“What’s wrong?” he says, following after me and putting his hands gently on my arms.
“What’s wrong? You! Get away from me.”
“Baby girl,” he pleads.
“Don’t you baby girl me. As a matter of fact don’t anything me,” I add, racing to get dressed as fast as I can.
“What’s wrong with you? What did I do?”
“You went from…” I stop, looking at him in complete disgust, and then just don’t continue. “Forget it,” I say moving swiftly to the door and down the stairs.
“Should I stop her, boss?” one of his security guards says.
“Yes,” he quickly replies, but I shoot the big brute a look and grit my teeth. “You lay a finger on me and I’ll bury a knee so far in your scrotum you’ll be walking around with one ball the rest of your life.”
He leans in any way. “You touch me you’re holding me against my will, kidnapping me,” I add, and that catches a nerve as his hands pull back and I watch as his head looks behind me toward Carter for instructions.
I don’t wait around, making a mad dash for the door and hustling to the gate where I run as fast as I can to the bus station.
My bus isn’t there and I wait and wait, which gives me time to think and the tears to flow.
Part of me wonders if I’m overacting, but I’m not about to turn around and go back to find out. As a matter of fact, the best part about Carter was he was helping me put my past where it belongs…in the past. And then with one ill-timed move, he brought it all back with a vengeance.
Just when I thought I met a man, a real man who understood me, he went and showed me he’s as clueless as can be. I can’t be mad at him though. I’ve got my own emotional wounds, my own baggage to carry, and I can’t expect him to understand.
Maybe he thought he could connect with me by playing the orphan card, but I’m not a victim. I’ve never thought of myself that way and never will. Heck, if he was as good at reading people as a CEO should be he should realize that my feistiness and sharp tongue are exactly because I don’t want to be a product of my past. I only want the future, which as it suddenly stands, doesn’t include him one bit.
As soon as my bus arrives I head to the back corner, forgetting that once we turn off The 405 and get to my side street it’s not paved, which means I’ll be bumping my head on the ceiling as the bus driver tries to keep up speed so he doesn’t get stuck in the many potholes on my street.
Maybe Carter should be the one on this bus so this ride could knock some sense in his thick skull. Or maybe I need to quit reading Lena Little books on my Kindle, because I’m always wishing I could meet an older Daddy dom, or at least slight dom, who understands me better than I understand myself…so we could ride off into the sunset happily ever after.
I guess that’s why I read her books. Because it’s only fantasy…right?
Clearly I was fooled into thinking it could happen to me. Well, I’m not going to be fooled again. I’m not going to put myself out there. Not going to make myself vulnerable. Nope. No thanks.
I’m going to crawl up in my shell with my Kindle and just read about what happens to other people, not me, and do my work until I have enough money to make my own future with my own life. I don’t need some guy.
As the bus gets stuck in mid-morning traffic, then again when isn’t there traffic in Southern California, my mind drifts back to just over a month ago when I was finishing high school, thinking this was finally behind me.
Johnny Ellis, as All-American as his name, the captain of the football team always calling me that damn word. “Scab.” He loved to make fun of me for being so rail-thin, saying that I was so dehydrated looking that I probably didn’t have an actual vagina, but in fact just a scab down there. The other kids ate it up, and with a social media following that was the biggest in the school, offers to play football at all the top colleges, and half the cheerleading team bragging about being with him, I really didn’t have the firepower to get into a battle with him.
So I just tucked my tail between my legs and took it…for three damn years. He was a year behind me in class, but even so, he was nearly as big as Carter, which explains all his sports success and the fact he was coddled by all the teachers.
“This is your stop right?” I hear the words but they don’t register. “Miss?”
My eyes blink a few times rapidly and I shake my head from side to side, snapping back to the present moment. “Yeah, here. Thanks,” I say darting from my seat and out the door to my two hundred and forty-eight square foot apartment on the first floor of a neighborhood that even the police don’t want any part of. Just because Southern California is glamorous, filled with hard bodies and celebrities that make fortunes that rival some countries, doesn’t mean everybody lives like they stepped out a rerun of Baywatch, or whatever that show was called that made nearly every women in America self-conscious of the way she looks in the days before I was even born.
Once I manage to get my key to properly slide in the door and wiggle it just right so it opens, I pull out the single piece of furniture I have, a wooden chair, and bury my hands in my face.
Seconds later I’m crying and then I’m laughing hysterically as I look at the blow-up camping mattress I sleep on that I bought on clearance from Walmart for $14.99. It was the only kid’s mattress they had, and thankfully I’m not much bigger. Saved me ten bucks.
I laugh more at my luck, or lack thereof, and wish I had someone to call to spill all this too. Then I realize the only person I really talk to these days is Sandy, and then again she’s my work friend, so I don’t even have her actual phone number. Do I even have any friends? Maybe not.
Then again Carter was supposed to be my everything. He was the older man who could guide me through tough situations in life, not willingly create them, and put me through them for no reason.
Maybe I am just a kid after all. Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t know what the heck is going on. Was he testing me like he’s seemed to do before, or was I just overreacting? Then again, why should I even need to consider things like that? Why would the man I love be playing head games with me to supposedly make me stronger?
The man I love.