He had called a few times in the last couple of days, but I put them out of my mind. I didn’t even listen to them.
“Yes,” I lie. “You can’t be here, Cal. The restraining order is still in effect.”
Slowly, I inch my way back to the counter. I try to think where I had left my gun. It must still be in my purse. I don’t think I’ve ever taken it out. But it’s still not loaded! And I’ve only tried to load it a couple of times. I’m not sure I could do it on the fly. There’s always bluffing. Truman believed you. And he’s a CIA agent. Cal will have to believe you. I just have to get to my purse.
“I know. I’m very sorry about that,” Cal whispers. Every inch that he gets closer to the front counter, Cal makes up by taking one big step closer to me.
“Where are you going Avery?” he asks, running his fingers over my arm. My skin feels like it turns into reptilian skin at his touch. I can’t stand it.
“Cal, you can’t be here,” I turn to face him, shrugging his hands off me. “You need to leave.”
“I don’t want to, Avery.”
I sense something different about him. He looks more menacing than before. Determined even. I smell alcohol on his breath. When I feel like I’m close enough, I reach for my purse, which is behind the counter. But it’s too far away. Cal puts his hands on both of my shoulders and pushes my arms around his neck.
“Let go of me!” I say and push him away. He wobbles away and then reaches into the front pocket of his jacket.
“It’s time that we stop playing games, Avery,” Cal says, pulling out a handgun. I freeze. My eyes focus on the size of the gun – it’s much bigger than mine. And I’m pretty certain that it’s loaded. My heart starts to beat a mile a minute. I take one deep breath after another, trying to calm myself down. Think, I say to myself.
“What do you want, Cal?” I ask. Think. Think. But nothing comes to mind.
“I want you to come with me,” he waves the gun toward the front door. I shake my head, no.
“Do you not see this gun, Avery?” Cal says louder. “Let’s go.”
I shake my head no, again. I remember what I heard a detective say on Dateline once. Never get into a car even if the perpetrator is waving a gun at you. It’s much harder for anyone to find you once you get into the car.
“If you’re going to shoot me, then you can do it here. I’m not going to get into any car with you.”
Cal narrows his eyes.
“Why do you have to make everything so difficult, Avery? Don’t you know that if you had just forgiven me for doing that and not gone to the cops everything would have been fine? But no, you have to be independent. You want to know another word for an independent woman that’s much more applicable? Difficult. And you want to know another one? Bitch.”
My mind races as he babbles on, trying to come up with some sort of plan. I can grab the gun out of my purse and bluff him. But if he shoots me…I can’t very well shoot him back. I can try to make a run for it out of the front door, but he will most likely catch me. And I’ll be that much closer to his car. Then it hits me. I should dial 911 and hope that they can figure out what’s going on. In the meantime, I need to get him to continue talking. After I call 911, I can try to hit him with something.
“I’m not difficult, Cal. We just aren’t right for each other. Why can’t you see that?”
Questions always start him up on tirades, and this one is no different. As he goes into all the reasons as to why we are right for each other, I inch my way toward the back of the counter, reach into my purse and search around for my phone with my fingers. I turn it on. Slide off the lock screen. Click the button for making calls, which is in the lower left hand corner. Okay. Now, which one is the keypad? I try to remember what the screen looks like while maintaining eye contact with Cal so that he doesn’t get suspicious. The fourth one over, I decide and press it. With one click glance, I look at my phone and then back at him. Yes! I’m on the right screen. Now, all I have to do is dial the right numbers. There are three across and four down. I carefully count until I reach the number 9. I quickly click the number 1 twice. The green send button is at the bottom of the screen. I press it and wait.
Cal continues to babble. I nod and agree with everything he says.
“911, what is your emergency?” I faintly hear someone say on the line.
“So you see what I mean, Avery?” Cal asks.
“Yes, I do Cal. And I agree with you. Just please put down the gun,” I say as loudly as I can without drawing suspicion from him.
