Demanding Ransom

by Megan Squires

  “You’re an idiot, Mikey,” I sneer, binding my arms tightly over my chest. What is it with guys and their need to push the limits of their mortality? “And so are you, Ran.” I throw him a cutting glare.

  “Shoot, Maggie,” Ran says. “That insult just deducted one of your compliments. You were so close to licking my lips.”

  Mikey raises his hands up and backs away from us, the keys to Ran’s motorcycle dangling in his palm. “I don’t even want to know what that is about,” he asserts. “I’ll be back by 1:00.”

  “The throttle sticks a bit,” Ran instructs, and it sounds like he’s speaking in some guy code Mikey appears to understand. “I lubed the cable this morning, so she shouldn’t give you a hard time.”

  “I’ll try to return her in one piece.”

  I’m pretty sure my jaw’s unhinged and my mouth’s hanging open, because when I swallow it’s so dry that it mimics the feeling of sandpaper running up and down my throat. Scrape, scrape, scrape—an unbelievably uncomfortable feeling. Just one of the many I seem to experience each time I’m in Ran’s presence.

  “Ready?” He pivots my direction.

  My head bobbles unsteadily on my shoulders and Ran must mistake that for a nod because he slinks his fingers through mine and then we’re out the door to the garage.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “What do you like to drink?” Ran grabs two cups from the counter and stands in front of the soda machine, surveying the eight different beverage options before him. “Let me guess. Not Mountain Dew; you probably think that looks like toxic slime. And it’s evident you could definitely use some caffeine in your life, so I’m guessing no on the Caffeine Free Pepsi. I bet you’re a Dr. Pepper drinker, no?”

  I make a loud buzzer noise, indicating his fail. “Diet Coke.”

  “Diet Coke? Really?” He says it like it should reveal something monumental about me, like he’s uncovered some hidden secret just by discovering my soda preference. “You don’t strike me as a Diet Coke type of girl.”

  “You think what I like to drink sheds light on who I actually am?”

  I take our tray of food to a booth at the back of the burger joint. A young mom pushing a stroller and grasping the hand of a toddler just vacated the seat, and the oversized wheel of the jogger lodges between two chairs in front of her. Ran slides the table barricading them to the side and they squeeze past. He gives her a genuine, full smile in return for her mouthed ‘Thank you,’ and continues toward our table.

  “I think you can learn a lot about someone by the way they look at you when you’re trying to analyze them,” he says, slipping into the booth and popping a French fry into his mouth at the same time.

  I settle in across from him and drop my purse from my shoulder to set it down next to me on the pleather seat cushion. “I think you can learn a lot about someone just by watching them interact with others.” I nod my head toward the family now exiting the restaurant. “Have you always been such a gentleman?”

  “Is that compliment number five, Maggie?” Ran flashes me an enormous grin as he continues chewing his food. How can he make eating junk food look sexy?

  “No,” I say, collecting my cheeseburger from the tray and peeling back the wrapper. There is cheese stuck to the paper, and I thumb it off with my nail and pop it into my mouth. “Remember that insult-related deduction? I’m back down to four.”

  Ran grins and hangs his head. When he looks up, he’s peering at me from under his dark hair and I realize just how attractive he actually is. I thought maybe before it was the whole hero thing he had going for him in his paramedic attire, but seeing him dressed in just distressed jeans and a V-neck white t-shirt, he’s even more appealing. He stretches his arm across the table toward his soda and my eyes trail down his half-sleeve of colorful body art that winds around his bicep.

  “Four compliments for me and I’ve yet to give you any.”

  I swallow the food in my mouth, wipe my lips with a paper napkin and say, “I don’t need you to compliment me, Ran.”

  “No, you don’t strike me as the type of girl that needs any sort of affirmation.”

  “I don’t seem to strike you as much today, do I?”

  Ran sets his drink back onto our table and stares at me openly. “Wrong. I do find you very striking.”

  I pause for too long. I want to kick myself for it. I want to kick myself for a lot of things lately, and all of them have something to do with my interactions with Ran. I’m supposed to be the one with the quick wit and controlled humor, yet I’m having trouble keeping up with this stranger across the table from me.

