The club had a side exit and Ari pushed through it, knowing the fire alarm wouldn’t go off. She’d seen others going in and out of the door before.
The cold night air slapped her face the instant she stepped outside, and her hearing sounded hollow from the loud music. Tears formed from the cold but reality seemed even more real out there. She’d come to rid herself of the numbness and only made a fool of herself.
“Ari.” She heard her name. Looking straight ahead, she pretended she didn’t hear him. She ran up a short flight of concrete steps to the parking lot next door. Davis met her at the top.
“Holy shitz,” she choked. “How did you...?”
“I jumped.”
Right. He jumped.
She shook her head and said, “This is just really …”
“Awkward?”
“At best.”
She kept her eyes away from his face. From his mouth. From that spot below his ear.
“Can we just keep pretending this never happened?” she asked. The sweat on her arms and neck froze under the night air, sending her into a shiver. Davis reached out and ran his hand down her arm, sharing his warmth. She pulled away and laughed bitterly. “See, like that? That shouldn’t happen.”
“What if I want it to?”
“Do you always get what you want?”
His dark eyes locked with hers and he said, “No. Not always.”
“That other night,” she said. “That wasn’t me.”
“No?”
“No.”
He closed the space between them. “Seemed like it to me,” he said, tipping her head toward his. Calling her bluff.
Rightly so, because that was her. That night. The real her. The one she hid from Oliver and Nick, dressed in straight-laced clothes, and sat stoically in Judge Hatcher’s courtroom.
Ari didn’t know how to respond and she didn’t have to, because the back door opened and a crowd of people spilled out into the parking lot. In the center, Ari saw the guy from the floor. She looked from the group to Davis and saw a flicker of concern in his eyes.
“I have to go,” he said. “Your car is close?”
“Yeah, it’s right there.” Ari clicked the key fob so the lights flashed.
“Are you okay to drive?”
“Yeah, I only had water,” she assured him.
The voices below escalated and she could tell he wanted to go down there. That kid probably was in his crew after all. “Go straight home, okay?”
“Yeah, All right,” she agreed, brushing past him.
He grabbed her arm. “Don’t do anything until we talk.”
“What—” she started to question his right to ask that of her, but he was gone, leaping down the steps and over the railing. Davis disappeared into the crowd below.
***
Ari didn’t do anything about Davis the next day. Or the next. Instead she focused all her energy into catching up on the unrelenting pile of work on her desk. If she was honest with herself, she would admit that she hoped maybe the situation between them would just blow over. Maybe Curtis would fail out of the program and she’d never have to go back.
Other than her work, Ari threw herself into Nick. Well, as far as he was willing to let her.
“How was dinner?” Oliver asked. His legs stretched across the couch and he held a bowl of cereal in his hands.
“Good. I see you’re having your own dinner of champions.”
“Dessert. Dinner was a frozen burrito.”
“Gross.” Ari scrunched her nose in repulsion.
“Well, you bailed on me—again. You know I can’t cook.”
“Poor baby.”
He decided to go one step further. “Plus, I don’t have some handsome sugar daddy springing for dinner either.”
“Hey! I paid for dinner tonight,” Ari argued, but it was futile because it only led Oliver to question “how” she paid for dinner. If he only knew how chaste it all really was.
Just before the 11 o’clock news, Oliver hopped up, tapped her legs out of his way and went to bed. “You coming?” he asked as he secured the lock on the front door and set the alarm.
“Not yet,” she replied, stretching into the space on the couch he’d just vacated, “I need to watch the news—make sure none of the kids landed in the pokey tonight.”
“Okay then … night.” Oliver shuffled off and she heard the lock click on the door of the bathroom they shared.
Ari flipped the TV to the local news and breathed a bit easier as the night’s stories unfolded and none of her clients showed up in the ‘Breaking News’ section. She was about to turn the television off when the news anchor said the words, “mystery man,” and caught Ari’s attention.
Ari reached for the remote and turned up the volume. Oliver came out of the bathroom, toothbrush in his mouth, and sat on the couch arm next to her. “Holy shit,” he said, through a mouthful of toothpaste. “There he is!”
“Shhh,” Ari said, focusing on the story.
“Earlier tonight, a fight broke out between rival gangs on the subway platform at Bolton Street. The altercation was caught on surveillance camera. To the surprise of police, the fight had been broken up by the time they arrived. Who stopped it? The local hero people are calling a ‘Vigilante.’”