“Ma’am. Where are you?” the faint voice from phone asks. Please, don’t hear it, I pray. Please, please, Cal. Don’t hear the voice.
“Cal, I still don’t understand why you’re here. Waving a gun in my face. In my floral shop. In Topanga Canyon,” I say. I debate whether I should say the name of my place and that it’s on Topanga Boulevard, but I decide that it might draw too much attention from him. I’m the only floral shop here, hopefully they can find it. “You’re going to be in trouble, Cal. You can’t be here threatening me with a gun, asking me to go into your car with you. I have a restraining order against you.”
“Someone’s on their way, ma’am,” the woman says.
Okay, now for the other part of the plan. I have to get that gun out of his hand somehow. What can I knock him out with?
Cal starts talking again. About how unfair I was in getting a restraining order against him. His keeps putting his hand down and holding up his elbow with the other for support.
“Cal, why don’t you put that gun down?” I ask. “It’s getting heavy holding it like that? Isn’t it?”
“No!” He extends the gun toward me in defiance. Just at that moment, I grab the heavy three-hole punch from behind the counter and hit his hand with it. The gun comes flying out and lands on the other side of the shop.
He grabs his hand and winces in pain. I hit him with the hole-punch upside the head. He falls to the floor. I run to the other side of the shop to get the gun, but it’s missing. It’s not anywhere on the floor. It must’ve hit the wall and landed somewhere among the flowers. We keep all uncut flowers in big round metal vases. I search behind all the vases, but I still can’t find the gun. What the hell is going on? How could it just disappear?
Thump.
I crash to the floor. It takes me a second to figure out what’s going on. Cal pulled my ankles from under me and I fell straight to the ground. Another second later, he’s on top of me. Blood from his head is dripping onto my face. He presses his body onto mine. I can’t move. He has gained even more weight since the last time I saw him. I try to push him back, but he pins my arms behind me. He presses his lips onto mine. My stomach turns from the iron taste of his blood. When he pulls away from me, I spit into his face. He just laughs.
Finally, I break one of my legs free from under him. The other one moves over to the center of his body. I force my knee in between his legs and knee him as hard as I can in the balls. He winces in pain. I push him away, get up and get away, but he grabs me and pulls me back. Suddenly, he’s on top of me again. This time, he has his hands around my throat. I can’t breathe. His face gets more and more blurry. A few seconds later, the whole world starts to fade away.
Then he releases his hands. I struggle to breathe.
“I’m going to keep doing this, Avery. Over and over again. Until you agree to come with me like a good girl.”
I barely hear him. I manage to catch some air in my lungs. Blood starts to flow through me again. Suddenly, I feel something that’s digging into my front jean pocket. A pen!
Cal is lying on top of me and leaning to one side of me. Luckily, it’s not the side with the pen.
“Well, what do you say?” Cal says showing me one of his hands. Threatening me with them again, but I don’t even process the threat. Instead, I focus all of my mental energies in getting that pen out of my pocket. It’s facing cap down. I knock the cap off and pull the pen out, hiding it in my hand.
; “Fuck you,” I say, wrapping my hand firmly around the pen. He pounces toward my neck again, grabbing it in both hands, but before he gets the chance to squeeze, I stick the pen into his neck. Blood squirts in all directions.
“You bitch!” Cal yells out and grabs at the pen. When he pulls it out, I get covered in a waterfall of blood. I close my eyes. When I open them again, Cal is off me. I pull myself up to my feet and rub my eyes. Someone is punching him in the stomach and the face. The man, whose shadow looks familiar, gets behind Cal and puts his head in a headlock. He twists it and Cal falls to the floor.
Somewhere in the distance, I hear sirens. The cops are finally here. When the man turns around, I take one look at his face and my legs refuse to hold me up anymore. I slide back down to the ground.
* * *
When I open my eyes again, paramedics are crowding around me.
