After the Before by Jessica Gomez Read Free Book Online Page B

top inner side of my bicep, traveling down to about an inch above my elbow. Lightly cut on the outer edges, while cut just deep enough in the middle to need sutures. Moving my arm causes blood to gush from the wound – I need to get this cleaned up and taken care of.
    I place my shirt against my arm to try to stunt the bleeding. “Get me some peroxide and the stapler.” I tell Carlos . He stares at me for a moment in shock, his eyes telling me he thinks I’m crazy.
    “Ahora!” I yell at him.
    He jumps and rushes from the room to collect the supplies, then returns a few minutes later with everything I asked him to gather.
    “You want me to help you?” He asks timidly.
    I look at him and only see worry in his eyes, so I decide not to be a dick. “Yeah, dump this shit on my arm.” I hand him back the peroxide.
    Again, he hesitates and looks at me for approval to continue.
    I nod and grit my teeth, knowing this is going to hurt like hell.
    Carlos dumps about half the bottle on my arm. It burns like acid, but I refuse to let a sound pass my lips. I have a tough as nails image to protect, I can’t be wining like a little girl over a small cut. Okay, the cuts not that small, it would be hospital worthy if I had not been trying to avoid the court system. All gunshot and knife wounds involve the local authorities eventually. That’s the last thing I need.
    “I brought this too, amigo.” He holds up a small tube of super glue.
    “Good.” I tell him. That will seal the wound before we staple it together.
    “¿Estás listo?” Are you ready? He asks.
    I nod, but he’s already getting to work.
    First comes the easy part – holding the wound together. Most of the bleeding has stopped, so we hold the two sides of skin together and wipe the area, stopping the bleeding completely.
    Carlos squeezes the contents of the tube onto my skin. The glue is cold where it touches , but dries shortly after.
    “Keep holding it together.” He says as he grabs the stapler with his free hand.
    He glances at me, as if he’s giving me one more chance to back out. I meet his gaze steadily, and he knows what I’m saying, so he returns his attention to my arm, placing the staple gun next to my skin.
    I put my shirt in my mouth and bite on it as Carlos starts to punch the staples in my arm , working fast to get them in. I have had staples before, but doing it without numbing drugs is on a completely different level. We’re lucky that one of my guys stole the gun from the hospital. We have all had enough staples done to know how to use the thing by now.
    When Carlos stops, I look down and see a straight line of newly inserted staples, and blood trickling down my arm. Carlos hands me a damp cloth, and I begin running it softly over the wound, cleaning off the blood.
    I breathe out heavily, relieved that the stapling is over. I swipe my hand through my hair and Jasmines image dances across my closed lids.
    I start cussing a string of English and Spanish curse words, frustrated that everything I went through tonight, everything I did; the fighting, cutting, and stitching up my arm, touched nothing of my thoughts of her. She remains plain as day.
    Mierda !
    Now I have to try to find a way to explain this to mi Madre. Lucky for me, she usually stays out of my dealings, taking the ‘less I know, the better ,’ route, but she knows that the only way I can blow off steam is to fight. The other way is with sex, but that’s something that is not shared with my mi Madre.
    Ever since the accident, I have been trying to numb my emotions by fighting, and when that solution fails, a different girl every couple of weeks will do it. After a while, before any attachment could form, I would break it off. I’m a pretty big asshole when it comes to relationships. Most of the girls I mess with now know this and don’t expect anything but a good time.
    Later that night , when mi Madre returns home from work, she says that she heard about what had happened from