CHAPTER 3

Author's Note: Thanks again for everybody who read and reviewed, it's so nice to hear you all say nice things! This chapter is dedicated to the real Anna.

4 Years and 40 Weeks Ago

The club was packed, running four people deep across the bar. In the corner by the staff exit, Anna could see her cousin Gomes standing with Fiasco, only his eyebrows visible under his beanie and the light occasionally glinting off his grill. She tugged at the hem of her black dress, trying to magically make it just a little bit longer. The overly perky shop assistant had said it was body con, "totally in, totally you" and Anna was sure as hell feeling conscious of her body as it clung to every curve. She hadn't wanted to buy it, was happy to go to the club in jeans and a tank top, but her friend Dee had insisted she get all dressed up to celebrate the start of summer. Anna looked over at Dee who was tottering back from the bar on staggeringly high heels, "stripper high" Anna thought to herself, that elevated her 5'5 frame so that she was eye to eye with Anna. Heels had been where Anna had drawn the line, refusing to trade her black Converse for something more "club appropriate" as Dee had tried to diplomatically put it.

Although generally speaking she was straight laced, "serious, responsible, conscientious" her school reports had always said, there was a part of Anna that if left to its own devices, overrode all that responsibleness like a mischievous imp flicking some kind of deviancy switch. And so she toed the line, excelled in her studies and made her doctor father and professor mother proud by being a "positive Latina role model", but there were times that she wished she could be a little more like her cousin and sit around shooting the breeze with the people she went to high school with instead of being in a classroom educating their children. However, ever since Dee had insisted they celebrate the end of the school year "with a few drinks", the need to let loose had been nagging at Anna like an itch that desperately needed to be scratched.

"Damn! Your cousin is looking fine tonight" Dee said, nudging Anna's elbow and handing her a drink.

"First of all, ick and second, didn't you hook up with Fiasco like last week?"

"A girl's gotta eat you know" Dee said, daintily sucking half her drink through an obnoxiously pink straw.

"The Byz Lats aren't a buffet!" Anna chuckled. "Anyway, I would give my cousin a wide berth, his girlfriend is crazy jealous. Like earrings off, hair tied back, instant beat down jealous."

"What about the other guy with them, the one with the neck tatt? Can you introduce me?"

Anna rolled her eyes at Dee. "Fine," she sighed, "just don't go getting knocked up by him. Lupe already has a whole bunch of kids he can't afford." She downed her drink in three gulps and grabbed Dee's hand. "Come on," Anna said "let's get this over and done with."

Four drinks later and Anna was standing awkwardly with her cousin and his girlfriend, who were in the midst of a domestic dispute that was threatening to go nuclear. Before Anna had even finished her second drink, Dee had disappeared with Lupe, hopefully to somewhere slightly classier than the ladies' toilet, a favourite sex destination. Anna was so busy trying to tune out her cousin and his girlfriend arguing that she didn't notice Fiasco sidling up to her. He bumped her shoulder gently and handed her another vodka tonic.

"That looks like it's about to get real ugly, real quick," he said, eyeing Gomes. "She take off her earrings yet?"

"I give it 5 minutes before she does" Anna said with a smile.

"You wanna dance?" he asked

"You do that?" Anna asked in surprise. Fiasco seemed like such a stationary kind of guy, she couldn't imagine him running let alone dancing.

"I got mad moves" Fiasco said proudly.

"Alright, but if you bust out the electric slide, you're on your own" Anna said, bumping him with her hip and following him onto the dance floor.

Juice was in the club for one reason, to get laid. Tomorrow it was all going down with Jimmy O and Stahl, and there was no way that he was heading into County for 14 months without getting his dick wet. The atmosphere at the clubhouse had been tense, and since most of the guys were also looking to get laid, only the ugliest, used up croweaters were left. Kozik had had the same look of disgust and that solidified his opinion about the girls in the clubhouse – if even a whore like Kozik had turned up his nose at them, they must be next level skanks. "Fuck this," Kozik said, "I'm heading to Oakland. Gotta be better pussy there." He downed the last of his beer and looked at Juice. "You coming?" Juice didn't even need a minute to think about it, he grabbed his keys and followed Kozik out.

The club was a teeming mass of bodies, moving in a serpentine rhythm. Kozik and Juice pushed their way to the bar and turned to survey the dance floor, or "pussy on offer" as Kozik had leered. True to his slutty reputation, Kozik managed to hook up with some girl in the time it took for Juice to order drinks, and by the time he turned to hand Kozik his Jack and Coke, Kozik had a girl straddling him with her hand down his pants. "Seriously?" Juice said in Kozik's direction, downing both the drinks and returning his attention to the dance floor.

