Force

by Taylor Longford

  "You did okay at bat," he agreed. "But you're usually a better catcher. You're a damn good catcher. Something wrong?"

  And for two seconds I considered spilling about Force. But I decided not to because…well, it was over anyway, right? We had a fight and he sided with my father. I walked off without asking when I'd see him again. He couldn't even read. So what was there to say to Leo? "Nothing wrong," I answered.

  So, I wasn't going to see Force again. I was too smart to go looking for that kind of trouble.

  But I couldn't stop him from coming to see me. And I was surprised when he showed up at my apartment the next afternoon. Yeah, I invited him in. Don't judge me. I was brought up to be polite. Besides, something was wrong. I could tell the minute I saw him. Normally, there was a lot of confidence in his long stride. Today, he looked…shaken.

  "What's the matter?" I asked, worried about him even though I wasn't supposed to be liking him anymore.

  He took a seat on the faded green couch while I opted for the chair. Without even trying, he made the old eighties sofa look small. "I lost my job today," he said in a low voice.

  "What?" I exclaimed. "Already? What happened?"

  He searched my eyes with a confused look on his face. "I'm not sure," he answered. "That's why I'm here."

  "You're not sure? That's all you have to say?"

  "Well, I broke some dishes," he admitted. "That was probably part of it."

  "You broke some dishes?" I gasped. "How many?"

  "Quite a few," he answered.

  "How did that happen?" I demanded, staring at him.

  Then before he could answer, I realized how ridiculous the whole situation was. I shouldn't even be asking. Whatever it was, it shouldn't have happened. He might be good looking (okay, he was definitely good looking) but I refused to get involved with a guy who couldn't keep a job for a week.

  "No, wait," I said, throwing up my hands. "I don't want to hear about it."

  His eyes widened, and for the first time since I'd met him, he looked surprised. "You don't?"

  But I shook my head. Because I didn't want to hear his excuses. I was sure he had a million of them and I didn't want to hear a single one. I needed to get him out of my life before I started falling for him…as if I hadn't already. A homeless stray who couldn't keep a job. I looked down at my hands and pushed out a long sigh, trying to keep chill. "You know, you're right. You were right from the start. I can't help you."

  His eyes narrowed into metallic slits as he watched me, and his mouth turned very hard. Fine," he growled, getting to his feet and stalking across the room. And without another word, he stepped through the door…with his knife on his belt and his baldric on his back.

  "Goodbye," I whispered to the closed apartment door.

  That was it, then. It was over. Not that it had ever been much to begin with. But at that point, there was no going back. I should have been relieved, right? But when I pulled in a deep breath, I was surprised by how much it hurt. "I'm better off without him," I told myself. And before I could change my mind about it, I dragged myself off to apologize to Mama Chan for talking her into hiring him.

  There were no customers at Mama's place. The last of the lunch crowd had cleared off maybe an hour earlier and the staff was setting up for dinner. You know the expression, all-a-twitter? Well that's what the restaurant was when I got there. The staff was in full twitter mode.

  "Did you hear about your boyfriend?" Brooke demanded, hurrying from the kitchen where all the twittering was going on. She was almost bursting with gossip. Seriously, it was oozing from her pores.

  "I don't have a boyfriend," I answered in a low growl.

  "Well, did you hear about Forrest losing his job?" she asked.

  "Yeah, I heard," I muttered. "I don't want to talk about it. I just came here to apologize to Mama."

  "For what?"

  "Because I asked her to hire a guy she had to fire."

  "And you're going to apologize?" Brooke exclaimed, giving me a dirty look that I didn't understand.

  "Yeah," I answered. "Where is she?"

  "She ran out to the bank. All of a sudden, she decided maybe her money wasn't safe in the cash register," she said, getting snotty. "But she should be back in five or ten."

  "I'll wait," I announced grimly, looking around and throwing myself into a booth in the middle of the empty restaurant.

