The Wrong Way

By Oyuki

Lana sees busy city streets and freshly cut lawns outside the bus window on her ride home. Familiar streets and houses bring back memories as the bus turns right onto a low income housing unit. She frowns and smiles at certain houses she sees. Towards the end of the housing unit the bus drives by a particular house with an all too familiar young an standing out on the lawn. For the brief few seconds the bus drives by, Lana and the young man make eye contact. Her face and eyes held frozen in a frown, his yes are warm and inviting and a small hopeful smile plays upon his lips.

She turned away angrily at the last second not wanting to see his face anymore. She hugs her backpack closer to her body on the hard seat. Her day was ruined now. His face was what she least wanted to see, ever.

“Stupid bastard,” she mumbled to herself. She closes her eyes and rubs her temples with her hands. The bus continued on its set course until someone pulled the stop bell. With a groan and a shake the bus stops. A portly, older woman gets off and the figure of a man dressed in dark clothing gets on.

Lana looked out the window, not interested on who got on or off. The young man dressed in the dark clothes sat in the seat behind hers and tapped her on the shoulder. Lana took off one of her headphones and turned around. She gasped when she saw the young man’s face. “What do you want?” she asked coldly. She didn’t wait for an answer before turning back around.

“I want to talk to you,” he answered slowly.

She ignored him and put her earphone back on her ear and resumed her study of the passing landscape.

The young man frowned. He needed to talk to her and to explain. He reached out his hand and pulled one of her earphones from her ear.

Lana turned around with an annoyed frown on her face. “Would you leave me alone? I don’t want to talk to you, Rafael.”

He winced at the mention of his full name. She always used to call him “Rafa.”

Lana stood up from her seat and gave him a withering look. “Say hi to Margarita for me,” she said and walked to the front of the bus and out the door.

Rafael sighed and leaned back in his seat. He watched her walk on the side walk as the bus took off again. He wondered what he ever did to deserve this.

*~*~*~*

Lana walked home fuming. The never of tat idiot. Trying to talk to her. “I thought I made it perfectly clear to that dumbass I didn’t want to hear his sorry ass voice again,” she whispered. Lana walked home a little faster. She was pissed off. Way beyond pissed off in fact.

When she reached her house she threw herself face down o her bed. The phone began to ring and she answered it without raising her head away from the mattress.

“Hello?” she groaned.

“I need to talk to you,” Rafael’s voice pleaded.

She was annoyed now. Lana groaned. “Rafael, listen, you and I have nothing to talk about. I said everything I needed to say to you and I don’t wan to hear it. You cheated on me and that’s the end of the story!” Lana yelled into the phone.

“But listen, Lana! That ho lied! That baby wasn’t even mine!”

Lana rolled her eyes. “That’s not the issue, Rafael. The issue is that there was a chance you could have been the father! AND Margarita’s baby IS yours! So stop trying to make me see your point you dumb fuck!” she yelled and hung up the phone.

She needed a new boyfriend. It had been over ten months since this whole fiasco with Rafael and Margarita had take place. She was tired of Rafael trying to call her and get her to change her mind about him. Did he really think she was that stupid? He cheated on her with Yolandaa and she had been willing to let it go. But, damn, was that a stupid thing to do, but she was in love and had believed him when he said that he was sorry and would ever do it again.

It happened like this: This girl had come up to her and said her name was Yolanda. Then she went on to tell her that she had slept with “Rafa” and she was now pregnant with his baby.

So, after much yelling and fighting, “Rafa” had admitted to sleeping with Yolanda and admitted that the baby could be his. During the next few days, Margarita had called her and proceeded to tell her that SHE was pregnant and that her baby was “Rafa’s.”

The she was pissed off. She had forgiven Rafael for his little mistake before, but two? This was too much. So she talked to, more like yelled at, Rafael and broke up with him. She told him that she wasn’t going to put up with his shit anymore. That her friends had told her what a player he was but she still gave him a chance. She proved her wrong and made her look like a friggin’ idiot in front of everybody by sleeping with two other girls while he was her boyfriend. Not to mention that at that time she, and everybody else, had believed that he had gotten both of those girls pregnant.