Of all the women on the dance floor, she seemed like the only one who wasn't taking herself too seriously. He watched her roll her hips and pop her booty into the guy behind her before spinning around to do the running man and the sprinkler in a fit of laughter. He watched her lift the long curtain of silky dark hair and hastily wrap it up in a haphazard bun, fanning her face and miming the international sign for drink. The little guy in the beanie nodded and followed her off the dance floor but stopped halfway, pointing to a couple who were having a massive argument and heading in that direction to intervene.

Anna had a nice non-room-spinning vodka buzz going on, the kind that made her confident and prone to saying the first thing that came into her head. It also made her realise that she needed to get laid. She could feel the part of her brain that controlled caution slowly fading into the background, replaced with the optimistic filter that told her all her ideas were genius. This optimistic filter had her temporarily convinced that taking Fiasco home was a fantastic idea, until she noticed a muscular guy with a mohawk and head tattoos standing at the bar and looking at her. She altered her course of direction and made a beeline for him, squeezing herself between a guy with blonde spiky hair who was obviously getting a hand job and the guy with the mohawk.

"Nice running man" he said, smiling at her.

Anna grinned at him, looking him over to make sure that her initial impression of hotness hadn't been the vodka talking. "Thanks, I've been practising."

"So what are you celebrating?"

"Start of the summer vacation. You?"

"I'm most likely going to jail tomorrow."

"Oh...for what?"

"Ummm, it's complicated and I can't really tell you."

"It's not something sick is it? I mean you're not a serial killer or a rapist or a child molester. . . . ?"

"No, although if I was any of those things, I probably wouldn't tell you."

"Good point. So what's your name?"

"Most people call me Juice."

"Do you have a grown up name? You know one that doesn't make you sound like you're part of Fat Albert's crew?"

He looked slightly taken aback, most girls he met were so into banging a Son that they gushed over his nickname. "Juan Carlos."

"Sorry, I've been drinking and I have no verbal filter" the girl said, not particularly apologetically. "Juan Carlos, that's a nice name. I'm Anna" she said, holding out her hand.

There was a sudden surge of people at the bar, causing a domino jostling effect and pushing her into Juice. For a moment he could feel the swell of her breasts pushed up against him and smell the jasmine of her perfume. "So Anna, are you with that guy?" he said, placing a hand on her hip and pulling her closer to him.

"Nope, free as a bird."

"You want to get out of here?"

"You're not going to pretend to take an interest in my hobbies or crap like that? Don't want to hear all about my issues?" Anna asked in mock offence. Juice, not realising that Anna was pulling his leg, faltered for a moment. "Should I?" he asked, a little uncertainly. Seeing the confused look on his face, Anna burst out laughing. "Nah, my hobbies are kind of old ladyish and I don't have any issues. So my place?" she asked, taking him by the hand and leading him out of the club, waving to Fiasco and Gomes as she passed them.

A dip in the mattress, the jangling of a wallet chain and the confused stumbling of a person trying to make their exit without actually knowing where they were, were the sounds that stole the last few minutes of sleep. Groaning, Anna cracked an eye to see who or what had woken her up and the sight of a muscular back encased in an almost too tight tshirt brought the previous night roaring back to her; the tangle of limbs, sweaty skin gliding on skin, the weight of a man pressing down on her, making her dig her nails into him and beg him for more. Just the memory of it brought a flush to her skin and heat to pool below.

"Morning" she said, suddenly shy. Juan Carlos turned around and gave her a thousand watt grin. "Hey" he said, his voice still thick with morning rasp. "I, uh, I gotta go...I, damn this is awkward" he smiled, running his hand over his mohawk, "but thanks for last night." Anna sat up, forgetting that she was naked and quickly made a grab for the sheet. She hoped that the sight of her so dishevelled and with what she could only suppose was completely bonkers bed hair, wasn't making Juan Carlos regret last night. "No problem" she said, "I had a great time... I um want you to know that I don't normally do this, you know, take random guys home. So anyway, I hope you don't end up going to jail but if you do, then stay safe."

"Thanks, you too... wait, that was a dumb thing to say since you're not going to jail, it's just you look so damn hot sitting there all sexed up...so I gotta go" he said, looking just as confused by the verbal diarrhoea. Anna smiled at him and grabbed her robe. "Wait, I'll walk you out" she said, leading him to the door. As she climbed back into bed, she heard the chirp of her phone. Seeing Dee's name flash on the caller ID, she picked up the phone. "Hey Dee, what's up?"

"So I hear you took home some hot biker boy last night. " Dee's voice would always be just a little loud and chirpy for early morning.

"Where did you hear that from?"

"Fiasco."

"Wait, Fiasco said the guy was hot?"

"Nah, that was Gomes' girlfriend's opinion. Are you going to see him again?"

"Doubtful, it was just one of those one night things." Anna looked across at the clock which read 7:45. "Hey Dee, want to go get some breakfast?"

"Duh, why do you think I was calling? I want to hear all about your night walking on the slutty side of the street! See you in 15 minutes."

"K, love you long time."