Christina (Daughters #1) Page 10

  “You’re going to be sore tomorrow,” a voice says behind me. I glance up and find Hot Girl from reception standing in front of me. She has muscles growing on muscles. I shrug and finish the reps I’m doing. As if I have any freaking clue how many reps to do. Back in middle school, we had a weight lifting unit in P.E. and that was the extent of my training. I temporarily consider not answering, with the blank stare that inevitably makes most people think I don’t speak or understand English. My mom is full-blooded Mexican. She was born and raised along the Mexican border. Her parents were never citizens, only she was. She grew up in Southern California and ventured further north when she reached her early teens, looking for work. She found work, along with drugs, and eventually, my white dad. Or at least, he was supposed to be my dad. My skin is far darker than Derek’s, and we’ve often wondered if I were really even a Salazar. We know very little about our supposed dad. He didn’t exactly bond with us about our mom’s familial history. Like everything else in our youth, Derek and I don’t actually know anything for sure.

  My mom practiced prostitution and stealing along with all the other shit that goes bump in the night. The thing is: she never taught Derek or me any Spanish. She rarely spoke to us, in English or Spanish. I think she knew how to speak it. I have a few memories of her yelling at me in another language, but talking to me regularly enough that I’d learn to comprehend it? No. Didn’t happen. I think I was lucky to have learned some English.

  “Maybe I like to be,” I mutter as my breathing quickens. I wipe off the sweat on my brow.

  Hot Girl grins. “Pain? You like it with some pain involved?” She raises her eyebrows at me. Wow, she’s not subtle and I smile with appreciation. I like forwardness in girls. I don’t like to bother with games. I think… maybe. Maybe I would like sex with pain since I like to direct pain toward myself to express what’s inside me. “I like it when it’s not nice,” I purr lasciviously.

  Her tits are just below my eye level, like rocks sitting on top of the rest of her muscles. I’m nineteen, they’re huge and right there, encased in a training bra. Her tight stomach shows inches of tanned skin. What right have I to lust after her? Especially after I so easily and thoroughly made sure Christina didn’t get what she was lusting after? I see my hypocrisy. It flashes through my mind; and still, I don’t feel guilty. This has nothing to do with how I might, or might not, feel about Christina. In my mind, the two are separate issues. I’m good at filling up boxes and keeping them all separate in my head. She tilts her head back and her blond hair falls down her back as she lifts those globes towards me even more. “I get that. But seriously, if you’re going to work out, you can’t do it like that.”

  “So you want to teach me?” I raise my eyebrows, sure we’re talking about two things here: consensual sex and weight training.

  She smiles. “Yeah. I might. Now, first, widen your stance, distribute your weight evenly over your hips, and straighten up your spine.”

  I do as she says, but when her hands reach for me, I swiftly move my body. “No touching,” I warn her.

  She stills and her eyebrows rise. “Never?”

  “Never.”

  I think of Christina being upset and huddling on my bed, whispering, “even now?” Yeah, I guess it has to be never.

  She makes this kind of tsking sound and her lips are a moist, bright red. I can’t help thinking of them on me and instantly harden at the thought. I shift away from her so she doesn’t see.

  “Okay, that’s… interesting. That must make things kind of inventive.”

  “You could say that,” I mumble and she smiles.

  “You coming back here besides today?”

  “I guess. Nothing better to do.”

  “You fight?”

  “All the time.” God, it feels good to just say that. Yes. I do that. It’s just me.

  “What style?”

  Style? None. Ever. What the hell does she mean? She sighs. “Jiujitsu, Aikido, Tai Chi… western wrestling? Anything?”

  I laugh. Did she have a stroke? Is she speaking in tongues? “What are those?”

  “Martial arts. And wrestling. You know what wrestling is, right?”

  “I don’t see the arts in any of it. But of course, I know what wrestling is.” School had a team, but I was never into teams, or joining anything. At all. Ever.

  “But you like to do that? Beat the shit out of someone?”

  “I love to do that.”

  Her red, full lips slide into a smile over her fake-white teeth. “You should come back then.”

