by Lauren Beltz
after almost a week she still hadn’t managed to inflict a single bruise, something she was disappointed in if she was being honest.
As instructed, she lowered herself into an appropriate stance, her knees bent like he had instructed for better movement and agility. While the self-defense portions of their exercises were slow-goings, she had done well on the initial footwork teachings, proving she was much more agile than she had thought. A pleasant surprise considering how bad her blocking work was going.
He tapped on his open palm with his index finger, as if she didn’t know where to direct her punch. Holding her left hand in place to protect her face, she cross jabbed with her right hand, making sure to pivot her rear foot for the highest impact possible.
“Better!” he commended her. “But you still hit like a girl.” His favorite put down. “Put some muscle behind it this time.”
She had little muscle to speak of, but she tried to hit his palm harder as she punched a second time.
“Good, good,” he praised. “Now add the kick like we practiced yesterday.”
She hesitated as he widened his stance and lowered his center of mass closer to the ground. He raised both arms to his sides, his hands in fists, ready to block her attempts. “I still don’t know about kicking,” she confessed. The extra bit of workout coupled with the several flights of stairs had left her muscles sore the past two days. A few light blue bruises littered her lower legs, not to mention the ones she had on her arms from where she had blocked his punches.
“You’re never going to learn if you don’t practice,” he reminded her for the millionth time. He wasn’t wrong though, and she found to her surprise that she rather liked practicing. After the meager dinners with Sebastian, she had taken to retiring to her room and practicing in the mirror until it grew too dark out to watch her reflection. Without his careful eyes to critique every minor mistake, she rather enjoyed practicing the limited martial arts he had taught her over the past few days. It was mainly when he stood there, staring at her as he was then with that expectant look in his eyes, that she faltered, her self-confidence gone.
“Bring it, Lenore,” he taunted her, darting forward to slap her fists teasingly. “I’m growing old waiting.”
So she brought her left leg - he had scolded her for relying too heavily on her dominant side - around in a roundhouse kick. He easily blocked his side with his arm. The top of her foot made contact with his arm, resulting in a weak smack. Her foot dropped immediately to the ground by his side, and she hopped a step to regain her balance. He immediately criticized her for not returning her foot back to the proper beginning stance and made her go again. The rest of their session continued in a similar fashion, her every movement dissected and judged as they went.
The only thing that stopped Davidson’s teachings was when the ominous clouds overhead buckled under the weight of the rain, and the skies opened up with fury. The first drop hit her head as he caught her wrist and spun her around. The next hit his hand where he held her wrist as he challenged her to break free of the grip. The next several pelted them both in their faces as she tried in vain to break his hold using a few of the techniques they had practiced.
A bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, and it finally jarred them from their concentration. “Better get to work,” he told her, and she answered with a nod in agreement. They snatched up the buckets and moved to the trough. “You’ve come a ways since we started,” he shouted above the noise as the downpour began. “I didn’t think you had it in you, but you are just full of surprises.”
“Thanks!” she shouted back, wiping the hair from her eyes as she helped pull the mesh away from the trough and set to work.
Daniel
He expected the knock at his door as soon as he heard the storm outside break, but it still came as a surprise when she appeared in his apartment. Drenched head to toe, she struggled to carry two buckets of water so full that water sloshed over the rim with every step she tried to take.
“Sorry,” she mumbled as he rushed across the room to help her keep as much water as possible from spilling onto his hardwood floors. He tried to take both buckets from her, but as soon as he relieved her of one, she took off towards his bathroom to empty the other. He followed behind her, taking the time to make sure the contents of the bucket stayed inside it. By the time he reached the bathroom, she had already emptied the first bucket into his bathtub and was setting it on the floor.
When she saw him, she stepped forward to take back the second bucket. He handed it off without comment, waiting to see if she would say anything. She continued to work diligently, and he cringed as he watched the water drip off her onto the bathmats and the tile. It would take him forever to clean up the wet trail she left from his front door to the bathroom. He had heard the rain but hadn’t thought it as intense as it clearly was.
