“Fuck you!” I cringed and yelled as she shined a little penlight in my eyes.
“Stop being such a baby,” she said. She had gone back to acting all soft and mothering again, which was kind of funny for a chick who was always watching me move around naked. What was the opposite of an Oedipal complex? Electra? Nah, I had something backwards. Yolanda was more of a lioness. Or was it a cougar?
Maybe I did have a concussion.
I let her poke around at the back of my head, which was pretty tender but didn’t make me see spots or anything. Then she asked me a bunch of bullshit questions until I got pissy.
“Come on, Yolanda,” I whined. “I wanna smoke. I’m fine.”
The dizziness and ear-ringing were gone, and I did think I was okay. Yolanda either agreed or was tired of arguing with me because she let me up and watched me head out the door. I stomped up the stairs with my head throbbing in my temples, still ticked off that the guy lasted as long as he did. Overall, I was not in a good mood.
When I got to the top of the stairs, I immediately saw a figure leaning against the outside of the fence and looking back and forth down the street quickly. Each time the head turned, a long brown pony tail bobbed around, and strands of hair got caught in the chain links. If the short-shorts and Fin’s logo on the shirt weren’t enough to go on, the gigantic, evil handbag gave her away.
“What the fuck?” I snarled through the fence.
Tria startled and looked at me, turning quickly on her heel and holding up her keys clenched in her fist. I tilted my head to one side and raised an eyebrow at her. What was she going to do, wave them around at me from the other side of the fence?
“I’m pretty sure that was not meant to take the place of a ride,” I said, nodding toward the keys in her hand.
“You scared the shit out of me!” Tria yelled. She adjusted the mega-monster purse on her shoulder and ran her hand through her hair. “The girl who was driving me got another job. She just walked out today, and there wasn’t anyone else on my shift with a car.”
“So you’re walking down this street again?” I yelled. I slammed my palms into the chain links, making the whole side of metal rattle. She jumped away, stammering.
“I…I…”
I didn’t give her much chance to finish. I was livid.
“After what happened the last time? Seriously, Tria?” I paced over to the edge of the building and back to the fence again. My fingers wrapped around the links and yanked. “You do have a fucking death wish, don’t you?”
“I do not!”
“Then why are you being so stupid?” I screamed. I planted my feet right where they were, and my heart thumped audibly in my chest.
“I was trying to find you!” she yelled back.
“Well, why didn’t you come in the fucking bar?” I tossed my hands up into the air. “Is there not a big ass poster right there in your face saying exactly where I am on Friday nights?”
“I tried,” Tria said with a glare. “The bouncer wouldn’t let me in.”
“Why not?”
“I’m only twenty,” she said with a shrug.
There was something about that news that flipped a switch in my head. I knew she looked young, but I didn’t realize how young. The idea that she was out here on her own, trying to make a go in this place without even being old enough to get into a bar killed my anger and made me feel something a little odd as well. Respect? Maybe even pride?
Whatever it was, it also hardened my dick.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. I turned away from her and ran my hand through my hair, trying to get my dick under control before it made itself known through my shorts. I cringed as my fingers came across the tender spot on the back of my skull. At least the sharp pain killed my erection.
“You’re hurt,” Tria stated. I didn’t look up, but I could hear her hands grasping the links of the fence.
“All part of the job,” I responded. Turning around to look at her again, I could see concern in her eyes. I remembered what my face had looked like in the mirror, and I knew what she was seeing appeared a little crazy. I looked worse than I really was.
“Why?” I heard myself ask as I moved back to the fence that separated us. “Why did you come looking for me?”
She looked away, her neck craning to the side a little as she looked down the street.
“I was hoping…maybe…maybe you could walk me home?” Her voice quavered as she looked back at me. Our eyes met through the links, and my knuckles tightened around the little metal bits between my fingers.
I swallowed once, trying to understand why my heart was still pounding so forcefully in my chest. My appearance right now was probably as frightening as anyone on the street, but she was still asking me for help, just like I had told her to do the week before.
I moved my eyes somewhat involuntarily over her form—slender, young, beautiful, and in need. I ran my tongue over my lips, tasting blood, as these thoughts echoed through my head. My chest rose as I inhaled slowly.
She just looked far too tempting.
Another set of words that described her ran through my head: easy target.
I didn’t like those words so much, not just for me, but for anyone around here. She had no fucking idea what she was doing or how to live in the city—that much was obvious. If she did, she would have told Wade or Gary at the door that she was twenty-one and just forgot her ID. They would have let her in. She also could have pushed her boobs up a bit, and they would have forgotten to ask altogether. Worst case, she could have said she knew me, and they would have allowed her in, too.
And here she was again, hanging out in the back street behind the bar not fifty feet from where a group of guys had been waiting to ambush her a week ago. Granted, she had learned—she was on alert and holding her keys right—but still, her precautions wouldn’t have done much if someone decided they really wanted a piece of her.
