Hector Read online

Hector’s eyes shot open. He wasn’t sure if he should laugh or shove Walter. “Are you kidding me? You were on the ground in a fetal position.”

  “I had a plan!”

  This time Hector did laugh. “And what was that? To play dead?”

  Hector laughed even louder now. Walter shoved past him and started walking again. Hector followed him, continuing to laugh loudly. He was glad now that Walter’s response had been so utterly ridiculous; otherwise, he might be pissed. Here he’d risked getting in trouble, very possibly arrested, and Walter’s ungrateful ass was mad about it?

  “Go ahead; laugh it up.” Walter said, walking a little faster now. He turned to Hector with that same glare he remembered so vividly from the last time he’d seen Walter back in high school. “It’s what you’ve always done, right? Why stop now?”

  Okay, now Walter was pissing him off. “Look, don’t be stupid. There was no way you were gonna make a move back there. You were already down, and there were three of them and one of you. If I hadn’t showed up when I did, you’d be the one lying there unconscious right now, not him. I didn’t have to get involved, but I did. You’re welcome, asshole!”

  Hector stopped then spun around. Fuck this! He stalked back in the direction of the parking lot. For the first time since he’d slugged the guy kicking Walter, he began to feel the tingling pain in his knuckles. Maybe he should’ve let them beat Walter’s ass.

  “Why did you?” He heard Walter ask.

  Taking a few more steps before deciding to stop, he turned around. “Because it wasn’t fair.” He shrugged. “Three on one is how pussies fight. I hate that shit.”

  “You didn’t in high school.”

  Walter’s words stunned Hector for a second, and then he reacted to them. “That’s bullshit!” Hector pointed at Walter, stalking back toward him with a purpose. “They never hurt you. Okay, so they teased you and messed with you, but they never ganged up on you to physically hurt you. If they had, I would’ve stepped in.”

  This was the very argument he’d had with himself for months now. For too damn long, he’d been plagued with the guilt that Walter very possibly had done something tragic because Hector and his friends had pushed him over the edge. As much as it was a relief to know that Walter was alive and well, he hated that Walter did see him as the same kind of piece of shit as the guys kicking him while he was down today. Because ever since that last day he’d seen Walter, it’s exactly what Hector had felt like.

  Walter shook his head and started walking away. Suddenly Hector was mad again. This wasn’t fair. “What was I supposed to do, Walter? You were bigger than most of the guys back in high school. Why didn’t you stop them? Why didn’t you ever stand up for yourself?”

  Walter turned around. “Like today? Against more than one bully? Because I got news for you: it was never just one. Oh no. You said it yourself, ‘Pussies don’t start shit one on one.’ It was always at least two or more, and you saw today how that ends.”

  “Still, you fight!” Hector insisted. With Walter on the ground today, Hector had been outnumbered, too, but he never once thought about that when he went at them.

  “I’m not a fighter like you, man.” Walter said loudly. “I don’t have a knockout punch. Hell, I don’t have a punch period.”

  Hector was tired of this. All these months of beating himself up about Walter, was ending now. “And what?” His voice was so loud he practically yelled. “You think this happened overnight? You think this is just some gift I was given? It wasn’t, okay? It took years of training and hard work at the gym. You should try it sometime. But let me tell you something: I am not like them.” He pointed behind Walter with conviction. “I’m sorry, okay?” He lost a little of the conviction as the guilt inundated him once again. This is what he’d been hoping for months that he’d get a chance to say to Walter someday, and now here was his chance. He took a deep breath when he saw Walter’s confused expression. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop them from breaking your robot.” He took another deep breath. “And I’m sorry for all those years I stood back and watched them bully you without saying anything. I really am, Walt. I’m sorry.”

