Arizona Allspice Read online

  ARIZONA

  ALLSPICE

  Renee Lewin

  ReneeRomance Books

  ARIZONA ALLSPICE

  Published by ReneeRomance Books

  ReneeRomance.com

  All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  This story is a work of fiction. All characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is coincidental.

  © 2011 Renee Lewin

  Cover Design: ReneeRomance Book Design, Renee Lewin

  Cover Photo: © SXC; ‘Antique Star’ by rpichler; ‘Flowers of cactus’ by c_mackow

  DEDICATION

  To my family:

  Daddy, Azucar, Cha Cha, the Big Guys, and Mom

  ONE

  Holding up my blue Chinese parasol, I shaded my eyes from the sun. I adjusted my square glasses, their thin frames two-toned purple and black, and watched as Raul steadied his eyes on the ball. Raul’s right leg pulled back and then swung forward. I’d seen him do it dozens of times before, yet each time I was captivated by the movement of the muscles beneath his bronze skin and by his jet black hair dripping with sweat. Raul teased me about my glasses all the time. I got into the habit of wearing them during high school. He called me his murciélagita, his little bat. Sometimes he joked that I’m batty like my father. He often forgot how hard it was to take care of my dad. The few people still in my life forgot that. Raul said it was because I made it look so easy.

  There was the unmistakable sound of his sneaker making contact with the leather exterior of the black and white ball. His power transferred. The ball arched through the hot air. Everyone’s eyes followed its flight path. The goalie leaped. His distance came up short. The ball hit the back of the goal and everyone around me cheered. Even Manny yelled and whistled beside me. I remained seated, but I was grinning.

  On the other side of the field I heard some of the opposing team’s fans grumbling and cursing, furious over lost bets. I spotted Joey on one end of the field ripping his red t-shirt off, exposing his tanned chest and abs, as well as his freckled shoulders. He balled up the shirt and hurled it to the ground. The sweat had made his red hair darken. I watched his tantrum, mesmerized. He spit onto the team shirt, further soiling it after grinding dirt into it with his cleat. He brought a balled up fist to pound once at his chest before storming off the field and down the road toward his trailer.

  His teammates urged him not to take it so hard. They knew, however, not to be too adamant in trying to settle him. It would only make him angrier. His display of tarnishing his team shirt was not in any way a direct insult to his team. They knew that. Joey was their captain, their most passionate teammate. They called him El Fuego: The Fire. I personally preferred to call him El Pinturero: The Showoff. Joey stuck out like a sore thumb, being the only white guy on either team that day and he was also tall. I was sure he loved the feeling of everybody noticing him. Joey was on team Las Chupasangres: The Bloodsuckers. Thus, the red team color. Raul was on team La Tormenta: The Storm. Their team color was silver.

  Raul jogged over to me shirtless and smirking. “¿Tú miras El Fuego? Es loco. Seriously.”

  I nodded as for a moment my eyes followed the little trail of black hair that started from Raul’s navel and disappeared into the front of his soccer shorts. The smirk widens on in in his face. I knew he would tease me about it later, retelling the ongoing joke of me eventually breaking down and letting him be my first. He had never pushed me to do anything I didn’t want to do. We’d been dating unofficially for two years straight and I still had my virginity. What other guy would stay after they realized I wouldn’t give in to their lust? Raul was very dear to me, so I didn’t listen to the crap that people like Joey had to say about him.

  “I’m gonna go talk to Marisol,” Raul said. “I’ll talk to you later, ‘kay Mami?”

  “Okay,” I answered. I watched him walk over to Marisol. She smiled and her eyes roamed over his body. I couldn’t blame her. Raul raised a hand and playfully nudged her under the chin. She smiled and smoothed down the long curly ponytail that draped her left shoulder. I saw her glossed lips moving as she talked. She looked up at him with hazel eyes lined with black eyeliner and her “baby hair” was gelled down around her hairline, framing her face. She sat in a lawn chair with her smooth legs crossed, wearing flip flops, a jean mini skirt and a tank top. Raul’s eyes slid down her petite caramel body. He leaned down to whisper something into her ear. I quickly looked away. Why did he have to be so obvious about it? Holding my folded chair and my parasol, I headed home to Dad who’d wake up from his nap soon.

  I spotted my brother Manny chatting with others in the crowd walking home from the field. I try to catch up with him. I looked down at my feet as I walked. I wore black steel-toed boots, not flip flops. I wore fitted jeans tucked into them, not a mini skirt. I wore a t-shirt and a jean vest, not a low cut tank top. I licked my drying lips; there was no gloss or lipstick. I combed back strands of my black hair with my fingers to put them back into my bun and adjusted my glasses behind my ear. I’d worn that uniform for five years. It was me and I didn’t apologize.

