Cornered

by Ariana Gael

  “Angela, really. I just have work to do, I’m not going anywhere. I need to check out this catalog for Marjorie and make sure every description is accurate.” She pointed to the magazine in her hand with her highlighter, just to make her point.

  “Don’t give me that ‘I have to work’ stuff, I was there. I saw you two. And trust me, babe, sparks were flying. There was definitely heat between you two.”

  “There were no sparks, Angela, heated or otherwise. He’s a very nice person who came to my rescue...”

  “Twice,” Angela interrupted with a smug look on her face.

  “...fine. Twice. But that’s all. The last thing I need is to get caught up with some other guy. I haven’t even heard from Daniel yet, so there’s no telling how messy that’s gonna be. I certainly don’t need to drag Lars into my drama.”

  “Michelle, c’mon. You are the least drama-inducing person I know. Now come on, let’s get your things together and get a cab.” Angela looked around for Michelle’s shoes, checking her watch and doing a quick calculation about when their trains would leave.

  “Really, I can’t go. I’m too busy. Just go on without me.”

  “Too busy to visit your poor mother and your decrepit father? The people who gave you life?” Angela clutched at her chest, doing her best made-for-TV movie impersonation. “What with your mother in that wheelchair...”

  “My mom isn’t in a wheelchair. She ran a 10K last week with her running group.”

  “...and your father needing that kidney transplant...”

  “Now you’re just being weird.”

  “I just don’t see how you can bring yourself to stay away.” She put the back of one hand to her forehead and swooned, collapsing against the doorframe to the bedroom like a silent film star.

  “Have you seen my face?” Michelle asked, as though the answer was obvious. She pointed to the bruise that had only lightened to an ugly green and yellow pattern.

  “Yeah? So. Your parents didn’t do it, and they want to see you.”

  “Right, but then I’d have to tell them what happened. I don’t think my dad’s heart can take it.” She turned back to the catalog she’d borrowed from work and continued reading.

  “Shell, you can’t really have a heart attack just from hearing bad news. That’s only on the movies.”

  “I know. I meant, I don’t think my dad’s heart can take going after Daniel and trying to kill him. Trust me, I’m doing all of us a favor. I’m sure it’ll look fine by next week. Besides, I’ve already told my mom I had to do something for work. So, I’m doing it, I didn’t lie. It’s for the best.”

  Angela walked into the cramped room and sat down on Brooke’s bed, across from Michelle and facing her. Michelle wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  “You still haven’t told your dad, have you?” she asked quietly, the tiniest hint of accusation mixed with very real concern in her voice.

  Michelle sighed. “What do you think?”

  “I think you wanted to tell him, but then you chickened out, chica.”

  “Well, you know me! Won’t stand up for myself, and certainly won’t tell my dad something horrible and let him go running off on some noble crusade to save his daughter’s honor.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Angela said, seething. “Don’t you dare reduce this to something about ‘honor.’ There was nothing honorable about what happened to you. That man’s a pig and he took your whole life from you. And you not telling your dad and acting like this is some awful secret that you brought on yourself is the worst part of it, even worse than what he did.”

  “You know I don’t like talking about this,” Michelle warned.

  “Then it’s a good thing you don’t have to talk about it. You can just listen. I care about you, Michelle, and so do a lot of other people. But this thing that happened to you has changed your whole life, and you let it. You let that guy win. Instead of having to face up to what he did and face you on campus, he won because you just disappeared. And now, you hide in total silence instead of calling him out on it.”

  “What’s done is done, Angela. There’s no point in going over it again and again. It happened. He did win,” Michelle whispered.

  “Yeah, honey, I know. But the problem is he gets to win every single day. Every time you sit in this apartment instead of grabbing onto life, and every time you date a loser like Daniel because you think he’s the only kind of guy who would have you, that man wins all over again. He’s not done attacking you because you won’t make him stop.”

  Michelle physically jerked at Angela’s words, feeling the true sting of their meaning.

  “I swear to you I will never say these things again. You don’t need that. You know what to do, and no amount of talk from other people is going to make you change things. You have to do that for yourself. But you are too amazing to let this keep you down, to keep you from becoming who you want to be. It happened. Now own it, close the door on it, and get out there and live your life.” Angela stood up and kissed Michelle on the top of her head, wrapping her arms around her for a long moment. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lars held the piece of paper so long that it had started to wilt from the sweat on his hands, small smudges of grease coloring its edges. After what it took to get this information, he was afraid to put it in his pocket.

  The way she’d looked at him when he’d asked for her number—under the entertained expressions of her two roommates, who did a lousy job of pretending not to pay attention to them—almost made him chuck the paper in the trash on his way out of her building. She’d done everything but ask him why he wanted it and what he intended to do with it. The only reason she’d finally given it to him was because one of the roommates had coughed in a really obvious way, pretty much leaving her no choice.

  Lars fought with wanting to call her and wanting to just leave her alone, since that’s pretty much the message she’d sent when she scribbled it angrily on the back of a receipt that had been lying on the kitchen counter. Then again, he hadn’t gone to that much effort to just chicken out. It became a battle between who was going to get his way, the guy who was pretty much prodded into asking her out or the girl whose friends wouldn’t let it go.

