“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.