He disappears back inside the house with a wide-eyed, scared-shitless expression on his face, and if Cindy’s hand wasn’t still over my mouth, he’d see me smirk at him.
“I assure you, Ariel won’t give you any more trouble,” PJ tells the older deputy. “Obviously this is a very stressful situation for her.”
I realize I’m acting like a fool, but I can’t help it. I’m losing everything I love and it’s happening right in front of me. I feel helpless and lost, and anger is the only thing keeping me standing right now and not curled up in the fetal position in my front yard.
“Are you calm?” Cindy asks softly when the deputy moves away from us and inside the house with the others.
I nod my head with her hand still clamped over my mouth.
“Do you promise to stop yelling at the deputies?”
I nod again, and her hand slowly falls from my face.
“I’m sorry. I’ll behave,” I whisper.
Taking a deep breath, I count to ten and do everything I can to remain calm.
“Sorry, we broke one of these. But you’ve got like, thirty-five others just like it.”
I glance up to see a deputy standing in the doorway, holding a broken half of a Prussian cake dish, hand-painted with roses. He looks completely unapologetic about breaking it, and I forget all about what I just said.
A sound comes out of my mouth that has probably only ever been heard before on National Geographic, and I charge across my yard and up the steps of my front porch, snatching the broken piece of porcelain out of the man’s hand.
“DICK SHIT HOLE ASS!” I scream, pointing the jagged piece of plate at his face.
I hear my friends shouting behind me, but I ignore them. With the broken piece of china clutched in my hand and tears clouding my vision, I climb up onto my porch railing and wrap my body around one of the vertical wooden posts, holding on for dear life.
“You will have to pry my cold, dead body away from this house!” I shout, squeezing my arms and legs tighter around the two-by-four.
Yes, I climbed up on my porch railing and latched myself onto one of the posts like an octopus, don’t judge me. At some point in the last five minutes, I’ve lost touch with reality. I’m like a really, really drunk person who can hear the stupid things coming out of her mouth but has zero ability to stop them.
“Seriously, Mrs. Waters, you need to come down from there and start gathering up your things. We only have a few minutes before we need to leave and lock up the house, and then you won’t be able to get back inside or even come near the premises,” the deputy tells me with a sigh.
I remove one of my arms from the wooden railing and I watch the deputy’s face relax when he thinks I’m going to comply. Throwing my arm up in the air, I start pumping it up and down while I continue to glare at him.
“GATTACA! GATTACA! GATTACA!” I scream at the top of my lungs.
“Are you a huge fan of Ethan Hawke?”
Craning my neck around, I see that Eric has pushed through my friends as they all stand at the base of the stairs, looking up at me in horror. Eric is perched on the top step of the porch with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his stupid hot face.
“The fuck are you talking about?” I mutter.
“Gattaca is an Ethan Hawke movie. I think you meant to yell Attica. You know, from the movie Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino, where the chanting of the word Attica referred to excessive police force used in the prison riots at the Attica prison.”
My lip curls and I let out a small growl. Eric quickly shakes his head and pulls his hands from his pockets.
“Never mind. GATTACA! GATTACA! GATTACA!” he shouts, throwing his fists up in the air.
“Jesus God, don’t encourage her,” Cindy complains, coming up the steps to stand next to Eric. “Sweetie, we’re going to run across the street and grab a few of our leftover packing boxes, okay? We’ll be back as soon as we can. Eric, can you—”
“Say no more,” he interrupts, closing the distance between us and reaching for me as my friends all race back across the street to Cindy’s house.
“If you put one hand on me I will chop off your balls,” I warn him.
If possible, Eric’s smile grows wider and he chuckles under his breath as he presses his hands to my sides.
“I’ll take my chances.”
Standing behind me, his hands move from my sides, circling around me until his arms are securely wrapped around my body. I’d like to say I start kicking and screaming and putting up a fight over him physically removing me from my protest, but I don’t. With his chest pressed against my back, he gently pulls me away from the wooden post and I go completely limp against him. Every bone in my body turns to jelly as he holds me tightly to his body and takes a step back, slowly lowering me until my feet hit the floor of the porch. He’s much more muscular than I thought he would be. Muscular and warm as he continues to hold my back against his front with his arms still wrapped tightly around my waist. I want to tip my head back and rest it against his chest and forget about everything happening right now. I want to close my eyes and never stop feeling so warm and safe and stress free.