  Okay, she’s flirting. There is no mistaking her glance down my body. “I should come… back?”

  Yeah, I’m that cheesy and it works ‘cause she lifts the side of her mouth. “How old are you, kid?”

  Why lie? I’m of age. I’ve already figured out she’s got a decade on me, at least. There are faint lines around her eyes when she smiles, although I suspect she tries to hide it with surgery or something. “Nineteen.”

  “Young one.”

  “Old enough,” I challenge, and her eyes gleam.

  “Yes, old enough. I’m Tanya.” She holds out her hand. I ignore it, but meet her stare. Our eyes connect and we both smile. Pretty clear where Tanya and Max are headed.

  “Max,” I say, ignoring her hand. She finally drops her casual handshake.

  “Well, Max, why don’t we start with some basics here?”

  “Why would you bother?”

  She shrugs. “I work the front desk for free membership. I train some too. We don’t get busy until afternoons and evenings. I have a lot of time, I’m bored, and you look interesting enough.”

  “Okay,” I say and she ends up spending over an hour going through the circuit of weights. She makes me run until I nearly pass out on one of the treadmills, and then onto the bikes, explaining I need to build stamina if I ever hope to fight properly. I never intend to do that. But watching her run next to me is worth the sweat falling into my eyes as well as my burning muscles.

  We finish and walk towards the lockers. She nods at an office. “You have money?”

  “Why?”

  “You should start training with Bruce, he’s the best around here. He used to fight MMA until he got hurt just a year into it. He might be interested in training you.”

  “Why? You guys train for that? Mixed Martial Arts fighting?” Of course, I watch that on TV sometimes. But I don’t have much interest in it for myself. I don’t like rules. Any rules. Even those mild ones. I don’t like commercialized anything.

  “No. Nothing like that. You seem to like a challenge. Small, but strong, you could be fun to train.”

  “For you too?” I reply.

  She leans that red, tasty mouth towards me and her tongue darts out as she licks my ear and then whispers, “Maybe, for me too.”

  Then she saunters away while I shake myself out of my haze of horniness. I even duck into the showers to calm down and clean up.

  After an introduction like that, shit, yeah, I go back! I think Noah is stunned at my eagerness. He has Trainer Tanya to thank for that. The next few weeks, I spend increasingly longer hours there and my muscles start to grow while my stamina also increases. I even take Tanya’s surprising knowledge about nutrition for real and eat the proteins she insists on, while lessening my intake of junk.

  After three days into our private training parties, I start sleeping with Tanya. The first time it happened was after she tipped her long, red painted fingernail at me and motioned for me to follow her into some kind of storage room. Surrounded by wire shelves of sports stuff, she came onto me. I had to go through the awkward part I hate, where I try to explain the no touching rule. No holding onto me. No kissing my mouth. I simply tolerate the minimal touching it takes to complete the mission. It freaks some girls out. But not Tanya.

  “Freaky,” she comments while rubbing her own nipple. She licks her lips, “So you won’t do this?”

  “I’ll do that,” I answer as I lean out and tou
ch her tight bud, flicking it with my fingers. I am not a monster. But that and her vagina are about all I am interested in, or let’s face it, capable of touching. She seems to take it as a personal challenge and wants to figure out the physics of that. God bless her, there isn’t a shy thought in her head. Stripping from her tight, little shorts, she heaves herself up onto a flat table that is dusty and scarred from use. That doesn’t faze her as she opens her legs, sitting up on her elbows, and beckons me forward.

  She becomes more inventive over the summer in how she fucks me without me touching her, and in ways that still give her pleasure. She invites me to her house eventually and gets pretty resourceful there. She has ways that would put to shame any sexual encounters I had before her. Call her my guru for everything physical. From weightlifting to cardio training, she is as knowledgeable as any master. I respect the hell out of Tanya. There is nothing about fitness and health she doesn’t know. Her talents are kind of wasted though, at that rusty, washed-out warehouse gym where she works. But she doesn’t seem to care.

