Creed
I don’t remember getting up from the table or deciding to hit that asshole in the face, but I remember being violently angry. Watching that dude get handsy with Ivy set off every alarm bell in my head. I remember the red film of rage slip over my eyes, blurring the world around me.
I’m pretty sure I just meant to tell the guy to keep his hands to himself; it’s rude to lord a tip over a waitress’s head just so you can be inappropriate. I didn’t like the way they spoke to her. Seeing them lay hands on her turned my vision red. Although the boys didn’t like it either, none of them seemed as ready to fight as I was.
I glanced around the diner, standing over the prone body of one of the men. The whole place was trashed from the broken windows to the shattered tables and chairs. Five groaning, bruised men lay scattered around the floor, half lying in or around whatever object my boys had tossed them into.
Something inside my right shoulder hurt, and I could feel blood slowly trickling down my cheek from a cut across my forehead. Other than that, I was unhurt. My boys looked alright, too, with the exception of Marty, who was limping exaggeratedly.
We crunched over the broken glass and shattered wood, winding our way to the front of the diner. What was left of it, anyway.
Ivy stood there, a serene angel in the center of the wreckage, her face displaying no emotion at all as she looked around. Her stained uniform and tousled hair didn’t diminish her beauty, nor did the rigid posture that she always held. Surveying the damage with empty, mocha-colored eyes, Ivy seemed to be frozen to her spot on the floor, unable to move.
Her eyes continued to crawl along, taking in every inch of the damage until she got to me. Then her eyes got wider as she noticed the little cuts and bruises I’d gotten from the broken glass and the tussle.
I took a deep breath as she surveyed me, her eyes dark with fear, hoping to say something to make it better. That look in her beautiful eyes filled me with an emotion I couldn’t name and I hated it. I hated her for being able to dredge up these feelings inside my chest. I hated that she looked so frightened.
I’m not sure what I would have said because I was interrupted by a new adversary.
“What in the hell have you done to my restaurant?” The voice was huge and deep, filling the whole room. The owner climbed out of his back office, his eyes burning with rage as he saw the damage to his precious business. The man was about six feet tall and thin as a rail, dressed in a suit that was too short in the legs and arms. He looked like someone had pulled him through a taffy machine to stretch him out.
Before my boys or I could react, the man I presumed to be the owner pointed a too-thin finger at Ivy. “Nevermind, I don’t care. You are fired, and I’m going to sue the shit out of the rest of you. I’m calling the police!” The man continued to scream as he walked back to his office, presumably to find a phone.
And that was my cue to leave.
We grabbed everything we’d come in with and hightailed it out of there, heading for our bikes like the devil was at our heels. A rush of adrenaline and a surge of heightened awareness filled my blood, making every detail of the scene stand out. And the details that stand out the most to me are the distraught lines of Ivy’s beautiful face. Tears slipped down her cheeks, her fingers caught up in her curls. Staring at the destruction around her, Ivy looked like a small child lost in the woods.
She was fired for this, I thought as I mounted my bike and tore out of the parking lot. It is my fault and I have to fix it.
My boys and I were gone before the owner had even had a chance to start calling the police, and I knew my first loyalty was to them. But I still felt incredibly guilty for leaving Ivy alone and crying in that busted-up cafe. I sped up, glancing in my mirrors to make sure that all four of my boys were still in line behind me. We cruised down the highway and towards a hiding place where we could lay low. I hid for a couple hours to make sure things were quiet before I finally headed home.
Considering the number of people in and out of that place and how dirty it was, they’ll never be able to separate out our fingerprints. So as long as the guy can’t finger us, we’ll be home free.
I should have felt like crowing my victory to the winds, but I couldn’t shake the memory of tears slipping down Ivy’s pretty little cheeks. That vision haunted my every step until I pulled up to my motel.
By the time I got back to my place, the door to Ivy’s place was closed and locked, and I didn’t hear any noise or see any light spilling from around her poorly-sealed door, but I was still pretty sure she was home. Where else would she have gone? I started to head into my own room but hesitated on the doorstep. I have to do something.
Huffing into the cold, autumn air, I walked over to Ivy’s door. There was almost nothing to distinguish her door for anyone else’s; her door was at the very end of this hallway. Convenient if you wanted to share as few walls as possible with neighbors, but it must have been drafty as hell. I stopped, staring at the numbers on her door: 328. The “2” was loose, dangling down half in front of the lowest curve of the three.
After a long second of hesitation, I took a deep breath and knocked. It was cold enough out here that I could see my breath, and I hoped she would answer the door quickly.
There was no noise on the other side of the door and I growled under my breath. “Ivy,” I growled, my voice unhappy. “Answer the door. I just want to talk.”
Again, nothing.
“Ivy,” I warned, my voice a little louder.
Silence.
“I will knock down this door.” She had to be home; there was literally nowhere else for her to be. She went to work, to the laundromat maybe, but she had to be in there. I needed to see her face. I needed it like I needed to breathe.
A mumbling of curses came from the other side of the door. The chain slid out of the lock with a few clicks and a scraping of metal on metal. The bolt slid out of its home in the doorframe, and the handle lock was disengaged with a click. After a breathless, silent second, the door cracked up, displaying the hopeless face of a very broken looking woman. Ivy’s chocolate eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks and face swollen. Her eyes were too wide and trained on my feet. She didn’t even look up when I stepped back a little to give her space.
“I have nothing left, Creed,” she whispered, her voice barely carrying across the short distance between us. Her voice quivered as she grasped the door with white-knuckled fingers. “I have nothing left for you to ruin. So please leave me in peace.”
“You can find another job,” I answered, my voice cracking a little. She looked devastated and lost, and I that horrible guilty feeling grew in my chest.
She shook her head. “I applied for everything in the immediate walking distance and the bus routes that don’t take a million years. Literally everything. Whether I was qualified for it or not. The restaurant was the only one to respond.” Fresh tears slipped down her face as she cradled the door like it was the only solid thing in the world. She still wouldn’t look me in the face. “I’ve looked and called and applied. I have nothing left. I’m just so tired.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You won’t give up.”
Fire filled her eyes as her gaze snapped up to me. “What do you know about it?”
“More than you, apparently. You’ll find something else.” I was so firm because I believed it; Ivy didn’t look like the type to quit. “In the meantime, Josh needs someone to keep track of him. He needs someone he’ll listen to, to make sure he goes to school. Someone who gets him.”
Ivy wrinkled her pert little nose at me, sending shivers down my spine that had nothing to do with cold. “He has ADHD. He needs specialized classes where they won’t force him to hold still for eight hours a day.” She suddenly looked down at my boots, like she remembered who she was talking to. “I believe,” Ivy finished lamely.
“See, you know him already. He trusts you and likes you, for whatever reason. I’ll pay you better than you were making at that dump heap. Did those assholes always treat you so bad?”
She shrugged noncommittally, her oversized sweater slipping off of one shoulder, displaying a long line of beautiful, freckled flesh. My eyes locked onto the long, lean curve of her shoulder, and I wondered what her skin would taste like if I--
Clearing my throat, I glanced back at her face. “I have the money; the only reason my boy and I are here is to lay low.”
Ivy said nothing, her eyes locked with the carpet.
“It would be good for us both.”
But as my eyes trailed over the long line of her body that I could see through the open door, I began to wonder if it really was good for either of us.