11. Stella
STELLA
Ninety seconds. Somehow, through sheer force of will or maybe a small miracle, I manage to last ninety entire seconds in the paint aisle, holding a tube of viridian green.
He told me to stay put, so I’ve stood here counting slowly and telling myself to do what Tristan said because he’s probably got his reasons.
Ninety seconds.
Then every single nerve in my body overrules his instructions, and before I know it, I’m moving toward the front of the store.
I don’t even bother going to the register—as it is, I’m pretty sure he was going to buy all of this for me.
I leave the basket on the floor where he placed it, setting the viridian green on the nearest shelf, which also happens to be the colored-pencil section.
Somebody’s going to be very confused later, not that I care.
He told me to stay. He even used the flat voice, the one that means what it says. I said okay, and I meant it at the time. But between then and now, I’ve had more than enough time to fill in the blanks, and the blanks are very, very bad. How do I know he’s not walking into something terrible?
How do I know I’m not joining him in something terrible as I step outside?
Normally, I would be monitoring the breeze.
Right now, I’m too busy scanning the sidewalk to care about the wind for possibly the first time in my life.
There’s no sign of him out front. I look left toward the alley between the art store and the dry cleaner, and that’s when I hear something.
A heavy, meaty sound, like a side of beef hitting a wall.
My feet make the decision before my brain does.
The alley is narrow and dim. It’s filled with the usual alley décor, too—a dumpster, pallets. About twenty feet in, I see what made the noise that drew me closer. Two men are fighting, and Tristan is one of them.
I should be scared. I know this with the same detached clarity that knows straws are not weapons and turtles are not threats.
I should be terrified, because there are two men in an alley, and one of them is throwing punches and the other one is Tristan, who is also throwing punches.
This is violence, real violence, the kind that doesn’t come with subtitles or a pause button.
But I’m not scared. Not for myself, anyway.
I’m scared for him, which is different. It’s a kind of fear I’ve never felt before because I’ve never had someone to be scared for.
My heart is hammering. My hands are ice cold.
I’m pressing myself against the wall of the alley like I can make myself invisible, which is unlikely given the amount of red hair piled up on top of my head.
Also—and I recognize this is not the appropriate observation for the moment—watching Tristan fight is kind of hot.
He moves like it’s choreographed, except it’s not.
It’s just muscle memory. His body is doing things it was trained to do without asking his brain for permission.
He’s fast for someone his size. The other guy is big too—thick neck, wide shoulders—but Tristan is faster and more efficient.
Every hit he lands sounds like it means something.
The other guy swings wide. Tristan ducks it, comes up inside, then drives an elbow into the guy’s ribs.
I swear, I feel it in my own chest from twenty feet away.
The guy staggers and his jacket swings open.
Something falls out and hits the concrete with a metallic clatter that echoes off the alley walls.
It skitters across the ground and stops about six feet from me, sitting on the dirty concrete as if it’s waiting for someone to make a decision.
It’s a gun. An actual, honest-to-God gun.
The cold in my hands goes from zero to arctic.
Everything around me freezes, too, while my gaze stays fixed on the gun.
It’s small and dark, and I can’t take my eyes off it.
A sound comes out of my mouth that I don’t authorize—a sharp, high yelp, the kind of sound a small dog makes when you step on its paw.
Tristan’s head snaps toward me. “Stella?”
That’s all he gets out, because the half-second he spends looking at me is the half-second his opponent needs.
A fist connects with the side of Tristan’s jaw, and his head rocks sideways.
Then the other guy drives forward and slams him back against the dumpster.
Tristan’s skull hits metal, and the sound makes bile rise in my throat.
He fights the other guy’s grip, one hand now around Tristan’s throat while the other fist draws back for another punch.
Because of me. This is all my fault. If I didn’t come out here and make a sound like a stepped-on Pomeranian, he wouldn’t have turned his head. He wouldn’t have someone’s hand around his throat now.
The gun is right there.
I don’t think about it. If I thought about it, I wouldn’t do it, because thinking is what I do and thinking always leads to fear, which always leads to freezing. Freezing is not an option when someone has their hand around Tristan’s throat.