  I learn things from her that no one else could have taught me. She moves on pretty quickly, trying to get me into one of her fetishes. Owing to my own strange fetish of no touching, I manage to bow out of most of it without pissing her off. She likes to be tied up, which I can do, but thank God, I have an excuse so she can’t return the favor. She finds it particularly hot when I have her totally immobilized and all I touch her with is my mouth or penis. Like I said, she is kind of a freak, but I’m game.

  She seems pretty content with our setup. She doesn’t ask anything more from me than I do from her; and it feels really freaking nice not to have to pretend to be a hearts-and-roses kind of guy. There are no awkward dates, or poor Tanya episodes because I refuse to hold her. It is, in fact, kinda my first real relationship, beyond, of course, whatever Christina and I share.

  Christina. She would probably start hyperventilating if she knew what I am really up to. She thinks I’m simply working out and taking some martial arts classes. She’d hate knowing the rest of it. I see her like usual. Evenings. Weekends. But she has no idea what I do all day long. I so often keep my life separate from her.

  ~Christina~

  Summer in Ellensburg means warm weather, tons of sun, and one last summer where I can pretend I’m not supposed to be an adult, starting my life. I hang with my sisters, and see less and less of my high school friends. I mostly stay home and swim a lot. I ride horses with Missy, and play basketball, or catch, or soccer with Emily. I work five afternoons a week at my mom’s vet clinic. I answer phones, make appointments, and maintain the files. It’s a great job and they pay me decently enough. There’s not much stress, so each night, I go off with my friends and Max; and each morning, I sleep in until forever and tend my sisters, but only if the need arises. They’re mostly self-sufficient, so I have it pretty easy. Until about now, however, I didn’t fully comprehend how easy.

  Melissa causes me the most trouble. She’s frequently wandering off and getting lost or misplaced. I’m not kidding. I swear to God, she’ll see a pretty butterfly and follow it straight into the woods for two hours before she forgets where she is and what she’s doing. Then, she ends up crying because she’s lost and scared and confused. Melissa drives me nuts! She often acts like a bewildered child, although she is old enough not to be.

  We have twenty acres, and, good vet that my mother is, we populate it with a variety of animals, including horses, goats, sheep, chickens, several dogs, and multiple cats. My mom doesn’t eat meat so they are all our pets, especially Melissa’s. She gets up early and does most of the feeding and cleaning, out of joy, not because anyone makes her. It used to be one of my jobs, which I gladly surrendered to Melissa after she begged me. She loves the animals and, for as flighty and spacey as she can be, she’s also kind and nurturing. She’s always trying to save any creature she finds, from spiders to flies to rodents even. There is nothing alive that Melissa doesn’t love. I admire it in her, despite crushing the spiders and swatting the flies and insisting on mousetraps being set all around the house. No way am I as good as Melissa that I could bear to live with those things in my house!

  Emily’s easy to watch because she’s always done the right thing and for every moment of her life. She’s wiry, athletic and lithe, which makes her crazy good at any sport she attempts. From track to basketball, softball to gymnastics, you name it, and she’s done it, or trained in it, or wants to. She takes private swim and tennis lessons. Why? No reason, other than, she loves to. She’s my dad: anal, perfectionist, accomplished, and a master at everything.

  Her summers are spent playing and participating in anything she can sign up for. And of course, being the best on the team/club/association, or whatever it is, she’s grown accustomed to her superior status. Melissa, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. No sports for her. She’s always off with the farm animals. Although friendly, she often gets into trouble for not paying attention to what she’s doing, or where she’s at, or she forgets to do what she should be doing, or go where she should be going. Emily is the absolute salt of the earth when it comes to being reliable. Swear to God, she could take care of me. Smart and quick and funny, she is also intense and sometimes forgets to act her age.

  During the summer mornings and afternoons, the three of us rule the house. We bicker and fight, staging epic battles we usually don’t tell our parents about… But there are times when I feel a sharp pang in my chest and realize how much I will miss them, and this, our squabbling, when I leave for college. We’re sisters, friends, enemies, and blood. Forever. It’s not confusing; it’s just how it is. I’d do anything for either of them, and they both worship me. No kidding. My parents require a lot from me. The reason for half of it, I know, is because of my little sisters, who still look up to me.

