Chapter 4 #2
“But…” I sputtered, trying to understand what was happening and the meaning of his words, but my body was still achingly sentient, focusing on where his hand held mine, and my mind was decidedly distracted.
Again, I looked to Elizabeth for help, but she was already some distance behind us, and I wasn’t certain she could hear our conversation.
He wasn’t moving particularly fast, so we walked side-by-side holding hands.
Finally, I said, “What’s wrong with how I look? And aren’t I safe with you?” My skipping record of stream-of-consciousness questions seemed to be spinning again.
He glanced at me from the corner of his eyes and hesitated a moment before speaking, as though he were about to give away a secret reluctantly. “Not necessarily.”
“Can’t I just stay here?”
He withdrew his hand from mine and placed it on my back, pressed me forward as he answered, “No. You can’t.
” His firm strength at the base of my spine reminded me of how he’d escorted me to the basement on my worst day ever, and I felt aggravated.
My annoyance spiked when he added, “Someone like you shouldn’t be in here anyway. ”
I stepped abruptly away from him and stopped walking; we were approximately ten feet from the entrance.
His words felt like a snowball to the face. “Someone like me?” I asked, squaring my shoulders, even as I felt an irritating blush spread up my neck and over my cheeks. I glanced around at the perfectly formed animated mannequins in the club and knew exactly what he meant.
I was used to remarks about my strangeness, and I’d long ago resolved to rejoice in the awkwardness of my appearance, but the offhand comment, coming from him, the benighted source of my weeks-long stalkerish fantasies, chaffed against a wound I thought had healed into a concealed scar long ago.
His attention followed my movements as I pulled away, a mixture of surprise, annoyance, and confusion apparent in his features. He took a step to close the distance between us and reached for my hand, but I crossed my arms over my chest to avoid further contact.
I wondered at my seesaw of emotions; hot then cold.
I didn’t enjoy how unbalanced I felt, especially when he touched me.
I didn’t like that I’d given him some strange power over my inner mechanics and chemistry just because he was beautiful.
I didn’t like how my body seemed to be intent on sabotaging my brain, especially since my brain was so good at sabotaging itself.
The burning in the pit of my stomach was replaced with a cold ache. I felt seasick and truly absurd.
“I think I can navigate the last few feet just fine without an escort. I do know how to walk.”
I tried not to notice how very nice he looked in his black suit, and I gave him what I hoped was a withering glare, but I suspected it was merely a stiff stare, and I walked around him and headed straight to the door.
I didn’t look back as I exited the club, and welcomed the windy, Chicago city air.
Elizabeth must have been a significant distance behind me, because she didn’t join me for what seemed like several minutes. This gave me ample time to work myself into a tornado of heated annoyance and embarrassment.
When she finally arrived, she was on her cell phone, obviously talking to the hospital.
She gave me a huge smile, nudged my elbow with hers, and mouthed oh my God.
I frowned at her elated expression and shook my head.
Elizabeth covered the receiver of her phone to block our conversation from whoever was on the other end; a questioning crease was between her eyebrows, her smile replaced with meditative concern.
“I thought you’d be over the moon,” she said in a loud whisper, indicating the club with a quick nod of her head. “He was flirting with you!”
I sighed and turned away from her. “No, he wasn’t.”
“What, are you crazy? He’s completely into you. Did he…yes…” I listened as Elizabeth turned her attention back to the voice emanating from her cell. “Yes, I’m still here.”
I ignored the rest of her phone conversation.
My thoughts were a black cloud of grumpiness focused on my maladroit personality disorder and gargantuan features.
There were very few times in my life I truly wished I looked different, and simply was different from the person I am: the middle child in a family of three girls, and the one who is universally acknowledged as the smart plain Jane of the bunch.
We were the Morris girls. My older sister, June Morris, was the pretty one; I was the smart one; my youngest sister, Jem Morris, was the crazy one.
Jem’s first arrest came when she was nine, shortly after our mother’s death.
She stabbed one of her teachers in the hand with a cafeteria knife, then told the police she had a bomb hidden in the school.
Even from an early age, I was at peace with my family and my place in it.
In recent years both June and Jem had become known, collectively, as the criminal ones.
June had just been found not guilty in California for her part in running an organized escort service as my dad called it.
He was too polite to call it what it was—her prostitution business.
The last time I heard from Jem, she was calling the shots at a chop shop in Massachusetts just outside of Boston.
To their credit, June and Jem were both leaders in their respective fields, masterminds at their craft.
I, meanwhile, went to college to become an architect, and the closest I’d come to realizing my dream was securing a job, bought by my at-the-time-boyfriend’s dad, as a staff accountant at a mediocre firm.
I wasn’t even sure it was my dream anymore.
Elizabeth pulled me back into the present with a tug on my arm as she led me toward a waiting taxi.
“Here.” She shoved cash into my hand. “Just go to the apartment. I’ll take a different cab to the hospital; it’s in the opposite direction.
” She gave me a quick hug as I looked from her to the money in my hand.
“We’ll talk tomorrow. I won’t be home ‘til the afternoon.”
I nodded dumbly as she shoved me into the open door, closed it, waved through the window, then turned to hail another taxi.
The car was moving. I frowned at the pile of bills in my fist. I wondered why my sisters were so fearless.
I wondered if I had missed out on that gene along with June’s beauty gene and Jem’s crazy gene.
I wondered why everyone—Jon, Elizabeth, and even to a certain extent Sir Quinn McHotpants—felt like I needed oversight: someone to escort me, to take care of me, to tell me what to do and point me in the “right” direction.
“Where to?” The cabbie’s baritone cut through my dazed preoccupation, and I realized we’d already gone two blocks. “Where are we going?” his voice sounded again from the front.
I quickly considered my options. I could go back to the apartment, read my new book on the history of viral infections, and embrace my hermit tendencies, or I could ask the driver to turn the cab around, take me back to the club, and—just for one night—live my life unescorted while I tried to unlock my Morris Girl fearless gene.
“Take me back to Outrageous.”