Demanding Ransom

Chapter SEVEN



“What do you like to drink?” Ran grabs two cups from the counter and stands in front of the soda machine, surveying the eight different beverage options before him. “Let me guess. Not Mountain Dew; you probably think that looks like toxic slime. And it’s evident you could definitely use some caffeine in your life, so I’m guessing no on the Caffeine Free Pepsi. I bet you’re a Dr. Pepper drinker, no?”

I make a loud buzzer noise, indicating his fail. “Diet Coke.”

“Diet Coke? Really?” He says it like it should reveal something monumental about me, like he’s uncovered some hidden secret just by discovering my soda preference. “You don’t strike me as a Diet Coke type of girl.”

“You think what I like to drink sheds light on who I actually am?”

I take our tray of food to a booth at the back of the burger joint. A young mom pushing a stroller and grasping the hand of a toddler just vacated the seat, and the oversized wheel of the jogger lodges between two chairs in front of her. Ran slides the table barricading them to the side and they squeeze past. He gives her a genuine, full smile in return for her mouthed ‘Thank you,’ and continues toward our table.

“I think you can learn a lot about someone by the way they look at you when you’re trying to analyze them,” he says, slipping into the booth and popping a French fry into his mouth at the same time.

I settle in across from him and drop my purse from my shoulder to set it down next to me on the pleather seat cushion. “I think you can learn a lot about someone just by watching them interact with others.” I nod my head toward the family now exiting the restaurant. “Have you always been such a gentleman?”

“Is that compliment number five, Maggie?” Ran flashes me an enormous grin as he continues chewing his food. How can he make eating junk food look sexy?

“No,” I say, collecting my cheeseburger from the tray and peeling back the wrapper. There is cheese stuck to the paper, and I thumb it off with my nail and pop it into my mouth. “Remember that insult-related deduction? I’m back down to four.”

Ran grins and hangs his head. When he looks up, he’s peering at me from under his dark hair and I realize just how attractive he actually is. I thought maybe before it was the whole hero thing he had going for him in his paramedic attire, but seeing him dressed in just distressed jeans and a V-neck white t-shirt, he’s even more appealing. He stretches his arm across the table toward his soda and my eyes trail down his half-sleeve of colorful body art that winds around his bicep.

“Four compliments for me and I’ve yet to give you any.”

I swallow the food in my mouth, wipe my lips with a paper napkin and say, “I don’t need you to compliment me, Ran.”

“No, you don’t strike me as the type of girl that needs any sort of affirmation.”

“I don’t seem to strike you as much today, do I?”

Ran sets his drink back onto our table and stares at me openly. “Wrong. I do find you very striking.”

I pause for too long. I want to kick myself for it. I want to kick myself for a lot of things lately, and all of them have something to do with my interactions with Ran. I’m supposed to be the one with the quick wit and controlled humor, yet I’m having trouble keeping up with this stranger across the table from me.

“What’s your angle?”

Ran swivels his head in surprise. “My angle?”

“Yeah, your angle.” I pull in a long drink of my Diet Coke to buy some time to decide what I’m going to say next. I barely know this guy. I definitely don’t know how to communicate with him. “Why the gifts? Why the lunch date? Do you feel sorry for me because I was in a car accident and now walk like a gimp? Or is it that I’m the girl with the brother dying of cancer and you want to be a heroic shoulder to cry on?” I bite down on the straw, indenting the flimsy plastic with my two front teeth. “What’s your angle, Ran?”

Stopping mid-chew, Ran leans back in his seat and swallows visibly. “I don’t have any angle I’m trying to work here, Maggie.”

He doesn’t say anything more. I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.

For the next several minutes we just eat. Well, he eats and I pick at my food and pretend that I’m actually consuming it, yet all I can think about is how hurtful my words must sound if he actually doesn’t have any ulterior motive. Right as I’m about to open my mouth to apologize, Ran opens his.

“If you think I feel sorry for you, you’re wrong.” He’s looking right at me, his palms planted firmly on the gritty tabletop. “But you know who I do feel sorry for?”

I shake my head like a nervous tick, unable to control its rhythm.

