So, I said, “Loulou.”
No one had ever called me Loulou before even though I’d tried to make it stick. Mum and Dad said it was a common name, which meant they didn’t like it, which meant I couldn’t have it.
“Cool. I’m Zeus.”
“Zeus,” I squeaked. “For real?”
His mouth twitched. “I got a name my parents gave me but don’t like it much so, yeah, Zeus.”
“That’s the coolest name I ever heard,” I told him, bouncing up and down in my seat. “Do you know who Zeus is? He’s like the king of all the gods on Mt, Olympus. He throws lightning!”
“Smart girl,” Zeus rumbled in his super cool, super god-like voice.
I stared at him, having a moment because mum told me girls are allowed to have moments and I was pretty sure this man was the absolute coolest man on the planet.
“I’m pretty sure you are the absolute coolest man on the planet,” I told him.
His eyes danced at me and got all crinkly in the corners. Suddenly, it was harder to breathe.
“I’m damn sure that you are the absolute coolest girl on the planet too.”
“Cool,” I said, pretending that wasn’t the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me ever.
He smiled again.
After a minute, it faded and he said, “You should probably head back to bed before someone worries about ya.”
He was right but I really didn’t want to go. Zeus was big and strong and I was pretty sure he was half angel, half monster, which meant that all the other monsters in the hospital wouldn’t hurt me if I stayed with him.
“Will you stay here all night and fight the monsters if they come to get me?” I asked him, looking around his little curtained room. “Do you have your lightning bolts with you?”
“I got the bolts. You don’t worry, kid. I’ll stand watch.”
“Promise?” I asked and my voice was stupid and small like a baby.
Zeus held out his pinky. It was four times the size of mine and for some reason, I thought that was really cool. I linked mine onto it.
“Pinky swear,” he swore.
Then he hooked his thumb over our tangled little fingers to shake it against my thumb. I giggled and for the first time in a long time, when I went to sleep, I didn’t dream of monsters, I dreamt of him.
The next morning, I ran down to the ER in my hospital gown, clutching my uneaten green Jell-O from the night before in my hand. I wanted to share it with Zeus because he’d kept the monsters away all night.
“Fuck this, Z, you’re gonna go to prison for this, ya know,” a scary voice growled from behind Zeus’s curtain just as I was going to push it aside.
I froze.
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe about it, dipshit. You got kids at home and you’re pullin’ this crazy-ass stunt without your brothers at your back?”
“I don’t know who my brothers are at the fuckin’ moment, Bat, otherwise wouldn’t be in this fuckin’ mess in the first place. You rather Crux put a bullet in you ’fore I put a bullet in him? He killed our brothers and he went through a motherfuckin’ kid to get to me.”
“Gonna lose half the brothers over this and half of ’em are gonna wanna back you as Prez now he’s gone.”
“A Prez in prison isn’t the best call for the club.”
There was a really awkward pause, like when I heard my mum and daddy fight.
“Farrah’s gonna flip, you go to prison and leave her with the kids,” the angry guy said. “She can’t handle that shit on her own.”
“Yeah,” Zeus said, soft sounding like he was sad. “But this is good, Bat. We needed a change in the club and now that rat bastard is gone, we can move forward.”
“Hard to change the norm when the fucking leader of our revolution is goin’ to prison for manslaughter.”
Manslaughter didn’t sound good. It sounded like Zeus had probably killed someone with his bare hands for real. I shivered but I wasn’t actually scared, not of Zeus. I was scared of what kind of monster that man had been that my angel slayer had to kill him. It didn’t occur to me to think it could be a man who shot a little girl in the chest.
“The pigs are sniffing around but I’ll hold ’em off until you get out of this place. I brought the truck, bring it round front and meet you there in ten, yeah? Won’t buy you much time but I figure you can say goodbye to yer kids.”
“Yeah, brother. Thanks,” Zeus said.
I quickly ducked away from the opening just before a tall, scary-looking tattooed man blew past me. Before the curtain could close, I slipped into Zeus’s space.
He was sitting up in his bed, really dark against the white sheets and way too big for such a tiny bed. They hadn’t changed the Band-Aid on his chest because I could see blood on it like a pink flower blooming underneath. His thick brown eyebrows hung low over his eyes as he stared into the distance at something that made him unhappy but as soon as he saw me, he smiled really big.