“She’s conscious!” one of them yells out. Suddenly, Logan appears above me.
“What are you…?” I try to ask. My voice is raspy. I cough and sit up.
“Careful,” one of the paramedics advises me.
“I’m okay,” I say to them. “Really.”
“Where is the bleeding coming from?” Someone asks, checking me for holes.
“This isn’t my blood,” I say. “It’s Cal’s.”
They don’t believe me. They feel me up and down before they are satisfied.
One of the police officers pulls Logan away from me to ask him some questions. Another one talks to me. After the paramedics wrap me in a warm, grey blanket and give me a bottle of water to drink, I tell them what happened. Every single detail of what had happened this afternoon is burned into my mind. I’m pretty certain that it’s going to stay there forever.
An hour later, one of the detectives brings me a cup of tea and I drink it, sitting on the stoop outside the shop. Since I refused to go to the hospital, the second ambulance leaves empty. The first one left almost immediately with Cal, who is apparently not dead but in critical condition. When he left, he was losing a lot of blood (thanks to me), and his neck was probably broken (thanks to Logan).
“Thank you very much for all of your help, Officer,” Logan says walking outside with one of the detectives. This is the first time I get a very good look at him. I still can’t believe that he’s alive and actually standing here in front of me.
“Let me know if any of us can do anything else,” Logan adds.
“We’ll be in touch.” The detectives give us their cards, and all four police cars leave the parking lot.
Logan and I watch them drive away.
“What are you doing here?” I ask as soon as they disappear out of sight. “How are you still alive?”
“Avery, I need to tell you something. What you saw on the beach that night—“
“Truman was here,” I interrupt him. “He told me that you worked for him. He told me that you are an agent.”
Logan takes a step back. It’s almost as if he can’t believe his ears.
“Truman told you that?”
“He was here. He was really worried about you. I’m so, so sorry that I screamed like that. I just saw what you were doing and I thought you were…” I can’t bear to finish the sentence.
“A murderer?”
I nod.
“And I freaked out. I was so scared. And then when Truman came here and told me what you actually do…and that you were missing. He said that you were dead, Logan.”
“I was, pretty much. They thought that I was when they dropped my body off in the jungle. But then these two kids found me, and their mom cared for my wounds, and brought me back to life. I would’ve died for sure if it weren’t for her and those kids.”
I nod, trying to process what he’s saying, but it’s all a bit too much.
“Would you mind doing me a favor?” Logan asks. I nod. “Would you mind driving me back to my house? My wounds aren’t all entirely healed, and that was a little too much activity for me.”
He lifts up his shirt a little and I see the stitches on his stomach.
“Oh my God,” I gasp.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be okay,” he says, taking me into his arms. “As long as I can kiss you again.”
I nod and smile. He presses his lips against mine and the world fades away.
Chapter 30 - Logan
One Year Later.
* * *
Dressed in a little yellow polka dot bikini, Avery walks a little bit ahead of me, carrying her surfboard. This has become something of a tradition of ours ever since she moved in. Even though I’ve seen her dressed like this almost every single day, it takes all of my strength not to pull on those little strings holding up her top and wait for her to yelp and run into my arms. Though going surfing every morning has become something of a tradition, today is different. I have a surprise waiting for her at breakfast, and I’m a nervous wreck. My palms are sweaty. My breathing is sped up. As I make my way into the cold waves, I take a moment to reflect on everything that has happened since that fateful day.
When Avery drove me home that evening, she never really left. I asked her to stay the night and then another night and another. After hiring a staff of cleaning people to put her floral shop back in place, so that there was no sign of what had happened there, her friend Cynthia stepped up and ran the place until Avery was ready to go back. Within a week of her staying with me, I knew that I wanted her to stay with me forever. So I asked her to move in. She was shocked, of course, crinkling her nose in that cute way she does when she looks at me like I’m crazy.