“Whores,” Lana muttered. “Both of them are whores,” she said more loudly.

When Yolanda’s baby was born they did a test and they found out that ho’s baby wasn’t Rafa’s, but when Margarita’s baby was born they did the same test and they found out it was Rafa’s.

So now here they were. Rafa was eating, drinking, living, and sleeping with Margarita in her parents’ house along with their “precious baby.” What a bunch of crap that all was.

She wasn’t going to deny loving Rafael because she did. she still did, but she was never going forgive him for what he did. She wasn’t willing to have a trail of someone else’s kids and, of course, the mothers themselves, trailing behind her just because she was in love with him. They were his mistakes to pay for, his responsibilities to carry, not hers. She was adult enough, and smart enough, to know that if she did, it would ruin her life.

She was going places. She was not going to be dragged down by people that didn’t matter. She was going to get out of this ghetto even if it killed her. She would put Rafael, Yolanda, Margarita, and their kids behind her, never to look back.

*~*~*~*

Rafael got off the bus and crossed the street to catch the bus going in the opposite direction. He was going home. His chance to talk to Lana was shot to hell, but she had all the right in the world to not talk to him. He had, after all, cheated on her with two girls and impregnated one of them. That was his cross to bear. Now he was father of a one month old son, aptly named Rafael by Margarita to further stake her claim upon his soul. He loved his son, but he was damned if he didn’t think he was the biggest mistake of his life. He didn’t resent his son, it wasn’t his fault he was conceived in those circumstances after all, but he couldn’t help thinking that.

Now Lana was the only one of the two that had a good chance of getting out of here. She was the one that didn’t have anything tying her down. Nothing to distract her from her goals. And he was stuck in a minimum-wage-paying job, taking care of a baby and living with someone he couldn’t dislike more.

Margarita had gone from being a hot chick that any guy would love to fuck to an annoying screaming shrew. She had gone back to her original size and her breasts were now huge, but her attitude annoyed and angered him. Most of the time he wished he could stay at work so he wouldn’t have to listen to her mouth going off about everything and nothing.

How had he ended up in this position? Why had he done this to himself? Or, better yet, why couldn’t he keep his dick in his pants? He had Lana, and she was having sex with her. She was hot, and for the first time, after an endless stream of girlfriends, he was in love. Really in love.

They Yolanda had come along. He liked her, he was attracted to her. She had the nicest ass he had ever seen. But he never did anything beyond look. She had come onto him first. He had been flattered, or cocky, whatever you want to call it. Before he knew it, he was in his bedroom, naked and being straddled by the girl with the nice ass and big brown eyes known as Yolanda.

Next came Margarita. An old flame of his. One of his first sexual partners. She had been hot as a fifteen year old and she was ever hotter now as a high school senior, a failing high school senior.

Was he thinking of Lana when was with these girls? Of course he was. He was thinking about what she would do if she ever found out. After, he swore he would never, ever do that again. And he didn’t. He didn’t sleep with another girl besides Lana again. Only that three months later both Yolanda and Margarita had come back claiming he had gotten them both pregnant.

But that wasn’t the worst thing. The worse thing was that they had told Lana first. That hadn’t gone well at all. First Yolanda. Lana had forgiven him, but then Margarita too. That had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. He knew then, when she broke up with him, that she would never forgive him.

And she hadn’t forgiven him for it ever after they found out Yolanda’s baby wasn’t his. He guessed it was just the same. It was the same mistake but with different names.

Rafa pulled the stop bell. When he reached home he just stood there looking at the chipping paint and dried up lawn. This was his home, his life. Where his family was. And, for the first time, realized that Lana didn’t belong here. The only people that did belong in this house, in this ghetto, in this life were him, Yolanda, Margarita and little Rafael. But not Lana. Never Lana.

The End

Sorry if there are any grammatical errors. I tried to fix it but I probably missed some.