  Many Saturday nights, my aunt and uncle come over with Max. They lounge on the back deck, taking in the views. Whether my dad barbecues, or my mom pushes us toward her vegetarian salads, trying to make us turn us away from the hamburgers my dad cooks, she rarely succeeds, however; Max comes with them, of course. He and I sit together with my sisters and it’s fun. We’ve spent the last five years doing that… being friends, but more like family. Shooting hoops, playing horse with Emily, or venturing out to the barn with Melissa and coddling whatever new baby animals she discovered or helped birth or simply wants us to visit, we all trail around together, just doing stuff.

  My dad has a motorcycle track on our property and we all love to ride. I enjoy it particularly, and Max often uses my bike. He goes way crazier than I do off the jumps that he and my dad have set up. They are way too high for the rest of us. It drives my poor mother nuts as she clucks and coddles, fussing about as we all lean or sit on the fence rails beside the pasture, taking turns riding. My dad and Max get way too crazy and often challenge each other in break-neck races that make my mom and aunt freak out. Emily and I just tootle around, not even at half speed, and never do I jump. We all have full riding gear and helmets, but after Melissa took it up, it was much to Mom’s chagrin. She is even crazier and faster than Max! Strangely enough, despite her usual lack of coordination for anything, she is fast and sharp when riding the tracks. It’s the one thing she and my dad love to do together. They often haul their bikes up to trails around the mountains and ride. Luckily, none of us go with them, or witness their daredevil acts. Mom worries the entire time they are gone, and only breathes freely again when she hears Dad’s truck roaring up the driveway.

  My aunt and uncle occupy the spot, I believe, most grandparents would fill. Since we have none, they have always acted like my second parents. I absolutely adore them. My sisters and I often spent nights there on the weekends, or hung out there after school if Mom had to work. And since Max joined the family, I think I must spend half my life there. They truly are my second home. We are a good family. A strong family. A family that hangs together even when we don’t have to. Those Saturday nights, especially during the summers, when th
e light lingers forever, and the adults sit around drinking beer and relaxing while we kids just play are the best memories of my childhood. So now, on the cusp of leaving home, and leaving this life, to find a new one, it means so much more to me than ever before.

  Except, Max rarely comes anymore. He’s always at the gym, or hanging with his new friends from the gym, whom I’ve yet to meet. I don’t know what to do with that. Max has his own life now, and for the first time perhaps, his own friends, so he has way less to do with me.

  I try to be cool with it. I smile and say okay, fine, great, see you next time. We don’t talk on the phone like we used to either; and now that school’s over, we only see each other in the evenings when we’re hanging on the beach with a big group of friends. We don’t go off alone to talk like before. It’s like Max is always triply sure not to ever be alone with me.

  I have no idea what happened to us.

  Chapter Seven

  ~Max~

  AS SUMMER WEARS ON, Tanya pushes me to enroll in some of the classes the gym offers. Most of the martial arts stuff is taught in the evenings, except for the random, little-kid class here or there. I am awful. Having no training, I’ve never even watched anything beyond the old movies like Karate Kid. That’s all I can imagine. Me, raising my arms, then my knee, and balancing, the perfect chop of my legs in the crane. I still don’t know what the actual move is called. Anyway, I spend a lot of time mimicking that in the mirror and around the gym, pissing a few people off. Some get a laugh off me. A few of the gym fighters, however, take all this shit seriously. I mean, you better watch your back if you try to have a little fun with them. I start to get known, since I’m there every day. As Noah pointed out, I’ve nothing else to do, and Christina is busy at the vet office. So I fill the hours with sweat, both from the gym and from Tanya. It’s not a bad way to spend the summer. Noah and Lindsey are happy. They think, hell, the entire family believes, I’m channeling my shit in a healthy way… finally. And the random bruises? They can now be explained by what I do at the gym. Perfect cover. Perfect excuse.