The Journey Ch. 01

"Yeah?"

"Just once, maybe actually get her phone number next time. You should try to date someone, not just go from one one-night-stand to the next all your life."

I couldn't manage to say anything before he closed his door behind him. My eyes started burning with tears.

I didn't know where Manny got the idea I deserved to be happy.

~~ Lorton, VA ~~

I heard footsteps and turned my head to see a familiar pair of stained work boots walking approaching.

"Hey Dee, I didn't know she called you too," I called out from under my Abuela's car.

"I think she called me first, it just took me a while to get here," my brother Diego replied.

"I could have saved you the trouble if I had known, man, I almost got this fixed."

Abuela had called me a couple hours before. Her car had started up a noisy shimmy as she'd pulled into work and she was afraid it wouldn't get her home, so I'd come over to take a look at her beat up VW for her. She'd had it my entire life and the dark green Beetle looked it. The two left side fender covers were different colors, the front one light blue and the back one primer grey. The only good thing that could be said about the car was it was easy to work on. Between myself and Diego we always managed to keep it running for her.

Diego dropped down to his back and inched under the car next to me. I had the front two wheels jacked up and blocked.

"What's the deal?"

"Tie rod was coming loose. We might need to find a new one soon."

"Sooner than you think, I've tightened this one up twice already."

"Geez, you must not have done a good job then," I said jokingly.

Diego was an ASC certified auto-mechanic at a Toyota dealership. Any work he'd done on this car was almost certainly better than what I could manage. I didn't take offense that Abuela had called him first.

"I'll swing by the salvage yard Monday after work and see if I can find a set. We should replace all of them at the same time if we can. You up for helping me?"

"You know it, man. As long as you don't want to do it on Sunday night."

"How's your bowling team doing?"

"Second place after last week. We play the first-place team the last week of the season, so we're in a good spot." I made a final turn with the torque wrench until it made that satisfying click. Diego kept a canvas tool bag, a jack and two stands in the front cargo compartment of the Bug, so we always had anything we needed whenever she broke down. He looked over my work with a critical eye.

"Nice work. I didn't need to come out at all."

"Yeah, but then we couldn't go inside and have lunch."

"I could go for some tacos."

"I'm starving, let's do it."

I packed up the tools while Diego jacked the car off the stands and lowered it back down it to the asphalt, then we went inside the restaurant that the parking lot serviced. In addition to selling tamales to local Mexican grocery stores, she also worked at a semi-fancy Tex-Mex place, running the tortilla maker behind a big glass partition at the front of the dining room so the patrons could see their tortillas being made hot and fresh.

She saw us come in and came over to greet us while we were waiting to be seated.

"Ola Cariño," she said, cupping Diego's cheeks and kissing him. She turned to me and repeated the gesture. "Alguna suerte?"

"All good Abuela. I'll drive it around the block after lunch to make sure you're good to go."

"Gracias, cariño. I don't know how I'd keep that thing running without you two. I better get back to work!" She said as the hostess arrived to seat us.

"I hate that they make her wear that thing. It seems so demeaning," I said, nodding at our grandmother, who was back at work making a new batch of tortilla dough to run through the press onto the baking wheel. Her work uniform was what passed for a traditional Mexican peasant dress in America. The waiters all wore black pants and colorful button-down shirts.

Diego shrugged. "She doesn't seem to mind. At least it's colorful. She could wear whatever if she worked back in the kitchen, but she doesn't like how hot it gets. Out here she can go at her own pace without anyone bossing her around as long as she keeps up with the demand. Speaking of, here we go!"

The waiter arrived with a basket of chips, bowls of salsa and spicy relish and a tortilla container. We ordered without looking at the menu and both skipped the chips to go right for Abuela's tortillas. I piled salsa and jalapeños into mine, before folding it up and taking a huge bite.

"So, what you got going on with your Saturday night?" I asked around my mouthful.

"Going out with Virginia again."

"You guys getting serious? You been going out for a couple months."

"I like her a lot. We'll see how serious it gets. How about you?"

"Going to Smitty's to shoot some pool with Manny, probably."

"Hmm," Diego looked thoughtful.

"What?"

"You used to get dolled up every weekend and hit those fancy gay bars in D.C. The League of Their Own? Number Ten?"

