Loup ran, going nowhere. “Just keep reading.”
T.Y. read.
They helped; they all helped, the Santitos. Except Pilar, who had set about ignoring her in a determined fashion. The others read stories to her. Jaime and Jane read articles from old science magazines. They took turns spotting her while she lifted weights, steady and patient.
Pilar continued to ignore her.
“Show me.” Floyd held up his hands, covered in defensive punch mitts. “I want to see a jab, a straight jab. Nothing else.”
She punched.
Left.
Right.
Left.
He grunted. “Don’t lean, child!”
“Sorry,” Loup murmured.
“You hit like a goddamned truck.” He repositioned her with impersonal hands. “But in a real fight, the goddamned truck’s going to hit back. Again.”
Footwork and shadowboxing. Sometimes she thought about Tommy while she trained. Sometimes as a goad, remembering the hurt on his face when she’d told him she could take him. Remembering the way he’d snapped at her when she told him to take a dive. Remembering his face, slack and lifeless, on the operating room table. But mostly about the good times. How he was always trying to protect her from herself. How his face lit up when he saw her, just as Pilar had said.
All the memories of Tommy made her heart ache.
She thought about Pilar, too.
Floyd reopened the gym. He scrubbed the black paint from the windows, replacing it with blinds. He procured a permit for Loup so she could be out during curfew. In the early mornings and late evenings, he closed the blinds and taught her. Different punches, then combinations. He let her start working the bags. Days and weeks passed, marked by the steady rhythm of punching.
The Santitos continued to grow and change. Mack turned eighteen and Father Ramon offered him a job as the church’s handyman and a private room above the garage. Mack accepted.
Katya broke up with him and started dating Sergeant Buckland.
For the space of a month, the church acquired two new orphans after a house fire killed their parents—a brother and sister with shocked, traumatized faces. They spent a lot of time clinging to Pilar. For as much as she’d complained about taking care of her aunt’s children, she was good with kids. But then an uncle surfaced from a monthlong bout of grief-stricken drunkenness and came to claim them.
Loup kept working.
Pilar kept ignoring her.
It wasn’t until Diego and Maria’s wedding, four months after Tommy’s death, that Loup found a chance to talk to her. The wedding was small; aside from the Santitos and church staff, only a couple of friends that Diego and Maria had made since they left were in attendance. But it was a warm affair, the first joyous occasion since before Tommy had died. The reception was held in a seldom-used hall and Father Ramon had managed to procure a case of champagne for it.
“I’ll serve,” Pilar offered. “Joe’s teaching me to bartend.”
Loup waited until everyone else’s glass was full before she approached the table. Pilar poured a glass deftly and handed it to her without meeting her eyes.
“Wow.” Loup sipped. “Bubbly.”
“Yeah, well, it’s champagne.”
“Pilar.” She set down the glass. “Why are you mad at me?”
Pilar looked past her. “You can’t guess?”
“No.” Loup reached across the table and touched her wrist. “Look, I didn’t tell anyone. But—”
“It’s not that.” Pilar did look at her then. She shook her head. “Jesus, Loup! Never mind. If you can’t figure it out, it’s not worth talking about. Leave me alone, okay?”
“I’m not the one—”
“Hey!” C.C. bounded up behind her, extending his empty glass. “This stuff rocks! One of us should get married every day!”
“Gimme that.” Pilar grabbed his glass and refilled it. “There you go, loverboy.”
He grinned at her. “Wanna get back together? Just for the night?”
“Maybe,” she replied in a teasing tone. “Ask me later after I’ve had a few.”
“Deal!” C.C. said cheerfully, bounding away.
“Here.” Pilar’s voice changed. She picked up Loup’s glass and thrust it at her. “Just forget about it, okay? Forget it ever happened.”
“Why?” Loup asked in frustration.
Pilar folded her arms. “Because.”
That was all. Loup watched Pilar pour and flirt. She watched Diego and Maria dance when the hired guitarist began to play, gazing into each other’s eyes. She watched Father Ramon and Sister Martha dance together, and watched Anna watch them, calm and contented. Jaime and Jane—still bickering, still together. Dondi, grown unexpectedly tall, squiring one of Diego and Maria’s newfound friends with newfound gallantry. Katya agreeing to dance with T.Y., since her sergeant wasn’t in attendance. Pilar abandoning her station to dance with C.C. They started making out on the dance floor with considerable abandon.
