“Fuck,” I mumbled under my breath. I was starting to come off the fighting high I had been on—the tears might have helped with that—and my stomach felt tight.
After three long, deep breaths, I looked back to the girl on the ground and saw her frantically rubbing at her eyes and cheeks. She didn’t look at me as she reached out and pulled her mostly empty bag close to her. She looked inside and then looked around her at all her things on the ground.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I wasn’t all that great at apologies, and I figured now wasn’t going to be much different. I’d obviously upset her with all my shitty comments, though. “I didn’t mean to…I just…”
I stopped talking. I didn’t know what to say, and I felt bad about yelling at her. She looked at me all red-eyed with tears staining her cheeks.
“Just don’t do that shit anymore.” I let out a big sigh.
She nodded once and then reached out to grab something off the ground near her and shoved it back into the bag. From the amount of stuff scattered all over the street, my estimate on the size of the so-called purse wasn’t too far off. There was an umbrella, a little flashlight, a bunch of tubes and bottles, and at least a half dozen pens. As I looked around some more, I saw a small notebook, a paperback book, keys, a bottle of hand lotion that was nowhere near travel sized, a stack of tissues wrapped up in a Ziploc bag, two sets of earbuds, and a checkbook. There was also a whole pile of ponytail holders, bobby pins, and those little hair-holder-things that looked like teeth.
There was shit from her bag from one side of the fucking street to the other.
She started crawling around, gathering it all up, and cramming it back inside, which gave me a fabulous view of her ass in the short-shorts style waitress uniform the place up the street usually demanded. I could kind of see how she might have thought she could use the bag as a weapon—there had been more stuff in there than really should have been able to fit. I looked around on the ground to see if there was an actual kitchen sink, or at least part of one, but I didn’t see anything metal. There was something that looked like a small rock, though.
“How do you even carry that thing around?” I asked.
“What?”
“That…that purse-bag-thingy there,” I said, pointing and shaking my finger at it. I wouldn’t have admitted it, but the whole idea of the thing scared me, and I wasn’t sure why. I felt like if I got too close to it I might get sucked in, never to be seen again. “It’s insane.”
Her eyes became little slits as she looked up to me.
“There is nothing wrong with my purse!” she growled.
“It’s huge,” I said.
“It has everything I need in it.”
“It has everything you and ten of your friends could need for a week,” I replied with a laugh. “I know there are people who carry Chihuahuas in their purse, but you could fit a Dane in there.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Okay, a decent-sized schnauzer, then.”
I got another glare, but this time it sort of made me smile. As the corners of my mouth turned up, I couldn’t help but take it further.
“A pair of poodles?” I asked. “They could sit under the umbrella and read to each other from the book.”
“Not really.” She seemed to be actively trying to keep her frown on her face now, and her tone had definitely changed.
“I bet there are lost works of art in there,” I teased. She just shook her head. “Undiscovered sonnets.”
“You are very strange,” she said, but she had cracked a bit of a smile.
“I could be a lot worse,” I said. She went silent as she looked back down the street and a shudder ran through her body. “I’m gonna get you home, okay?”
“Home?”
“You live around here, right?”
“Um...well, yeah,” she stammered. She looked in the direction she had originally been walking.
“I could walk you home,” I suggested. “Make sure…well, just get you home.”
“How can I trust you?” she said cautiously.
“Trust me?” I asked, trying to decide if I was offended by the very notion that I was somehow not trustworthy. I mean, I had certainly just saved her from a rough night, and most likely a whole lot worse than a little pushing and shoving. I raised both brows at her. “Well, if I was going to rape you and kill you—which was probably their plan—I would have just insisted on going first, not chase the other guys away.”
Her eyes went wide, and she dropped whatever she was holding onto the pavement. She quickly scrambled after it while I ran my hand through my hair and tried to get myself back together.
“Sorry,” I muttered again. I closed my eyes and rubbed my fingers into the sockets before looking back at her. “I think, all in all, you’re better off with me than you are by yourself.”
“Better the evil I know?” she responded with a smirk. The look and the tone of her voice didn’t match her eyes, though—there was fear there. It was entirely possible I was a bit too blunt, but that shit was also true.
“Something like that, but you don’t know me, either.” I smirked right back.
“You’re my hero,” she said but seemed to immediately regret the words. She looked away from me, and her throat bobbed as she swallowed.
She had a beautiful neck—long and pale. I could see the outline of her carotid artery as it pulsed just under her skin. Her heart rate was still a little higher than normal, and I wondered if I was the cause of her current fear. I tried to put her at ease, at least as much as she could be at ease in the dark street with a guy she didn’t know minutes after she was attacked.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I told her. She nodded but didn’t look up. “I’m just going to make sure you get home safely, okay?”
“Okay,” she said flatly.
I wondered if she was going to go into shock or something. I definitely needed to get her behind a locked door as quickly as possible so she could relax again. I hoped, since she was walking, she wouldn’t have too far to go.