"Number Nine," I corrected him.

"Whatever. Now all you do is go to dive bars or troll Tinder. How are you going to meet a nice girl hanging out in places like Smitty's?"

I glanced at Abuela. "No point in meeting a nice girl, she'd never accept it anyway."

"She doesn't have to accept it, Viv. You can't spend your life unhappy to make someone else happy."

"Besides, who said I'm looking for a nice girl, anyway?" I tried to give Diego a smirk. I don't think I pulled it off.

"Cut the shit, Viv. You haven't dated anyone in two or three years near as I can tell."

I looked away. "I don't want to talk about my love life."

"Why not? You—"

"I said, I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay, sorry."

Our food arrived and we ate in silence.

"Nice job on the tie rod by the way," Diego finally said.

"Thanks."

"You'd be a good mechanic. You could get a certification and work with me."

I snorted. "Dude, I make as much as you do, working in an air-conditioned cab all day, and I don't come home with grease all over me."

"Fair point."

I pushed my carnitas around my plate with a chip.

"I was thinking of applying to the engineering apprentice program at work though. They teach you to perform all engineering and maintenance work on the trains, tracks and tunnels. Eventually you can get into electrical design and stuff. It could've opened up a whole new career for me."

"That'd be cool, you should definitely go for it."

"I said I was thinking about it. They're changing the requirements and you have to have at least an associate's degree now."

"Oh. Didn't you tell me that WMATA had tuition assistance as a benefit?"

"So, what? Can you imagine me in college?

"Sure, why not?"

"Dude, I barely graduated high school."

"Yeah, but that was mainly your lack of motivation."

"Not sure about that. I had to take history and social studies in summer school after I failed them my junior year, remember?"

"Yeah, but you were a wiz at math. You tutored me through algebra and geometry. I'd never have passed those without you. What kind of degree would you get?"

"Northern Virginia Community College has an associate's degree in engineering. That would probably help in getting admitted to the apprentice program. But you don't just take math and engineering classes. I'd have to take a bunch of other shit I'd be terrible at."

"Never know until you try. High school was a long time ago."

"I was so bad at it though."

"You were a kid then. You're a grown-ass woman now. You don't think you could be better at it if you wanted to?"

"I don't know..."

I looked over at my Abuela, toiling away at the tortilla station. I didn't want to live my whole life at the same monotonous job. I didn't want Abuela to have to work like this until she dropped dead. I wanted to be able to take better care of her than just paying a third of her rent and buying her groceries every week. I wanted to make something more of my life.

I just didn't know if I could.

~~ Burke, Virginia, December ~~

"Showboater!" Raúl shouted as I turned back from the lane after throwing my sixth strike in as many frames.

"Damn, Viv, you might be on your way to a—"

"Shut up, dude!" Manny interrupted Oscar, "You never talk to the pitcher about throwing a no-no during the game!"

I laughed. "It'd take more than Oscar to jinx me tonight! I'm in the zone!"

It was the second to last week of the season, and the last game of the night. We were playing the last place team, and I was, indeed, in the zone. I had the high score in both the first two games and was killing it in the final match. I'd never managed to throw a perfect game before. Maybe tonight was the night. I took a seat next to Manny while Oscar took his turn.

"You've been in an awful good mood tonight," Manny noted.

"Well, I'm bowling like I'm on the pro tour."

"Good day off?"

"Eh, yeah. Hung around the apartment but I got some stuff done. It felt like a really productive day. I don't seem to have those very often. I vacuumed the place and cleaned the kitchen. Did some other stuff."

"Nice! I appreciate that."

"I left the bathroom for you."

He grimaced. "Fine, I'll get it when we get home. Or maybe in the morning."

Manny got up for his turn and I leaned back, stretching my arms. It had been a really good day. Not only had I caught up on all my laundry, cleaned most of the apartment, and gotten to watch two football games, I'd managed to get some research done online that I'd been wanting to do.

"You're up, Viv," Manny said after picking up a spare.

I got up to hold my fingers over the fan in the ball return. I glanced back as I picked up my ball and froze.

Bow-head was sitting at the bar, watching me. Huh. Guess our little bathroom excursion left an impression. I honest-to-God thought there was no way she'd ever show up here again.

