“Uh-huh. Sure.” And my arm’s already up, finger already pointing, because apparently we’re doing this now. “Trap.” His eyebrows shoot up.
The one with the tongue ring. “Trouble.”
Somehow that smirk gets bigger.
“And you.”
The blond one—
My brain glitches but it’s already made up its mind.
“…Are a problem.”
Silence.
I put my arm down.
I said that out loud. I pointed at three enormous, attractive strangers with giant muscles and gave them nicknames. With a finger.
“Trap?” the normal one repeats. I watch him light up, delighted.
Oh, that’s not how…
The guy with the tongue ring loses it completely.
Nope.
I push on, because the alternative is lying down on my broken door and waiting for death.
“From where?”
“Out of town.”
“Where out of town?”
“Far.”
And right then a look goes between the Trap one and the problem — fast, there and gone, the kind of thing you only catch because you happened to be staring at the wrong spot at the right second. I have no idea what it meant. I’m choosing not to think about it right now.
I’ll come back to it.
There are three of them. I count. Three.
Except when they knocked the door in — that first second, all noise and bodies — I’d have put money on four. I can still almost see him. One more, off at the edge of everything, there and then gone. I count again. Three. Whatever the fourth one was, he’s not in my apartmentnow, and grown men don’t evaporate, so I must have double-counted somebody or maybe I’m seeing things. Weird.
The trap is still smiling at me.
“Why’d you break my door?”
“We heard you scream,” the ink one says.
“And the solution was to break the door…”
“It was in the way.”
I look at the problem one without deciding to. It just happens. He’s already looking at me. He’s been looking at me this whole time, with that look on his face that makes me feel things I do not want to feel right now.
I look away first. I always look away first. We’ve done this four times now and I’m keeping score and I am losing.
