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She looks off into the distance and doesn’t seem to notice the young girl who brings out our food. I’m not all that hungry anymore. At least not for food.
“It’s a process, getting over something like that,” I say, sounding all smart, as if I know anything about it. “Sometimes you take three steps forward only to take five back.”
She shrugs. “That puts you behind. But it makes sense. I feel like I’ve been behind this whole time.”
“Tell me about it,” I say and grab my burger to have something to do with my hands. The aroma is perfect, the meat probably cooked to perfection, but eating is the furthest thing from my mind. “I’ve been about a thousand steps behind for the last ten years, I feel like.”
She takes a French fry and twirls it between her fingers. “I just wish I could make them pay. I wanted to when they took me the second time. But I never got the chance.”
“They paid,” I say. “We made sure they did.”
She fixes me with another knowing, piercing gaze. “But you know what I mean. I wanted to be the one who made them pay.”
I lay down my untouched burger and nod. “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.”
“You made the people who killed your family pay, didn’t you?”
I nod again, the events of those killings flashing before my eyes, starting with the vivid images of kneeling next to my dead parents. I always try to not see those and I always fail.
“We got some of them, yeah,” I say tonelessly and finally take a bite of my burger. It tastes like nothing, but at least it gives me something to do with my mouth that’s not talking. I don’t want her to know who and what I really am. A killer.
“I’m happy for you,” she says quietly, in a voice that conveys anything but happiness. “That must’ve felt good.”
Then she finally eats the fry she’s been playing with.
I finish chewing my bite and swallow. “Not gonna lie. It did. At the time.”
“So you’re saying you wouldn’t do the same thing again?”
Now that’s a question. One I haven’t thought about in my quest to better myself. It was a bloody affair, tracking down those men and ending them. I wasn’t as hardened then as I later became when it comes to causing violent death.
“I would,” I say. “I’d do it all over again.”
And that’s the truth. Whether I want to admit it to myself or not.
“Yeah, me too,” she says and takes a large bite of her burger, some of the sauce dribbling down her chin.
She’s the prettiest girl I know, with her sky-blue eyes, porcelain skin and hair softer than silk. She looks like innocence personified. But she’s not. Her soul might very well be as dark as mine. It’s not something I expected to find.
“Will you teach me how to defend myself?” she asks suddenly. “How to shoot and all that? I don’t ever want to be scared and defenseless again.”
“You’re not,” I say. “You got me. And the rest of the brothers. No one’s ever gonna touch you again.”
It’s important for her to know that. I don’t think she does though. Not really.
“They came for my family too last time,” she says. “Your protection was plenty. But it wasn’t enough.”
I can’t argue with that, because it’s just a simple statement of fact. A very dark and twisted fact, but undeniable anyway.
She smiles and whenever she does that her whole face lights up like the world after a bad storm passes and the sun comes out again.
“I just want to be ready for them when they come next,” she says. “The way you’re always ready.”
“You want me to teach you how to kill?” I ask, because I heard it so clear between the lines of what she said, despite the sunshine that is her face.
She nods. “Yeah, I guess. I want you to teach me to be someone who isn’t afraid. Someone who can take care of herself.”
I want to tell her she doesn’t need to know that if I’m with her. But that’s not what she wants to hear.
