Free Dimitri by Roxie Rivera

with her."
    "Uh-oh." With a wicked smile, she asked, "Does
she have Sharpie eyebrows and wear lip liner this
thick?"
    I laughed as she drew a wide line around her
mouth in the way so many of those girls preferred. "No on the lip
liner but yes on the eyebrows."
    "I knew it!" She giggled gleefully.
"Can you believe there was a time when I thought those tough cholas were so cool? I
wanted to be one of them."
    "When did you wise up?"
    Her smile vanished. "My friend,
Mireya, thought that the only way she could get respect was to join
one of the gangs in our old neighborhood. They beat the shit out of
her as part of the jump-in ceremony but that wasn't enough. Later,
they made her pull the
train . We were in eighth grade,
Benny."
    Lena's anguished expression tore at me and I
squeezed her hand. Pulling the train was street slang for having
sex with multiple guys in a gang. I'd heard some of the girls had
to throw dice for their number. It was horrific and awful and so
degrading.
    Inhaling a long breath, she said, "After that,
I wised up and realized the only way I was getting out of there was
to work hard and go to college. I was going to stand on my own two
feet and make my own way."
    "And you have," I said, releasing her hand.
"You're amazing, Lena. Look at you! Twenty-four years old and
you've got a great job. You have friends who love you. You're going
places."
    "Alone," she replied softly. "I guess the
trade-off to being strong and independent is that it scares off a
lot of men."
    "The wrong men," I countered. "The right guy?
He's going to see how totally wonderful you are and snatch you
right up."
    "Like Dimitri finally snatched you?"
    I sighed as the troubling uncertainties
returned. "I don’t know. I'm not sure what he wants with me. Like
was last night the start of a real relationship or is this just a
sex thing?"
    "So ask him. He's a straight shooter. He'll
tell you one way or the other and then you'll know."
    I hesitated before telling her about the offer
he'd made. "He wants to buy Johnny's share of the
business."
    "Whoa!" She sat fully back in her chair. "What
did you say?"
    "I asked him not to do it. I don't want money
between us. That's weird, right? I mean, nothing good can come from
that."
    Lena didn't answer immediately. Finally, she
said, "Benny, it depends on the couple. Look at Ivan and Erin. She
lives with him now. He supports her while she's in school but he
makes it perfectly clear that she's not in any way indebted to him.
He helps her out because he loves her and he wants her to follow
her dreams. From the outside, it looks unbalanced but on the
inside?" She shook her head. "They're on equal footing. They're
partners."
    "Dimitri said he wanted to be my partner before
we got interrupted by Adam."
    "Okay, I have to hear this. Interrupted where?
How?"
    I rolled my eyes. "It's not what you're
thinking. We were hugging in the kitchen." I reluctantly added, "He
wasn't wearing a shirt so it looked sort of—"
    "Hot?" she interrupted with a smile. "Sexy?
Delicious?"
    I laughed. "You're not going to let this go,
are you?"
    "Oh, honey, you have no idea. I need something
to distract me from the crap storm in my own life. This is just too
yummy to pass up!"
    Concerned, I asked, "What's wrong? Can I
help?"
    Lena hesitated before exhaling roughly, the
whoosh of pent-up air carrying her frustrations. "So you know how
I've been at the firm for a while now, right? I mean, I was an
intern during my senior year of college and then they hired me on
full-time before I'd even graduated. I took 716 from launch to
Houston's best nightspot by working my ass off and giving
everything I had to make it a success, but did my jerk-face manager
ever give me any recognition?"
    "No?" It wasn't a hard guess to
make.
    "Hell no!" She tapped her richly
manicured nails on the tabletop. "I'm constantly out there working
my contacts, surveying the readers of my blog and listening to the
feedback I get on social media. I listen to what the people