  And while I was waiting, another waitress (I think her name's Rachel) came in and headed for the kitchen. And pretty soon, I head Brooke's excited voice. I tried not to listen to what she was saying but she was so loud!

  "So the busboy didn't show up," Brooke was saying. "And Forrest grabbed a tub and started clearing tables."

  "Oh?" Rachel replied.

  "Oh, to say the least! He comes out of the kitchen balancing the tub on his hip, his T-shirt stretching across his shoulders and clinging to his abs. He's so hot. He reminds me of that Australian actor."

  "Yeah, I know," Rachel claimed. "Keep going. Why did he lose his job?"

  "His shoulders are so wide and the rest of him is so fit."

  "Go on," the Rachel insisted.

  "So, I'm at the back of the restaurant, busy staring at him, right? And I don't see what's going on at the front of the store, at the cash register."

  "The front of the store? What was happening at the front of the store?"

  "In the corner of my eye, I see this flash of dark metal and I realize there's a guy with a gun and it's pointed at Mama."

  "Wait. What! What do you mean, a guy with a gun?"

  "I mean there was a guy with a gun robbing the restaurant!" Brooke squealed. "And he has this wild look in his eyes like he's not even sane. Like he's on some really bad stuff. Like he's dying to shoot somebody."

  "Oh my God, Brooke, that sounds scary as hell!"

  "It was. Or at least, it almost was. But before I had time to get frightened, this heavy white dinner plate slashes through the air and smashes into the gunman's head. Then another one crashes into the gun. Then another one and another one. And all the time, Forrest is just walking calmly toward the front of the store, the tub still resting on his hip while he slings Mama's china at the robber."

  "Are you serious?"

  "And when he reached the gunman, Forrest's hand snapped out and wrapped around the guy's wrist then there was this horrible crunching sound. Like bones were breaking. The gun hit the floor and the guy's hand was dangling from the end of his wrist. Useless!"

  "Wh-what happened next? What happened to the gunman?"

  "He started screaming and ran out the front door."

  "And what did Forrest do?" Rachel asked. "Did he chase him?"

  "No," Brooke answered. "He looked down at all the broken china on the floor and told Mama he was sorry. Said he'd clean it up right away."

  "Oh, man," Rachel breathed. "I bet Mama was ready to jump on him and kiss him."

  "That's what you'd think, right? But Mama was furious. She said he'd endangered the lives of everyone in the restaurant. Said she coulda been killed if the gun had gone off. Said the guy might come back with his friends and throw a Molotov cocktail through the window."

  "She wasn't even grateful?"

  "Not at all," Brooke complained, happy to have a sympathetic audience. "She fired him on the spot."

  "You're kidding," Rachel squealed.

  "It was so unfair," Brooke said with a pout in her voice. "She was so unfair to Forrest."

  And it didn't happen often but Brooke was right.

  As she finished her story, I was staring through the restaurant's big front window. But I wasn't seeing anything going on outside on the streets of Denver. I was locked in my own personal hell. Yeah, Mama had treated Force badly. But what I had done was worse. Way worse. Force had come to me trying to understand what he'd done wrong. And I'd shut him down without listening to a word he had to say.

  A knot of dread gripped my stomach as I pushed out of the booth, planning to get the hell out of there before Mama c
ame back. I didn't want to talk to her anymore. I didn't want to apologize. I didn't want to get mad at her and start yelling. But before I could make a run for it, Brooke and Rachel stepped from the short hallway, carrying a bunch of napkins that needed folding.

  "And you know what's really sad?" Brooke said in that snotty voice she's pretty much perfected. "Camie's here to apologize to Mama for what he did."

  Rachel gave me a condemning look that I admit I had fully earned. "She doesn't deserve a guy like Forrest."

  And they were right. But they didn't understand the circumstances that had gotten me to the place I was in. The girls at Mama's had been happy to glom onto Force for no other reason that he was nice-looking, while I was determined to make sure that the guy I liked was more than just a pretty face. But if I hadn't been so busy rejecting him because of his over-the-top looks, maybe I'd have cut him some slack and realized he was a good person as well as drop dead gorgeous.

