A tall, dark figure enters. He’s holding onto something. Something big and heavy. Something that definitely could be used as a weapon against me. He turns to shut the door, and that’s when I strike. As soon as I see the whites of his eyes turn toward me, I scream while lifting the pepper spray in the air and attacking.
“Aaaaah!” he yells while dropping the large item, which unfortunately lands on one of the overly long ties of my robe as I run away still screaming. The robe comes undone and slips from my shoulders as I keep running.
“What the heck!” he screams.
And the voice sounds familiar, but not in the way that gives me the creeps.
“What’s going on?” It’s Lily, and she flips on the lights. “Oh goodness! That smell! Rachel, did you use the pepper spray?”
“Turn the lights off!” I scream as I use one hand to cover my chest and another to cover myself eighteen inches south of there.
“Rachel! Why are you naked?” Lily questions, then she looks down at the floor seeing Evan and understanding registers on her face. “Oh no! Evan, are you okay?”
Evan is on his knees, using the backs of his hands to rub his eyes, but he withdraws one to point at me. “It’s her fault.”
Lily grabs the robe lying on the floor and tosses it to me. I wrap it around my body, snuggling back into its comfort.
The strange thing is…being naked felt a lot less exposing than being on stage earlier, which makes me realize just how vulnerable sharing words and pieces of your heart with the world really is. That when we expose ourselves emotionally, it can be just as damaging if the wrong person sees you. People like KillerPlotTwist.
“Evan, did you…” Lily trails off.
“I didn’t see her naked,” Evan growls, finishing Lily’s thought. “She pepper sprayed me in the dark in my own hotel room.”
“Whoops?” I shrug with my palms up.
Lily laughs. “Well at least we know the pepper spray works.”
Evan grunts. “Help, please.”
“Oh, right. I am your assistant. I should probably assist. Although you told me I wouldn’t have to work on this trip,” Lily rattles off.
There’s another grunt from Evan.
“I’ll go get some saline solution. Rachel, can you help him get to the bathroom sink and start flushing his eyes out with cold water? I’ll be right back.”
Then Lily leaves, and it’s just Evan and me. Fantastic.
“I’m sorry. I thought you were…” I start to say, but Evan grunts again.
“Just help, please,” he cuts me off.
I hurry over to him, helping him to his feet while he keeps his hands on his eyes. I walk him to the bathroom carefully and start running cold water in the sink. He leans over it and starts splashing the water on his face.
“What were you thinking?” he snarls.
“Oh, I don’t know, that you werethe stalker,” I snarl back. “It hasn’t exactly been an uneventful day.”
He grunts…again.
“Can you stop that?” I ask with a scowl on my face, although he can’t exactly see my scowl at the moment, which is unfortunate.
“Stop what?” he asks.
“Grunting like a baboon,” I reply.
He grunts again as a reply.
“You know, you owe me an apology,” I add.