“Where do you live?”
“Just around the corner,” she replied as she collected the last few items from the pavement and added them to the collection in the monster-bag. “A few blocks to the left. You don’t have to go out of your way—”
“I know the area,” I interrupted. “I’m walking you home.”
I wasn’t asking anymore, and she didn’t try to fight it. I picked up my gym bag, and she picked up her purse. I thought about putting a shirt on, but then I remembered I had dropped it back at Feet First. Considering Yolanda’s comment about how it smelled, maybe that was for the best. Besides, I was still warm from the exertion, and it wasn’t more than a ten-minute walk home.
I grabbed a couple of the other items that had been hanging out near my feet—packets of salad dressing, a tube of lipstick, and something else round—shit, a fucking tampon—and handed them to her without meeting her eyes. She took them quickly, mumbled a thank you, and shoved them into the huge, practically overflowing handbag.
She stood up and looked at me, and her eyes got big again.
“You got hurt!” she said as she lifted her fingers up toward my temple and then pulled away without touching me.
I reached up and felt the little cut above my eye and snickered.
“They didn’t touch me,” I assured her. “That was from work.”
“Work?”
“Yeah, I’m a fighter.”
She paused and her eyebrows screwed together.
“A what?”
“A fighter,” I repeated. “You know—two guys in a cage beating the shit out of each other.”
“In a cage?” she asked with disbelief.
“Yep.” I stated it simply and without making a grandiose noise out of the final consonant because that would just sound stupid.
“For real?”
“Yeah, for real.” I laughed.
“I thought that was just on TV.”
&nb
sp; “We all have to start somewhere,” I muttered.
“Sorry,” she said. She wrapped the strap of her bag around her neck and shoulder.
“What for?”
“I didn’t mean to be…insulting.”
“I’m not insulted.”
“Oh…well, okay then.” She ran her teeth over her bottom lip and looked down the dark street. I was pretty sure she shuddered a little.
“Let’s get you home,” I commanded as I started walking.
She nodded, and I walked next to her as she headed off in the same direction I usually walked home anyway. She kept her fingers wrapped around the strap of the huge bag and continued to stare at the ground as she walked.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Do what?” Her eyes met mine for a moment.
“Look at the ground,” I said. “You aren’t paying attention to your surroundings, so it makes you an easier target.”
“Oh,” she responded. At first she looked right back to the ground again, but then she seemed to process what I had said and held her head a little higher.
“Where are you from?”
“What makes you think I’m not from here?”
“You aren’t from the city,” I stated.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Yes,” I snickered. “Girls from around here know better than to walk alone, except the hookers, but that doesn’t seem your style.”
She glared at me out of the corner of her eye.
“I’m from Maine,” she said with a tone that told me I had just about reached my question quota.
“You’re a long ways from home,” I said. “How long have you lived here?”
“Two weeks,” she answered. “I’m going to school here.”
“You got a name?” I asked.
“Of course I have a name,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “It’s Tria. Tria Lynn. You?”
“Liam Teague,” I told her, and I held out my hand. She took it, shaking it briefly before she nearly tripped over her own feet on the flat ground. “I hope you don’t chew gum.”
I laughed at my own joke.
“Very funny,” she snapped back. “I’m not overly…coordinated.”
We walked the next block in silence. I felt kind of bad for picking on her, so I tried another approach.
“So what are you studying?”
“Economics.”
“Really?” I narrowed one eye at her.
“Why is that so surprising?” she asked, obviously displeased with my reaction.
“I dunno,” I responded with a shrug. “Just not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Um…teaching? Maybe nursing or physical therapy—something like that.”
“Why, because I’m a woman?”
“Uh…um…” I didn’t really know how to respond to that. I wasn’t really sure why I thought she would say something else; economics just didn’t seem to fit. “Well, why economics?”
“Because I don’t understand why some people have a ton of money and others don’t have anything,” she said simply. “It doesn’t have anything to do with how hard they work. I thought if I learned more about it, it would help me understand.”
I laughed again.
“I’m not a comedian,” she growled. “Stop laughing at me.”
“I’m not.” I shook my head. “I mean, I am, but…not like that. It’s just…weird.”
“I am not weird!” she yelled as she stopped in her tracks and snarled at me. “It makes perfect sense, and maybe you have just been hit in the head too many times to understand anything other than punching people, but I really don’t see how your opinion ought to matter to me!”
“Whoa!” I called out, stopping and turning to face her and holding my hands up in surrender. “Easy there! I just…shit…I just never heard of anyone wanting to study something like that. It’s cool.”
Her look softened but remained wary, so I turned it around on her.
“And now you have insulted me,” I told her.
“What? How?”
“I have not been hit in the head too many times—I fucking win.”