“Hey, loup-garou.” Mack touched her shoulder.
She shivered. “Tommy used to call me that.”
“Yeah, I know.” His calloused fingertips brushed the nape of her neck, hesitated, pulled away. “I’m sorry. You wanna dance?”
“Sure.”
Mack held her with resolve.
“You don’t have to fake it,” Loup said, resigned.
“I don’t mean to.” He touched her lips, his gray eyes unwontedly gentle. “It’s just—”
“Weird?”
“Yeah.” He kissed her softly. “Weird.”
THIRTY
Loup dated Mack for the rest of the year. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad, either. In an odd way, it was comfortable. It was one more thing to help keep the grief at bay. Mack understood her better than the rest of the Santitos. He was patient and gentle, and he kept trying long after the others had given up.
Not long after they started dating, there was a rematch scheduled between Ron Johnson and Kevin McArdle. The news sifted slowly through Outpost, received with apprehension.
“What happened to Mig?” Loup asked Floyd Roberts. “I thought it was his turn.”
“Superstitious,” he said laconically. “He won’t do it. Will you come? I want you to take a look at the guy.”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
The night of the fight, she studied Ron Johnson as he entered the ring. Watched the way he moved, the way he stood, the way the canvas dipped under his weight. Floyd raised his white eyebrows in inquiry.
Loup shook her head. “That’s the original guy. The one Kevin fought before. It’s not the guy who killed Tommy.”
The coach nodded. “I told McArdle something was hinky with Tom’s fight. I’ll let him know this one ought to be clean.”
The fight was pretty awful. The crowd was sparse, subdued, and anxious. Even the military spectators weren’t rooting hard for the guy who’d accidentally killed a local hero. Kevin McArdle was pale and sweating, nervous and off his game. When he got knocked down in the ninth by a glancing blow that caught him off balance, he almost stayed down for the count.
The Outpost crowd rallied and cheered when McArdle rose in time. He managed to finish the fight, and although he lost by an overwhelming margin, they cheered him for surviving.
“I’m finished,” he told Floyd calmly when he left the ring.
The coach nodded. “I understand. But you did a good thing, son.”
It helped leaven the town’s despair. The Festival of Santa Olivia came and Loup turned sixteen. The town square was filled with picnics and music, kids chasing one another with hollow eggs filled with confetti.
A year ago, everyone had been praying for Tom Garron’s success. She found herself looking for him, trying to spot that bright blond head that stood out above the crowd.
Instead, she saw Pilar, laughing and flirting with some guy Loup didn’t know. One of Salamanca’s gang, probably. Pilar had gotten bored with Joe the Bartender. When she broke up with him, he promptly offered her a job. She was good for business. Now she worked an afternoon shift at the bar almost every day, and came home almost every week with some love token from a besotted patron.
“Told you you’d start hooking,” Mack had said cynically.
Pilar had shrugged, complacent. “I get paid for pouring drinks. The rest is just shopping around.”
Now she caught Loup’s eye and for once didn’t look away. Instead she came over, suitor in tow. “Hey, this is Eric. He said you guys used to kick each other’s asses back in the day.”
“Thought you looked familiar,” Mack said.
Eric shook his hand. “You’re the guy with the broomstick.”
Mack gave his hard smile. “Yeah.”
“You doing okay?” Pilar asked Loup, her voice soft. “I was thinking about your brother earlier. All of this kinda reminded me.”
“Me, too.” Loup swallowed. “Thanks.”
“Sure.” Her gaze lingered. “Be extra nice today, Mackie.”
“You bet.”
They both watched Pilar’s ass as she walked away.
That night, Loup lost her virginity in Mack’s room above the garage. “I want to do it,” he said adamantly. “I want to want it.”
It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, either.
He shuddered inside her, coming into a rubber. “Jesus! Ow!”
“Did I hurt you?”
Mack rolled off her. “That’s what I’m supposed to ask.”
“You didn’t.” Loup regarded him. “But I did, didn’t I?”
“Honestly?” He took a deep breath. “Yeah, you might say it’s too much of a good thing. It’s a little like having your dick stuck in a vice grip.” He cupped her cheek. “Loup, it’s no good for you, either. And I don’t know how to make it good for us. I wish I did.”