  Good person? Hell, the guy was a hero. Sure, I was coming to that realization a little late. But there was one thing I could set straight before I left. "It's Force," I gritted through my clenched teeth as I eyed my escape route through the front door.

  "What?" Brooke asked, frowning at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

  "His name is Force," I growled. Then I stalked to the front of the restaurant and slammed through the door.

  You can probably guess what happened next. I started stalking the streets, looking for that tall frame, that gold hair and that gunmetal gaze. I searched the entire downtown area for him, even returning to the dumpster where we first met. But I couldn't find him anywhere.

  Eventually, I went back to Castle Block, hoping maybe he was hanging around there, looking for me or waiting for me or something. But I guess he was as disgusted with me as I had thought I was with him. And I got to thinking…why should he forgive me? Why? I hadn't even listened to his explanation of how he lost his job. I never gave him a chance. So why should he give me another chance?

  I was never going to see him again.

  But that depressing little fact didn't stop me from jumping up at the first knock on the apartment door, my heartbeat drumming heavily in my ears as I rushed across the living room to grab the door open.

  But it was only Leo.

  "S'up girl?"

  "Nothing," I sighed, checking to make sure there was no one else coming down the hall behind him.

  "You don't exactly look happy to see me."

  "Sorry, Leo. I was just expecting someone else."

  "Expecting or hoping?"

  "Hoping," I admitted, and broke down, telling him the entire story of love-lost or at least potential-love-lost.

  "Well, we gotta find him," Leo insisted. "Let's get you dressed up nice and go out lookin'."

  Good idea, right? But I was torn. I wanted Leo's help to search the city in his car. We could cover a lot more ground than I had covered on foot earlier in the day. On the other hand, I was afraid I might miss Force if he came back to the apartment, looking for me.

  But, deep down, I knew he wasn't coming back. Not in this lifetime. So in the end, I dressed with Leo's help (short red leather skirt and transparent black tank over a not-so-transparent white one) and we went out lookin'. Hoping that we could find him. And hoping that if we found him I could convince him I was sorry for misjudging him. Ready to grovel if I had to, although I couldn't have told you why Force was so important to me.

  "I can," Leo interrupted in the middle of all this soul-baring.

  "You can?" I asked cautiously.

  His thick Afro bobbed as he nodded. "You're in love, girl."

  "I'm too young to be in love," I muttered.

  "Too young?"

  "Yeah. Love isn't scheduled until I'm out of college."

  "You can't schedule love," he laughed. "You're in love, Camie. With a blond god."

  "Gold," I corrected him. "His hair is gold." And for a while we argued about blond versus gold as we took up our search in Leo's car, scouring the city for Mr. Harmlessly Homeless.

  "Handsomely Homeless," Leo corrected me.

  "That too," I answered.

  We parked a few times and checked out some back alleys and talked to some street people to ask if anyone had seen him. But the only lead we got was from Phil Everton.

  "Yeah, I seen your boyfriend," he offered with a nearly toothless grin.

  I forced a smile. "He's not really my boyfriend," I muttered. "Just a guy I was trying to help out."

  "So you say," he answered with a wise, all-knowing look. "But you didn't look at him the way you look at the rest of us out here on the street."

  "Whatever," I mumbled. "Where did you see him?"

  "And he looked at you the same way."

  "What?" I exclaimed in a controlled explosion. "Were you some kind of dating consultant in your previous life?"

  "I just sees what I sees. And I knows what I knows," he insisted kinda stubbornly.

  "Well, what did you see and where did you see him?" I demanded.

  "Seen him coming and seen him going. I paid attention, ya see. Because he looked troubled when he was coming. And angry when he was going. And he wasn't with you. And I wondered why."

  "Phil! Where did you see him?"

  "Right here," he answered. "He put some money in my cup then turned at the corner, heading down toward the stadium."

