Squeezing by him, I took a survey of hedonism on earth. I couldn’t even imagine Emma squeezed into this seedy joint that was vibrating from the tasteless music and the bodies more-pounding-than-gyrating to the music. I had to find her and get her out of here, the mission impossible trained part of my mind repeated.
This wasn’t going into a country of hostiles armed with semi-automatics and desperation, this wasn’t infiltrating the world’s most dangerous Alliance of Inheritors, this wasn’t even going up against a man twice my size in a hand-to-hand battle, this was weaving my way through a bleary-eyed brood of Stanford’s finest and escorting a woman I cared about away from here.
This should be the easiest mission I’d undergone—in fact, it was laughable to consider it a mission, but something about the electric edge surging through me—like I was ready for a bullet to be fired at me from twenty different directions—was roaring to life.
I tried to coax my fists flat, my muscles smooth, my mind calm, but I was unsuccessful at any calming endeavor. If anyone tried to mess with me tonight, they’d be wearing a body cast for the better part of the year.
Tucking through the entry and into the room where most of the fumbling bodies were congregated, I wished I would have heeded Julia’s warning and worn gloves or, better yet, a radioactive resistant body suit. The place stunk of vomit, that goes without saying, but vomit that had been baking in the sun during the apocalypse and right alongside the tantalizing scent of puke was a tangy scent of undeodorized armpits. The hideousness of this stench would haunt me to the end of time.
Realizing my white-blond surfer hair, chiseled by the hand of God physique, and outfit that took a dump on the mall store jeans and branded t-shirts around me stood out, I knew I needed to make an effort to blend in with the rest of the genetically-impaired. Plus, I didn’t doubt that however drunk Ty was at this time on a Friday night, he’d have no trouble picking me out of the crowd.
Grabbing an un-manned red plastic cup teetering on a windowsill, I plucked a red Phillies baseball cap off a guy who was college boy bouncing his head to the wrong beat of the music. I was already halfway across the room when I heard him holler out, but I knew even despite the hat’s overt color, he wouldn’t be able to identify the thief. I was the Dalai Lama of blending into a crowd when I needed to be.
Not finding Emma in the main room, I slipped into a dark hallway. Between the coupled bodies and choppy breathing, I saw her. It was like the dark hallway was pointing at her, as if I needed any other hints that I needed to get her out of this place. She was sitting on a sofa arm, legs crossed, hands twisting around each other like they didn’t know what to do, shoulders slumped, eyes in that faraway place again.
I didn’t need a psych degree to diagnosis her with a bad case of get-me-the-hell-out-of-here. I’d shoved my way through most of the bodies when an arm snaked around her neck. An arm I wanted to dislocate from its socket.
Ty handed her a red cup. “Here, drink this.” Perhaps the only good thing about having heightened senses in a room like this was that I was able to zone in on his voice through the deafening drone surrounding me. “Is it too much to ask that you try to look like you’re having a good time? These are my friends, you know. Maybe you could show them the same amount of enthusiasm you like to show your asswipe friend.”
Emma took the cup from him, but made no other show of acknowledging him and, to my relief, he made no more attempts at acknowledging her presence. In fact, he turned to the girl glommed a little too close to him given his relationship status, the epitome of girl-you-don’t-take-home-to-mama, and bent his mouth down to her ear, whispering something in it that made her flick a wink his way.
Through this entire trash hits on trash transaction, Emma played oblivious, but Emma was not one of those oblivious girls. She was choosing to ignore it, for lord knows what reason, but it made me want to claim her girlfriend rights that she wasn’t and bitch-slap one and knee the other in the balls.
Ty got pulled a few feet away into another stimulating conversation on the finer qualities of beer pong, or where you could find a size xxxs-near-non-existent jockstrap, or whatever lame brain things his brand of losers gravitated towards, and I took full advantage of his distraction. Crouching against the wall at the end of the hallway, I slid my hand between her fingers and the cup that turned out to be empty save for a swig.