I lined up my shot and let the ball fly. I could tell when it left my hand it wasn't good. Sure enough, my ball went right through the head pin, leaving me with a six-seven-ten split. Fuck.

"I told you, Oscar, you jinxed her!" Manny shouted.

I failed to pick up the split too, but got my shit together and still finished with high game. Even if I didn't get my three-hundred.

I finished first, stowed my ball and shoes in my bag and stomped my feet into my boots, then went up to the bar while the guys finished up their last frames.

"Hey, Cindy, what's up?" I said to bow-head as I set our empty beer pitcher on the bar.

Her grin faltered. "Uh, it's Stephanie."

"Shit, Stephanie, right. Man, I'm really sorry about that."

"It's okay."

"What's going on? How long were you here watching?"

"I saw your whole last game. You're really good! I can't imagine bowling a two-fifty like that."

"Two-sixty-seven," I automatically corrected her, then felt myself flush at having sounded so defensive over a bowling score.

"That was payback for the 'Cindy'," she said, her grin returning. I felt my flush deepen. "Anyway, you said if I wanted to hang out again to come back, and here I am."

"I see that. No repeat performance of our bathroom escapade, I'm afraid. I don't want to get banned from the alley. My teammates would be pissed."

"I wasn't looking for that anyway. I thought maybe we could go get a drink or something to eat. Get to know each other a bit. I mean... if you want to."

"Sounds nice," I looked over to see Manny zipping up his bowling bag. "My ride is leaving though."

"I can drop you off at home after, if you don't mind riding with me.

"Okay. Uh, hang out here a sec?"

I went over to Manny, who was looking at Stephanie with a mixture of amusement and irritation.

"Don't worry Man, I'm not taking her into the bathroom."

"Good."

"Uh, I think I'm going to go grab a bite with her though. You mind taking my bag home?"

"No problem. Try and treat it like a real date and not another one-night stand."

"Whatever, dad." That earned me a snort.

I collected Stephanie and we made our way out to the parking lot. I blinked when she led me to a red Tesla Model 3. Almost new, by the looks of it.

"Where to?" she asked, once we were inside and her car had come to life, the middle panel looking like the cockpit of a spaceship.

"Uh, I don't really care. There's an IHOP over on Shiplett we go to sometimes after league night."

"Pancakes sound great!" She touched a button on her car and said, "IHOP on Shiplett," into the air. In moments her car was displaying directions on the enormous display.

"Nice car."

"Isn't it cool? I wanted a BMW, but my mom and dad are big into green stuff, so they got me this. I think I like it better than I would have liked the Beemer. What do you drive?"

"A vintage VW bug," was all I could think to reply. I'd never owned a car of my own.

"Oh, that's cool! So retro!"

My expectations for this 'date' were falling fast.

We arrived at the IHOP and ordered pancakes, then Stephanie proceeded to rattle on, dominating the conversation, which was fine with me.

I learned she'd recently graduated with a degree in business from the University of Virginia, and had started at her dad's company in Annandale as an entry level middle-manager, but of course that was just to get her feet wet, she was sure that after a year or two he'd promote her to run a division so she'd be ready to take over the company when he retired, and she'd come out to them in college as bisexual, which she'd been nervous about, but it turned out to be no big deal, her parents were very progressive, and she'd dated a guy through most of college until he graduated and went to work in Silicon Valley, but she didn't want to live on the West Coast, and anyway she was kinda tired of her friends-with-benefits guy that I saw her with last time and thought she'd try something different, and she was twenty-three to my twenty-eight but she didn't mind the age difference because I was hot, and she loved my sleeve of tattoos and my hair, and she couldn't believe I didn't have a girlfriend, and how long had I known I was gay?

There was a long, uncomfortable silence as it dawned on me she'd stopped talking about herself and had actually asked me a question. I swallowed a mouthful of pancakes and wiped my lips with my napkin.

"Sorry, what?"

"I asked how long you've known you were gay?"

"Always, pretty much. I never got funny feelings in my tummy for any of the guys in high school."

"Were your parents okay with it when you came out?"

