Demanding Ransom (7 page)

Ran sets his drink back onto our table and
stares at me openly. “Wrong. I do find you very striking.”

I pause for too long. I want to kick myself for
it. I want to kick myself for a lot of things lately, and all of them have
something to do with my interactions with Ran. I’m supposed to be the one with
the quick wit and controlled humor, yet I’m having trouble keeping up with this
stranger across the table from me.

“What’s your angle?”

Ran swivels his head in surprise. “My angle?”

“Yeah, your angle.” I pull in a long drink of
my Diet Coke to buy some time to decide what I’m going to say next. I barely
know this guy. I definitely don’t know how to communicate with him. “Why the
gifts? Why the lunch date? Do you feel sorry for me because I was in a car
accident and now walk like a gimp? Or is it that I’m the girl with the brother
dying of cancer and you want to be a heroic shoulder to cry on?” I bite down on
the straw, indenting the flimsy plastic with my two front teeth. “What’s your
angle, Ran?”

Stopping mid-chew, Ran leans back in his seat
and swallows visibly. “I don’t have any angle I’m trying to work here, Maggie.”

He doesn’t say anything more. I’ve suddenly
lost my appetite.

For the next several minutes we just eat. Well,
he eats and I pick at my food and pretend that I’m actually consuming it, yet
all I can think about is how hurtful my words must sound if he actually
doesn’t
have any ulterior motive. Right
as I’m about to open my mouth to apologize, Ran opens his.

“If you think I feel sorry for you, you’re
wrong.” He’s looking right at me, his palms planted firmly on the gritty
tabletop. “But you know who I do feel sorry for?”

I shake my head like a nervous tick, unable to
control its rhythm.

“I feel sorry for the families of the girls
whose bodies they pull from the cars whose hearts no longer beat.” Ran doesn’t
blink as he speaks, and I try to keep my eyes open to hold his gaze, but the dryness
forces me to shut them swiftly. I almost don’t want to reopen them. “I feel
sorry for the kids who have to hear that their brain tumor is inoperable and
they only have a few months to live.” My chest rises and falls too quickly, and
I fold my arms over myself until I’m twisted up like a pretzel, trying to hide
my increased, instable breathing. “And I feel sorry for the girls whose moms
didn’t just walk out on them, but those whose moms are dead and aren’t ever
coming back.” He pushes our now-empty food tray to the side and slinks down in
his seat like he’s making himself comfortable. “So no Maggie, I don’t feel
sorry for you.” He crosses his arms behind his neck. “And I suggest you stop
feeling sorry for yourself.”

I don’t know if I want to cry or scream, so I
choose to do neither and just sit there, radiating under the heat of my flushed
cheeks. I look up at Ran and notice he has something—probably leftover
traces of mustard—stuck to the corner of his mouth. Telling him about it
feels like the safest thing to do right now.

“You have a little something,” I say, mirroring
him, pointing to my upper lip with the tip of my fingernail.

“You wanna lick it off? Just one more
compliment and it’s yours.”

“I don’t even know if I want to sit in the same
restaurant as you right now,” I groan, glaring out the window at the bustling
street outside, wanting to be swallowed up in it, wanting to disappear.

“You’re always trying to get away from me.
First you wanted to get out of the ambulance, now the restaurant.” He laughs
and I feel the tension slip slowly out of my rigid frame. I tighten my
shoulders back up, still wanting to stay mad at him. “I’m not holding you
hostage, you know.”

“It kinda feels like it. You pretty much came
to my house and kidnapped me with my own brother’s car.”

“So that’s what you think? That I’ve kidnapped
you and I’m holding you hostage?”

“Yeah, and now you’re demanding a kiss as
ransom.”

Ran’s previously wide eyes nearly disappear as
a loud bout of laughter overtakes him. Several people eating their lunch at the
tables near ours look our way, but they shift their intrusive gazes when I
challenge them with my own assertive stare.

“I think you mean I’m demanding a kiss
for
Ransom.”

“As ransom, for ransom. It’s all semantics.”
I’m beginning to find this guy impossibly difficult to communicate with. Maybe
English isn’t his first language.

“I don’t think you truly see the humor in all
of this, Maggie.”

I pull my chin back. “What? You think it’s
funny to keep me here against my will?”

“No, I think it’s funny that my name is Ransom
and you’re joking about offering kisses as ransom.”

