Chapter Fourteen

“You gonna stick by me?”

“Maybe…”

**

I couldn’t believe I was at the high school again. After all the time I spent just waiting to get out of that fucking place, there I was, back twice in one day.

“This is probably the biggest mistake of your whole fucking life, even bigger than what you did to Linder,” I thought to myself as I leaned against the brick wall at the entrance to the school. “You are walking a fine line here, Dom…and you’re about to fall over the fucking edge of it.”

I couldn’t not be there, though.

Finally, I saw Letty walking towards me. She was still wearing my jacket, and I had to smile. It was way too big for her, came down to the middle of her thighs, the sleeves completely hid her hands. It made her look like she was mine, and I liked that. A lot.

“Hey, Leticia,” I heard some guy yell to her. I almost went back to my car, thinking to myself, “See, this is who she should be with. Some guy from school, her own age. Not you, Dom. Just leave her alone.” But then he continued. “If I said you had a great body, would you hold it against me?”

“Yeah, and how much would Sly charge us? Five, ten bucks?” another boy added.

Letty hesitated slightly, like she wasn’t sure if she should stop or just keep walking. I couldn’t believe that she would let anyone get away with saying things like that to her. But then, she lifted her head to glare at the boy. “The question,” she snapped at them, “is how much would you have to pay me to keep me from kicking your ass, Lamont.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” the guy replied, reaching forward to grab Letty’s arm, gesturing to his crotch with his other hand. “You know you want this, bitch.”

“Well now, this should be interesting,” I muttered to myself, leaning back against the wall.

“Get your fucking hands off of me, you mother fucking son of a bitch,” Letty growled, completely calm.

“You gonna make me?” he asked in reply, smirking, putting his hand on her ass and trying to pull her closer to him.

As Letty pushed this asshole away from her, swung at him and hit him in the stomach, I slid away from the wall and walked over to them.

“Is there a problem here, baby?” I asked Letty, cocking my head towards the excuse for a guy she’d called Lamont. “You need some help, or you got this guy covered?”

“Nah, I got him,” she replied, looking over at me and smiling. “So what are you doing here?”

“What,” I laughed, stepping closer to her. “I’m not allowed to miss you?”

“You missed me, huh?” she asked, looking a little confused. Not that anyone but me, Leon or Mia would notice the slight difference in her voice, the questioning look in her eyes.

“Oh hell yeah,” I replied, reaching up to brush the hair away from her face, gesturing with my eyes over towards our audience. “I’ve been missing you all day.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep. Besides, I heard on the radio it might rain this afternoon, and I didn’t want you getting all wet. Not from the rain, anyways.”

“So…we leaving, or are you just going to stand there and look at me all day?”

“Well,” I said, reaching out to pull her closer to me, “you know how much I love looking at you…but I actually had other things in mind…”

She shivered a little, I noticed, and I wondered if I was actually getting to her.

“You warm enough?” I asked, sliding my hands from her waist to further up underneath her jacket. Well, my jacket. But I didn’t think I was going to be wearing it much anymore, as good as she looked in it.

“Well, now I am,” she replied, laughing at me. I thought she might even have been blushing a little, and I had to smile. It was cute, but I knew how much she hated looking flustered in public, and I was sure she’d make me pay for it later.

Thinking I’d gotten my point across to Lamont, I stepped back from Letty a little, took her hand, and started walking away.

We didn’t say anything to each other as we walked to the car. But I didn’t let go of Letty’s hand, not even when we were out of sight of Lamont and his gang. I didn’t want to stop touching her. I had to laugh at myself. I knew exactly how to act when I was putting on a show for other people, claiming Letty as mine and trying to intimidate them into staying away from her. But I didn’t have any idea how to act around her when we were alone, couldn’t even let her know how I felt. I’d been with tons of chicks before I went to jail, never had to think twice about how to act around them. But Letty was different from all those other chicks. She was special.

Before we got into the car, Letty shrugged her way out of my jacket and laid it down on the backseat. I was sorry to see her take it off, actually.

“Thanks for letting me borrow this, Dom,” she said, breaking the silence that had built up between us. “I would’ve totally frozen my ass off today without it.”

“So…how’d your test go?” I asked after a few seconds, desperate for anything to talk about, anything to distract myself from remembering the last time we were in the car together.

“It went pretty good, actually,” she replied, giving me a strange look, like she wondered why I was asking. “Mia helped me study for it, all last week, so that helped a lot.”

“Yeah, she always has been good at that sort of thing,” I said, trailing off into silence again.

“So, you don’t mind that I came to pick you up, do you?” I asked when we were halfway to the garage, feeling like a complete idiot.

“What,” she laughed, “you think I like walking home every day? I don’t mind being driven around everywhere, not at all.” She paused slightly, then continued, “Why did you, though? Just curious…”

“Oh,” I started, not knowing exactly what to say. “Well, it really is supposed to rain today. And I know Leon and I said you’d only have to help at the garage before school today, but we got about five new jobs in. So I could use your help again, if you don’t have too much homework...”

