Standing twenty feet away, tall and broad shouldered, with black hair and matching eyes and the menacing look I knew so well was Tom, my ex.
“I’m calling the police,” Lisa said, grabbing her phone out of her purse.
“No, don’t!” Tom cried, but Lisa ignored him.
“Go away, Tom. I don’t want to have anything to do with you,” I told him. I was proud of myself. I stood up for myself. I wasn’t the same woman I was when I was in a relationship with him, when he was beating me.
“I heard you’re pregnant, Mikki. Is that true?”
“I have a restraining order against you. You can’t be here, Tom. Lisa’s calling the police. They’re going to be here soon.”
“Ok. Ok. I get it. Look, I just wanted to say congratulations, ok?”
And with that, Tom put both his hands up in front of him as if to say he wasn’t going to do anything, then turned around and walked back into the mall.
Lisa was still on the phone with the police. I leaned back against the cool cement wall and took a few deep breaths. I hadn’t realized until that moment just how hard my heart was pounding. My hands trembled as Lisa hung up the phone and took me in a hug.
“Come on, sweetie. He’s gone. You did really well. We’re going to go to the police station and report this, ok?”
I must have nodded, because Lisa took me gently by the arm and led me to the car. I couldn’t help but notice her looking over her shoulder the whole time.
Giving her my keys, I got into the passenger seat as she drove us to the police station.
“They were going to send someone over,” she told me, “but when I told the lady on the phone that he left she said that they didn’t have the manpower to go looking for him, but to come down to the station and file a report, since you have a protective order against him.”
“Ok. Thanks Lise. Holy shit do I not need that dickhead in my life right now.”
Tom had been abusive. He had been the worst person I had ever known in my life. And I’d finally gotten away from him.
For him to pop back out, just by chance at the mall, scared me out of my wits. Had he been following me? Was he stalking me again? Of course, it didn’t make sense. I’d just moved once again, and I kept my address very private. Only Lisa, Kathy, Lee and Jaret knew where I lived. I’d learned my lesson the first time he decided to take up stalking me as a hobby.
When we pulled up to the old brick building that was the local police station, I wondered how long it was going to take before Tom really got the message: I was over him. Maybe this baby was it.
After all, he hadn’t tried to come near me. He had just congratulated me. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe he was finally moving on.
“Lise, what if this is the wrong thing? I mean, he didn’t come near us, did he?” I asked her.
“You’re joking, right? He would have, if I hadn’t gotten on the phone with the cops straight away. No matter what, he broke the protective order. You had a restraining order against him, and he still approached you. I saw what the man did to you before. You’re going in there, and you’re reporting him.”
Lisa’s scolding immediately brought me back down to earth.
“You’re right, of course. You’re always right. Sorry,” I mumbled. I knew she was right. Tom was a scary man, and regardless of whether or not he’d moved on, I had to tell the police that he’d contacted me, that he’d approached me.
We went into the building, which was very sparsely populated for the size. I was expecting to see at least a dozen officers buzzing around, but instead there was just a bored-looking receptionist in her 40s and a couple of men sitting at their desks behind her, one of them on the phone, the other buried in paperwork.
“Hi. My friend here, Lisa Prescott, has a protective order against her ex boyfriend that he just breached,” Lisa told the receptionist.
“Do you have the order on you?” she asked, sounding like she hoped the answer was ‘no’.
“Yes. Yes, I do,” I replied, leafing through my purse. I always carried it with me, like my lawyer had told me to when I first got it.
The lady held her hand out for it, then glanced it over.
“Have a seat over here. Billy there will take your statement in a bit.”
I looked at Lisa while we made our way over to a couple of seats in the corner. They were exactly the sort you’d expect at a police station, metal framed with a light cushion on top, that kind of dark red stripey fabric over the top.
She gave me the same look back. I had a sinking feeling that these cops were too overworked to care about a single protective order being breached.