“Really. I have a witness; what do you have?” I shot back, trying to ignore him as I grabbed the shrimp, scallops, snow crab clusters, red snapper, and cod we planned to cook this week.
Expensive, maybe, if we were getting other meats too, but neither of us was fond of pork and rarely ate chicken or beef, so seafood, eggs, peanut butter, and mushrooms were our biggest protein sources, along with the cans of tuna we made our lunch sandwiches and cucumber boats with, since we weren’t a fan of lunch meat either. We could afford to be picky as long as we stayed within budget and our G-strings stayed full.
“An old man who’s a cop,” he replied, stopping me cold.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“Figured that would get your attention.”
“You’re an asshole, so make it quick so I can get the hell away from you,” I snapped.
“Do you know what the sentence is for assault with a deadly weapon?”
“What fucking weapon?”
“The one I’m going to tell my old man he hit me with if you don’t show up at this address Friday night.”
“I work Fridays.”
“Then I guess you’d better figure a way out of it then or hope you wiggle that ass enough to pay to get him out on bail while heawaits trial,” the asshole said. “By the time I’m done telling the judge and jury what he did to me, they’ll probably slap him with a five-year sentence.”
“By the time you’re done lying, you mean.”
“Do you really want to take the chance of them believing you two over me?”
“You can forget about me showing up anywhere,” I snarled. “You go ahead and file false charges on him, and I’ll file real charges on you, backed up by the security tape showing you smacking my ass in the club as well as multiple eyewitnesses, including the bouncer who kicked your ass to the curb. Go ahead and try me, dickhead, and I’ll add a harassment complaint too, since I know for a fact that this store has video cameras. In fact, I think I’ll go find the manager right now and ask him to pull the footage of you approaching me in the aisle and following me over here, so I have proof that you are the one who has repeatedly sought me out.”
As if to make my point, I made a beeline for the manager’s office, hands gripping the cart handle so hard I knew there would be an imprint of it in my palms when I finally let go. Fortunately, Murry and I had been shopping in this store for years, so the manager knew me and was so concerned that after he sent the footage to my phone and set it aside for law enforcement in case it was needed, he had the store’s security guard escort me to my bike when I was finished shopping, just in case the bastard was outside waiting for me. I sent the video straight to Phoenix along with a brief rundown of what had taken place before loading our groceries in the oversized backpack I’d strapped to the sissy bars, pissed as hell by the time I made it back to the apartment.
As I carried the backpack up the steps of our apartment building, the only thoughts running through my head were about how pissed Murry was going to be when he found out, but there was no way I was keeping this from him. We didn’t have secrets between us, well, aside from a few bits of my childhood I’d chosen to keep to myself. He already knew enough shitty details, and I hated to see him crying over shit that had happened so long ago that there was nothing either of us could do about it.
Walk This Wayblared from the smart speaker when I stepped into the apartment, the song accompanying me all the way to the kitchen, where Murry danced barefoot across the space with a trio of spices in his hand.
“Did you find everything okay?” Murry asked when he spotted me.
“Yup, along with an added piece of shit I didn’t care to run across,” I said and proceeded to tell him everything that had taken place in the store.
He insisted on seeing the footage too, muttering curses and threats beneath his breath when I showed it to him.
“Before you ask, I sent it to Phoenix before I even left the parking lot,” I explained.
“Yeah, well, that fucker better hope Phoenix finds him before I do, because if I get my hands on him, his old man is going to spend the rest of his career trying to figure out where I buried the little shit. I cannot believe he had the audacity to just roll up on you in the grocery store like that. What a douche.”
“I just hope he steers clear of us and the club from here on out,” I replied.
“Well, if he shows up at the club, he’s not getting in, you know that, and we are not walking out to the parking lot unescorted again, so no worries there, either,” Murry replied. “What worries me is him approaching you in the store like that. Was he shopping, or do you think he followed you there?”
Shit.
I hadn’t even stopped to think about that.
“Umm, I don’t remember seeing him carrying a basket,” I muttered, “and he didn’t have a cart, so, I don’t know, he could have been there for one or two things and spotted me while I was shopping. To be honest, I was paying more attention to the grocery list, so I don’t really know what he was doing when he spotted me. I can’t say if he followed me to the store or not; I made, like, three other stops before I got there, so he could have spotted me somewhere and trailed after me.”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible for his frown to grow deeper, but it did, and I knew why, too. He was forever getting on my ass about not paying attention to my surroundings, and in this case, he’d be right to give me shit over it, considering what had happened.
“We’ve talked about this, Raleigh.”
“I know, I know, but it was such a perfect day, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the new modeling job tomorrow, and there was awesome music playing everywhere I went, so I kind of just got lost vibing with everything and forgot about everything else.”