“Oh, I see how it is, you just want my help so you don’t have to work so hard,” she laughed. “Hey,” she continued hesitantly after a minute, her voice dropping to a more serious tone. “Thanks for backing me up with Lamont. He’s a real asshole.”

“Yeah, well, it looked like maybe you needed some help, and I was there, so…”

“Needed some help? Oh, please! I totally had him!”

“Sure, Letty,” I laughed, indulging her. “Just like you totally had Sly too, right?”

“Exactly.”

“Those guys bother you a lot?” I asked, looking over at her briefly.

“Nah, not really,” she replied. “They’ve never actually touched me before. Mostly they just say stuff, bug me about Sly and all the other rumors and shit they hear about me. I just ignore them, or at least I try to. Today, I just couldn’t help myself, though.”

“Yeah, well, maybe now they think you’re…taken,” I said slowly, looking over to see her response, “they won’t be so quick to even say anything to you.”

That last comment had brought a strange expression to her face, as though she wasn’t quite sure she liked the idea of everyone thinking she was my girl.

“I hope you don’t mind me doing that,” I said quickly, dying a little inside.

“Hmm? Oh, no, Dom, it was a good idea,” she replied.

I was relieved, even though she still seemed distracted. Just then, it started pouring.

"See?” I laughed. “I told you it was really supposed to rain.”

“Yeah, yeah, I believed you!” she smiled back at me. “It’s a good thing you came to pick me up, though. Your jacket would have been ruined in all of this water.”

"Oh, I wouldn’t have minded. It would’ve kept you dry, at least.”

Right as we got up to the front of the garage, I remembered exactly how many cars had been dropped off during the day. There was nowhere for us to park except out by the street.

“So,” I said as I pulled into the driveway, “why don’t I just let you out by the door and then I’ll go park, so you won’t have to be out in the rain so long.”

“Damn, Dom,” she protested, reaching over to smack my arm lightly. “You think I’m gonna melt or something? It’s not raining that hard, I’ll be fine. Besides, it’s not fair for you to get all wet when you came out to pick me up.”

“Okay, okay,” I laughed. “Whatever you say, Letty.”

By the time we got inside, we were both soaking wet. Letty’s shirt was plastered to her skin, and I was sorry she wasn’t wearing white.

“Ugh,” she muttered, wringing her hair out just inside the door. “I think I should have had you let me out at the door. My hair’s gonna take hours to dry…my clothes too, prolly. Oh well, at least I have my coveralls here to change into. Now…where’d they end up, when we ran out this morning?”

“Uhm…they’re in the kitchen, on the counter by the microwave,” I replied, as I took off my wet shirt.

She just stood in the doorway to the back room a minute before looking at me. “Hey, Dom?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you have anything here, a shirt, and like, a pair of boxers maybe, that I could borrow? I really am completely soaked…and there’s nothing more uncomfortable than wearing wet underwear…”

“Uhm…” I struggled to think, trying to get my mind around the idea of Letty wearing my clothes. “Yeah…there should be some stuff back there. Look in the bottom cupboard over by the sink…”

“Thanks,” she said, as she walked through the doorway, out of sight.

It was a good ten minutes later when Letty came out into the garage again. At first, she just poked her head around the doorframe. Somewhere she’d found a rubber band or something to tie her hair up with, so it was off of her face, but I could still see small drops of water running down her neck.

“Uhm…Dom?” she asked, hesitantly.

Yeah?”

“I don’t know what you did to my bra this morning,” she laughed, blushing again, “but…I can’t get it off!”

“What?” I asked, sure I was suddenly blushing myself.

“You heard me,” she insisted. “So…could you help me? Please?”

“Yeah, okay,” I finally stammered out. “Come over here.”

She walked into the garage, the arms of her coveralls tied around her waist, holding one of my old t-shirts at her side, and my breath caught in my throat. Sure, I’d seen her wearing less just that morning, but now I had time to really look at her. And, she looked like everything I never knew I always wanted. At that moment…I fell completely in love with Letty.

After fumbling with her bra for a few minutes, I finally got the hooks undone. Okay, so I played around with it a little more than I really needed to, trying to find an excuse to keep touching her. Noticing her shivering, I stepped closer, reached around her to rub my hands against her arms. Then, hesitantly, I reached back up to her shoulders and pushed one strap, then the other, off of her.

She slid the t-shirt over her head as she turned to face me, giving me a perfect side view of her bare tits for half a second.

“You really ought to work on that, you know,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “Took you long enough. And here I thought you were supposed to be some kind of ladies’ man, the biggest player in the neighborhood…”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied. “Like I said this morning, I’m out of practice. You willing to be my guinea pig, till I can hook or unhook any bra in five seconds or less, one-handed?”

“Oh, yeah, you bet,” Letty laughed. “Why would you want me to use as a guinea pig though? I’m sure you could get any girl to let you practice on her,” she continued after a few seconds, looking down at her feet.

“But what if I don’t want just any girl?” I asked, reaching over to lift her chin up.

Before I could think to stop myself, I lowered my face to her and kissed her, my lips brushing lightly across her mouth, catching her by surprise.

“Why’d you do that?” she asked quietly when I’d pulled away, looking up at me.

“I wanted to,” I replied softly, bending down to kiss her again.