  “What’s your angle?”

  Ran swivels his head in surprise. “My angle?”

  “Yeah, your angle.” I pull in a long drink of my Diet Coke to buy some time to decide what I’m going to say next. I barely know this guy. I definitely don’t know how to communicate with him. “Why the gifts? Why the lunch date? Do you feel sorry for me because I was in a car accident and now walk like a gimp? Or is it that I’m the girl with the brother dying of cancer and you want to be a heroic shoulder to cry on?” I bite down on the straw, indenting the flimsy plastic with my two front teeth. “What’s your angle, Ran?”

  Stopping mid-chew, Ran leans back in his seat and swallows visibly. “I don’t have any angle I’m trying to work here, Maggie.”

  He doesn’t say anything more. I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.

  For the next several minutes we just eat. Well, he eats and I pick at my food and pretend that I’m actually consuming it, yet all I can think about is how hurtful my words must sound if he actually doesn’t have any ulterior motive. Right as I’m about to open my mouth to apologize, Ran opens his.

  “If you think I feel sorry for you, you’re wrong.” He’s looking right at me, his palms planted firmly on the gritty tabletop. “But you know who I do feel sorry for?”

  I shake my head like a nervous tick, unable to control its rhythm.

  “I feel sorry for the families of the girls whose bodies they pull from the cars whose hearts no longer beat.” Ran doesn’t blink as he speaks, and I try to keep my eyes open to hold his gaze, but the dryness forces me to shut them swiftly. I almost don’t want to reopen them. “I feel sorry for the kids who have to hear that their brain tumor is inoperable and they only have a few months to live.” My chest rises and falls too quickly, and I fold my arms over myself until I’m twisted up like a pretzel, trying to hide my increased, instable breathing. “And I feel sorry for the girls whose moms didn’t just walk out on them, but those whose moms are dead and aren’t ever coming back.” He pushes our now-empty food tray to the side and slinks down in his seat like he’s making himself comfortable. “So no Maggie, I don’t feel sorry for you.” He crosses his arms behind his neck. “And I suggest you stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  I don’t know if I want to cry or scream, so I choose to do neither and just sit there, radiating under the heat of my flushed cheeks. I look up at Ran and notice he has something—probably leftover traces of mustard—stuck to the corner of his mouth. Telling him about it feels like the safest thing to do right now.

  “You have a little something,” I say, mirroring him, pointing to my upper lip with the tip of my fingernail.

  “You wanna lick it off? Just one more compliment and it’s yours.”

  “I don’t even know if I want to sit in the same restaurant as you right now,” I groan, glaring out the window at the bustling street outside, wanting to be swallowed up in it, wanting to disappear.

  “You’re always trying to get away from me. First you wanted to get out of the ambulance, now the restaurant.” He laughs and I feel the tension slip slowly out of my rigid frame. I tighten my shoulders back up, still wanting to stay mad at him. “I’m not holding you hostage, you know.”

  “It kinda feels like it. You pretty much came to my house and kidnapped me with my own brother’s car.”

  “So that’s what you think? That I’ve kidnapped you and I’
m holding you hostage?”

  “Yeah, and now you’re demanding a kiss as ransom.”

  Ran’s previously wide eyes nearly disappear as a loud bout of laughter overtakes him. Several people eating their lunch at the tables near ours look our way, but they shift their intrusive gazes when I challenge them with my own assertive stare.

  “I think you mean I’m demanding a kiss for Ransom.”

  “As ransom, for ransom. It’s all semantics.” I’m beginning to find this guy impossibly difficult to communicate with. Maybe English isn’t his first language.

  “I don’t think you truly see the humor in all of this, Maggie.”

  I pull my chin back. “What? You think it’s funny to keep me here against my will?”

  “No, I think it’s funny that my name is Ransom and you’re joking about offering kisses as ransom.”

  I gag on my Diet Coke. “Your name is Ransom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I just figured it was Randolph or something,” I admit.

  “I’m not a reindeer.”