  He dialed the number, half expecting it to be a fake.

  It rang several times before her cheerful voice came on, telling him to leave a message.

  Voicemail.

  Lars did his best to sound excited but not overeager, stating his name and asking Michelle to return his call. And then he waited.

  In her apartment, Michelle heard her phone ring in the kitchen where she’d left it on the charger. With both Brooke and Angela traveling this weekend, she hated to not answer. When she picked up the basic black phone, though, she didn’t recognize the number from the only missed call.

  What if Angela or Brooke is hurt, and someone is trying to let me know from a different phone? she asked herself, a worried frown on her face. But what if it’s Daniel, knowing that I won’t pick up if I see his number?

  Common sense won out over ex-boyfriend hatred. Michelle dialed the number on her screen and waited, nearly hanging up when she heard the deep male voice on the other end answer.

  “Michelle?”

  “Who is this?” she demanded angrily.

  “Who is it? You called me, don’t you know who it is?” Lars said, laughing at her.

  “No, I don’t know this number. I missed a call from you,” she answered curtly.

  She didn’t listen to the voicemail yet! Lars slapped his forehead, forgetting that Michelle didn’t have his number. Of course she wouldn’t know who this was! And now he’d made a great start to the conversation by getting smart with her. Everybody knew how much girls just loved it when a guy made them feel stupid.

  “I’m really sorry,” he began, already flustered. “This is Lars. From the tow truck.” Smooth. Really smooth.

  “Oh, yeah. Hi.”

  “Hi.” Wow, this was going so bad
ly. “I, um, wanted to call,” just get it over with, dummy, “and see if you wanted to get some lunch.”

  “With you?” she asked blankly.

  Wow, and her roommates had said she’d gone to college. “Yes, with me. Both of us. At the same time. At the same restaurant, in case that was your next question.”

  Instead of making her mad like Lars thought that comment would—Michelle laughed.

  She actually laughed.

  Lars high-fived his reflection in his small bathroom mirror, congratulating himself for the fact that he had amused her in some way instead of just pissing her off.

  But then there was silence.

  “Hello? Are you still there?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m just thinking.”

  “Okay. Let me know when you’re done. I’ll just go sit down while you think about it.”

  “You don’t have to be snippy about it. Yes, I would like to eat lunch, I’m just trying to figure out how much time I have. I brought some work home with me and I’m trying to figure out how long I need to finish it.”

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you’d be working. It’s okay, maybe we can do it some other time.” This had to have been the single most embarrassing conversation Lars had ever had while asking a woman on a date. He wasn’t cocky, but usually girls were eager enough to get to know him. How did he end up with the one person on the planet who would rather work than eat food with him? There had to be something else to it, so it was probably better to get out while he could.

  “No, it’s okay. I mean, I can finish later. Where should we meet?” Michelle finally asked.

  “I can come get you if you...”

  “No.”

  “Okay then,” Lars said slowly, already regretting a date that hadn’t even started yet.

  “Did you have something in mind?”

  “I guess Vietnamese food is probably off the table, huh?” he joked.

  “Is that supposed to be funny?” Michelle asked in a biting tone.

  “Well, I thought it was going to be when it was still in my head, but no, now that you bring it up, I guess it wasn’t all that humorous.”

  “I’m just giving you a hard time, you are so easy to fool,” she said, laughing at what had to be the worst phone call Lars had taken in a long time. “Give me about ten minutes, and I’ll leave here. Do you want to meet at Timon’s on 48th Street?”

  “Yeah, I know that place! I’ll see you there.” Lars hung up, only mildly relieved that this girl seemed to come back around to normal towards the end. Hopefully the rest of the meal could be normal, too.

  But it was not to be.

  Lars waited patiently for Michelle for at least thirty minutes, only beginning to feel stupid towards the end. He thought about texting her phone to see what held her up but decided that looked really desperate. If she didn’t want to show up, she could have said so, but even he had to admit that her roommates had been a lot more gung-ho about the whole idea than she had. He was about to cut his losses and head home when the door to the restaurant opened and a hostess greeted Michelle with a smile. She led Michelle straight to Lars’ table, offering to refresh his drink while bringing something form the bar for her.

  “Oh no, I’ll just have water,” she answered too quickly. Great, she doesn’t even want to stick around long enough to eat, Lars thought miserably.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late, I had such a little bit of work left to finish that I really needed to do it right away. Please forgive me, I know I look like I didn’t even bother to comb my hair,” she said, only the way she said it, she didn’t sound like she was fishing for compliments the way some air-headed, shallow girls did. She really seemed to be apologizing for not looking her best.

  “No, I think you look great,” Lars said, before realizing too late that he sounded kind of stalkerish. “Your bruise is looking better. If I didn’t know how you’d gotten it, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed.”

  “Yeah, it’s fading. I’m glad, I don’t need anything at all to remind me of that whole situation,” she answered, fidgeting. Lars could tell she didn’t want to be talking about this, which only made him hate his next words all the more.

