When Gracie Met The Grump

by Mariana Zapata

“Now,” the bossy bitch said.

“You will… when I tell you to.” Really? “Do people usually do what you tell them to?” He didn’t even think about it. “Yes.”

Just when I thought my life couldn’t get any more ridiculous, I was proven wrong. I was arguing with The Defender.

“I have… a sense of humor,” he tried to claim, actually looking and sounding serious. I pressed my lips together. “If you say so.” “I do,” he insisted.

“O-kay.” That got me an icy glare. “I don’t like… your tone of voice.”

“I watch comedies.” I looked at him. “When I have time.” I kept looking at him. His jaw worked. “It’s not often… what with saving you idiots from yourselves five times a day.”

“You should really look into a job change with that kind of attitude.” He shot another burning look my way. “Do you… know what I am? Who I am?” “I know. I’ve fed you by hand while making airplane noises. Almost broke my back helping move you. I almost went bankrupt feeding you. Do I need to keep going or…?” I got the longest side-eye in the history of side-eyes.

And before I could open my mouth to argue with him more, he was out. Again. Leaving me with my thoughts. And all my fears. And with my assumptions about why he was finally talking to me. Then I took a long look around the empty, quiet room, and I sighed.

When I got tired of that, I stared at The Defender a lot because it wasn’t like there was much else to do.

And a few times, I cried like a fucking drama queen, these big, hiccupping gasps into my palms.

Then I got pissed off over being upset and started thinking about other ways to hopefully one day bring down the fucking cartel.

That was the only way I was ever going to have a normal life...

But it wasn’t fair. I hadn’t done anything to them. I’d never done anything to anyone.

“What are you doing?” The Defender asked, scaring the shit out of me. “Why are you on top of me?” For the record, I wasn’t on top of him. I was next to him.

“Why are you looking at me so much?” the most beautiful man I’d ever seen asked, somehow still looking amazing even though he’d been asleep for days and hadn’t showered in who knows how long. He didn’t even smell. How unfair was that?

He caught me. “You used the bathroom eight times, hummed the Electro-Man theme song about a hundred times, hummed other songs completely off-key.” I stopped moving. “Cried too much,” he had the nerve to add.

I threw myself on top of The Defender a second before the door flew open. His body went stiff.

If anything, The Defender’s body went even harder under me. I was literally sprawled on top of him. Covering him like a pitiful blanket.

My poor fucking stomach did a barrel roll, trying to warn me again. Too late though. Way too late. Why hadn’t it acted up before?

Terror like I didn’t know gripped my entire body as I was lifted. He’d said to pretend to be asleep. He’d said to be quiet, but the second I was up, my weight focusing on the joints of my wrists and ankles, which was pretty fucking painful, totally fucking vulnerable… I opened my eyes and locked onto the long body belly-down on the floor.

Some people say that the opposite of love is fear. But the truth was, without fear, there can’t be love. If you can’t worry about losing something you find precious, it probably isn’t all that valuable to you in the first place.

But to lose my life? Maybe it wasn’t perfect, and I had roadblocks set up at every corner preventing me from living it the way I dreamed or at least would have settled for, but it was something. It was mine. I didn’t want to lose it. Not my life. Not my future. I was scared.

And reason didn’t exist when terror was present. I suddenly understood why people did such stupid fucking things in horror movies that got them killed. I would have been one of those dumbasses, and I wasn’t fucking proud of it.

“I’m sorry!” I cried out, just in case…. I hoped he knew. I hoped he understood I hadn’t meant for this to happen. That if I could have chosen, he wouldn’t have been involved.

“Please leave him alone! We barely know each other! He was a one-night stand!” I wailed, sounding like a fucking crazy person, but… but… I was. What if this was the end?

I was on my own. Like I’d always known I would be. I screamed.

I screamed for help. For my future. Like my grandma had told me to if a stranger ever tried to abduct me. I screamed for them to please let me go. Please and please and please.

I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t sorry, and I didn’t say I was sorry. And I didn’t say I would do anything to keep on living, because that wasn’t true either. I wouldn’...

I screamed, hoping for mercy maybe....

“That was a lot more dramatic than I’d expected.” It was a woman.

She looked fucking bored. This bad energy came from her as well. My stomach didn’t like it.

So this was how they were going to do this. No beating around the bush. I didn’t know what to do.

She stared at me for a long time with dark brown eyes, and I just stared back. I hadn’t taken the money from her. From them. I hadn’t asked for any of this shit.

“Are you sure that’s what you want your answer to be?” There was something about her tone that didn’t sit well with me, not at all.

“I’m sorry they stole from you.” That was a lie. I was sorry that this had trickled down to me. If anybody deserved to have money stolen, it would have been them. I’d done my research. I knew what kind of drugs they produced. What kind of crimes they were guilty of. But as much as I wanted to give her—give all of them—the middle finger, I had someone to protect. Someone worth keeping my mouth shut for.

“I don’t have it, and I don’t deserve this.” I hated her fucking smile.

The “bad guys” were never going to free you. They were never going to let you live no matter what they promised. And that’s why I kept my mouth closed. Because I knew.

I’d made my decision. And I especially wasn’t going to give this motherfucker who had burned my house down shit.

The water came again and again.

This was all her fucking fault, whoever the hell she was.

No. I wasn’t going to beg them, and I wouldn’t give anybody up, no matter what they promised—and nobody had promised anything. Fuck this whole shit.

So that’s why I lifted my gaze, hoping like hell I wasn’t making anything close to the expressions that The Defender had shot my way at any point. I’d choked and coughed for hours thanks to this asshole.

“I don’t enjoy doing this, you know.” I bet she didn’t. Liar.

I was going to remember their faces. I was going to remember all of this.

That had made it personal. And I wouldn’t forget.

That became the second reason why I decided I was going to make it through this and out of here, some way, somehow. So that one day, even if it was in the afterlife, I could pay these two a little visit. Just a little one.

And if I was a ghost, they were fucked because I wasn’t going anywhere.

The money was theirs. Give me a break. And home? Really?

Was there a point in explaining that innocent people understood that they were going to be blamed for something regardless of what they did and said? Wasn’t that exactly why I was here?

I knew in my heart that there was a good chance I wasn’t getting out of here alive. Maybe The Defender wouldn’t be able to get us out. Maybe this raging asshole would really drown me or cause me some kind of brain damage and life as I knew it would end.