The jackhole handed her a cup of backwash.
She looked at my hand, a smile already in its early stages when she looked up into the face of the hand’s owner. Her eyes bulged when she saw me ducked in the shadows, but the smile stayed in place. Taking a nervous glance Ty’s way, she leaned towards me. “What are you doing here?” she asked one level above a whisper.
Returning her grin, I pulled at her hand. “What are you doing here?”
She didn’t budge from the sofa arm, like she’d been crazy glued to it. “Having a great time,” she answered.
“Sure looks like you are,” I said, giving her hand another tug. I’d pick her up and carry her out of here if I had to, but it would be a helluva lot easier if she’d work with me. “Why don’t you keep the good times rolling and come with me?”
She stalled, biting at her lip. Throwing one more glance at Ty’s back, she set the cup on the ground and ducked into the hallway next to me. She was pressed against me so close, we took up no more space than one person.
“Well, are we just going to stand here?” Emma whispered against my neck. Holy goosebumps, Batman. “I flew the coop with the promise of good times to be had.”
I angled my face down towards hers, so close my nose was skimming her forehead. I lost purchase of the comeback I was prepared to deliver, but when she tilted her face higher to mine, so the breath coming off her lips flowed against mine, I lost purchase of all twelve languages I knew fluently.
Wordless, I pulled her up with me and led her down the hallway. She followed me, weaving her other hand through my elbow, and together we cut our own path out of the darkness. Spilling out onto the middle of the expanding dance floor, I turned and pulled her against me. Harder than I should have, closer than I should have, but I didn’t give a damn.
“Dance with me,” I said, my whisper breaking against her ear.
She answered me every way but verbally. Her hands slid up my arms, settling onto my shoulders, her body swayed against mine until we caught the beat of the music and each other, and her eyes gripped mine, warm, inviting, and scared.
My hands worked over the curve of her back, pressing her closer, trying to memorize every dip and curve of her back.
“Why are you here?” she asked after we’d danced in silence through an entire track. “Really?”
Doing a quick survey of the room, glad to find it Ty-free, I answered, “Well, it isn’t for the cheap beer or ear-numbing music I can assure you.”
“That’s why everyone else is here,” Emma replied, doing her own scan of the room, her fingers constricting into my shoulders a little deeper.
“Yeah, well, I came to this about this one girl,” I said, easing my way into laying it all out on the line.
“Did you find her?” she asked, her eyes latching on the ground.
Stilling us, I did another scan of the room, but this time, instead of looking for douchebag extraordinaire, I paused on a couple dozen women, earning a sigh from Emma.
My eyes ended on her and stayed on her for so long a blush crept up her neck and her eyes couldn’t hold mine any longer.
But they didn’t stay away long. As if thinking the better of it, they veered back to mine and she held mine harder she ever had, a smile spreading into every plane of her face. The Emma smile I missed. The real one that made me feel like I was the only person on the face of the world she cared for.
“Ah, there you are,” I said, part mesmerized, part hypnotized, but mostly just falling in love. “Nice to see the Emma I remember. Where have you been?”
Her smile warped into the sad one I hate to see as she sigh
ed. “That Emma you want to believe I am—the smiling, carefree, world at her fingertips girl you see when you’re around—that’s not who I am. I’m the girl who’s insecure, pessimistic, runs away from her problems, or when that doesn’t work, ignores them, and spends most of the present terrified of the future,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “I know, I sound amazing, don’t I?”
I couldn’t understand why she identified herself as the shell of the girl I’d seen her as a few times. That wasn’t a person—that was a corpse warmed over.
“So you see yourself one way and I see you in exactly the opposite way. Which girl do you want to be?”
Another song pumped through the speakers, making those predeceasing it seem tame. “It’s not that easy,” she replied. “It’s not who we want to be, but who we are that defines us.”
That sounded profoundly wise. Too bad it wasn’t true. “That’s positively the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.”