  “So, what exactly was that ‘whole situation,’ if you don’t mind my asking. I mean, you don’t have to talk about it, but...are you okay?” he asked.

  Michelle took a deep breath, trying to decide how much to tell. She stopped short of the whole truth by simply answering, “Well, it’s a situation that’s over with, how’s that? He was a stupid mistake, one that I only made because I was already at a pretty low point in my life. We’ve really been over with for a couple of months, but I just never really had the ambition to make that official.”

  Lars nodded thoughtfully, understanding that exact scenario all too well. He’d been in more than one relationship that had lasted way too long, mostly because neither person had the energy it took to actually end it.

  “So, tell me about yourself, if that’s not too cliché for a first date,” Michelle said, smiling genuinely. She drank her water and watched Lars, eager to listen to what he had to say.

  “I don’t guess there’s a whole lot to tell,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and looking down at the tablecloth. “I had a rough time of things in high school and went to work for Dante, you know, at the garage from the other night, and I pretty much been doing that since I started there.”

  “You mean you dropped out of school to work at the garage?”

  Lars looked up sharply, meeting her gaze to see if she was judging him before deciding that no, she seemed more curious than judgmental. “Actually, no. I thought about it plenty of times, don’t get me wrong, especially when I was trying to get free from the crowd I used to run with. They didn’t take too kindly to me not hanging with them anymore. No, I managed to finish in night school, just barely, but I do really well at Dante’s. He takes good care of the guys who really put an effort into it. But I gotta tell you,” he said, grinning a heart-stoppingly mischievous leer, “you almost cost me my job the other day.”

  “What did I do?” Michelle asked, blinking in surprise.

  “Dante’s the one who found your purse in the cab of the truck. He called me in and chewed me out good, threatening to fire me.”

  “I’m so sorry!” she gushed, leaning forward and wearing a pained expression.

  “It’s okay, he let me go when I explained...you know...what happened. But he made it really clear that there are no more joyrides in the truck!”

  Michelle was surprised at how easy it was to talk to Lars. He was warm and open, but genuinely interested in what she was saying. It had been such a long time since any guy had wanted to hear about her that she almost found herself letting too much information slip.

  “So, I don’t get it. You were in college, and just...quit?”

  “Well, you make it sound like I got distracted by a shiny object or something,” she said, rolling her eyes at his insinuation. “No, there were some...problems.”

  “What kind of problems could be so bad that you turn your back on a college diploma?” Lars asked, shocked.

  “Wow, you sound just like my dad.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to come out wrong, but I’m just...”

  “What?”

  “I guess I’m just confused.”

  “What’s confusing to you? It’s my education!” she retorted, halfway smiling and halfway accusing him.

  “Don’t take this wrong,” he began, watching as irritation colored her face, “but if I had the chance to go to school and be somebody, I wouldn’t let any ‘problems’ get in my way. Those ‘problems’ would have to be huge to make me give that up. Galactic-sized huge even.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but you don’t know all the details,” she answered quietly.

  “No, I don’t. But I’m trying to envision what kind of problems would make me let someone take my education from me. I did that once. I let other people influence me to the point th
at I almost ended up in jail instead of a graduation line. And I don’t let others have that kind of power over me anymore.”

  Michelle sat back against her seat, wanting desperately to get angry and to go home. She couldn’t do either of those things, though, because she knew that Lars, this man she’d met only a couple of times and had seen for a combined matter of only a few minutes, was right.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Michelle knocked loudly on the back door of the book dealership, waiting under another threatening sky for Marjorie to unlock the door and buzz her in. She went through the first door and pulled it locked behind her before pressing the buzzer on the second door, waiting again now that Marjorie knew that Michelle was safely inside the alcove and was alone.

  On her first day at work, she had wondered if the lady was possibly just a little bit crazy. Michelle lived in a decrepit walk-up over a bar, for pete’s sake, and she didn’t have nearly the security system in place that Marjorie had. But then, once Michelle started taking home some of the catalogs to proofread the descriptions, she got a firsthand look at the prices of the books that her quiet little company dealt in. It made Michelle nervous to even be in the room with the books, and made Marjorie’s strict policies of no food in the building and no pocketbooks allowed make more sense. Who knew, right?

  Marjorie had made it clear that her rules weren’t in any way a reflection of her opinion of Michelle, which was good because the first few rules were a little bit offensive. No purses in the main room? What, did she look like a thief? Once Marjorie explained that purses could easily knock a book off the counter top, or that something as tiny as a tube of lip gloss that got overheated and oozed could destroy a book’s value, the strict guidelines almost looked too lenient. After Michelle saw the market value of some of the titles, she invested in her own pair of white cotton gloves to wear while handling any of the books.

  “Good morning, Marjorie,” Michelle called to the white-haired woman in the office. “I finished proofreading these catalogs last night, I’ll just put them on the counter over here.” She placed the paperbound books on the counter then went to put her coat and purse in the closet before returning to the office.