“Hey, beautiful.”
Tight in front of me are two guys, maybe in their late thirties. They look drunk. They’re ruddy-faced, and have that glaze over them. They’re walking all wobbly.
I’ve got a really bad feeling about this. Alarms are wailing in my head. They’re practically bomb sirens.
I don’t reply, slip my hand into my bag and fold my fingers around my phone.
“You looking for some company? You look sad,” the one on the left says. He’s wearing a red baseball cap on backwards, and he’s grinning, baring yellowed teeth at me.
“I’m just waiting for the tram,” I say. I don’t want to tell them to leave me alone or to go away, because I suspect they’d react badly to that.
“It’s been a really long day,” I continue. “I work with old people, and one of them threw up all over me today.”
They just look at each other and smile. Damn it. They’re not taking the bait.
“There’s no nursing homes around here. You lost, honey?”
“No. I came here to grab a bite to eat.”
“You mean, while in your clothes that someone puked on?”
“No,” I say, my voice dropping. “I mean, I changed.”
“Well since you’ve had such a bad day,” the man with the baseball cap says, “Why don’t you let me and my mate here buy you a drink. You know, take the edge off.”
“No thank you,” I say, taking a step back. I can feel adrenaline pumping through my body, and I’ve got to admit to myself that I’m scared. I flash a look quickly back at the restaurant, but it’s too dark and I can’t see if anybody is coming my way or not.
“Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go ’ave a drink, shall we?” the second man says. “Don’t worry, we’ll be heaps of fun.” He licks his chapped lips.
“I said no,” I say. “No means no.”
“Well, unless no means yes. And you know how it is with women,” he says, sneering at his friend.
“Isn’t that right, mate?” his friend says. “They’re always sending us confusing signals.”
I’m holding my breath. I don’t know what to do. I think about running back to the restaurant, back to… back to him.
And I really don’t want to do that!
“Hey, fuckhead!” The voice is an angry growl, and I turn around to see Pierce walking up to us. He’s got anger in his strides, and his fists are balled. His whole body is like this charging tank, hard, with a promise of hurt.
“No, wait,” I say, trying to grab him, but he just walks past me. “Wait, Pierce. They’re drunk!”
“I don’t fucking care.”
The two drunk men stand stupidly, stare at the behemoth of a man bearing down on them. Pierce grabs the man with the baseball cap and throws him down onto the tram stop bench. One of the armrests bends his back unnaturally, and I wince.
The other tries to run, but Pierce grabs him by the collar and yanks him down, kicking out his feet at the same time in what I’m sure is a move you only learn when you train to fight.
I hear the drunk slam against the ground. His bones must be rattling in his body.
Pierce kneels down, points the guy’s face at him, and then punches him right in the cheek. His body goes limp.
“Your turn,” he says, standing up and going to the man with the red hat groaning on the bench and clasping onto the small of his back.
“No, wait!” the man gasps.
Pierce hauls him up to his feet, and pins him against the scuffed-up plastic of the tram stop shelter.
“What are you?” Pierce asks.
The man just shakes his head. “What?”
“What are you?” Pierce barks. His voice is savage, full of promised malice. When the man doesn’t answer, he sighs. “Repeat after me: I am a lowlife shit stain with a small cock.”
The man just shakes his head.
“Repeat it you cunt, or God help me I will bash your fucking head in.”
“Okay, okay!” the man says. “I’m… uh… a lowlife, shitstain… with a small cock.” He says the last words quietly.
Pierce pushes down on his shoulders and the man falls into a squat. “Stay,” he growls. “Until morning.”
“Pierce,” I say, exhaling. “Come on. You’re being a dick.”
“Say it again!” Pierce shouts, slapping the man on the top of the head.
He repeats it, this time quieter. He’s speaking at the floor, head buried between his knees. He looks pathetic.
I just shake my head. “You don’t have to stay here until morning, just wait until we’re gone.”
Pierce shoots me an angry glare, and then he walks over to me and grips my arm.
“Hey!” I cry, shaking free. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
He’s panting, but I slowly see his body relax. Then his hand comes up slowly, and he touches my face.
“Would you have come back to the restaurant? If these two assholes were chasing you?”
“You shouldn’t have let me go!”
I hear the man with the red baseball cap get up, and start running. Pierce’s eyes don’t even go to him.
He takes my hand, and he presses it to his mouth, and he kisses it. I can feel his hot breath against my palm, feel how quick it is.
That’s when I notice something. His eye shave gone shiny, and the expression on his face isn’t the anger I thought it was.
It’s worry… possessiveness… protectiveness.
“I would have been fine,” I say. “They were just a couple of drunk creeps. I can handle that.”
“Would you,” he says through gritted teeth. “Have come back to the restaurant?”
“Of course I would!” I say. “I’m not stupid.”
His mouth flickers into a smile ever so briefly.
“I would have gone back to the restaurant not because you were there, but because other people were there. It’s a public place. They would have called the cops.”
We look at each other for a moment, and I know he hasn’t bought my lie. I would have run straight back to him, because I knew that he, more than anyone else, would protect me.
I try to pull my hand from his, but he grips it tighter. “I’m not letting you go. Let’s finish dinner.”
“I don’t want to,” I tell him. “I stormed out, we made a scene. I don’t want to go back in there.”
“Fine, I’ll settle-up, get the pizza take-away. We can eat it at my apartment. What do you think?”
“Your apartment? What was that, some kind of move?”
“No.”
“What if I just want to go home?”
“Do you?”
I look into his hard, grey eyes.