(Edited)

THE PAST

Every Sunday Juan met his friends at El Toro; every Sunday Juan found himself staring dreamily at the Harleys that were parked next to the entrance. Although he knew his friends were swept off their feet by lowriders and muscle cars, his heart always started to beat just a little faster at the sight of such a powerful motorcycle. Riley's cousin would take him for a ride outside the city every now and then and those memories were some of the best he had gathered over the past fifteen – almost sixteen – years.

After he finished his cigarette – his excuse to stay outside a little longer – he tore his glance away from the vehicles and entered the pool hall. Immediately, his eyes were drawn to the bar were some bikers were talking loudly with each other. One of them winked as he caught Juan's stare and Juan felt a blush spreading across his cheeks. By now they must have noticed that he didn't give them a wide berth like most people did, that when they caught him staring it was with a look of admiration and curiosity in his eyes rather than fear. With their tattooed arms and leather cuts they radiated authority and the tribal-like logo on their backs gave off the impression of togetherness. A brotherhood, that's what they were. He nodded to the group of men before he diverted his glance away from them and focused it on the far corner of the hall where his friends were sitting in a booth.

"Dude, thought you were dead or somethin'," Emilio said as they hugged each other. "I called you like ten times."

Juan lifted the corner of his mouth. "Just building the suspense man. Wanted to hear your story live."

After the last text he had received from June yesterday, he was hopeful for them which made the thought of listening to his friend telling him his own success story feel a lot less annoying than before. After greeting the others in their group – there were six – he shoved into the wooden bench next to Emilio.

"You wanna hear the story live?" With a groan, Riley dropped her head on the table. "E's speaking time is over man. Don't need to hear again how hard he came when they were doin' it doggy style. I swear he was just about to whip out his dick and give us a play by play for every position they tried."

"Can still do that if you want," Emilio smirked, unbuttoning his pants until the girl kicked his leg.

"I've already seen it once. Was really not worth repeatin'."

"Hey man, I was thirteen. Lemme show you how much I've grown since then." He winked.

Grinning, Juan shook his head at the memory. Back in the 7th grade, Emilio had gotten into a habit of sneaking into the girl's locker room to spy on the girls as they showered. After Riley had caught him, she decided payback was in order and casually walked into the boy's showers a week later to show him how it felt to be watched. Standing under that cold jet, there hadn't been much his friend could brag about.

"I'd sure as hell hope so. I'm not buying whatever sex story you're tellin' me otherwise." Rolling her eyes, she looked at Juan. "Where'd you go on Friday? You left the prom fuckin' early man."

Faking indifference, he shrugged his shoulders. "Had to bring a girl home and ended up chillin' for some time."

"Oh?" She raised her eyebrows. "Who?"

"You don't know her."

"Then why not tell me her name?"

Juan hesitated. Soon everyone was going to know about his feelings for June, but he wasn't sure he was ready to tell everyone, he still wanted to keep it to himself.

"Holy shit, were you with June?" Emilio blurted out before Juan could decide if he wanted the others to know about her. "Dude, you never tell me anythin' lately! Was she as boring in bed as I told you she was gonna be? No wonder you kept your mouth shut."

"I didn't sleep with her," he muttered. "We just talked and stuff."

"Stuff like what? C'mon dude, stop bein' so vague! What did you do? Touch her tits? French 'er?"

Although he was used to Emilio talking about girls like that, it still caused an annoyed frown to appear on his face now. "We just talked, danced..."

"You danced? Boring… even I would want to do other things with her." He showed a wolfish grin. "Unless you were doin' the horizontal mambo."

"Shut your mouth for once, E," Riley cut him off. "Not everyone's a dickhead like you."

The others started laughing, Emilio wrinkled his nose making a face at the girl.

"June, isn't that Jordy's friend?" Riley asked.

Suddenly nervous, Juan scratched his neck. He hadn't expected that anyone but Emilio would know her, but Jordy was one of the few girls Riley talked to now and then. "Yea," he muttered.

She smiled. "Do you like her?"

"I guess."

"You guess?" Next to him, Emilio started to laugh. "Dude's got an enormous crush on her. It's fuckin' hilarious."

"You're the ridiculous one here, and you're annoyin' as hell. Go get us some drinks." Riley pushed him to the right so he almost fell off the bench. Rolling his eyes, Emilio stood up and walked to the bar, where he started talking to Riley's uncle, who owned the place.

Riley took Emilio's seat and ran a hand across her dark, boyish hair. "That idiot is always such a big talker after a hot night that I'm sure he makes up half of his stories." Tapping her fingers on the table, she looked intensely at him again. "So... does June like you too?"

His eyes shot to the other side of the table. Two of his friends were staring at the screen watching the football game, one was on his phone but the last one started to whistle a teasing tone before taking a sip of his coke, smirking.

Juan shoved his embarrassment to the side and nodded as confident as he could. "Yep."

Riley's lips curled into a friendly smile. "Congrats man! So do you just wanna bang her or something? Or will you be the first one of us with a girlfriend?"

He shrugged. "We'll see how it plays out."

Emilio stood over him as he put the tray with the drinks on the table. After that, he laid his hands on Juan's shoulders and squeezed. "Now I don't want to miss all the fun, bro. What happened after, did you take her home?"

"No man nothing like that, I brought her home from prom and we walked to the park and chatted and kissed a bit, that's it. Left her on the front step."

However romantic it might have been – he knew better than to share the details with his friends.

With a smirk, Emilio wiggled his way between them, ending up half on Riley's lap, who shoved at his back until she managed to get away from him.

"Was she good? Bet you were her first, huh?"

"Didn't feel that way." He didn't even have to feign his grin. "She absolutely knew what she was doin'."