  Walter stared at him for a moment and then glanced away. Obviously, he wasn’t expecting to hear this from Hector, and that’s what burned the most. As much as Hector didn’t want to admit it, he was as bad as the guys beating on Walter today. Maybe he’d never physically beaten Walter, but he’d been a part of beating Walter’s self-confidence to the ground for years. Any sense of self-worth Walter might have ever had, Hector had a hand in beating it lifeless. Hector knew he’d never join the jerks he hung out with in ganging up to beat on someone, but how were Walter and some of the other weaklings that got picked on regularly supposed to know that? Of course, they’d never fight back. Who would fight a group of overconfident bullies that included a trained fighter among them?

  Hector waited for what seemed too long, but hell, he’d waited for months. He could give this guy a few more minutes. He understood how Walter could be so stunned. An apology from someone he considered to be one of his bullies for so many years was probably the last thing Walter thought he’d ever hear. Of course, he’d been stunned into silence.

  They both looked up as the noise from a public bus that turned into the college campus parking lot distracted them momentarily. “I gotta go,” Walter said. “That’s my ride.” He started toward the bus stop a few feet away from them but stopped just before he got to in and turned to Hector, still holding his side in obvious pain. “I always knew you weren’t like them.” The bus pulled up behind Walter, and he began to turn around to get on but stopped again one last time to face Hector. “Thanks, man.” For the first time that day, Walter smirked and lifted his chin. “I really didn’t have a plan back there.”

  Hector smiled, laughing softly. “Yeah, I didn’t buy that shit for a minute.”

  Walter smiled and got on the bus. Hector walked back toward the main building, flexing his now-aching fist and feeling a bit bittersweet. He finally got to say he was sorry, and it was good to know Walter never thought Hector was like his jerk ex-friends. But Hector couldn’t help shake the feeling that he had done Walter wrong and for way too long.

  Chapter 2

  More than a week after the whole Walter/Ross incident, Charlee still couldn’t stop thinking about the guy that saved them. At first, she kept shuddering at the thought of what might’ve happened if he hadn’t showed up when he had. Then, as the days went by, she stopped shuddering and started daydreaming.

  The only information she had on him was what little Walter offered. His name was Hector, they’d gone to high school together, and he was an amateur boxer at a boxing gym over in East L.A. That explained how he’d knocked out Ross so easily. In her daydreams, Hector was now a superhero: a beautifully tanned, perfectly sculpted specimen of a hero.

  What he said and did to her had become a little more elaborate with each daydream she had. She figured she’d never see him again, so it didn’t matter how ridiculous or naughty the dreams became. As far as she or Walter knew, Hector didn’t attend East Side U. Walter hadn’t asked him, but neither had he seen him on campus ever since. His being there at all that day was a mystery to them both. Never in her life had she felt so distracted and all because of a guy she got the pleasure of being in the presence of for about five minutes.

  “Hello!” Drew waved her hand in front of Charlee’s face.

  Charlee snapped out of it and smiled sheepishly at her friend, who held out a can of Red Bull for her. “What’s with you this week, girl?” Drew smirked at first, and then a look of concern washed over her face. “Are you sure you’re okay? Ever since what happened with that jerk Ross and his friends, you’ve been a little weird.”

  Charlee shook her head, taking a sip of the much needed energy drink. “I’m fine. I’ve just had some stuff on my mind lately: midterms. You know that and the Jr. World Olympiad are coming up, soon.” In an effort to avoid her inquisitive best friend asking more que
stions, she tried changing the subject. “They’re having a knockout tournament this weekend to replace Vladimir.” She then frowned, thinking about what she’d just said. “I don’t think we’re gonna find anyone as good as he was.”

  “How good could he have been, Charlee?” Drew rolled her eyes. “He got caught cheating.”

  Charlee was about to argue that he technically hadn’t been caught cheating. He was just caught with a wireless device and headphones in his last tournament, something that was strictly against the rules, but it was never proven he’d actually used it to cheat. It was a bit unfair, Charlee thought. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty anyway? The punishment hadn’t even fit the crime. Not only had he automatically been disqualified from the tournament but he was kicked off the US team and the school team, losing his free ride to ESU. But before she could start her argument, she noticed Drew had slowed down and was glaring at something straight ahead. No sooner had Charlee looked up to see who she was glaring at than she regretted doing so.