  I try not to spray my soda out through my nose. “That’s Rudolph, idiot.”

  “I’m not that either.” He gives me a smug smile.

  “What? An idiot?” I challenge. “What are you then?”

  Ran rises slightly in his seat and I think I even hear him clear his throat before he begins speaking. “I’m a twenty-two-year-old paramedic named Ransom. I live in my own apartment in the historic district and I drive a Ducati Diavel Cromo. I’m an only child and was adopted by an older couple when I was four. My mother died when she was 79 in her sleep and my dad is in a home that cares for the elderly with Alzheimer’s. I work four, twelve-hour shifts a week and I own a German shepherd named Nikon. I also have two goldfish on rotation.”

  “Rotating goldfish?”

  “Yes. Every week after my Wednesday shift I stop by the pet store to pick up another goldfish, because sure enough, one is always dead when I come home. I just keep rotating them out.” Ran’s phone buzzes across the table and he gives it a cursory glance, punches the ‘decline’ button, and returns his attention to me.

  “So why do you keep buying new ones? Why don’t you just have one instead?”

  “Because that would be sad, Maggie.”

  “You’re telling me you can spend twelve hours at a time dealing with horrifically gruesome situations, yet the thought of a lonely goldfish makes you sad?”

  “Have you seen them when they’re lonely? They just swim in circles all day. It’s heartbreaking.”

  I sigh and my hair lifts off my forehead. “You are the strangest person I have ever met.”

  “Maybe you haven’t met enough people.”

  “Maybe not.” I shrug.

  Ran edges closer, hovering his shoulders over the table. Two more precisely drawn tattoos peek out from under his shirtsleeve as it pulls up slightly. “Well then,” he smirks, his lips curving upward. “I’m glad to be one of the few you’ve had the honor of meeting.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Did you see that bike, Mags?”

  I shake my head and settle into the leather couch cushions as I slip off my shoes. Mikey’s back from the pool hall, yet his clothes still hold the lingering stench of cigarettes and stale pizza. Too bad I just finished his last load of laundry.

  “Not really.”

  “Ran must really like you if he was willing to swap with me this afternoon. That bike is top of the line, Mags.” Mikey shakes his head, still not believing the less-than-even vehicle exchange that took place. “Like worth at least five times more than that junker of a jeep of mine.”

  I quirk my lips indifferently and give him a shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “He’s got a crazy expensive bike and he’s off the charts hot? Not fair, Maggie, not fair.” Cora slinks down next to me, propping her arm up on the back of the couch as she twirls her blonde hair around a slender finger. “Who is this guy and why are you keeping him to yourself?” She snaps a piece of bright pink gum in her mouth, chomping it loudly between her teeth. “Sounds like perfect jealously bait for Brian.”

  “I’m not interested in making Brian jealous,” I say, pulling on the string of my hoodie. “And I’m not interested in Ran.”

  “Well, you must be both blind and stupid,” Cora asserts. “Because Ran is gorgeous, and Brian is an ass that deserves to made a little jealous if you ask me.”

  “I don’t remember asking you, Cora.”

  She tucks her head onto my shoulder and wraps her hand around mine. “That’s never stopped me from giving my opinion before.”

  For only knowing Cora since our first week of college, I’m amazed at what a fast and rock-solid friendship we’ve forged in such a short amount of time. She’s the sister I’ve never had, and never really knew I wanted. Cora’s the opposite of me in so many ways: overly affectionate—to the point of making things uncomfortable—steadfastly loyal, and she’s got a crazy good sense of style that everyone seems to appreciate. Cora is all of the things I’m not. Including easily infatuated.

  “Ran is a hot piece of meat. What’s his story?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, but it’s a complete lie. I do know his story. He’d given me a very precise, one paragraph summary of it over our awkward lunch date. I’m just not quite sure how his story fits into mine. “He’s the paramedic that took me to the hospital the night of the accident.”

  Cora’s green eyes pull open. “That was two months ago, Mags. And he’s still smitten with you?”

