“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “I’ll at least give it a shot.”
And when we got off the phone, I did take her advice. I packed up my laptop and walked a couple blocks away to Café Paris, where I sat at one of the outside tables, under the awning, and drank iced coffee and sent out some more resumes. I also opened another blank document and stared at the screen for a while, trying to come up with an idea of what to write.
I thought when I graduated from college, I’d have my whole life figured out.
I stared at the sentence for another minute, reading the words over and over in my head. Then I started to type.
By the time I finished typing, it was late, and my article was about three times the length that my mother had said it should be. It would need some serious editing, but I left the café feeling productive, like I had done something right. I walked back home, encouraged that maybe things would work out after all.
There was something happening outside my apartment building; I could see that right as I turned the corner. At first I thought it was a couple of guys just horsing around, maybe they’d had a little too much to drink. But as I got closer, I realized that they weren’t just having fun, and that one of the guys—Noah—was being restrained, by Ben and another guy I assumed was Kevin.
“Daisy!” Noah yelped when he saw me. There was a little trickle of blood coming out of his left nostril, and Kevin was standing behind him, both Noah’s arms pinned behind his back. His eyes were wide, and for the first time, he looked scared. “Daisy, who are these guys?”
“We’re the guys who are around to make sure creeps like you don’t get to do whatever fucked up shit is running through their heads,” Ben said. He looked at me. “Hi, Daisy. Looks like it was a good thing that we were out here. We finally caught him trying to get into your building. He actually snuck in when someone was coming out, and was trying to break into your apartment.”
“I just wanted to leave you those,” Noah said, looking woefully down at the ground where a tattered bouquet of flowers lay. “I was just going to leave them for you on the table and leave.”
“But he couldn’t pick the lock. So that’s how we found him when we got in—standing at your door, trying to jimmy his way in with a bent paper clip.”
“How did you get in, though?” I asked Ben.
The tiniest of smiles appeared on his face. “I picked the lock.” He looked back at Noah. “So. Should we take your ass down to the police station and have them throw you in jail? Bet you didn’t think that’s how your night was going to end.”
“I wasn’t doing anything illegal!” Noah said, looking truly distraught. “I just wanted to leave those for you—I wasn’t going to stay. I knew you’d know who they were from when you saw them.”
“Stalking is a criminal offense, you know,” Kevin said. “You feel like spending a couple years behind bars?”
“I have done nothing wrong!” His voice cracked, and he struggled against Kevin’s grip, but got nowhere, his feet scrambling underneath him. He looked at me, his eyes wide. “Daisy, please. I would never hurt you. You’ve got to know that, don’t you? Have I done anything to harm you?”
“No, but you haven’t listened to me when I’ve repeatedly told you to leave me alone. When I told you that I wasn’t interested. You just seemed to think if you were persistent enough that I’d eventually give in, which isn’t going to fucking happen! So why shouldn’t I let them take you down to the police station? Why shouldn’t you get locked up for a while?”
I could see the realization dawning on him slowly, just how much trouble he could be in for these actions of his that he’d originally thought were so innocuous. It was like spilled ink spreading on a linen cloth, the way his expression changed.
“Hold on one sec,” Ben said to Kevin. “Let me talk to Daisy for a sec.”
He motioned for me to follow him, and we walked a few paces away.
“So,” he said. “This asshole has clearly been following you around. We noticed him a few night ago, but he wasn’t really doing much more than just lurking, making it look like he was waiting for someone.”
“I don’t know if I think he’d actually do anything to hurt me,” I said, “though I do know I have told him dozens—if not more—times to leave me alone, and he just hasn’t gotten the message. And he hasn’t tried to get into my apartment until tonight.”
“That you know of.”
“Right—that I know of.”
“So we could haul his ass down to the station if you wanted. Though if he’s going to deny everything, there’s a good chance he’ll get off with a fine, maybe a little jail time, no more than a year.”
I glanced back over at them. Noah looked like he’d given up; he was just standing there, arms still pinned behind his back, shoulders slumped, head down. I was starting to feel a little bad for him all of the sudden, which was the last thing I wanted to be feeling for him right now, but I couldn’t help it. If he would just promise to leave me alone now, then I’d be okay with that—that’s all I had wanted to begin with.
“Say he ended up having to go to jail,” I said, “and he gets out, and he’s even more pissed than before? What if he comes back and tries to kill me or something?”
“I’d say that’s something that would more likely happen in a movie, but it’s always possible,” Ben said. He leaned toward me. “There have been a few instances in the past where we could’ve taken people down to the police station, but in those cases, too, there probably would’ve ended up being a court hearing, and we’d have to testify, and Ian prefers if we can avoid getting involved with that sort of thing. So we . . . handle things our own way. We could do that now, if you wanted.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, in this case, it means we kick his ass—not enough to permanently disable him or anything, but enough to make him realize that if he does this sort of thing again, it’s not going to end well for him. And trust me, Daisy—the message will get through. He’s in way over his head now; he doesn’t actually realize what he’s fucking with here. Some guys are hard and can take a beating and just brush it off. Not him. We won’t even need to hurt him that badly.”
I nodded slowly. It felt strange to be the one in the position to be making this sort of decision. There was a part of me that wanted to just say to let him go, so long as he promised that he wouldn’t come around anymore. But I’d told him that before and he hadn’t listened, so it seemed like he did need something a little more . . . memorable.