The air fills with a round of boos. I can feel the tension ratcheting up, slowly climbing into the yellow zone. This is not good.
“Or… is this your daddy, Kita? Did your daddy come to save you?”
Kita? Is that her name? After a short delay, she looks toward Lizzie and I'm fairly certain that must be her name. She's responding, but far too slowly.
“Mike? Doug? Are you guys gonna let Daniel just step in front of you on the bidding?”
Shit. Lizzie is seriously trying to get me into a fight. If there are men here who've already been bidding on Kita, I don’t want to think about what they'll do if they don't get what they think they paid for.
“Kita? That’s your name?” I hear myself say, stepping toward her. I still don't even have a plan. I don't know what to do.
She blinks those big green eyes again, so slowly I can almost see her eyelashes waving in the small breeze they make. She's breathing through her mouth and tips forward, almost too far. It would only take a moment. It would only take just a simple nudge this way and…
Before I even have time to iterate the steps of my plan in my mind, I catch her behind the knees and dump her into my arms. She curls up like a kitten against my chest, automatically folding her forearms behind my neck, nuzzling her forehead into my coat. She weighs nothing, absolutely nothing.
But this might not have been complete genius. The crowd erupts into a roar of disapproval and by my calculations I’ve got about twelve seconds to get the hell out of here. I walk around to the other two podiums, whistling between my teeth to get their attention. The girls both flinch, scowling at me immediately, but at least they have the sense to listen.
“You ladies need to get out of here immediately! Come with me, and you won't be here when the cops arrive!”
Without even waiting to see what they do, I turn around, still carrying Kita's feather-light body in my arms as I stride back toward the door. I hear yells behind me and can only hope that a few more seconds of confusion will work in my favor.
“Get back here, Daniel!”
“What the fuck is that guy doing?”
“Hey! Don't take her!”
“Give me my money back!”
Big Boy is smart enough to get the hell out of my way as I rush back to the entrance and into the open door of the Mercedes. To my absolute delight, the minute I’m in the back seat, the other two sorority pledges tumble in after me. Freddie slams the door closed and gets us back into traffic.
“What the hell happened in there?” pouts the one with the long blonde hair.
The other one crosses her arms over her see-through blouse and wedges her knees together. She glares at me darkly.
“Thanks,” she says meaningfully. It shuts the blonde one up, and for that I'm grateful. At least this one has the sense to know that I saved her ass.
Freddie drops them off at the sorority house, when I realize I've still got Kita in my lap. Somehow, during the whole ride I've been holding her to me, cradling her weight as though it's always been there. As though it's completely natural to have her pressed against me like this. And it's not natural, not at all. But every time I look down at her, her half-lidded eyes bring a wave of something that crashes through me. I don't even know what it is, but I can't let her go yet.
I think she's been drugged. She doesn't smell like alcohol, so that's the only thing that makes sense. Every few minutes my thumb just wanders to the inside of her wrist and I find myself counting her pulse again. Still 54, sometimes 58. She's fine, she’ll sleep it off.
So why can't I let her go?
But I can’t answer the question yet. I'm just going to see this mission through, and then debrief myself tomorrow. I will think more clearly about it tomorrow, when I know everything is taken care of here.
Freddie doesn't say anything, to his credit. He just gets me back home, parks the car in the rear garage and then silently makes his way out to his quarters. The overhead lights bang on in the garage all at once and I leave the car, still holding her fairy weight body to mine. Every once in a while she makes a small, kitten like sound, but she doesn't seem to mind.
I walk past the cars to the back entrance, opening the door quietly so as not to disturb her. As we move across the silent great room and then through the marble hallway to the loft stairs, I keep counting her breaths. In this space, where I'm so used to everything being completely silent except for mechanical whir of appliances and computer equipment, having an extra sound is sort of strange. Sort of nice, really. It fills out the space.
I’m not entirely sure where to put her. After standing at the bottom of the loft stairs for a moment, I consider how utterly inappropriate it is to bring a college student up to the bedroom level of a grown-ass man. A strange man. A man she doesn't even know… I realize it's also the safest choice. If she wakes up in the night, it's the best way I can hear her. If she gets sick. If she’s afraid.
That makes sense, or at least that's what I'm telling myself.
But I can feel it in my heart as I try to lay her on the simple, charcoal cotton bedspread in the guest bedroom. A tugging... a feeling like pushing her away from me means pulling on a connection I don't want to pull on. It's like she's already been knitted into my fabric, and the only way to get rid of her is to cut her away.
God, you are so stupid sometimes, I tell myself. Put her down.
And I do put her down. She is so small in this big bed, curled into a C shape. As soon as her head hits the smooth cotton pillow, her tiny hand slides up next to her face in a sweet gesture that is so trusting, so completely at ease, I’m flooded with gratitude.