him, and especially not that he was a boxer. She hadn’t even
shared his name with Drew. It was silly, but she and Drew had always sort of
shared and lusted over the same unattainable guys together. For that very
reason—because they seemed so unattainable—it didn’t matter if they both
fantasized about the same guy. But this time she didn’t want to share. No other
guy had ever invoked such fantasies in her. And she just didn’t think she’d be
as giggly and enjoy hearing Drew’s fantasies about Hector like she usually did
about other guys. Just listening to Drew referring to him as Mr.
Muy
Caliente
had her pressing her lips
together tightly already.

Thankfully her BFF had the attention span of a tick. She was
already checking her phone for texts or any Facebook updates, no doubt.

“You better respond to anything you need to, using that phone now,
because once the tournament starts, all phones are to be shut off completely.”
Her dramatic friend looked up at her with the horrified expression. “Drew, you
act like this is the first tournament you’ve been to.”

“Yeah, but watching you is different I don’t get so bored. And I
almost always make sure I get there when I know it’s nearly over. This is
different. I don’t even know these people.” Drew looked at her with a suddenly
content expression as if she just remembered something. “But you said this was a
fast one right?”

Charlee shook her head, exhaling softly. “No, I said these are
speed
games. They are shorter. Thirty
minutes versus four to six hours. But there will be lots of them until everyone
is knocked out and there is only one player left standing: the winner.”

Drew was nothing if not dramatic. Her shoulders slumped, but she didn’t
say what Charlee knew she was thinking. She knew she should’ve just come alone.
Her car
was
working now, but Drew had
insisted on accompanying her. “You don’t have to stay, you know? You can take
off if you want. Go get those boots you wanted at the mall, and just come back
for me later.”

“Or I can give you a ride home.”

Both Charlee and Drew turned around to look at Walter. Charlee
glanced at Drew, who was already beginning to smirk, but her smirk morphed instantly
into a bigger smile. Charlee had seen her do that many times, and she knew what
it meant. She was up to something. “So who’s your friend, Walter?”

Charlee closed her eyes for a second, praying this wasn’t Drew’s
way of calling dibs on Hector, not that Charlee thought either of them had a
chance with him. Drew was cute enough, and her socializing skills were light-years
ahead of
Charlee’s
, but even Drew had never been with
someone like Hector. The guy was way out of both their leagues. Well, at least Charlee
thought so, but judging by Drew’s comments and the way some of the other girls
in the auditorium were ogling him as well, she wasn’t the only one that
couldn’t keep her eyes off him.

Glancing around casually, Charlee did her best to appear uninterested
in knowing any more about Hector than she already did, but it was almost
impossible. She was already bracing herself for what else Walter might let her
in on.

“Oh, that’s Hector.” He glanced back in Hector’s direction then
back at Drew before finally looking at Charlee. “You didn’t tell her about
him?”

Drew glanced back at Charlee then shrugged and responded before
Charlee could. “Well, I know he’s the guy that knocked Ross on his ass, but
what’s he doing here?”

“He’s in the tournament.” Walter informed them as if it weren’t a
big deal.

It was a
huge
deal. If
he won and took Vladimir’s place on the team, it meant Charlee would get to see
him on a daily basis. She stopped mid thought to swallow hard. She might
actually get to talk to him—maybe even become a friend or at the very least an
acquaintance.

A little worried that Drew seemed too interested but incredibly
grateful that she was the one doing all the asking, Charlee hung on Walter’s
every word now. Unfortunately, he didn’t offer much else except that he didn’t
know how good Hector was, so he wasn’t sure what his chances were. Drew got a
text, so the interrogation about all things Hector was momentarily dropped.

Charlee took advantage of Drew’s distraction to gaze at Hector
again. She’d never felt so drawn to someone in her life. What was it about him?
Obviously his looks had a lot to do with it, if not
everything,
since she didn’t know much else about him, and she’d
never even spoken to him other than to say thank you. But there had to be more.
She couldn’t be
that
shallow, could
she?

“So what’s his deal?”

Charlee brought her attention back to her best friend, who was
now putting her phone away. Drew’s eyebrows lifted as her gaze went from Hector
to Walter. Apparently, she wasn’t done with her inquiring about Hector. As much
as Charlee wanted to know more about him, she almost wished Drew would stop.
She didn’t like that she was so damn interested in
her
fantasy guy.

“What do you mean?” Walter was doing that weird thing with his
head again, moving it slowly up and down, and he was biting his lower lip.

Drew rolled her eyes. “Does he have a girlfriend?”

Great, Drew
was
interested in him. But Charlee had to admit she was glad Drew asked. A guy like
Hector
had
to be spoken for. She
could tell already, based on the looks he was getting here, he could easily
walk out with any girl he wanted tonight. Sure it was a chess tournament, not a
social event, but this guy could probably walk into a funeral and pick up.
Maybe this would put to rest her insane fantasies once and for all.