Emilio smirked back, throwing an arm around him. "Riggght man. Well I gotta admit that I wouldn't mind givin' her a go if she'd be wearing a dress more often." His eyebrows moved up and down. "We finally know what she was hiding under all that baggy shit." He turned his head to the side, to Riley. "Coulda asked you too. Bet you've seen her naked after gym class."

"Uh-uh. Wouldn't have told you anyway though, perve. She's a shy girl, eh. But she seems like a sweetheart, I think." She winked at Juan.

"A sweetheart," Emilio huffed. "What the hell am I supposed to do with that? Melany however..."

Riley stood up. "Gonna puke if I hear that name one more time. Come on guys, let's play pool," she said to some of the others.

Juan kept sitting as the other boys stood up, deciding to be the good friend and listen to whatever Emilio had been dying to tell him for the past two days.


At the crack of dawn, his nerves started to pile up. Today he would see June again, the prospect of which made him glow from top to toe. He didn't know how to act around her now – things had been really awkward on Saturday. Obviously, he hadn't told his friends anything about that, so he hoped they wouldn't noticed that things hadn't gone as smooth as he had claimed.

He went a little earlier to school than he usually did – after giving Emilio a poor excuse why he wanted to go alone – and hung out around the lockers until she showed up.

With her friends.

Immediately, he felt insecure. To his surprise though, Jordy was smiling at him – not as brightly as she usually did, rather it was a bit sad, but it was still a smile. Her locker was close to his and so gathering his courage, he walked towards her.

"Hey. Um, look, I'm sorry about your cousin," he said quietly. Now that June had already told her what had happened, it seemed a little easier to apologize. "Things got way out of hand. I just wanted to give 'em a good beat down, that's all."

"June told me," she answered softly. "But thank you for telling me this in person too, Juan." She held his glance for a while. "And thank you for taking care of June that night. She really enjoyed the evening with you."

A warm glow spread across his face and his eyes shot down the hallway, until they found her kneeling in front of her locker.

"Think I should be the one thanking you," he muttered. "For the music. It uh – it really helped."

With a smile she closed her locker, looking over her shoulder. "You can go see her now if you want. I'll keep Beth busy. She uh – she's isn't your biggest fan."

Yeah, he knew that. Hopefully he could make her change her mind one day. He waited a few seconds until Jordy had walked to her black-haired friend and they disappeared around a corner. As June watched them leave, confusion written all over her face, he hurried towards her. Awkwardly he cleared his throat. "Uh, hey."

When she turned her face towards him, he didn't know what to do and on a whim he gave her a quick kiss on the corner of her mouth. Heat spread across his face and he saw it happened to her as well.

"Sorry," he muttered as he realized it might not have been the best idea to do that in the middle of the hallway. He didn't mind that much, but maybe she did. "I uh, I'm just really happy to see you." His face felt so hot that he had to suppress the urge to take a bottle of water from his backpack. "How uh, how was the rest of your weekend?" he asked quickly, hoping a simple conversation would make her feel more comfortable around him.

She looked a little lost, staring in the direction in which her friends had disappeared. Only Shawna was still at her locker, changing her books so painfully slow that she had to be doing it on purpose.

"It was okay," she said quietly. "Nothing special." She clutched her hand around her upper arm. "How was yours?"

"Yesterday I was able to hang out with the guys, at El Torro. It's a pool hall. You uh – you could come with me some day, if you want?" He bit his lip. No, that was just a horrible idea. She would probably feel super awkward around his friends. "Well, not when they're there," he added quickly. "Maybe just Riley. Jordy could come too?" He looked hopefully at her, but she was avoiding his glance. She wants to know what happened to Katie first, he realized. "Umm, well, so I talked to Mateo about Katie and he thought that you could have a coffee with one of her friends. So you can ask her what happened. Cause he was thinking that you would trust their words more than his. And uh, maybe Beth could go with you. So she'll know the truth too. Mateo can set it up, he told me." Juan was silent for a moment, giving her some room to answer. Nervously his hands slipped inside his pockets, before he started to fidget with something. However, only after two seconds the silence was already too much for him and he continued: "Would you – would you like that? We thought… I thought, that you might like that more. I know you're not a fan of my brother so…"

Before she could answer, the buzzer sounded. Fright flashed across her face; being late was out of the ordinary for her. Quickly she picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. The halls were almost empty now, even Shawna had left.

Skittishly, she looked at him. "We have the same class first period, right?"

He nodded and pushed himself away from the lockers. At a quick pace they walked to the classroom – of course it was the one that was the furthest away.

"I think it's a good idea," she said after a while. "Although, I am a bit nervous since I don't know the girl."

"I can stay with you, if you want," he said as they climbed the stairs. "But if Beth's around, that might not be the best idea."

"No," she muttered, sighing. "But it's nice that your brother is willing to do this for me."

They neared the classroom, the door was already closed, nervously June pulled at her shirt.

Juan laid a hand against her lower back. "You won't end up with detention if you're late for just one time," he winked. "Wait, swing an arm around me."

A little blindsided she looked at him.

A grin crossed his lips. "Come on, trust me." He moved his arm to her shoulder and started to limp. "We'll just tell 'em that I fell and that you were nice enough to help me upstairs. No way they will punish you for that."

Hesitating, her arm slid around him.

Chuckling, he limped to the door. "This is kinda romantic, don't ya think? Being late together?"

She laughed softly and he felt how she held him a little tighter. Hearing her laugh made him want to lean down and kiss her, but he ignored that raging desire and concentrated at the door they were heading for.

"You have to stop grinning," she whispered, her voice tensed but with a light undertone. "Otherwise they will never believe you."

He chuckled and he couldn't stop himself from giving her a kiss on her temple. "You're probably right. I'll try to pretend it's anyone but you who's holding me so close."