I grinned at her before I started walking across the street. She rolled her eyes again, but continued on beside me. We were quiet now with her speaking up only when we made a turn to the right and crossed another dark street.
“This is my street,” she said.
I felt an odd tingle run through my arms but didn’t respond.
Tria stopped in front of a three-story apartment building with faded brown paneling that tried to give it some sort of Tudor flair but failed miserably. There was a barred door painted black with one of those keypad security systems attached to it. The windows on the ground floor also had bars though the ones higher up didn’t. I glanced up the fire escape stairs next to the door and saw a black-haired girl swinging her legs and smoking a cigarette. The ash flicked out into the air and landed beside me on the chipped sidewalk.
“This is where you live?” I tried to stop from smiling too much. I mean, what were the odds?
“Yes,” she said. Her tone was dark. “It’s not as bad as it looks from the outside.”
“Heh.” I snorted. “Yes, it is.”
I reached forward and gave the barred door a good yank. It opened immediately, even without entering a code or anything. Bullshit security system hadn’t worked in at least eight months. Tria kind of glanced at me sideways as I held it open and made a grand gesture with my arm.
“After you,” I said.
“It’s supposed to be a secure building,” she said. “They said they were going to be getting that fixed soon.”
“Yep,” I replied, “that’s what they tell ya.”
“I’m not really supposed to let anyone inside the building.” She looked off to the side, like she was afraid to send me away while looking me in the eye.
I chuckled.
“You aren’t home yet,” I told her. “I said I would walk you home.”
“It’s just inside,” she said.
“First floor?”
“Yes.”
“What number?”
Her jaw tensed and she continued to look away from me. It looked like she was focusing on a stack of broken up pieces of brick lying in a haphazard pile near the entrance to the apartments. She glanced up at me before blowing out a big gust of breath.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “Come on in.”
Tria led me to the fourth door on the right, which had faded, not-really-brass numbers tacked up on it. Number 142.
I laughed in one quick burst.
“You live here?”
“Yes,” she said as she fished around in her purse for keys.
I had been wondering if my nights were going to be a little quieter, and now I had my answer. I chuckled softly to myself.
“Why is that funny?”
I shook my head as she glared at me.
I started to consider the reasons it was funny, but the reasons that all of this was not funny popped into my head instead. They were especially obvious as she continued to fumble around for her keys with her head practically buried in her monstrous over-the-shoulder bag.
I mean, she had just led a perfect stranger—hero or not—right to her door.
“Tria…” I shook my head a little to try to keep my cool. I started counting on my fingers. “One, stop being so trusting—this ain’t the small town you grew up in. Yeah, I’m not one to rape you in the street, but that doesn’t mean I’m not the kind of guy who would get you back somewhere private and do the same. Two, get your keys out before you get to the door. Hold them in your hand—like this.”
I grabbed her wrist before she could move and pushed a little, rubbery, lobster-shaped keychain against her palm. Then I positioned the keys on the ring between her fingers.
“Go for the eyes,” I said. I raised her hand up with mine and wrapped her fingers into a fist. The keys jutted out between her fingers, turning her
hand into a fairly impressive weapon. “Third, don’t fucking walk on that street at night by yourself. Get a fucking ride. Someone where you work has to have a car. Fourth, look where you are going, for Christ’s sake. Get your head up like you know where you are going and what you are doing even if you don’t. Fifth and final—let me know if you need anything. I’m right above you in apartment 242.”
With that, I turned and left her, mouth agape, in front of her door while I headed for the stairs at the back of the hall. I could feel her eyes on me, and found myself compelled to look back one more time and grin at her before I headed up the stairs. She pursed her lips, but they quickly spread into a smile just before she entered her apartment and closed the door.
I was never one to get attached, but I had the feeling I’d be seeing her again.
Chapter 3—Make the Move
My apartment was way too quiet, and I had too much pent-up energy to even consider going to sleep. I took a quick shower and pulled on a pair of sweats, commando style. I was just about out of clean underwear, and I fucking hated doing laundry. The refrigerator called to me, but when I opened it, I was not particularly impressed with the contents. The only thing that interested me mildly was the six-pack of Guinness, but I wasn’t in the mood for beer.
My hands began to shake a little. It was probably the pent-up energy from the brawl. I wished it were easier for me to calm down after such things, but any change in my routine usually ended up being a little dangerous for me. Though it has been years, the desire to slip up never really goes away.
I shut the door to the fridge and looked over the small, four-room apartment. Every room could be seen if you stood between the kitchen and the living room and looked past the small opening to one side that led to the single bedroom and bathroom. It wasn’t pretty, but…
Well, but nothing. It was a dump. The whole building was. It did fit the unique qualifier of being a place I could afford though, which wasn’t much. Most of the apartments in the building were advertised as furnished, which was an overstatement. I had gotten a deal on mine because the previous dude took most of the furniture with him the night he disappeared. I had to supply my own, but the rent was lowered to make up for it.