“This won’t be good for our relationship,” she said. “We’re moving too fast.”
“There are no rules for our kind of relationship. I don’t think we’re moving too fast, but if you do, then we can stop.”
“No, I don’t want to,” she said and kissed me. It didn’t take much more coaxing after that before she brought all of her clothes over and took up one small dresser in my walk-in closet. That’s when I knew that she’ll definitely need more clothes.
Much to my dismay, Cal ended up living. He was in a coma for a few months as a result of Avery and her ingenious pen trick. Unfortunately, I was the one who had fucked up. I didn’t have enough strength to actually break his neck, so I only managed to paralyze him. He’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and from what I’ve heard, he also has severe memory loss. My hope is that he has completely forgotten about Avery. Regardless, Avery has filed charges, and he’ll stand trial as soon as he’s a little better.
My own recovery is going pretty well. My leg has healed completely. The scar on my stomach is almost entirely gone. I only occasionally feel some pain around my stomach if I move too fast on my surfboard. I’m not sure that my injuries would’ve been enough to get me out of work for more than a month or two, but thanks to Avery and her big mouth, I’m out of the CIA. (She told Dolly that I was an agent and that I was dead and Dolly in turn told practically everyone else in my family). So, I’m finally a free man.
We surf most of the morning and then head back exhausted, but rejuvenated. Avery jumps into the shower while I chitchat with Marilyn in the kitchen. Sanchez is dead, and the elected president has returned from exile and is running the country again. After Sanchez’s death, after the prisoners from all those illegal prison camps were released, the world learned about all the atrocities that he committed against his people. We didn’t even know half of them. Marilyn couldn’t be happier – she’s practically skipping. She’s no longer worried night and day about her family members, and it makes me feel good that I’ve done something to put that smile on her face again.
“So, are you ready?” Marilyn asks. She knows what I’m up to.
“Nervous,” I say.
“Oh don’t be. That girl loves you!” she waves her hand dismissively.
I go into the bedroom and change into a pair of linen pants. I dig through the top drawer for the box that I’ve hidden there and put it in my front pocket.
�
�Hey,” Avery says coming out of the bathroom. She’s dressed in a light summer dress. Her hair is dripping onto the floor and she looks radiant.
“Ready for breakfast?” I ask as casually as possible. She nods and follows me out onto the patio. As we walk, I finger the delicate clasp of the leather of the box in my pocket.
On the patio, we are greeted by a beautiful set table with a white tablecloth and a platter of cut up fruit. Another platter has toasted bagels, pastries and danishes.
“Wow, this looks amazing, Marilyn!” Avery yells back to the kitchen.
“I know,” I mumble.
“What’s the special occasion?” she asks rhetorically, sitting down. “A white table cloth even. Marilyn’s definitely in a mood, isn’t she?”
Avery flashes a smile and reaches for the cut up watermelon. I place my hand on her hand and stop her.
“Before we start, I want to say something to you.”
“Okay,” she says carefully.
“I was just reflecting the other day on how wonderful this year has been for us. I never thought that I would ever want to have anyone sleep in my bedroom night after night, let alone move in with me. Until I met you.”
Avery’s eyes twinkle in the sunlight.
“And then, after you moved in, I kept waiting for this bliss to wear off. It couldn’t last, I said to myself. People can’t actually be this happy all the time.”
She smiles with her whole face. The sun wraps her in a warm glow, placing a halo around her head.
“I know, I’m pretty happy too,” she says.
“But time passed. I kept waiting for things to get worse – for you to tire of me, for me to get bored with you – but it never happened. I love you, Avery. And now I know that I always will love you.”
“I love you, too, Logan.”
I get the box out of my pocket and get down on one knee in front of her. Her eyes get round and she gasps.
“Will you marry me?” I ask, opening the ring box before her.
“Yes, yes, yes!” she screams out. I barely get the ring on her ring finger before she wraps her arms around me.
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