  Leo caught my eye, probably thinking the same thing I was thinking. There were several bridges down near the stadium where homeless people sheltered from the weather.

  "Thanks, Phil," I said softly, and dug in my skirt pocket for a five but I'd given the last of my cash to a guy with a guitar twenty minutes earlier.

  "You're welcome darlin'. I'm happy to help after all the good you done me. Hope you find your young man. He's a nice fella. Gave me twenty dollars."

  I shook my head, thinking Force probably hadn't realized how much he was donating to the Phil Everton cause. Then again…maybe he did. Maybe he was just super generous…as well as a hero. And maybe that would work out in my favor, if generous people were also forgiving. Because I was gonna need a whole lot of forgiving from Force.

  So we jumped back in Leo's car and parked in one of the empty stadium lots and searched the entire area in the dark but, other than several homeless people who didn't fit Force's description at all, we found nothing.

  The sun was coming up when Leo dropped me off in front of Castle Block.

  "Thanks," I said before I closed the car door. "Thanks for trying to help."

  "I just feel sorry for this guy," Leo said, clucking his tongue. "It's a shame he missed out on seeing you looking so fine."

  "Yeah," I said, forcing out a laugh that I was not feeling in the least.

  Feeling dejected, I dragged myself up the stairs to the top floor where a single bulb flickered at the end of the corridor. As I started down the hallway, trailing my hand along the wall to keep me on course, a dark form started to take shape in the shadows beside my apartment door.

  And…there he was, sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out on the ratty old carpet, his back propped against the wall, his sword lying across his thighs.

  It was Force.

  Chapter Eight

  I stopped and stared and wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me. I mean, the light was almost nonexistent there in the hall with most of the bulbs burned out and no windows. So it was dark but…there was really no mistaking those wide shoulders and that thick gold hair that hung just to his chin.

  Like a big cat, he glided to his feet and scowled as he looked me up and down, like he wasn't too happy to see me dressed up like that. Like he wasn't too happy to see me, period. "I need your help," he said just as bluntly as anyone could say anything.

  "Wh-what?" I whispered. I was in shock and playing for time, needing a few seconds to pull my wits together. And trying to hide the fact that I was so happy to see him.

  "I need your help," he repeated.

  "I-I neve
r thought I'd hear you say those four words."

  "Me neither," he admitted without smiling. "But I need your help and you need to change out of those clothes."

  "Wh-Why?" I asked, looking down at my short skirt and tall heels.

  "Because we need to move fast and those shoes don't like they're made for fast."

  "Okay. Just give me a minute," I said, unlocking the apartment door and hurrying across the living room to my bedroom. Safely hidden from view, I shucked the skirt, pulled my skinny jeans from the laundry hamper and wriggled into them. I checked out my tops in the mirror. They could stay, I decided. They even looked nice with the jeans. "Where have you been? What have you been doing?" I called out as I ran some lip gloss over my mouth.

  "Looking for my family," he answered.

  "Did you find anything?" I asked on my way back through the living room, grabbing my purse from a corner of the couch before we stepped into the corridor together. I don't usually carry a purse because I can fit everything I need (cash and phone) into two pockets. But I didn't know where we were going or what we were doing. And besides, Leo and I had put a lot of work into my makeup…which might need touching up. So I made sure my eyeliner was in there when I added my tube of lip gloss.

  "That's why I need your help," he answered, grabbing my hand.

  "Wh-Where are we going?" I asked, staring down at our hands locked together. It was weird, but despite the vast difference in size, my hand felt at home in his.

  "Other side of town," he answered and started tugging me toward the stairs. "I have to show you something."

  We hit the sidewalk with me being towed at the end of Force's arm, swept along at a pace that would never have worked in my heels. So I was glad I'd changed into running shoes because those heels had cost me fifty-seven dollars on sale. (One of the few things I owned that wasn't a thrift store bargain.)

  "What was that you were wearing?" he growled, casting a frown back at me.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "That red thing," he muttered.

  "It was a skirt," I answered reasonably.