With the second bucket emptied, she collected the first one and squeezed past him back into the living room. “Back with another load in a minute,” she told him as she headed out without another word.
He watched as the door swung shut behind her. He wasn’t exactly sure what to think. Granted, her duties required efficiency as they were heavily dependent on the weather, but he had at least expected her to open her big mouth and spew some kind of judgmental opinion. It felt weird to have her say nothing at all.
Daniel had just settled back down on the couch and found where he had left off in his novel when she quickly returned, leaking water from herself and the buckets once more. He bit his tongue to hold back a snappish comment and returned the bookmark as he crossed the room once more to lend a hand.
“I’ve got it,” she protested, but let him take a bucket from her when he insisted yet again. He followed her steps into the small bathroom and emptied the bucket alongside her in tandem. Then he reached for the towel rack and grabbed the cleanest towel he had, extending it towards her as a sign of a peace offering.
“Sorry,” she apologized as if noticing for the first time the dripping. Moving to the sink, she lifted her shirt to clear the counter top and then wrung the heavy fabric over the ceramic bowl. Water dripped in a steady flow from it, even after a second wringing. Once she had done the best possible with her shirt, she tilted her head over the sink and wrung out her hair as well.
Finished with her minimal tidying up, she ran a hand through her drier hair to tousle it before standing upright and facing him. “I’d better get those buckets back up to the roof. They aren’t going to fill themselves here.”
He took a step back and to the side to block the doorway and offered the towel to her once more. “The buckets can wait for a second.”
Grudgingly, she took the proffered towel, running it against her hair, then drying off her face and neck.
“You’re acting weird, and it’s confusing me,” he admitted when he grew tired of standing there watching her towel off in silence.
She scoffed, “You’re the one who has been avoiding me like the plague all week.”
“I’ve been on laundry duty. Any avoidance was completely unintentional.”
“Sure.” She wrapped the towel around her back and began to rub it against the wet fabric of her shirt. The towel was already turning a noticeably darker shade of blue as it grew damp.
“If I’ve been avoiding you, that would imply you have been looking for me,” he suggested, stuffing his hands in his pockets when he could find nothing else to preoccupy himself with.
“I’m sorry I ratted on Nathan, okay?” She paused with the towel and looked up at him. Even in the almost nonexistent lighting of the windowless bathroom, he could still see the clearly defined shadows under her eyes. “I only did it for the safety of the rest of the group. If I had to do it again, I would. In a heartbeat, because I know it was the right thing to do. But I would do it in a different way. I never meant to betray your trust.”
“By blabbing it out in some friendly pillow talk to Davidson? Yes, well, I would hope you would handle it a bit more delicately next
time around.”
She let out a dry laugh at his comment, giving a slight shake of her head as she bent down to press the towel against her pants legs one at a time. “You honestly think I told Davidson in some post coital chat? I told him based on the sole fact that I value his opinion, and you and I were obviously at an impasse. Thus, I needed a second opinion. I’m insulted that you think I told him because you think I’m sleeping with him. Thanks for the towel,” she snapped as she tossed it to him.
He caught it easily, though the trailing edge of it swayed around from its momentum and caught his shirt.
“I don’t know why I thought I owed you an apology. If I hadn’t done what I did, who knows what would have happened. One or all of us could have been infected or killed by now. So yes, I’m sorry that I had to betray your trust to do what I thought was right, but I’m not sorry I did it. What Anna did was wrong, there is no denying that and I’m more upset than anyone about it, but at least it was handled. No thanks to you.
“Can I please leave now?”
It took him a minute to realize he was still standing between her and the door frame. He hesitated as he stood there. He wanted to apologize, but what she had said had only served to piss him off more. It was a subtle ‘I told you so’, but it was one nonetheless, and she