Page 66 of The Cadence
Kirsten pointed toward the police cars and gave a recap of the incident, highlighting her own heroics with the pepper spray and how she’d practically carried me out of the building after incapacitating the pervert. It was true that once he was down, screaming and moaning, she had also kicked him in the balls before we’d run outside.
Will listened to the story but he didn’t respond. “You need ice,” he said, looking at my face.
“She had some before. I’ll get more,” Kirsten announced, and sauntered toward the ambulance. She’d already let me know that one of the EMTs was really cute, but they were too busy to talk to her and too professional as well. They’d had to treat several people besides the fetish guy, who was now on his way to getting booked. Fortunately, there hadn’t been a lot of other customers, but everyone who had been inside the building was suffering from stinging eyes and a cough. The store was closed, so I had the rest of the day off.
“What really happened?” he asked me. “I’d like to hear the truth instead of tall tales from Kirsten.”
“She did help a lot,” I answered. “She emptied her whole canister onto his face.” Then I told him a more balanced versionof the eggplant event. As I talked, he gently stroked the place where I’d gotten whacked.
“Here you go,” Kirsten butted in, and pushed a cold pack toward my face. He intercepted it and placed it carefully against my cheek. “It’s so lucky that I had the pepper spray. My dad got it for me for my birthday last summer. He said that since I was legally an adult, I could stop sneaking off to The City and do it more safely,” she explained, but then quickly corrected herself. “I actually go there all the time. I actually live there.”
I caught something else, though. “You were legally an adult last summer?” I asked her. “Does that mean you turned eighteen and you’re nineteen now? You’re still a teenager.”
“I’m close enough to twenty that it counts,” she assured me. “It’s basically the same.” Then her head whipped to the right and she smiled. “Cully came! I told him that I saved you and that we almost died.”
She skipped off to the parking lot’s perimeter where he was trying to convince the officers to let him pass. The two of them had a very emotional and also very physical reunion that started to resemble what they did next to the loading dock. In not too long, all eyes in the parking lot were directed toward them, including those of the emergency personnel.
Except for one pair of eyes. Will continued to look at me, and he still carefully held the cold pack. “This is going to bruise. What should we do to make sure that guy stays in jail?”
I explained how incarceration worked, since the Bodines hadn’t experienced many brushes with the law (no matter what theymight have done to deserve them). “He’ll be out soon enough, but I heard one of the police officers mention that they ran his name and saw that he had warrants out of Nevada. Everybody has warrants,” I said.
“I’ve never known anyone with warrants.”
“You may have been hanging out with the wrong people,” I told him, and he said maybe so, but he was happy to be in a warrant-free crowd.
We were able to leave, and we went together in his car because my eyes were still bothering me. “That was crazy,” I said as we pulled into the garage. I was very, very glad to be…and it was at that moment when I realized that it was home. It was the place where I felt most comfortable and secure, just like I had at my grandma’s house. The ladies from church had been correct that it didn’t take too much time for you to feel like you belonged somewhere.
Will was watching me again. “Your eyes just got—"
“I’m tearing up from the pepper spray,” I explained. “I need to wash them out again.”
I took a shower and changed clothes, too, and put what I’d been wearing into the nice machine in the laundry room. When I came out, he held a grilled cheese sandwich on a tray along with a glass of milk.
“I thought you might want this,” he told me, but then frowned. “Now I know it’s not from the pepper spray. You’re crying.” He put down the sandwich and strode across the kitchen to hug me again. “It was scary, honey, but it’s ok.”
It seemed stupid to admit that I had been crying over the fact that he’d made me a sandwich, so I nodded. And what had happened at the store did sound kind of funny, but it had been frightening. That guy hadn’t been playing around and I was glad for Kirsten and her spray. I suddenly had the thought that I’d better tell Cully that she was younger than he might have believed, but I decided that it could wait.
Will loosened his arms. “Come eat your sandwich,” he said, and he guided me over to the couch. There were pretty pillows on it now from Annie, but it was still big and comfortable and he sat next to me and watched as I took a bite.
“Crying is probably good for my eyes,” I noted. “It clears them out.”
“I don’t want you to,” he said. “I don’t want you to cry. Would you feel better if I went and killed that mother—”
“No, I wouldn’t,” I interrupted, and further stopped this line of thought by holding half the sandwich to his mouth. “Take a bite. You need it too, because this probably made you very anxious.”
“I needed to get to you,” he agreed. “The head of security at the stadium came running onto the field and said I was excused from practice.”
“The head of security can do that?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Lyle has been there for a long time, and he has a lot of sway with the coaches and the rest of the team hierarchy. They listen to him.” He took another bite. “This is good. You eat the rest.”
“I’m happy to share.”
“Let me take care of you and not the other way around,” he said sternly.
Like how he had carted me off to a new home, and given me money and a job? “I’m not taking care of you. I just wanted you to enjoy the grilled cheese,” I answered.
“You always do that. If it was raining when I came to tutor you, you used to take my wet coat and hang it over the heater. You always got me a big glass of water so I would be well-hydrated.”
