I stabbed my waffles. “I said can we talk about something else?”
“Sure. Are you in school or working?”
I thought about that. I had been in school before the incident with scholarships paying for everything. Now I was working just so I could pay the bills. I didn’t want Law to know anything real about me, so I decided to start lying.
“School,” I mumbled, spearing mashed potatoes with my fork just to watch the perforation.
“What are you studying?” he asked, taking another gulp of his beer.
“I’m leaning toward peace and conflict studies.” Back before the incident, I had been studying peace and conflict. I had fancied that I would change the world and make it a better place.
Now I knew the world would never be a better place, because the people who were making the changes were evil, terrible people. I took a chug of my whiskey cocktail and shrugged. The drink was delicious. It tasted like fruit and sugar and syrup, and the alcohol hit just the right spot.
Law took another sip of his water and the ghost of a smile appeared on his face.
“Are you amused by something?” I asked caustically.
“Yes,” Law said, his smile broadening. I glared, taking another swig of whiskey. It was entirely unladylike, but whatever. I didn’t want to be there anyway. I would have preferred the seventh layer of hell to this.
“I do find the idea of a pedestrian bashing, gun-toting woman such as yourself studying peace and conflict amusing.” I scowled, feeling vile and venomous. I had always hated the idea of violence, a pacifist by nature. Call me a constitution hater, but I thought guns should be banned. That was, until the attack. I still didn’t like guns. Every time I reached for mine, I felt such conflict. Wasn’t now the time I should really stand for my beliefs? It’s easy to say “Put your guns away!” when you don’t feel threatened, but now that I felt threatened, I tossed my ideals aside and reached for my gun. I don’t know. Fuck. I took another sip of my cocktail in an attempt to allay the troublesome thoughts.
“What about you?” I asked, attempting to change the subject. “What do you do?” I knew it was futile. Law was a liar just like him. Whatever he told me was only to serve whatever new sick plan they had for me.
I hated this. I hated that I had felt some semblance of power for two months but yet again he was taking it away from me.
I didn’t want to be at dinner, but he and his henchman had forced me there.
He was taking control of my life once again.
I gulped the last of my drink, hoping the liquid would stave off the tears brimming beneath my lids.
“You should eat something,” Law stated.
“Fuck yourself,” I replied, and ordered another drink.
Law paid the tab. I didn’t even reach for it. Are you kidding me? I was practically a hostage. It wasn’t a date. I wasn’t going to foot the bill on my own kidnapping. When we left and Law opened the door for me, I grunted. His manners were like a lifejacket on the Titanic. Just like I would rather die quickly than float for a few hours before freezing to death, I would have rather had Law cut to the chase than sprinkle manners on top of his bullshit.
My car was actually near the restaurant; I hadn’t thought it was smart to park near his house when doing reconnaissance. So, I only needed to walk about a block and half to find my car parked along the street, but I wasn’t about to lead Law to my getaway vehicle—cough, old Honda, cough.
I looked around. It was probably about three in the morning. Since I’d started working the night shift, I was getting good at recognizing the time of night. Sort of how people learn to tell what time of day it is, I’d started to understand the night.
“All right, well, you can go now,” I said, gesturing to Law. “It’s about to blizzard, anyway. You can tell by the way the nimbostratus is forming.” The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. I worked at a meteorology lab and my grunt work was identifying clouds and cloud patterns to store in a national database to help predict weather patterns. A toddler could do it.
Law narrowed his eyes. “How do you know that?”
Fuck it, it’s not like I’ll see the bastard after tonight. “I work in a meteorology lab. If I didn’t know that I’d be pretty piss poor at my job, don’cha think?”
“A peace and conflict student working in a lab?” Law’s disbelief was evident.
I rubbed my nose, ready to end the night. “I’m not studying peace. Or conflict.”
Law took a step closer. “What?”
“I’m not studying peace. Or conflict,” I repeated, folding my arms and taking a step back as Law inched nearer.
“Why would you lie?” I shrugged at his question. Did it matter? If Law stuck to his word, I wouldn’t see him after the night. I’d agreed to the dinner just to get the man off my lawn and out of my life. I honestly didn’t expect him to find out about my white lie. Chalk it up to in vino veritas, or in whiskey veritas.
Law stepped even closer to me. Instinctively, I stepped back again—into a wall. I glanced hurriedly around, looking at the brick and cement walls that pinned me. How had we ended up in an alley? I supposed it wasn’t really an alley; Utah doesn’t have many “alleys”. Chalk it up to the Mormons: they may have their problems, but they know how to keep a street clean—on the outside, at least.