  I caught up to Manny and he looked over at me and smiled. At five foot eight we stood eye to eye. I grasped onto his hand and he swung it back and forth just like he’d done since elementary school. I laughed as he swung our arms faster and higher until I thought it’d begin to hurt but he slowed down, like always, released my hand and put his arm across my shoulder as we walked. He sighed. “Don’t be mad, but Joey is coming over for a beer later.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I hate you hanging out with him.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s a bad influence.”

  “I’m not a child.”

  “You’re not old enough to drink.”

  “I look old enough to buy it and I’m man enough to handle it.”

  “You mean you’re the one buying the beer?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  I smacked him on the back of his head. He simply laughed and lazily rubbed at the spot with his long fingers, his fingertips running over the prickly waves of his fresh fade. The shadows from my parasol fell as diagonal lines along the side of his smooth shaven face. “Emanuel Roberts! You don’t have to be like the rest of the guys in this town. Don’t let people convince you of something you don’t want to do because the next day they’ll get bored of it and convince you of something worse.”

  “Laney, I’m going to enjoy a couple beers with a friend in my house, under the supervision of my overprotective twin sister! I’m not going to get wasted and hop into my truck. I promise.”

  I sighed. “Okay. Maybe I’m being overdramatic, but you know how I feel about Joey. Frankly, he’s scary, nosy, rude, and conceited. He probably has autographed pictures of himself hung up in his locker at work.”

  “Wow,” he shook his head with a smirk.

  “Are you trying to tell me I’m wrong?”

  “Yes, once again, I am telling you you’re wrong. You’ve never really seen his good side. I wish you would give him a chance.”

  “The fact that you’ve been friends with this guy for months and I have yet to see his good side probably means he doesn’t have one.”

  “Laney, you and I think alike. I wouldn’t hang out with someone you couldn’t ever like. He just hasn’t let his guard down around you completely yet. Why would he when you always give him attitude? Give him a break, okay?”

  I shrugged my shoulders as we climbed the steps to our trailer home. We found Dad sitting on a bar stool on the opposite side of the trailer smoking a cigarette, blowing the smoke out of
the screened window and mumbling to himself. I hated seeing him smoke and I hated him smoking in the house, but he was afraid to go outside and smoking cigarettes calmed him down.

  ******

  “You remember Joey? Don’t you Dad?” Manny asked, even though Joey had come over many times before. Dad simply nodded. We had to introduce him to visitors, even if he’d seen them ten times before, because his memory wasn’t what it used to be and his suspicion often took over.

  Manny and Joey sat on the couch drinking and watching an old Steven Seagal movie. I was itching to get up and leave. I had been watching television before Joey arrived and I was so disturbed by his presence that I had goose bumps on my arms. I wasn’t about to let him control my actions in my own home so I stayed put on the couch when he walked in. Joey had the decency to politely say hello, but not enough to sit on the other side of Manny. Instead he sat right next to me. His body heat radiated, warming my goose pimpled skin. He glanced at me. Surprisingly, he said nothing. He returned his eyes to the television and took a long swig from his beer. The gray shirt he was wearing with his jeans was tight around his biceps and hung close across his chest.

  Though he tried to act unfazed by my displeasure, I noticed that his other hand is clenched tight. Was he imagining hitting me? I had reason to believe that he was a woman beater. His reputation with half the girls in town started in high school. He had girls of every shape, size, and color and almost every one cried when, predictably, he left them. Apparently he made quite an impression on them and I figured that impression was physical in more ways than one. There was no way in hell that Joey, the volatile hothead, was having these girls cry over him for being a sweetheart.

  It was scary seeing girls crying in the hallway or in the cafeteria or in class, girls that clearly had gone out with Joey. Much gossip surrounded each one of his relationships and added to his reputation. Even scarier was that some of the girls he dumped didn’t cry at all. They quite happily let him go, even giving him a hug and a kiss on the cheek to send him on his way, off to another chick. He appeared to have this power over most of the girls in town, which wasn’t too hard since most of the girls were so simple it was laughable. His influence was unsettling. Plus, he began making smart remarks to me about Raul and commenting on things that didn’t concern him, telling Manny he could still go to college or that I shouldn’t be left alone to watch my father. What the hell did he know about loyalty to your father? Joey’s father wasn’t even in his life.

  I stared uninterested at the movie, glancing over at my dad every once in a while to make sure he was okay. I could tell by his body language if something was brewing in his mind. His shoulders would slump over like a gargoyle and his eyebrows would furrow as he shook his head back and forth or tapped his foot feverishly. He was still sitting on the stool smoking his cigarettes. He was calm.

  I heard a sound like someone tapping a stick on an empty Campbell’s soup can. Dread pulled the warmth from my skin. Was I hearing things like Daddy did? Things that weren’t really there? The sound got louder and finally Manny, Joey, and Dad turned their attentions away from the television. The windows started to rattle. I stood up along with Joey and parted the curtains with a nervous hand. Elementary school boys were encircling our house, giggling and running and smacking fists or sticks against the steel siding of the trailer. Joey stormed outside. When the boys saw him in the doorway their little jaws dropped.