  “Why is it that before last week I’d never even noticed this guy and now it seems I see his stupid ass everywhere?” Drew asked as they walked out the cafeteria.

  Ross and his friends were sitting just outside the cafeteria. Thankfully, unlike for Drew, this was only the second time Charlee had seen him since the incident the week before. The first time she’d run into him, he stared her down, giving her a major case of the heebie-jeebies but hadn’t said anything. His cheek still had some signs of the swelling Hector’s blow had left but nothing like last week when his left cheek was about an inch higher than his right and the whites of his left eye were all red.

  Charlee didn’t look at him long enough now to take inventory of his injuries. But she may’ve looked too long because he smiled at her. It was early in the morning. Charlee and Drew were barely on their way to their first class of the day, but from the looks of it, Ross and his friends were already glossy-eyed. She turned away without smiling back.

  “Just keep walking and stop looking their way,” Charlee said, pulling on Drew’s arm.

  “Morning, Charlee.”

  Charlee nearly jumped out of her skin at the sight and sound of Ross right next to her now. She flinched but kept walking. “Morning.” She responded, deciding ignoring him might elicit another rude reaction from him. Her heart was already racing.

  “Can I talk to you?” He asked in a voice much nicer than last week’s.

  “No, I’m late already.” She tugged at Drew’s arm to warn her that she didn’t need to her to come to her rescue. Charlee could already feel the anger radiating from her friend.

  “Maybe later then?”

  Charlee glanced at him for a second. “Maybe.”

  “What!” Drew nearly roared.

  “I gotta go.” Charlee said quickly and picked up her pace to a near sprint, pulling Drew along with her.

  When they were far enough away and in the humanities building, Drew stopped in front of Charlee. “Maybe? You’re not actually gonna talk to that creep are you?”

  “No, of course not,” Charlee assured her. “I just didn’t know what else to say.”

  “How ’bout no?” Drew placed her fist on her hip.

  “I just said the first thing I could think of so that I could get away from him as fast as possible. That’s all.” Drew gave her the stink eye. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, well, now he’s gonna think he has the go-ahead to confront you the next time he sees you.”

  Charlee frowned. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. Truth was he’d spooked the hell out of her. The only thing she could think of at the time, aside from wanting to run away like a crazy person, was to agree to anything and get away without making a scene.

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, if I ever have to.”

  She didn’t even want to think about having to talk to Ross again. Unlike that first time, today she’d been in the middle of a crowded campus with her best friend at her side, and she was still terrified. There was something so ominous about him. If he ever confronted her alone again, she’d probably freak out.

  They reached their class, and Charlee decided she’d not think about it until she absolutely had to. For now, she had the bottle of mace she’d bought the day after the first incident, and if she was forced to use it, she would. She sat down and thought of something much more pleasant: Hector, her dreamy hero.

  ~*~

  It’d been weeks since Hector’s texts and emails with Lisa had tapered off. When she first moved up north they’d spoken on the phone a few times late in the evening, and their conversations had begun to take an intimate feel. Hector actually thought he was really starting to feel something for her. She even said she was going to try to come back down to L.A. and visit as soon as she could. Normally something like that might’ve scared him a little. He’d never done the relationship thing. He wasn’t sure if her making such a long trip meant she thought he was getting that serious. But the thought of it had begun to grow on him.

  Then, he noticed a change. She’d say she was going to call him and wouldn’t. The texts began to dwindle, and any talk of her visiting was suddenly never mentioned again. That’s when he noticed a reoccurring dude in her Facebook photos. The captions only ever mentioned his name and where they were but not what relation he was to her. Never one to beat around the bush, Hector asked her flat out who the guy was. All she said was that he was a friend, but soon there were photos of them at college football games and at a fair. The kicker was the photo of them posing in front of a movie theater, holding hands. That’s when Hector un-friended her and stopped responding to her texts. They were few and far between anyway. He’d already started to feel a bit creepy stalking her Facebook photos, but he still insisted she should’ve just been honest with him.