And yeah—guys definitely wanted a piece of that.
“Liam?” she said quietly. I focused on the movement of her lips, and images similar to the one Gary had conjured up with his bobbing hands and thrusting hips came to mind. “Would you?”
“Would I what?” I responded.
“Walk me home?” Her voice was small and scared, and it brought out something primal inside my gut.
“Yeah,” I said with a quick nod. “I can do that.”
I was never the outdoorsy type, but I started walking her home every night after that.
Chapter 4 - Find the Step
I walked slowly back and forth in front of Fin’s Bar and Grill and watched people smelling like grease walk out of the place. Just the smell of greasy food made me feel a little sick—there was no way I’d ever actually eat in such a place. I couldn’t even bring myself to walk through the front door.
Tria bustled out just as I finished my cigarette. She was trying to walk and find something in Godzilla’s Clutch Purse at the same time, which made her trip on the step as she was coming out the door. I tried to keep from laughing out loud.
“One of these days,” I told her, “you are going to stick your hand in there, and it will get lost in all that shit. You’ll never find it again.”
Tria sighed and tilted her head at me. She pulled her hand out and held up a little tube of lipstick or ChapStick or gloss or something—maybe all three—like it was some kind of trophy. She put it on with exaggerated flair before dropping it back into the bag.
“You just don’t understand,” she said.
“I hope I never do,” I admitted.
“Wow...who would have thought?” she said under her breath. Her eyes darted over me.
“Thought what?” I asked, looking down to see if I had pizza sauce or something on me.
Tria's cheeks tinged with red.
“That you owned a shirt,” she said with a small smile as she looked me over again. “Well, most of one, anyway. I've never seen you in one before.”
“Heh...I guess not.” I reached u
p and fiddled with the collar of my plain, black T-shirt with the sleeves sliced out of it, leaving it mostly open down the sides. I never thought much about what I was wearing. Most of my clothing came from secondhand stores.
We fell in step together, moving without a lot of rush down the sidewalk and across the street. It was Wednesday, and I wasn’t working, but Tria had gotten off late again. She was supposed to get off before the place closed, which was one in the morning, but she always seemed to get stuck doing something else until closing time. It was only a twenty-minute walk, but she’d be so late, we usually wouldn’t get back to the apartments until two thirty in the morning. This night wouldn’t be any earlier.
I had given her a bunch shit about hanging out for so long behind Feet First the week before. It wasn’t much safer than the street. Apparently, she thought she would be “close enough” to me that it would be okay, which set me off pretty bad. I took her around front and introduced her to Wade and made her promise to come inside when I was working on Friday.
“So who made ‘patron of the evening’ tonight?” I asked.
“This guy with a big green Mohawk,” she said immediately. “He’s a vegetarian and wanted me to get the chef to make something special for him since there wasn’t anything vegetarian on the menu outside of fries and onion rings. It’s a bar, dammit—not a four star restaurant! We don’t serve pasta primavera! We don’t even have spaghetti!”
“I’m a vegetarian,” I said with a sideways glance at her.
“You are not,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
“I most certainly am.”
Tria looked over at me, trying to determine if I was making this up or not.
“Really?”
“Really,” I replied. “Since I was about seventeen.”
“How old are you now?”
“Twenty-six.”
Her lip disappeared behind her teeth for a minute.
“So why did you become a vegetarian?” she asked.
“Nope,” I said. “You grilled me about cage fighting last time. It’s my turn to annoy you with questions.”
“Ugh!” Tria groaned, and I laughed.
“Why did you decide to move here?” I asked. I shoved the tips of my fingers into the front pockets of my jeans and kicked a chunk of cement into the center of the road with the toe of my tennis shoe.
“I told you—I’m going to school.”
“Yeah, but why here?” I asked.
“Hoffman College gave me the best deal,” she said with a shrug. “Aside from the financial aid and scholarship, they have a service that will come and pick me up to get to classes.”
“You’re going to Hoffman?” I tried not to sound too shocked.
“Yes,” she affirmed. “Why?”
“You just hadn’t mentioned it before,” I replied nonchalantly as images of the tall brick buildings filled my head. I remembered the ladies in the alumni center who would always give me candy when I accompanied my mom on one of her visits. “It’s a pretty small school.”
“That’s one of the things I liked about it,” Tria said. “It’s actually family-owned and gives more money in scholarships than other programs. The econ department is really well known as well.”
There would be no argument there—Hoffman College was quite well known for a few of their programs. I hadn’t really heard about the economics department before, but I also didn’t pay much attention to that shit when I was a kid.
We continued along the sidewalk past the back side of Feet First and around the corner toward our street. When I looked up, there were two guys heading toward us, and I heard Tria let out a long breath. Glancing over at her, I could see the muscles in her arm tense as her fingers gripped the strap of her bag, and she moved a half step closer to me.
