“You weren’t getting it, so I thought a demonstration was in order,” he explained, and then stood back in the empty locker room and put his hands on his hips. How can he stand there so damn cool?
“Fuck you,” I snarled.
He ignored me. “So this is the Dragons space?” he mused, and then crossed to the cubby where our Captain, Alexandre ‘Simba’ Simard always sat, taking a seat and brushing at the crease in his perfectly pressed pants. Meanwhile, I was still bent over, my hands on my thighs, waiting for the adrenalin rush to dissipate, and fantasizing how I would get my stick and wrap it around his neck.
I straightened, and crossed to my own cubby, two down from Simba, picking up my backpack, and hoisting it onto my shoulder, wishing my sticks were where I could get at them. Then I had this strange image of him picking up his own stick and us dueling in the locker room, but that would end in tears.
“We can go,” I said, then waited at the door, gesturing for him to go through first.
“He learns,” I heard Jason mutter, and then before I could even think of a comeback, he was tugging me through the open door and into the hallway. “I open doors, you walk through,” he pointed out.
“Fuck you.” I didn’t know what I expected in response but his snort of laughter wasn’t it.
“Let’s get you home,” he said.
“I can get myself home…” Why was I even bothering to argue and defend myself as being capable. Someone out there was messing with my life, and obstructing someone’s help was a waste of everyone’s time. “Okay, fuck this.” I strode down the long corridor, the door to the locker room shutting behind us, and then he caught up and overtook me at the next door.
By the time we made it out to the final exit from the building and to player parking, we’d gotten into the dance of it all, but it struck me that this man was walking into rooms first, and I hadn’t actually seen if he was armed. Did he have a gun under that fancy jacket? And if he did, why wasn’t there a bulge? Unless, of course, he kept the gun tucked into his pants.
He stopped me at the final door and held out a hand. “Keys please,” he said.
I blinked at him. “Now wait a minute.”
“I’ll get the car.”
I gaped at him, because my beloved 1970 scarlet and black Mustang, now with the words that had been carved into it all painted and polished out, was my baby. No one drove it except me. Not even Kyle or Bobby.
“It’s okay,” I began.
He shook his head and pointed upward. “Snipers,” he said.
I closed my hands around the keys in my pocket. “What?”
“On the roof, with guns pointing at you.”
I swallowed my fear. “How did you get from flowers and notes to snipers?”
“Just doing my job, Mr. Howell.”
My internal battle was a mix of impatience, disbelief, anger, and distress that anyone was going to get behind the wheel of my car, but he wasn’t budging, and finally I handed him the keys.
“It’s the red—”
“Mustang. I know.”
“Don’t burn out of the space, treat her carefully. The clutch is difficult and it’s a stick shift. Can you even drive stick shift?” I wanted to explain that finding her with the sides all scratched had been way worse than getting shoved face-first into a wall by the dead-bird-guy, but some things were best left unsaid.
He closed his fist around the keys and nodded. “I can. Stay here.” He headed outside, and wasn’t exactly looking up and around, checking for snipers, or whatever it was bodyguards did, and he didn’t appear to be in any great hurry, but what did I know? Everything was catching up to me, and the thought of the irritating, bossy, asshole bodyguard protector guy who was going to be all up in my space, made my head spin. I couldn’t see my car from there, but even through the glass door I could hear her start. The throaty growl of the Mustang brought a smile to my face even in the middle of everything else.
I’d wanted this car since I was five, when my dad, during one of his rare lucid times, had brought home a tiny Matchbox duplicate and explained it was the best car ever made. From experience, the 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 had an unpredictable clutch, she didn’t do so well in the cold, and sometimes she handled like a bus, but I think I got where he was coming from. When I drove her she was an extension of me, and I would feel the safest and most secure when I was sitting in the driving seat. Okay, so she cost me in gas. And also, how much longer I’d be able to drive her when I was trying to be a responsible grown-up about environmental issues, was open for debate. But for now she was mine, and there was someone else out there probably kangaroo-hopping up the road to this door.
Contrary to my worries, when he pulled up it was smooth, and when he gestured for me to come out, I noticed he didn’t climb out of the driver’s side, but the creeping doubt about snipers on the roof outweighed my need to argue the toss. He headed out of the parking area, pausing at security to talk to Marvin on the gate, a tall stocky man with an intense expression who never once failed in his mission to make everyone’s lives awkward. Of course, if we all remembered our security passes then it wouldn’t be an issue, but I mean, he knew us yet he loved riding us and telling us we couldn’t go in.
There was none of that with Jason though, in fact, Marvin and Jason were having what sounded like a love-in about security issues, and when we left Marvin even called Jason sir. I guessed he was deferring to Jason with respect, but in all honesty I wasn’t there yet with the whole respect thing because I still hadn’t forgiven him for the pen at the throat incident.
“You want to give me directions?” he asked after joining the freeway heading west out of town.
“I thought you knew everything?” Great, now I sounded like a six-year-old. This shit needed to stop now.
“I know your address, there’s no GPS, and my phone is in my pocket, so uhmmm… yeah, directions would be good.”
“Take the next exit, and I’ll talk you through it.” We fell into silence, but it wasn’t comfortable, or at least, he might have felt good, but I had questions. “So I take it you’re not from around here?”
“What gave it away?” He checked his mirror then indicated to take the exit.
“Your accent is definitely Canadian, and you don’t know your way around Burlington.”
“Nope.”
“Left from here, then stay straight until I tell you to stop.”
The worst thing about arriving back at my apartment and driving into the underground parking was the fact that Jason guessed my code and got it right first time. I don’t know what was more annoying, the fact that I was useless and had clearly left my life exposed to everybody, or the fact that he was just too damn clever for his own good.
“I’m going to change the codes to everything.”
“That’s probably a good idea.”
We walked to the elevator, and this was where I knew I had him, because there was no code to open the doors, but a card instead. I pulled it out of my wallet and smiled at the thought that at least I had control over who came up to the fifth floor.
My pleasure at this stupid simple thing didn’t last very long when he took out his phone and waved it in front of the identifier and it too was recognized.