  “First of all, the 1950’s called and they want their word back,” I tease, pulling my hand from hers so I can resume my nervous hoodie-drawstring-tugging. “Second, I saw him again two weeks ago when Mikey went to the ER.”

  “How many times has this hottie come to your rescue?” she asks, twirling her gum around her finger this time rather than her hair.

  “Two times too many.”

  Cora turns to face me, her eyes surveying me head to toe. “I think the fact that he came to your house and still took you out after seeing you dressed in that ratty sweatshirt and those faded jeans proves he’s into you, Maggie.” Her gaze scans me once more. “Believe me, this is not you at your best.”

  I tug the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head, almost wishing the act would drown out Cora’s incessant chatter, but no such luck. She continues for the next hour—and the entire duration of our car ride back to Davis—talking about how I need to get some and ‘how long has it been since Brian, anyway?’ I tuned her out somewhere around exit 46B and forced myself to focus on other things while I faked sleeping in the passenger seat of her daddy’s BMW.

  Unfortunately, the only images I could summon on the underside of my eyelids belonged to Ran: his nice face, lips, and newly discovered body art. Every time I closed my eyes, it was Ran I saw in my head. And it was his voice I heard rattling around in my brain, not Cora’s much too high tenor that sounded like it belonged to an eight-year-old girl.

  “Maggie?” Something pushes my shoulder and my head wobbles unsteadily. “Maggie, we’re here.”

  I blink rapidly, forcing the lingering effects of sleep away, and unbuckle my seatbelt. “Yeah. Yeah, I see.”

  Slipping out of my seat, I unlock the passenger door. Cora’s already out of the car and pulling open the lid of the trunk to withdraw my suitcase from inside it.

  “Sawyer!” She calls out to a black haired boy I recognize from one of the frat parties we’d attended the first week of school. “Help Maggie with her bags.”

  Sawyer jogs over to us and scoops my luggage out of Cora’s grip. “Hey Maggie. Glad you’re back.” He flashes me a pearly smile, though his bottom lip is packed with dip.

  “That crap will give you cancer, Sawyer,” Cora scolds, hiking her designer purse up her shoulder. Her three-inch heels click across the asphalt as she walks.

  “Not the kind that will kill you.” The three of us skirt around the mad rush of bicycles and students scurrying across campus. For
a Saturday, it’s unusually jam-packed.

  “Any kind of cancer can kill you, moron.” Cora gives me a sympathetic look, but I wave her off. If coming back to school means being on the receiving end of insincere empathy and false compassion, then I’m ready to hop back in Cora’s car to drive ninety miles straight in the opposite direction. I came back to Davis to escape all that I’d left at home, pity being one of those many things.

  “Sorry, Maggie. I heard about your brother.”

  “It’s fine.” I hobble into the entry of our dorm lobby, wishing my stupid leg would stop giving me such grief. I know the original injury was bad, but I figured I’d be patched up and good as new by now.

  The three of us ride the elevator to the fifth floor, and I’m grateful when Sawyer offers to carry my belongings all the way into our room. It’s taking all of my effort to walk without a noticeable limp, and being weighed down by a suitcase full of clothing probably wouldn’t make that any easier to do.

  “You’ll be in O-Chem on Monday?” he asks, setting my bag onto my bed against the far wall. Our room isn’t big; Cora had arrived on campus a day before me and claimed the half closest to the long stretch of windows, leaving the bed against the cold, cinderblock wall for me. I didn’t complain at all, because truth be told, I’d figured I wouldn’t actually be spending much time in our dorm. I had assumed I’d be sleeping most nights over at Brian’s off-campus apartment. How wrong I’d been in that assumption.

  “No.” I shake my head and unzip the luggage, pulling out my clothing and walking to the closet with them in hand. “I had to drop all my classes this quarter. All but Anthro—Professor Long did me a huge favor with that one.”

  “Well, if you end up taking O-Chem again next quarter, chances are we can be lab partners because I’m currently failing.” Sawyer flashes another award winning smile, then reaches for an empty red cup on Cora’s desk and spits into it, throwing away any of the charm he might previously have exuded.