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And, fuck, if it didn’t feel right.
“This is your solution?” I asked, trying to keep my tone calm.
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to let go sometime.”
“You know, I’m not sure I will have to. Not until you calm down anyway.”
“What if I have to pee?” I asked, having to curl my hands into fists to keep my arms from going around her.
“Well, if I am going to be a doctor, I guess I will have to get used to that sort of thing.”
“What ifyouhave to pee?” I asked.
At that, she angled her head up a bit, making her chin rest on my chest so she could look up at me.
“Yeah, that won’t work,” she admitted. “So you just have to calm down before I have to pee,” she concluded.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I told her as I took a step back just to see what she would do. Then one to the side. Then forward. Then a circle. All the while, she held on tight. “You’re like one of those little baby monkeys,” I told her. “Except they hang on the back.”
“That would be easier,” she decided, ducking down under my arm, then sliding around me as I tried like hell not to notice the sensation until she was safely behind me. “Alright, giddy up,” she declared, arms going around my neck as she jumped onto my back.
And, damn her, she knew how to de-escalate my moods. My arms grabbed her legs, and I fucking carried the girl all the way down the street to the convenience store, where we picked out snacks, then carried her back to her apartment where we ate snacks and watched one of her medical shows she loved so much. The scripted ones, not the real life ones, though she liked those too.
Then I waited.
Until she finally passed out, and her hold loosened.
Then I climbed carefully out of her bed, got my shoes back on, and made my way through the building to my own apartment door.
“Whoa, you don’t slam doors in my fucking house!” my father roared when I threw it open, hearing it smack against the wall, getting the attention of his two buddies as the three of them sectioned out the powder on the coffee table. “What the fuck you got your chest puffed out for?” he asked as I charged forward toward him. “You—“
He didn’t get to finish whatever he was trying to say, because my hand was on his throat, using it to lift him off the couch, pushing him through the apartment by it as his hands clawed at mine as my fingers dug into his neck.
A year or two before, I might not have been able to take him on. But the years had made me taller. The gym had made me stronger. And the drugs had made him skinny and weaker than ever before.
My other hand yanked open the window as I shoved his head right through the screen, holding him out the window as he went red, as he flailed, watching his pathetic fucking life flash before his eyes.
“If you ever so much as fuckinglookin her direction again, I will rip open your stomach, pull out your fucking guts, wrap them around your throat, and strangle you with them. Do you fucking understand me?” I roared, shoving his body a bit as I said it so he went further out the window.
“Yes,” he hissed out.
I released him.
Right there in the open window, leaving it up to fate if he made it or not.
Unfortunately for the world, he got himself back into the apartment, dropping to a squat inside the window as he gasped for breath.
I made it to the door before he found his voice again.
“You stupid shit,” he said, voice raspy, making me exhale hard. “You really think you have a shot with a girl like that? Smart. Pretty. Going places. The fuck you think she would want anything to do with your pathetic ass?”
That was one thing about your parents, wasn’t it? No matter how strained your relationship, those bastards knew what buttons to push.
Turning, I stared him down as I moved a few steps back into the living room.
“I am never going to be with Ama,” I said, knowing it down to my bones, to my fucking marrow. “But the warning still stands. You see her? You walk the other fucking way. You’re overdosing in the street and she stops to help, because that’s the kind of person she is, you tell her you don’t need it. If I find you even breathe the same goddamn air as her again, you won’t live another day of your pitiful fucking existence,” I said.
