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“Get your hands off her!” the employee shouted.

She stood in the entrance with a phone at her ear, one foot bracing the door. The hand truck was abandoned just inside.

The man turned his head.

It was enough.

I twisted free and backed through the doorway, nearly hitting the stacked water. The employee came inside with me and let the door close between us and him.

“I’m calling the police,” she told him through the glass. “You stay away from her.”

“I was talking to her,” he shouted back.

I looked down at my arms.

Apparently talking left fingerprints now.

The employee moved between me and the door while she gave the address to whoever had answered. A customer put down the drink he’d been about to buy and stayed beside the register.

The man remained outside, gesturing at the glass as though an audience might improve his version.

My heart was pounding.

I could feel every place he had touched me.

But I knew what had happened.

All of it.

I didn’t have to wonder whether somebody had actually been there.

The employee brought me a bottle of water and sat me on a stool behind the counter.

Her hands were steady. That helped.

“Did he hit your head?” she asked.

I shook mine. “Just my shoulder against the wall. I’m okay.”

She looked at my arms but didn’t argue.

The customer who’d been standing near the register called something to the man through the glass without getting close to the door. The employee kept watching through the window.

After that, she looked at me again.

“You know him?”

“No.” I took a drink. “He knew who I was.”

Her mouth tightened.

I thanked her.

She brushed that aside, then seemed to reconsider.

“You come straight in next time,” she said. “You don’t have to buy anything.”

I nodded, and thanked her again.