NERTHUS
The evening with Arawn and Danny had me falling back onto square one.
Not that I had made any progress anyway.
After lying to Owen about feeling sick and keeping the call short as well as having us reschedule a date to after Thanksgiving, I give up.
Barricading myself in my apartment, I let my friends depart for their holidays with their families without even seeing them for the last time. I cancel our traditional dinner before they leave town for the festivities by telling them that I feel unwell.
Absolutely crushed, I spend my days in bed, eating nothing but chips, pretzel snacks, and ice cream.
And I actually start feeling sick.
While I enjoy the occasional texts Owen sends me to check in on me, I absolutely hate my phone blowing off by Arawn calling me practically non-stop.
And I soon have to recognize that I hate it because it pains me.
Even with his newly named caller ID ‘Mr. Entitled Asshole’ he gets my heart to skyrocket. And as one day he stops calling me for like an hour, I hate how my heart breaks at that.
Yearning for his attention.
Once every attempted call he leaves me a voicemail begging me to pick up.
I love how he gets dirty, but never mean. Threatening, but always in a smutty type of way.
Which actually would never help him to make me behave.
For a few days, I have been experiencing strange occurrences in my flat.
I often heard strange noises at my door, but I never found anyone in front of it.
As I asked Maria about it, she told me that she had never heard anything, so it just piles up on me losing my mind.
But it got worse as the low thuds morphed into scratching, and as I woke up frequently during the night due to my current state, I noticed that the scratching was prominently worse at my door during those hours.
Scared of opening the door myself, I alarmed the concierge service of the building. They checked several times but unfortunately found nothing.
When the noise got increasingly penetrating, and I was sitting in bed chewing on my fingernails, I had to actually keep myself from calling Arawn to ask him to check it for me.
He would take care of it.
As the day of Thanksgiving arrives, and I can’t seem to be able to stay home alone any longer, I get out.
I walk along the crowded streets with the people ready to see the parade and walk as long as it takes me to reach a shady little diner that I used to dine in when I worked the streets.
Other than the pizza restaurant this wasn’t on my daily route but only a place where I would treat myself with a milkshake when I finally got to earn a bit more money than usual.
I enter the cold diner with a sigh while my phone vibrates in my jacket pocket again.
After greeting the waitress behind the empty counter, I take my place in a booth on the left side of the restaurant.
“What can I bring you, babes?” Helen asks with a smile.
I move my lips from one side to the other as I stare at the menu.
As if I didn’t know it by heart already.
Not feeling worthy of a milkshake, I order a black coffee and french fries with a coke.
My vibrating phone is my sole companion as I finish my fries silently and spend hours staring out of the window facing the buzzing sidewalk.
Watching people scurry past my window in totally different moods, I catch myself sighing repeatedly.
As the night falls, and I am slumped over the table while playing with my hair and staring outside, my heart skips a beat as a gloomy figure passes the windows I’m staring out through.
And enters the restaurant.
I hate how I jerk up immediately and start combing my hair with my fingers. Even if I continue to stare outside the window, ignoring Arawn taking his seat in front of me, my heart keeps beating faster, making me fear to faint any second.
“What can I bring you?” Helen asks him as she steps next to the table.
“The one with cheddar cheese and bacon. And a beer.” Arawn’s voice glides down my spine, making me shudder. And I pull the sleeves of my pullover, hoping to mask it as a cold.
“Right away. Everything still alright for you, Aria?”
I nod, careful not to meet his gaze as I smile at her.
“Wonderful.” She says in a singsong voice, walking away from our table.
“Didn’t you say you were celebrating with your friends?”
With a deep sigh, I get up to sit in another empty booth.
Naturally, it takes him just a few seconds to move as well to follow me. It feels like a stab in my heart as he sits down directly next to me.
“What happened to the dinner with your friends?” He asks again as he corners me.
I just take another deep breath, feeling him shift to put his arm on the backrest of our seat. “Nerthus.”
“I’m not working tonight. And I don’t talk with men for free.” My breath forms on the cold window as I talk still looking away from him, my chin resting on my hand.
Hearing it rustling, my eyes widen as I don’t expect him to slide a 100-dollar bill on the table towards me.
The fucking audacity.
I turn to him, looking at him for the first time since he invaded my space in those peaceful festivities. “Which fucking part of I am not working didn’t reach your brain?” He looks at me unimpressed as I lower my voice even more. “You better put that thing back from where it came from before I chop your fingers off.”
“Nerthus…” He starts, but I turn around.
“Not working tonight, big boy.”
I can feel his frown without even looking at him. A rustling tells me that he put his bill back into his coat pocket.
“Here you are, enjoy.”
Looking back at him, I see Helen setting a big plate in front of Arawn with a seductive smile. “How come you are spending Thanksgiving all by yourself in our diner?”
I flinch as I feel my heart squeeze and curse myself.
Stop it. She can have him all for herself.
Arawn is already concentrating on his burger as he rumbles, “What do you mean? I’m spending it with her.”
“Oh,” she says, taken aback, “you know each other?”
Not even looking at her, he takes his first bite, his demeanor shooing her away. I feel a bit of malicious joy as I watch her walk away disappointed, and my eyes fall back on him.
Gulping, I observe him wipe a bit of sauce off his bottom lip.
My brain floods with thoughts of me, dragging him to the washrooms to eat me instead.
God, I’m like an addict on detoxification. And I would know.
I just don’t remember getting off Coke as so painful.
“Get your own.” He growls, tearing me out of my thoughts.
“Huh?”
“I’m not sharing. Get your own.”
I scoff, scooping away from him another bit. “Thanks, I’m good. Don’t worry.”