I lunge forward, grab the gun off the ground, and point it at the attacker with both hands.
It’s heavier than I expected. My arms are shaking.
The muzzle is jumping around like it has its own ideas about where it wants to point.
I’m gripping so hard my knuckles have gone white.
I hear myself say, in a voice that is definitely not as steady as I would like it to be, “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”
Silence. Both men go completely still. Tristan is staring at me. So is the other guy.
“Wait,” I mumble. “I have the gun. That doesn’t... that’s not…”
“Stella,” Tristan croaks through the hand on his throat.
“I’m handling this.” I am not handling this. My hands are vibrating like a cell phone on a hard surface. But I’m holding a gun, and it’s pointed at the man hurting Tristan, and I’m not about to put it back down. “You. Let go of him. Right now. Or I’ll... I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
“That’s not a threat,” Tristan manages.
“It sounded better in my head,” I snap without looking his way.
The stranger lets go of Tristan. I’m guessing it’s not because of the Godfather quotes.
More like there’s a gun pointed at his center mass, held by a woman whose hands are shaking badly enough that she could hit literally anything in the alley.
Arguably, that would make me more dangerous than someone who can aim.
He takes a step back, eyes glittering as he sizes me up. Calculating, measuring me. I watch the decision happen on his face before his body commits to it.
He lunges.
I pull the trigger.
The sound is enormous. It fills the entire alley, bouncing off every surface, slamming into my eardrums. The kick snaps my arms up and back, and I stumble. For a fraction of a second, I have no idea what just happened or where the bullet went.
The stranger is on the ground, clutching his thigh.
There’s blood coming through his fingers, spreading in a dark flower blooming against his jeans.
He’s making a sound I would not describe as happy.
But he’s alive. He’s conscious. He’s bleeding heavily from his leg, though, which means I shot him in the leg.
That means I actually hit something. Statistically, that’s kind of impressive considering my eyes were half closed when I pulled the trigger.
The gun is still in my hands. My ears are ringing. The alley smells like something metallic and burned, and I literally cannot believe this is happening. “Oh my god,” I whisper. “Oh my god. I shot him. I shot a man. Tristan, I just shot a man.”
Tristan is already moving. He’s off the dumpster, a hand on his jaw where he took the hit. He takes the gun from my grip gently but firmly, the way you take scissors from a child who’s been running with them. Ironic, since I’m also afraid of scissors. But I can imagine.
“We’re leaving,” he grits out. “Right now.”
“But I shot him,” I repeat, in case anyone has forgotten. “Is he—I mean, should we—does he need—”
“He needs to think about his life choices, and we need to get the fuck out of here. Let’s go.
” His hand is on my back, and he uses it to steer me out of the alley.
I’m walking on legs that feel like they belong to someone else, maybe to the version of me that didn’t just shoot someone.
Behind us, my victim is still on the ground and still making the unhappy sound.
I just shot a man.
I, Stella Brown, who is afraid of straws and turtles and wind, just picked up a gun and shot a man in the leg in an alley behind an art supply store. After dropping two poorly chosen Godfather quotes, no less.
Tristan opens the car door. I get in, then he does too. We pull away from the curb without my art supplies, which I would be upset about if I could currently process anything other than the fact that I discharged a firearm and lodged a bullet in another human being’s leg.
He drives three blocks in silence. Four. Then he pulls into a parking lot behind a pharmacy and kills the engine before turning to me. His face seems to loom much too close as he asks, “Are you okay?”
My hands are still shaking. My ears are still ringing. My heart is doing something that should probably be evaluated by a medical professional. I would answer him, I would, if I didn’t feel roughly three seconds away from falling apart.
“Stella.” His voice is sharp, louder than it needs to be, but it cuts through some of my shock. His eyes crawl over my face, searching for the answers my mouth is incapable of forming just yet. “Are you all right?”
Here’s the thing I can’t explain. The fear is draining out of me. I feel it going, like water flowing out of a bathtub. What’s rushing in to replace it is something I’ve never felt before. Something electric, something completely unhinged. “I shot him,” I whisper.
“I know. I was there.”
“In the leg. With a gun and everything.”
“That is typically how it works.”