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1
Sapphire
Afinger taps me on the shoulder and I jump, involuntarily swinging my arm to the side of my body where I’ve just been touched, slapping the Starbucks barista in the waist.
“Um. Okay?” she says, taking a step away from me, her eyes wide.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, reaching both hands out to her but she just takes another step back, then takes a circuitous path to the other side of my table, sitting down the vanilla latte with my name inscribed on it in marker.
“We’ve been calling you for five minutes but you didn’t move. We thought maybe you had noise-canceling earbuds in, but I can see that’s not the case.” She takes a step away from me and as I watch her go she points an index finger toward her ear and makes a circular motion as her co-worker at the counter mouths ‘cuckoo.’
The worst part is that at this moment she’s not far off.
I’m jumpy and I can’t concentrate. There’s a ringing sound in my ears and my body is making short, jerky movements despite the fact that I haven’t even taken a sip of my overpowering caffeine concoction.
Unbuttoning the top button of my shirt I try to reduce the profuse sweating that is peppering my chest.
Running my hands down my pants doesn’t help to stop my knee from bouncing so my fidgety fingers scrape through the air instead as I suck in a sharp inhale and bite at my lower lip.
Eyeing the exit I’d leave right now if I could, but I can’t. Because the second I do, the man I reached out to for a meeting might come barreling in and who knows what he’d do if he thought I was wasting his time.
He told me in no uncertain terms to be here at five p.m. sharp, and as my phone shows one minute until I’m not about to risk pissing off a man I’m hiring to commit a felony. The anonymous underworld figure who I asked if I needed to wear any specific color or item of clothing so he would know who I was when he arrived, only for him to reply flatly that, ‘he’ll know.’
I wondered how, but now that I’m here I know exactly how. I’m a mess. My sweaty hands repeatedly grasp and release my coffee cup as I struggle to keep from hyperventilating.
Just as my phone switches over to five p.m. a text message comes through.
Leaning forward I click on it, grasping the sides of my head to try and regain some sort of control over my motor skills.
Calm down. Casually stand up from your seat. Walk outside where your ride will be waiting. Location changed.
My eyes look up from my phone but there’s no vehicle in front of the Starbucks, no ride. A second message immediately comes in.
Quit looking around. You’re wasting time. Get yourself under control and come outside.
Suddenly I don’t know what’s worse. The ex-boyfriend I need to be dealt with, the one who has been threatening to kill me after I told him I wasn’t ready for sex after we’d only been official for two weeks, and dating a couple of months, or the man I plan on hiring to help me. The man whose number I found in the back of Inked Magazine, a small classified ad advertising ‘Security Services.’
Ironic considering he is making me feel so insecure, so unsafe right now.
Blowing out a hard breath in frustration, my mind wanders back to how the first person I reached out to tried to deal with this. My father brushed it off, telling me to stop worrying and that it will just ‘go away.’ He said we could discuss it when he returned from his business trip to the Cayman Islands, which I’ve learned means he’ll forget all about it while he’s gone for months on end trying to concentrate on his favorite game of making money and not his least favorite activity, which is doing anything that resembles being a responsible father figure.
Annoyed with his response, and the threats from my ex increasing, I reached out to my uncle, who supposedly knew a guy who knew a guy. Of course that turned out to be a dead end and when I went to meet my uncle to ask him if he knew of anyone else all he did was comment on how different I looked now that I’m in college, and how technically we’re not related. Yuck. His intentions were more than obvious.
Which put me in the desperate spot I currently find myself in.
My phone lights up and a third message appears.Now.
I take a few breaths, trying to calm my nerves and muster up some courage before I tip back my entire coffee and then march right out the front door toward the empty curb.
But just as I press on the door handle and step outside I hear the exhaust of a loud engine and a motorcycle with the word ‘Ducati’ on it rolls to a stop right in front of me.
The bike is big, sleek, and matte black, matching the all-black attire of the beast of a man who’s operating it. The one with the all-black helmet and visor down.
Reaching around back he unhooks a helmet without looking and extends his tree trunk of an arm toward me, the second helmet in his hand.
I freeze up, my body turning to stone as my shoulders rise and the rest of my body shrinks. I feel like I’m in quicksand and I can’t move.
With his head he motions for me to come, but I can’t.