  “What do you think you bastards are doing?”

  “Joe Kinsley,” they whispered, astonished. Most of the kids ran but a few were too scared to move. “We did it on a d-dare. They dared us to tag Crazy Eddie’s house,” one of the boys stammered. “We’re real sorry.”

  “Who dared you?”

  “The Tormentas.”

  “Let your friends know, if you mess with the Roberts, you mess with Joey Kinsley!” he roared. My mouth fell open at his declaration.

  “Now get out of here!”

  The little boys ran for their lives and disappeared behind various trailers. Neighbors were peeping outside their windows. All the commotion startled my father and he began pacing the house, looking through all the windows for any more kids.

  Manny, Joey, and I stood on the front porch scanning the area. Manny and Joey walked past me to go back inside. Felipe, a little boy who lived in the trailer adjacent to us, walked out of his house tossing a baseball in the air. I waved at him and he smiled and waved back. I turned around to find my dad running out of the house toward me. I put my hands up and onto his shoulders to push him back. “Get away!” he screamed at Felipe. “Leave my family alone!”

  “Dad!” I pleaded for his attention while desperately trying to hold him back. Manny bounded out of the house toward us. Poor Felipe ran away frightened.

  Dad looked from a retreating Felipe to me. “You’re keeping communication with Them aren’t you?”

  Manny grabbed Dad by the arms, pulling him backward toward the house. “I saw you make a signal. You signaled those boys as a distraction, didn’t you!”

  “No Daddy. I would never do that.”

  Manny struggled to get Dad up the stairs, but Dad wouldn’t cooperate. Joey stood in the doorway watching. Dad maneuvered out of Manny’s grip and rushed toward me again. My father must have misjudged the distance between us and the speed he was going. He didn’t mean to crash into me. I fell backwards and scraped my palm on the concrete at the foot of the front steps.

  Then Joey was on him. With his arms wrapped tight around Dad’s midsection, he picks him up and tossed him back into the house. “I’m sorry,” I heard Dad whimper. “I thought she, I thought she...”

  I stood up with Manny’s help and we rushed back into the house, quickly locking the door behind us.

  “It’s okay, Dad. I know you didn’t mean it,” I said.

  Joey grabbed my hand to examine it. The heel of my palm was bleeding. He held up my hand so Manny could see it and then gently released my wrist. “This is the shit I’m talkin’ about Manny!”

  Manny lowered his eyes as if guilty.

  Joey turned to me. “And you heard what that kid said, Elaine. Raul, your “boyfriend”, and his boys sent those kids over here. Are you just going to let this continue?”

  How dare he criticize my brother, my boyfriend, and me when he had no idea what we were going through? Who was he to criticize me?

  “Get out of my house, you bully. Get out!” I yelled at him.

  Joey stared at me with a bit of surprise in his cold blue eyes. His gaze made me swallow, but I stood firm. He broke the stare, walked over to the coffee table and picked up his beer. Gulping it down, he walked past me and out the front door. I clenched my fists as a breeze of his warm, soapy scent filled my nose. Through the window, I saw him toss the empty bottle into the garbage can by the park office building as he walked down the dirt road.

  “I’ll get you something for your hand, Laney,” Manny mumbled and headed to the bathroom.

  Raul’s friends may have sent those kids but not Raul. He had nothing to do with the dare. Although my dad wasn’t as easy to handle as I made him out to be, he was what was left of my father. Every now and then my real father would shine through and I would never betray that man by sending him away to an institution. Never.

  I walked over and rubbed Dad’s back to calm him and to let him know that I accepted his apology. Manny entered the room with some bandages for my hand. He seemed to be in deep thought.

  “He didn’t mean it,” I said.

  Manny speaks in a low voice. “I know but…this wasn’t the first time he’s gotten out of control. I wish I could say this’ll be the last.”

  TWO

  My family fell apart two years ago.

  Restless, I sat in my third period English honors class. There were only a few weeks of my senior year left and I couldn’t wait to escape the impound known as Lorenzo High School. I had no friends there. I found the people who didn’t live in Merjoy Mobile Park snobby, and those who did li
ve in my neighborhood were rude and jealous. My father owned the park in those days, and because I felt no need to seek out the acceptance of my peers, I was labeled stuck up from the very first day of high school. I really wasn’t full of myself back then, just uninterested in everyone’s immature social politics. After freshman year, however, I definitely looked down on most of them. It was the natural result of them stooping as incredibly low as they did to terrorize my family and me after ‘the rent thing’.

  I was absentmindedly twirling a pen between my fingers when the principal’s voice came over the intercom system. “Emanuel and Elaine Roberts please report immediately to the principal’s office. Emanuel and Elaine Roberts. Thank you.”

  I’d never been called out of class to go the principal’s office in my life, and not only did he call me, he called my brother, too. Everyone in class looked at me curiously. The pen I was twirling ceremoniously fell from my hand, rolled down the surface of the desk, and fell at my boots.