“What did I tell you?” she said, lifting her mouth to my ear to cut through the bass shock waving around the room. “I’m a pessimist.”
Curling my neck into her, I repeated, “Who do you want to be?” I wasn’t going to let her distract me from this, not when we were making progress.
When her hands slid from my shoulders to the curve of my neck, her fingers weaving through my hair, I would have let her distract me from saving the world. “I want to be the person you think I am.”
We weren’t moving against each other anymore, but our bodies locked together immobile just as well as they had in motion. “Good news for you then. That’s who you are,” I said. “The rest is just staying on that path.”
Her laugh muffled into my neck. “Sounds easy.”
“It is if you just stick with me, never leave my side, move in with me—”
“That,” she interrupted, “sounds anything but easy.”
“By your own admission, you said that the person you are when you’re around me is the person you want to be,” I said. “Lucky for you I like you and don’t mind you hanging around twenty-four seven striving to be all you can be.”
“How generous of you.”
There’s a sliver of silence while the stereo system took a breather before the next song—and I use the word song loosely—pounded through the room. It’s enough to put a crack in the spell Emma cast on me whenever she’s around. I remembered why I’m here. And it’s not to dance and flirt back and forth with her, although that took a close second. I was here to get her out of this place.
“What are you doing here, Em?” I asked, never an advocate of segues.
“Dancing with you,” she said, a smile in her voice.
Damn if she didn’t have me there. “Let me specify. What are you doing holing up in this bottom feeder of a house? Why have you been afraid of so much as making eye contact with me?” Instead of punching something in frustration, I drew her closer, until she stilled the raging waters within. “What are you doing?”
This, perhaps more than any of the others, was the question. The question I had no answer for. The question she had every answer for. The question that would open or slam closed the crack in the future of us.
I felt her chest rise before she answered, “It’s complicated.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That be-all-end-all answer you girls like to use holds no sway over me.” Clenching her shoulders, I looked down at her. “Spill it, Em. All of it.”
She held my gaze for a moment or two before her lids fell like heavy curtains. The tri-wrinkle between her brows smoothed right before the rest of her face did and, when her eyes reopened, I knew she was ready.
She was just opening her mouth when I spoke up. “Hold up. I know that face,” I said, waving my hand at her. “That’s an I’m-ready-to-give-you-the-key-to-the-safe-of-deep-secrets face. That’s a serious face.” One side of her mouth curved up in amusement. “Let’s get out of here. I prefer sordid confessions and spilling of guts over a bucket of ice cream.” I was already tugging her towards the door I’d entered hell to save an angel.
“Sordid?” she said, giving me a look.
“You’re not the only one who has some dishing to do tonight,” I said, putting on a blasé front. “My confessions may or may not be of a sordid nature. I’ll let you decide.”
“Would it make any difference if I put up a fight?” she asked, not putting up any of a fight as I carved a line for us through the dance floor.
“Of course not,” I said. “I’d just throw you over my shoulder and kidnap you if I had to.” When I glanced back over my shoulder at her, her eyes were the first thing I noticed. They were no longer glinting with happiness.
A cocktail of surprise and fear floundered in them. I knew why, I knew I’d more than pressed my luck staying as long as I had, pressed up against another man’s women on the dance floor, so I was expecting what came next.
Spinning around, I backed into Emma, knowing I couldn’t keep her safe from flying limbs, bottles, and whatever else got thrown into the mix if I wasn’t melded into her until it was hard to distinguish whose body was whose.
The first strike came in the form of an outstretched arm coming from my ten o’clock, sweeping the kipped hat clean off my head.
I pivoted a quarter turn, furious at the cheap shot. Not because I’d been made a fool of in front of northern California’s future burger flippers, but because spit-wad’s arm had come within a hair of smacking Emma across the face. His arm wouldn’t still be attached to his shoulder had that been the case.
“I don’t believe you were on the invite list,” hat sweeper hollered at me over the music, his oiled biceps, only to be outdone by his oiled hair, making me wonder if he was more the thing of bad reality television than real Ivy League college life.
