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“Yeah?” I lift my soda and take a sip that ends with an obnoxiousahhh. “Well, Detective Banks can suck a ketchup bottle. He’s not here to make me eat. And you…” I look the man up and down and scoff. Physically, he’s bigger than me. Meatball arms and thick thighs. He was assigned, I’m sure, for his large frame and ability to absorb a bullet before it passed through his multi-muscle layers and embedded in my skin. But emotionally, and mentally, he doesn’t have the strength to stand up to me. “Unless Detective Banks wants to come here himself and make me eat, I think I’m going to exercise this supposed freedom of mine and choose when to carb load.” I set my soda on the stone counter and smile at Officer Spears. “But thanks for your concern.”
“But Ms.—”
“Are you related to Britney?”
“Bri—” His brows shoot high in surprise. “Britney, ma’am?”
“Spears.” I turn from the counter and open the fridge again to peruse its contents. Specifically, the offending pasta Detective Disappearing Act has declared my dinner. “Familial relations?”
“Uh… no ma’am. Not as far as I know.”
“I would hope, if you were,” unimpressed, I slam the fridge shut and turn away, “you’d disown the conservator folks.” I wrinkle my nose and meet his concerned stare. “Money-spinning enslavement at its best, covered in glitter and diamonds to appease the masses.” I fake a smile and cling to this conversation since it’s the most enthralling one I’ve had in days. “How old are you, Officer?”
“Um…” He looks down at his plain-clothed self, then brings his focus up again. “Twenty-five-years-old, ma’am.”
“I’m twenty-one.”
“Y-yes,” he stammers. “I know.”
“So stop calling me ma’am. For god’s sake.” I bring my hands up and slide them through my hair. A habit, I think, that I’ve picked up in my time knowing Detective Doesn’t Follow Through On His Promises. I seem to recall something about never leaving. About never letting me know loneliness.It’s us, Little Bird. Together. Blah, blah, friggin’ blah. Dropping them again, frustrated with my own bad mood, I look at Spears and study his long frame. “Do you have any injuries you need dressing?”
This is what prisoners in isolation experience, I think. A mania. An off-the-wall insanity no one on the outside could possibly understand.
“Um…” He gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “What?”
“Wounds. See, I’m training to become a nurse… or a surgeon… or something.”
“Something?” his eyes widen with panic. “You want to operate on people?”
“Well, maybe,” I hedge. “I have a hundred-thousand-dollar student debt so far that says I should. Ya know, wasting is bad manners and all that.”
“A-and you want to cut into me?” He takes a step back, like I’m Jack Nicholson and I’ve found an axe. “Really?”
“Actually, I’d hoped you already had a wound, and I could practice stitching it up. But if you insist on the full package.” I pull the utensil drawer open and yank out a butcher knife that makes the poor guy’s face pale. “I’ll be careful.”
“Ma’am…” He raises his hands and takes another step back. “Did you see any sun today?”
I choke out a laugh and set the knife on the stone countertop. Shaking my head, I start toward the doorway that leads towards the pool. The same doorway I escaped through the day I met Felix Malone.
Poor Officer Spears is gonna ask for reassignment today, but until he makes that call and alerts Detective Ditch-A-Girl that I’ve officially lost the plot, I head outside and into the biting cold, the snow still sticking to the grounds.
The pool is beneath shelter, a patio with pretty lights and plenty of chairs to lounge in. Tables are scattered, and ashtrays sit empty. Unused.
But they paint a picture of a world that once was. Gangsters conducting business, and hands shaking on deals that’ll make the men in attendance rich, but the poor schleps on the street who ingest the drugs or find themselves at the end of the barrel of a black-market gun, poorer than ever.
Families like Malone’s. And Cordoza’s. And Vallejo’s.
They made money and built mansions like this one.
It’s ironic really, that the man hunting me down is no better or worse, no different really, to the family who has offered me shelter and allowed me refuge amongst a war I didn’t start.
“Ms. Swanson,” Spears follows me to the door and softens his tone, now that I no longer have a knife in my hands. “It’s cold out here. You really should come in—”
“Not yet,” I whisper. Too tired to go anywhere but forward. Too listless to consider stepping back inside my prison for another night of solitude. “I lived alone before all this started.” I head to the pool and pay no attention to the cop who follows me outside. He keeps his distance, circling the perimeter and doing his job to ensure I remain alive. “I mean, I wasn’t the nicest person because of it,” I admit. “Probably insufferable enough to force my ex’s hand and push him into the arms of his professor for a sneaky tryst.”
Stopping at the edge of the pool, I crouch and run the tip of my finger through the still water to create ripples that stretch all the way to the other side. “I don’t accept fault for his cheating,” I murmur, mostly to myself. “We’re adults now, and we all make our own decisions. I didn’t push them into a room together and take their clothes. But I can acknowledge when someone isn’t very fun to be around.”
I look to my left and find Spears almost exactly where Felix was when he breached the safety of our walls and snuck onto his own property. “Like me right now,” I admit solemnly. “Lonely and bitter and terrible company.”
