Free Hemingway's Girl by Erika Robuck

backside. He picked her up and apologized, but then they laughed until
     they couldn’t catch their breath.
    He pulled her over to a corner and touched her forehead.
    “You really are a terrible dancer,” he said.
    “I don’t know why you didn’t believe me,” she said.
    “I thought you were just trying to put me off.”
    She looked him in the eye squarely for the first time that night and saw all the intensity
     she’d seen the first night they’d met. She grew warm and hoped he hadn’t noticed her
     divided attention. The strains of the slow and sultry “All Through the Night” began.
     Gavin reached for her hand.
    “Let’s try this one,” he said. “If we knock heads now, we can cross dancing off the
     list forever.”
    She smiled and allowed him to lead her back to the dance floor, enjoying the way she
     fit into his arms and the weight of his hands on her back. She looked up at his face
     and stared at his scar and the shadows under his eyes. It didn’t seem as if he could
     look her in the eye from this close, and she wondered why he was suddenly so shy.
     She thought he tried to turn his face so his scar was away from her, and she wished
     she could tell him that it didn’t bother her, but she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable.
     When the song ended they walked back to the bar. Hemingway wasn’t there. She was satisfied
     with herself that she’d gone a whole five minutes without thinking of him.
    “Where do you live?” Gavin asked.
    “Whitehead and Louisa. Where are you staying?”
    “At a friend’s house on Olivia Street. How about I walk you home? It’s getting ugly
     in here.”
    Mariella hesitated. What if he was just trying to get her alone? She looked at his
     face and decided that she trusted him.Besides, if he tried anything, she knew all the hidden alleys and escapes and had
     friends on every corner. He wouldn’t get away with anything.
    “Okay. Let’s go,” she said.
    They stepped out onto Greene Street and enjoyed the change from the stuffy, noisy
     bar to the fresh air and the night. He led her to Duval to look into the bars and
     listen to music. The people were getting sloppy, and Gavin put his hand on Mariella’s
     back in a protective gesture. She looked at him with her eyebrows raised.
    “Sorry,” he said. “Can’t help it. I know how these vets get.”
    “Last week one of them took off his clothes in my neighbors’ yard and had to be taken
     to jail.”
    “That was me.”
    Mariella punched him in the arm, and he laughed.
    Before long, they’d ended up on her street. She could see her house and saw Lulu’s
     doctor pulling open the screen door.
    “Oh, no!”
    Mariella took off running, a thousand guilty thoughts going through her head, followed
     by prayers to the Blessed Virgin, to her father, to Saint Theresa—everyone but God
     himself, since she was too ashamed for running around to apply to him directly. She
     was home in minutes, with Gavin at her heels. When she got to the house, she pressed
     him to go.
    “I don’t know how my mother will take you,” she said. “Go, please.” She ran through
     the door without waiting for a response.

    Estelle wrung her hands in the corner. Mariella heard water filling the tub in the
     bathroom where Eva stood at the open door—her hair and eyes wild, and her hands fumbling
     over the beads of her rosary. She looked Mariella up and down, and then looked over
     Mariella’s shoulder as if she expected to see Hemingway.
    The doctor came out of Lulu’s room.
    “What’s her temperature?” asked Mariella.
    “One-oh-three,” said the doctor. “I just gave her aspirin.”
    “And her stomach?”
    “Horrible,” said Eva.
    Dr. Wilson smelled like booze, wore a wrinkled shirt, and looked as if he’d just been
     woken up. Mariella thought he must hate living around the corner from them. She ran
     to her room, pulled three dollars out of the can, and hurried back out to the doctor,
     thrusting the money into