“I have nothing to say. Travis can talk to him if he wants.”
“He doesn’t want to either, but we need to do something in case he causes trouble. I made a call to my lawyer and he’s looking into what we can do.”
“You don’t need to do that, mom already took care of it. I have guardianship of my brother. Why was he calling anyway?”
“He said he was worried about you. Now don’t freak. There was a write up in the paper about what happened yesterday. Someone tipped them off obviously and somehow it got back to him.”
“Is he here, is he in New York?”
“I don’t think so, but he did say he might come here.” She was sitting on my lap, so I felt her reaction. “Hey, you don’t have to worry, no one is getting near you.”
She was still achy and a little clingy. The latter I did not mind, but the former made me want to run out and find Ray for some one on one. I pulled her head back to my shoulder and wrapped her up tight. “I’m sorry I let you down baby. I have no words, nothing I can say to make this right.”
“It’s not your fault Max, come on.” I didn’t want this to turn into another her comforting me session so I kept my thoughts to myself. “Did you wanna do something today baby?”
I was testing the waters to see where her mind was. I have no experience with a woman who’d been attacked by an asshole, and wondered if like me, was she worried that he had something more in mind?
“Sure, where should we go? You know I never really got around to seeing most of the things I wanted to see in the city, and with the school opening Tuesday I might never get the chance again anytime soon.”
I watched her eyes to see if this was one of those things where she was over compensating, but she looked excited. She’d cancelled this weekend’s dance class ahead of the big open, and we had the next few days free because no way am I leaving her side.
“We can go anywhere you want.” Wrong fucking thing to say. Not only was she not stressing over the attack, but she had a boundless amount of energy. First stop was the statue of liberty, which she made me climb.
In her words, it was good for working the kinks out. I’ve known grown men who would be laid up for at least a day or two from a hit. We had lunch at the seaport before heading into midtown.
She wanted to play tourist, which was fine by me. And by the time we were ready to head back, she had about ten pounds of chocolate from the Hershey store along with bags of kettle corn. Now she wanted to go to an arcade.
“I have all those machines back at the apartment.”
“You do? how come I never saw them?”
“You never made it up to the third floor.” She was going to town on a double scoop praline cone like a twelve year old while taking looks behind her.
“Max, I think we’re being followed.” She got closer to my side than she already was, and I looked back
to see what she was talking about. “That’s your security.”
“My what?” I had to tug on her arm to get her moving again which wasn’t easy with my hands full of crap.
“Max, why do I have two men the size of tanks following me around?”
“You really wanna do this here?” I kept moving towards the car with her shadows behind us. I knew it was only a matter of time before she made them, but I didn’t think she’d do it that quickly.
She argued my ass to death all the way home, which only took about fifteen minutes with light traffic, but she was singing into the wind. I let her have her say and then calmly told her that they were staying.
I released them at the door and had to listen to her shit all the way up in the elevator. Oh she was not feeling any pain, not the way she lit into my ass. I was still waiting for her to have some kind of meltdown, or flashback or some shit. Any one of the things mom had told me to look out for.
As far as I can see she wasn’t overly bothered by the whole ordeal and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. “How’s your head baby? You need pills?” I still think I should’ve taken her to the doctor, but she nixed that idea when she woke up this morning. According to her she’s had worst dancing.
She took the stairs ahead of me up to the game room and I had to hear how unreasonable I was among other things. I wish I could see it as her really not being affected, but it was the opposite. I knew she was being too fucking reasonable and accepting.