Page 3 of Rent an Enforcer

He’s looking down at me. There’s something in his face I wasn’t expecting, something underneath the flatness. Something almost careful, like he’s holding something important, something he doesn’t want to break.

“Who are you?” I whisper.

And why is everything so quiet when he’s here?

2

TRISTAN

I don’t know who she is. I don’t know who the guy with the mullet is. I only know it’s a good thing he ran.

I watch him clear the corner, and I keep watching the empty space where he was, because that’s the job. You don’t relax when the threat leaves. You only relax when you’ve confirmed it isn’t coming back with three friends and a tire iron. I give it a five-count. Nothing. His footsteps fade and then they’re gone, swallowed up by the traffic on the street. He’s not the type to circle back. He’s the type to shake for an hour in his car and tell himself he almost did something.

In a way, it’s a shame. There’s a part of me that’s genuinely disappointed. That part wanted him to try. It wanted a reason. I know exactly what I would’ve done. I’ve built a life out of knowing exactly how much force a body will take before it stops arguing. It’s the first language I ever really spoke fluently. Some men pray in the language they grew up in. I do this.

But I didn’t do it. That’s not the most interesting part of the sudden turn my day has taken, though.

It’s that I don’t want this girl to know I was thinking about it in the first place.

She’s still tucked under my arm. She’s small like a bird, all tiny bones and quick pulse. I feel her heart going through her whole body. Hammering, that terrified-animal rhythm I know from experience, though I’m usually the reason for the terror. Not this time.

That’s not the only difference here. She’s not pulling away. Everybody pulls away. I’ve made peace with it. It’s useful, mostly, having a face and a body that can clear a room or end a conversation. People take one look at the head, the ink, my size, and they remember they have somewhere else to be.

But not her.

“Who are you?” she whispers.

She doesn’t really want to know the answer.

Her eyes are a pale, clear shade of blue, and they’re pointed straight at my face like there’s nothing in it to be afraid of. I don’t know what to do with that. I genuinely don’t. It’s not in my training.

“He’s gone now,” I tell her. My voice comes out rougher than I meant it, because I don’t have much practice with being gentle. I try to be with Lillie, my boss’s daughter, but even then, I usually have to remind myself to be.

I ease my arm off her shoulders slowly, giving her the room I figure she wants. She doesn’t take it, though. She sort of sways for a second before catching herself. Then she goes red all the way up to her ears, almost the same shade as her hair.

“Okay,” she whispers shakily. “Wow. Thank you. You were very convincing. As a boyfriend, I mean. Ten out of ten. Frighteningly good, actually.”

She’s spiraling, talking faster and faster. “Are you hurt?” I cut in.

She stops. Blinks. “No. No, I’m fine. He never got close. Because of you.”

She hefts a plastic grocery bag that’s cutting deep red lines into her fingers. “You saved my groceries. I really thought I was going to have to drop them so I could run faster. Successful trip, all things considered.”

There’s a laugh sitting somewhere in my chest that I haven’t used in a while. It doesn’t come out, but it moves.

I look past her, down the alley, up to the mouth of it, and out at the street. Wrong place. Bad sightlines, one way in, dumpsters a man could sit behind. She shouldn’t be back here, and she definitely shouldn’t be back here alone, and the guy with the mullet knows what she looks like now and what neighborhood she shops in. “I’ll walk you home,” I decide.

Her eyes fly open wide. “Oh, no. You don’t have to do that. I’ve taken up enough of your⁠—”

“I’ll walk you home,” I tell her again. I find repeating a thing works better than arguing it. She looks at me, and whatever she sees tells her it’s not worth fighting.

“It’s five blocks,” she says.

“It’s a short walk.”

A short walk during which she talks the entire way. Not that I mind. I spend most of my life in cars where nobody says anything for an hour because there’s nothing worth saying. This—her filling the air, unprompted, about nothing—is almost novel. She talks about the grocery store and the color of green she can’t get quite right.

I make a note of that, the way I make note of other things. The way she flinches when a pigeon lifts off a ledge. The way she shudders when a gust of breeze blows over us. “The weather app said eight,” she mutters, shaking her head. “It didn’t say anything about gusts.”