Porcelain shattered. Huge chunks spread out across the floor.
Mario jumped back onto his feet before I could even think.
And then things got worse.
“You fighting my brother?” The bedroom door was thrown open. A loud crack sounded through the room as the doorknob broke through the drywall.
“Juan, get back,” Mario spat.
So that was the infamousJwho needed his big brother’s help in cleaning up.
He looked like his brother: beady dark eyes and a pointed face with olive skin and green eyes. They both had shaved their heads down to the scalp, and they both were covered in black-and-white tattoos.
Something about Juan’s instantly caught my eye. Unlike his brother, Juan had tattooed his knuckles. Every knuckle had the tattoo of a cross done in a different style.
He cracked those knuckles, his beady eyes pinning me down. I moved backward, toward the door. I was outnumbered and out of my element.
This interview was over.
Except Mario didn’t seem to think it was. He launched himself at me again. I saw a glint of pearl white in his hand and realized, almost too late, that he held one of the shards of porcelain. I sidestepped his lunge at the very last second, the porcelain shard slicing through the air only inches from my face.
If I hadn’t dodged, he would have impaled me. No doubt about it.
I felt the door at my back. I grabbed the handle and twisted it. Mario was moving to attack again, but just before he could launch at me, I opened the door and used it as a shield.
Mario hit the other side of the door with a loud bang. The momentum slammed the door shut and threw me out of the apartment.
I ran out of there before Mario and his brother could try for round two, glad I was running with both my eyes intact and a new person of interest to look into.
23Oliver Brightly
I’d been chewing on my nails all day. Nerves were as alive as a nineties kid finding out Toys “R” Us and Blockbuster are making a joint comeback. I couldn’t sit in one spot, and when I couldn’t sit, then I would stand, but I couldn’t do that in one spot either, so I would end up pacing around my living room, Mason and Jar both staring at me with the most judgmental cat faces I’d ever seen. If they could talk, I’m sure I would have been shouted at to “sit down already but get our salmon first.”
I continued to pace. The TV played some mid-afternoon talk show, but I wasn’t paying attention, the celebrity being interviewed serving as white noise. I started second-guessing my decision to stay home from the clinic today. I thought my nerves would be torture, but now I thought I could have at least kept busy.
My phone dinged, pulling my attention toward the counter. I ran over. All I wanted was to read a text from Beckham saying “interview with Mario is done, he confessed to everything and he’s spending the rest of his life behind bars, love you and see you in twenty.” Instead, I got a text from my dentist reminding me I was due for a “sparkling-tastic check-up.” I groaned loudly and opened my calendar app. There, I set a reminder to myself that read “find new dentist.”
Another text dinged in. My eyes shot to the top of the screen, but this one was just from Will, asking what I was up to later. Again, I groaned, but this one wasn’t as frustrated or as loud as the previous one. In no way was Will comparable to the dentist.
I told him that I was busy later with Beck, but that if he was around he could swing by. Thankfully, it didn’t take him longer than a few minutes to say that he was down for coming over. I knew he was between jobs and probably frustrated with being home, especially since he and his mom didn’t really get along. They lived in a tiny two-bedroom place, so if Will wasn’t working, he was probably crammed up in there.
Having him over would be good for my nerves, too. I wasn’t sure how much longer Beckham would be with Marco. I knew that I couldn’t take another hour of this pacing, and my carpet definitely looked like it was calling it quits. There was a clear circular trail around the coffee table where the tan threads had turned dark.
I considered vacuuming real quick (that’s how anxious I felt), but there was a knock on my door telling me Will had arrived.
“Hey, man.” Will stood in the hall, the heat from outside practically smacking me in the face the moment I opened the door. He wore navy board shorts and a gray T-shirt, small sweat marks telling me he probably biked here. It would explain how he got here so quick, too.
“Get inside. It’s an inferno out here.”
Will gratefully stepped into my air-conditioned palace of neurosis and anxiety.
Mason and Jar, my court jesters, jumped off their perch and came cooing and purring over to Will. He’d been over so many times, they always recognized him instantly and went right for the cuddles.
“How’ve you been?” Will asked, slumping down onto the couch, fanning himself with one hand and giving Mason back scratches with the other. I went to the kitchen and poured him an ice-cold glass of water, bringing it back and seeing the face of pure gratitude reflected on my friend.
“All right,” I lied.
“So how’ve you really been?”