I was pissed that they had scared her even though I knew they were only walking at this point. I looked ahead, trying to determine if I had ever seen them before, but they didn’t look familiar. They certainly weren’t part of the group that went after her a couple of weeks ago—I was sure of that.
With a quick side step, I moved behind Tria to stand on the other side of her so the two guys would pass us beside me, not her. They didn’t even stop their conversation as they walked by, but Tria relaxed immediately after they passed.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“No worries,” I replied. She was still gripping her purse tightly. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Just remembering.”
“Well, don’t,” I suggested. Tilting my head to look over at her, I offered her a goofy half smile. She returned one of her own, so the desired effect was attained.
“Thank you,” she said again. “I mean, for the other night. I don’t think I ever really properly thanked you.”
“You were kinda in shock,” I reminded her. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” she told me. “You didn’t have to go after those guys and risk yourself for—”
I interrupted her with a sharp laugh.
“Risk myself? With those douchebags? Hardly.”
“Still,” she continued, “you got into a fight for someone you didn’t even know.”
“I like fighting,” I told her. “I like to beat people up. It’s what I do for a living, you might recall.”
“I remember.” She sighed and her nose wrinkled up a bit. “The point is still the same—thank you for rescuing me.”
“I was in the neighborhood.” I shrugged and offered her another half smile. She looked back down at her feet and shook her head a little before looking back at me. Her large brown eyes darted back and forth between mine.
“And for doing all of this,” she said with a wave of her arm. “You don’t have to do this—walk me home every night, especially when I get off so late. I wasn’t expecting you to do this, but I’m not even sure if Stan is going to hire another server at this point, and—”
“Tria, don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I only work two nights a week, and I stay up late every night. If I wasn’t doing this, I’d be sitting in front of the TV, trying to figure out why people watch the shit that is on there.”
Tria snickered.
“You’re still going out of your way,” she said, looking up at me again. “And in the middle of the night, no less. I appreciate it.”
I just shrugged again, not yet willing to admit to myself, let alone her, that this little walk of ours was quickly becoming the highlight of my nights. I was kind of disappointed she didn’t have to work the next day.
“Why did you pick this area to live in?” I asked.
“Fin’s offered me the job,” she said. “School isn’t too far away to use their transportation service, and I needed the work. I didn’t have much experience when I filled out job applications, and no one else even called me back for an interview. Everyone seems to be looking for a job, and there don’t seem to be enough to go around.”
“Can’t argue with that,” I said. “I keep hearing that the economy sucks, and whatever politician you are talking to, it’s the other one’s fault. I assume you are going to fix that after you graduate, right?”
“I’ll be happy if I can at least makes some sense out of it all,” she responded.
We made it to the apartment entrance, and I glanced up to see Krazy Katie lying on her back on the fire escape. She had her legs straight up in the air and was doing a bicycle peddling exercise or something.
At least she had her clothes on.
“You’ll never get anywhere on that bike!” I called up to her but didn’t get a response. I laughed quietly as I jerked the door open and let Tria go in first.
“Who is that?” she asked.
“Krazy Katie,” I replied. “She’s the resident psycho. Every apartment building needs one.”
“What is she doing?”
“Who knows?” I laughed. “She’s a nut. Harmless enough, but still a nut.”
Tria slid her key into
the lock and opened her apartment door. She turned back to me then, and I became increasingly aware of how close we were standing, even though we weren’t actually touching. That made me realize I had only actually touched her twice—once when I yanked her back against me and away from a thug and then later that night when I showed her how to hold her keys.
Her eyes were on mine, but I couldn’t understand her expression. It seemed to be a combination of apprehension and wonder, but that didn’t make any sense. Mostly I noticed the shimmer of the lip shit she had put on earlier, which was emphasized as her tongue darted out over her lips.
My hands began to feel a little clammy, and I didn’t know where to put them. I considered leaning against the frame of the door, but it didn’t feel right, so I ended up shoving the tips of my fingers back into my pockets again.
I swallowed, trying not to focus on either her mouth or the area where the pale skin above her breasts was exposed. I pulled more oxygen into my lungs and realized I experience a similar feeling right before a fight starts—anticipation, excitement, and something else deeper and unnamable.
“Thanks for walking me home,” Tria said softly. Her eyes didn’t leave mine, and I wondered if her cheek felt as soft as it looked.
“You’re welcome,” I replied simply.
“Good night,” she said. Her face flushed, and she used her tongue once more to stroke her lips.
“Night.”
She turned slowly and moved across the line of the apartment door, and whatever had been going on in my head abruptly stopped when her eyes moved from mine.
I didn’t sleep well that night. In my head, I blamed the cold and figured I would have to turn the heat on by the end of the week.
I was never one to face my emotions, but I knew I was already in deep.
Chapter 5—Question the Motive
“Just let her in, and don’t fuck around.”
“Hey—it’s not my fault!” Gary tossed his hands in the air. “I didn’t know who she was, and she pulled out an ID that said she was underage! Shit, dude…”