“I didn’t realize you needed an invitation to hell,” I answered, every muscle, every fiber of my existence, zapping to life. “I thought you just kind of got sucked in with the rest of the riff-raff.”
“Metro has a smart mouth. Isn’t that precious?” oily boy shouted into the crowd. The promises of a fight had caught the attention of everyone within a two room radius; the hellacious music had even dimmed to almost-permanently-ruin-your-ear-drums volume.
“Would you guys stop calling me a metro already?” I replied, rolling my eyes. “Because I can promise you no metro can hit like this.”
And to further clarify, I demonstrated on the wannabe reality-tv star.
In all honesty, it wasn’t that hard of a hit. Just a soft right hook to the jaw that sent him spiraling backwards into the drywall. After witnessing the pucker in the drywall his head created before he slid to the ground, where he’d be sleeping it off the rest of tonight and tomorrow, I knew I had to recalibrate my “soft” when it came to whacking entitled, tough guy posers in the future.
The crowd took a collective giant step back as a dozen more carbon copies with varying degrees of oiliness stepped forward. What I hadn’t wanted was a frat boy war on my hands when I’d entered the door, but now that they were in front of me, eager and willing, it felt like just the thing I needed to burn off a little steam.
“Hey, Rapunzel,” carbon copy at my six o’clock called out, tilting his chin at me. “So you can land a hit on a rip-roaring drunk guy, good for you. What are you going to do when all of us come at you with an ass-whooping? Flick us with your golden hair?” He grinned into the crowd as he stretched his Thanksgiving day turkey sized arms over his chest. The guy preceded a fight by prepping and stretching his muscles. What—as the English would say—a wanker.
“Why don’t you put some action behind those words?” I said, keeping one arm trained on Emma, the other slack at my side, but ready.
“Hey, Emma,” idle threat boy called out, like he’d just remembered she was there. “Didn’t Ty tell you to steer clear of this loser?”
I felt every muscle in her body going rigid in defiance. I wanted her to tell this guy off just as much as I wanted her to stay silent and l
et me “deal” with the situation. In the end, she proved we were more cut from the same fabric than I’d realized.
“Ty doesn’t control my every move,” she said, her voice even and strong. “He can’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”
Boy who was getting on my nerves, about to wear a dent the shape of my fist in his forehead the rest of his life, chuckled like she’d just said the cutest thing he’d ever heard. “That’s not what I hear, sweetie. That’s not what I hear.”
With a cluck of his tongue, another guy behind us reached for Emma, but before he could pull her away from me, I was in his face, wondering if I’d used teleportation or just moved that fast.
“Don’t. Touch. Her.”
I didn’t think my words, or the breath steaming out of my teeth, needed any further clarification as to what the repercussions would be if my warning went unheeded. The guy I was staring down in front of me got it—he saw I was a man on death row with nothing to lose if he didn’t listen to me.
The guy behind me didn’t get it.
His arms had just ringed around Emma’s arms when I was on him. And by on him, I mean literally on him. Seeing him touching her in a way that was the opposite of gentle lit a stick of dynamite in me, and I became a bundle of muscle and fury controlled by animal instinct.
“Keep your hands off her!”
Tackling him to the floor, I pinned his shoulders to the ground with my knees and made good use of his head by imagining it was my punching bag back home. I made a Picasso of his face before the next guy could get to me.
It was as simple as a tuck and roll to dodge a grown man’s best attempts at ending me. Pathetic. Why didn’t men learn to fight like men anymore, instead of the caveman-chimpanzee creature with raw physicality they’d supposedly evolved from?
Two down, ten more to go, provided no else decided to join in and earn a purple heart of stupidity.
Shoving off my back, I flipped to a stand as the goon platoon made a rush at their enemy target. An explosion of fists and feet peppered me. In holding to the man code I ascribed to, although man was a stretch in this instance, I allowed them all their one hit, punch, kick, or sucker-shot.
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