Page 34 of Forced Proximity

I seriously need to stop thinking like this.

When he spins toward me, I scowl. ‘Really?’

He grins and adds a larger scoop before sliding me the bowl and handing me a spoon.

‘That’s better.’ The chocolate dances on my tongue and I refrain from moaning. ‘This stuff is so good. Ben and Jerry’s. Has a greater ice cream brand ever existed?’

‘Nope.’ He scoops up another bite but pauses the spoon in mid-air. ‘Hey, can I ask you something?’

Oh no. Please, please, don’t ask me exactly what I thought of your naked ass in your movie. Which was phenomenal, obviously. I still can’t get over how embarrassed I got when we brought it up. That day, the dimly lit living room barely hid my blush. Under the bright kitchen lights, he’ll one hundred percent read my face. ‘Sure.’

‘Have you always wanted to be a bodyguard?’

Oh thank God. ‘I wanted to be in the military, actually.’ I roll another dollop of ice cream on my tongue. ‘But I was disqualified from enlisting because of my diabetes.’

‘I didn’t realize you couldn’t enlist because of that. Makes sense, I guess.’ His spoon clanks against the side. ‘So did you see an ad or something and thought this was the next best thing?’

‘Not exactly.’

I tell Justin how I worked in the diner with my mom but wanted out. Small-town living wasn’t for me. Still isn’t. Sure, my town is what people think about when they hear ‘rural America’. Everyone knows everyone, church ladies bake bars and pies for fundraisers, and the town’s pecking order is God, family and sports. But it’s also stifling. When everyone knows everyone, it also means gossip is a local pastime. ‘I finally saved up enough money and moved to Minneapolis.’

‘Did you like it there?’ Justin rips a paper towel off the roller and wipes a drop of ice cream from the counter.

‘Yeah, the city’s great, but everything was so expensive.’ Sadly, my body nudges me that I’ve hit my sugar max. I set the spoon down and reach for a water. ‘I waited tables, worked the register at a gas station, and then found a dojo to teach martial art classes.’

He licks his spoon completely clean. This motion should not make me warm.

‘You obviously like teaching,’ he says. ‘Although you almost broke my arm when you showed me that one move.’

‘Stop it! Really? Someone needs to call the Academy and let them know you’re in the running for the most dramatic person of all time. I did not almost break your arm.’

As Justin finishes his ice cream, I tell him about the night where I noticed a man observing me at the dojo. Marcus is strong and fierce and beautiful, and hard to miss. ‘His posture terrified me, like he was a combination of royalty and special forces. I still wonder if he’s secretly both,’ I say.

That day changed my life. There’s a before I met Marcus and an after. It’s hard to articulate my feelings for Marcus. Father figure seems disingenuous and a bit of a slap to my own dad. Mentor doesn’t even begin to describe our relationship. He’s saved me, more than once. Figuratively and literally. He’s the person you want in your corner if you’re under attack but also want in your corner when your marriage falls apart. He’s my person, if I ever had a person.

‘My studio manager, Dave, introduces us and we go for dinner,’ I continue, telling Justin that Marcus asked me about my shoulder which I’d dislocated a couple weeks prior. ‘When I asked him how he knew about my shoulder, he said something about me grabbing my backpack with my non-dominant hand and one shoulder being slightly higher. My mouth dropped. Then he laughed and said, “Besides, Dave told me”.’ I grin. ‘After that we talked about random stuff. Dreams, goals, how fast my mile is—’

‘How fast is your mile?’

‘5:20.’

Justin lets out a low whistle and I can’t help my smile. The next time we’re bored, I’m challenging him to a race. ‘Anyway, Marcus said he created a security firm and only accepts top-notch talent after thorough evaluation and hands-on training.’

‘What type of training?’ he asks.

‘Intense physical and tactical for a year,’ I say. ‘I asked him if he was going to see how many push-ups I could do, and he asked me how many times a perpetrator challenged someone to a push-up contest. Pretty sure he cemented my loyalty with that single comment.’

‘God, I love this stuff. For my films, depending on the director, it feels like I’m in boot camp.’ He props his elbows up on the counter. ‘Never know, Doc. One of these days I might end up protecting you. I did kill twelve men with my bare hands in my last movie.’

I laugh. ‘Uh huh … yep.’

He grabs my bowl and stacks it on top of his. ‘So, then what happened?’

God, he is so easy to talk to. So easy. As I continue, the conversation doesn’t feel like I’m sitting with a client. I don’t get warm, yummy feelings when talking to clients. It’s so reminiscent of the early days when me and Katey got together. But except for scraping our dollars together to get shitty coffee and day-old baked goods, I’m in a gourmet kitchen on cushy chairs, feeling the remnants of top-tier ice cream on my mouth.

‘After everything, he offered me the job.’ I gulp down water to drown out the sugar. ‘He said I was a perfect fit but was honest and said he also needed to increase the women on his staff for low-profile work. He said female operatives can often pick up on body language and cues that male operatives may miss.’

Justin sits back and taps the sides of his chair. ‘I think that’s fair. But don’t you think there’s more to that? I often pick up on things, or can sense moods, but mine was because it was key to survival in my house.’