My thoughts wandered to my mom. She'd been deported before I'd ever got the courage to tell her and I'd never felt like sharing that piece of information long distance. Although my haircut probably told her I wasn't her little girl anymore whenever we sent her family pictures. My grandmother simply pretended I was choosy, and hadn't found the right man. The first of two times I'd tried to broach the subject, she'd quickly and angrily ended the conversation. The second time I'd explicitly said something about dating a girl she'd dragged me to confession with Father Esteban, whom I had definitely not told I was a lesbian. The next day I'd told Abuela I'd been joking and we'd never spoken about it again.

"They're fine with it. No problems."

"Nice! Isn't it great to have a family who supports you for who you are, not who they want you to be?"

"Yeah, sure is."

I paid for our food over her objections. "You drove, the least I can do is pay ten bucks for some pancakes."

"Do you want to, maybe come back to my place?" She asked shyly as we got back in her car.

"Maybe next time. I have to get up early for work tomorrow."

"Oh gosh, I didn't even ask what you do?"

"I'm a Metro train driver."

"Really?" She didn't look too impressed. "Are you doing that to put yourself through school or something?"

"Nope. I had a long string of stupid little jobs after high school waiting tables and or working at convenience stores before I landed this gig."

"Oh. Do you want to go to college?"

"Nope. I'm fine doing what I do, It's honest work."

"Well that's good. It's good to do something you love, I guess. What's your address?" she asked, her finger hovering over the button on her car's control panel. I gave her an address in Springfield and we were off. Twenty minutes later we pulled into the parking lot of a very nice, brightly lit apartment complex.

"Here we are. Nice apartments, which one is your building?"

"It's the middle one there, apartment eight-fourteen. You can't really drive up to it, so I can walk from here."

"Can I get your number?" she asked.

"Sure."

She pulled a scrap of paper out of the armrest console and a pen. I wrote down the number of the Papa John's pizza place around the corner that I happened to have memorized. "This was fun. Thanks for the ride."

"Hope I get to see you again soon," she said, then tugged my sleeve and pulled me over to kiss me, her hand stroking the stubble on the back of my head. She was a pretty good kisser. Too bad, really.

I said goodbye and got out. I'd hoped she'd drive off, but she stayed there watching me walk towards the middle building so I headed that way. After I got to the door I turned and waved. She flashed her high-beams at me, then backed out and I watched her tail lights disappear down the street. I turned and walked around the back of the building, across the parking lot, and through the muddy field behind it.

Ten minutes, and six blocks later, I arrived at my actual, much more run-down apartment complex. After I climbed the stairs to our door, I stomped as much mud off my boots as I could, levered them off my feet, and carried them into the apartment.

"Hey, I thought you'd be out later than this," Manny greeted me from the couch. Sunday Night Football was on the TV. "Giants are up six on the Eagles, but Hurts has 'em driving in the fourth."

"Cool, but I think I'm going to bed. On the early shift tomorrow."

"How'd it go?"

"Fine, as far as it went. She's a rich girl, looking to dip her toe in the pool before she settles down with someone respectable. I'm not down for being someone's wild oats."

"No offense, but sure you are Viv. You messed around with her in the bathroom, remember?"

"I'll mess around, sure, but I'm not gonna date someone who's just gonna wake up a couple weeks later and realize she's dating someone beneath her."

"Girl, don't talk about yourself like that, you ain't—"

"Manny, she's rich, I ain't. She's got a degree and a fancy job at Daddy's company. It would just be a waste of my time."

"Okay, okay. I just hate hearing you talk about yourself like that."

"Just speaking the truth. Anyway, 'night man. See you tomorrow."

I went into my room, shut the door and collapsed onto my bed. I pulled my beat-up laptop to me across my old, worn blanket and set it on my stomach. Opening the cover, I tapped the touchpad a few times and waited for it to crank up to life. I stared at the page I'd left open on my browser that afternoon. Then I hit the close tab button. A warning popped up.

Leaving this page now will discard all data and unsaved changes. Are you sure you wish to leave?

Okay/Cancel

I regarded the half-filled-out application page for NOVA Community College for a long time, chewing my thumbnail.

Then I clicked the 'okay' button and closed my laptop.

To Be Continued...

Thank you, Friend, for reading the first chapter of my new series. I hope you enjoyed it. Viv's just trying to find her way, as are so many of us.

Thanks to my beta-readers, ArmyGal33, Bramblethorn, and AvidReader223 and especially to my editor, AwkwardMD, without all of whom this would be a poorer story.