  The most maddening thing of all, though he was more pissed at himself than he was with her, was that his dumb ass actually passed up hanging out with some of his regulars in the last couple of weeks. He’d never admit it out loud, but clearly he was secretly hoping she was doing the same thing.

  He decided not to give it another thought. He’d already obsessed too much about her as it was, and all he’d ever done was kiss her one time. Instead, he decided to focus on his latest challenge.

  Shaking his head, he finally admitted it. He’d screwed up. Hector had never actually discussed college in depth with his mom and his older brother, Abel, but apparently he was expected to go. He hadn’t even bothered taking his SATs because he was sure that being part owner of 5th Street he’d go straight to working full time there after high school. It’s what Abel had done when he graduated.

  His mother, being old-school, had been fine when Abel went straight into fighting and working at 5th Street after high school. Of course, it had always been his brother’s dream to be a heavyweight champ, and the way things were looking, Abel had a damn good chance of making it. There’d already been one alumnus from 5th Street to make it to the big time. Abel wasn’t far behind.

  Hector was a good enough fighter, but he did it for the same reason he’d done just about anything growing up: because of his big brother—his hero. He almost never admitted it aloud, especially now that he was older, but he had always been and still was his brother’s biggest fan. Abel was the real fighter of the two and would someday be the heavyweight champ. Everyone said he had a real good chance at the title. Hector only really did it for the adrenaline rush fighting gave him, and he liked what the workouts did to his body, but he’d never really been interested in fighting professionally.

  It wasn’t just the fighting. There were a lot of other reasons why Abel was his hero, so hearing him say he was disappointed in Hector was all it took to get his ass scrambling. He needed to figure out a way to get into a good school, even if it meant waiting until the winter session since it was way too late for fall.

  The day he’d gone down to East Side U, he did so for one reason—to see about trying out for their cove
ted chess team. He thought he could just go down there, show the instructors his skills, and just like that he’d be in. Unfortunately, that’s not how it worked, and with the fall semester already well underway, there was no other way he could think of getting into that particular school. So it was back to the drawing board because Hector was determined to get in one way or another.

  Then something came up. In high school, Hector had refused to join what he referred to as the “nerd fest”—the chess club. Chess was another thing Abel had gotten him into. Abel played for fun and was pretty good, but he quickly realized Hector wasn’t just good but he had an exceptional gift for the game. Next thing he knew, they were on a bus to Santa Monica to play with the hard-core chess players at the chess park on the beach.

  That’s where he’d met Sam, a retired, cranky-as-shit Army vet and chess grandmaster with many championship titles under his belt. Abel had taught Hector the basics. Hector had tossed in his own spin on the game, stepping it up so much he impressed the hell out of Abel. But Sam, Sam was why he was here today, why he thought he had so much as a prayer at winning a knockout tournament that would get him on the US under-20 chess team—a team that would be playing for a spot in the Junior World Olympiad later this year. Sam had trained him and taught him everything he knew about mastering the game. Most importantly, Sam thought Hector had this.

  Even with all the smaller events he’d won over the years and the online tournaments he’d taken first place in over and over, Hector never thought he’d be playing in major knockout event like this. But having played and won in the World Olympiad more than once himself, Sam recommended Hector be entered in a chance to make a team that would be trying out for it. A week later, Hector was invited.

  At first, Hector was hesitant. Then Sam mentioned some of the team players for East Side University chess team were already on the US under-20 team and the trainers for the school team would be at today’s event: trainers that Sam said would no doubt notice Hector even if he didn’t win. Getting noticed by them this way might get him invited on the school team. This was his chance at early admission to the spring semester. Hector wanted nothing more than for Abel to take back how disappointed he’d been with him about not taking school more seriously. He hadn’t even told Abel about today. He was hoping to surprise him.