“I feel sorry for the families of the girls whose bodies they pull from the cars whose hearts no longer beat.” Ran doesn’t blink as he speaks, and I try to keep my eyes open to hold his gaze, but the dryness forces me to shut them swiftly. I almost don’t want to reopen them. “I feel sorry for the kids who have to hear that their brain tumor is inoperable and they only have a few months to live.” My chest rises and falls too quickly, and I fold my arms over myself until I’m twisted up like a pretzel, trying to hide my increased, instable breathing. “And I feel sorry for the girls whose moms didn’t just walk out on them, but those whose moms are dead and aren’t ever coming back.” He pushes our now-empty food tray to the side and slinks down in his seat like he’s making himself comfortable. “So no Maggie, I don’t feel sorry for you.” He crosses his arms behind his neck. “And I suggest you stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

I don’t know if I want to cry or scream, so I choose to do neither and just sit there, radiating under the heat of my flushed cheeks. I look up at Ran and notice he has something—probably leftover traces of mustard—stuck to the corner of his mouth. Telling him about it feels like the safest thing to do right now.

“You have a little something,” I say, mirroring him, pointing to my upper lip with the tip of my fingernail.

“You wanna lick it off? Just one more compliment and it’s yours.”

“I don’t even know if I want to sit in the same restaurant as you right now,” I groan, glaring out the window at the bustling street outside, wanting to be swallowed up in it, wanting to disappear.

“You’re always trying to get away from me. First you wanted to get out of the ambulance, now the restaurant.” He laughs and I feel the tension slip slowly out of my rigid frame. I tighten my shoulders back up, still wanting to stay mad at him. “I’m not holding you hostage, you know.”

“It kinda feels like it. You pretty much came to my house and kidnapped me with my own brother’s car.”

“So that’s what you think? That I’ve kidnapped you and I’m holding you hostage?”

“Yeah, and now you’re demanding a kiss as ransom.”

Ran’s previously wide eyes nearly disappear as a loud bout of laughter overtakes him. Several people eating their lunch at the tables near ours look our way, but they shift their intrusive gazes when I challenge them with my own assertive stare.

“I think you mean I’m demanding a kiss for Ransom.”

“As ransom, for ransom. It’s all semantics.” I’m beginning to find this guy impossibly difficult to communicate with. Maybe English isn’t his first language.

“I don’t think you truly see the humor in all of this, Maggie.”

I pull my chin back. “What? You think it’s funny to keep me here against my will?”

“No, I think it’s funny that my name is Ransom and you’re joking about offering kisses as ransom.”

I gag on my Diet Coke. “Your name is Ransom?”

“Yeah.”

“I just figured it was Randolph or something,” I admit.

“I’m not a reindeer.”

I try not to spray my soda out through my nose. “That’s Rudolph, idiot.”

“I’m not that either.” He gives me a smug smile.

“What? An idiot?” I challenge. “What are you then?”

Ran rises slightly in his seat and I think I even hear him clear his throat before he begins speaking. “I’m a twenty-two-year-old paramedic named Ransom. I live in my own apartment in the historic district and I drive a Ducati Diavel Cromo. I’m an only child and was adopted by an older couple when I was four. My mother died when she was 79 in her sleep and my dad is in a home that cares for the elderly with Alzheimer’s. I work four, twelve-hour shifts a week and I own a German shepherd named Nikon. I also have two goldfish on rotation.”

“Rotating goldfish?”

“Yes. Every week after my Wednesday shift I stop by the pet store to pick up another goldfish, because sure enough, one is always dead when I come home. I just keep rotating them out.” Ran’s phone buzzes across the table and he gives it a cursory glance, punches the ‘decline’ button, and returns his attention to me.

“So why do you keep buying new ones? Why don’t you just have one instead?”

“Because that would be sad, Maggie.”

“You’re telling me you can spend twelve hours at a time dealing with horrifically gruesome situations, yet the thought of a lonely goldfish makes you sad?”

“Have you seen them when they’re lonely? They just swim in circles all day. It’s heartbreaking.”

I sigh and my hair lifts off my forehead. “You are the strangest person I have ever met.”

“Maybe you haven’t met enough people.”

“Maybe not.” I shrug.

Ran edges closer, hovering his shoulders over the table. Two more precisely drawn tattoos peek out from under his shirtsleeve as it pulls up slightly. “Well then,” he smirks, his lips curving upward. “I’m glad to be one of the few you’ve had the honor of meeting.”