If Todd recognizes me as Sam’s boyfriend, it will no longer be a matter of what she wants. The decision will be out of her hands. I’ll have to take care of him today.
Todd is a monster, but he’s not an idiot. He’ll realize it’s no coincidence that the boyfriend of the woman he raped is in a tiny vacation town in Costa Rica the exact same week that he is. He’ll suspect something and he’s not the type to consider all the options before he acts. He’ll take steps to neutralize the threat to his safety and if I’m not careful, I could be the one taking a fall.
I’m going to have to keep a close eye on him, all while pretending to be fine and keeping a bunch of hungover frat boys from getting hurt in the process.
The thought obliterates the last of my Zen.
The beer fumes rising off the group are so potent I’m pretty sure it’s a violation of my sobriety to breathe the air around them for too long. It makes me feel sorry for the six people on the tour who weren’t up all night chugging beer.
As Paola and I gather the group of twenty-five together at the trailhead and she starts briefing them on the safety procedures, I notice the family of four and the two German women are careful to stay at the far edge of the press of stinking bodies. I’m disgusted on their behalf.
The privileged, American, twenty-something male is an embarrassment to our country. I exempt myself from the group by virtue of the fact that I’ve lived in Croatia since I was thirteen, and though my sister married into money she used to finish raising me, I started my life in the gutter. And the marks of the gutter never truly leave you.
A part of me is still that feral little shit who learned to scare the bullies away by hitting harder than any of the other runts. He will always be with me, like my damaged molars, a result of childhood tooth decay fucking up my adult teeth. Before Caitlin took over as my surrogate mother, worked her ass off to afford trips to the dentist, and forced my ungrateful ass to brush, no one cared if I went to bed dirty with teeth that hadn’t been cleaned in a week.
My inner hood rat is awake and watchful now. Even as I smile and introduce myself, seeming to scan the entire group in front of me, my focus is on Todd, waiting for him to confirm that he’s a threat. I remember the violent lessons of my early childhood well. Destroy or be destroyed, throw the first punch or wish you had when you end up in the hospital pissing blood because the guy who got the jump on you damaged your kidneys.
Those lessons had begun to fade from my conscious mind, but the past year has brought them all back to the surface, where they’re going to stay. I won’t make the mistake of believing in the end of hard times or happily ever after again.
No matter how much I wish the world were a safe place for good people, it isn’t.
It isn’t enough to do your best, love your fellow man, and try to do no harm. Sometimes you have to be ready to fight back, and fight dirty because the one thing you can be sure of is that the bad guys never play fair.
“Any questions?” Paola asks in her strange little accent that has half the frat boys smirking at each other beneath their ball caps.
Paola is petite, with long dark hair she wears pulled back in a ponytail, big brown eyes, and a perpetually friendly expression on her makeup-free face. She’s more cute than sexy, but I guess the accent is enough to get the SBE brothers going.
Great, another thing to add to my list: keep an eye on Paola.
She’s wiry and a lot tougher than she looks, but she shouldn’t have to defend herself from sexual harassment while she’s at work. If these booze-soaked losers step over the line, I’ll make sure they know to take a step back.
“All right, if there are no questions, then let’s get started! It’s going to be a beautiful day.” Paola grins and turns to lead the way up the trail to the first zip line platform.
I hang back, waiting for the rest of the tour to fall in behind her before I follow up from the rear. On his way by, Todd smiles and nods his head in my direction. “What’s up, man? You always let the lady do the talking?”
I grin and stretch lazily, forcing myself to act like I don’t want to smash his head against the nearest rock until it explodes. “She’s better at it than I am,” I drawl. “Especially this early in the morning. If I were on vacation, I’d still be asleep, dude.”