I gag on my Diet Coke. “Your name is Ransom?”

“Yeah.”

“I just figured it was Randolph or something,”
I admit.

“I’m not a reindeer.”

I try not to spray my soda out through my nose.
“That’s Rudolph, idiot.”

“I’m not that either.” He gives me a smug
smile.

“What? An idiot?” I challenge. “What are you
then?”

Ran rises slightly in his seat and I think I
even hear him clear his throat before he begins speaking. “I’m a twenty-two-year-old
paramedic named Ransom. I live in my own apartment in the historic district and
I drive a Ducati Diavel Cromo. I’m an only child and was adopted by an older
couple when I was four. My mother died when she was 79 in her sleep and my dad is
in a home that cares for the elderly with Alzheimer’s. I work four, twelve-hour
shifts a week and I own a German shepherd named Nikon. I also have two goldfish
on rotation.”

“Rotating goldfish?”

“Yes. Every week after my Wednesday shift I
stop by the pet store to pick up another goldfish, because sure enough, one is
always dead when I come home. I just keep rotating them out.” Ran’s phone
buzzes across the table and he gives it a cursory glance, punches the ‘decline’
button, and returns his attention to me.

“So why do you keep buying new ones? Why don’t
you just have one instead?”

“Because that would be sad, Maggie.”

“You’re telling me you can spend twelve hours
at a time dealing with horrifically gruesome situations, yet the thought of a
lonely goldfish makes you sad?”

“Have you seen them when they’re lonely? They
just swim in circles all day. It’s heartbreaking.”

I sigh and my hair lifts off my forehead. “You
are the strangest person I have ever met.”

“Maybe you haven’t met enough people.”

“Maybe not.” I shrug.

Ran edges closer, hovering his shoulders over
the table. Two more precisely drawn tattoos peek out from under his shirtsleeve
as it pulls up slightly. “Well then,” he smirks, his lips curving upward. “I’m
glad to be one of the few you’ve had the honor of meeting.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Did you
see
that bike, Mags?”

I shake my head and settle into the leather
couch cushions as I slip off my shoes. Mikey’s back from the pool hall, yet his
clothes still hold the lingering stench of cigarettes and stale pizza. Too bad
I just finished his last load of laundry.

“Not really.”

“Ran must really like you if he was willing to
swap with me this afternoon. That bike is top of the line, Mags.” Mikey shakes
his head, still not believing the less-than-even vehicle exchange that took
place. “Like worth at least five times more than that junker of a jeep of
mine.”

I quirk my lips indifferently and give him a
shrug. “I don’t know.”

“He’s got a crazy expensive bike
and
he’s off the charts hot? Not fair,
Maggie, not fair.” Cora slinks down next to me, propping her arm up on the back
of the couch as she twirls her blonde hair around a slender finger. “Who is
this guy and why are you keeping him to yourself?” She snaps a piece of bright
pink gum in her mouth, chomping it loudly between her teeth. “Sounds like
perfect jealously bait for Brian.”

“I’m not interested in making Brian jealous,” I
say, pulling on the string of my hoodie. “And I’m not interested in Ran.”

“Well, you must be both blind and stupid,” Cora
asserts. “Because Ran is gorgeous, and Brian is an ass that deserves to made a
little jealous if you ask me.”

“I don’t remember asking you, Cora.”

She tucks her head onto my shoulder and wraps
her hand around mine. “That’s never stopped me from giving my opinion before.”

For only knowing Cora since our first week of
college, I’m amazed at what a fast and rock-solid friendship we’ve forged in
such a short amount of time. She’s the sister I’ve never had, and never really
knew I wanted. Cora’s the opposite of me in so many ways: overly
affectionate—to the point of making things
uncomfortable—steadfastly loyal, and she’s got a crazy good sense of
style that everyone seems to appreciate. Cora is all of the things I’m not. Including
easily infatuated.

“Ran is a hot piece of meat. What’s his story?”

“I don’t know,” I say, but it’s a complete lie.
I do know his story. He’d given me a very precise, one paragraph summary of it
over our awkward lunch date. I’m just not quite sure how his story fits into
mine. “He’s the paramedic that took me to the hospital the night of the
accident.”

Cora’s green eyes pull open. “That was two
months ago, Mags. And he’s still smitten with you?”

“First of all, the 1950’s called and they want
their word back,” I tease, pulling my hand from hers so I can resume my nervous
hoodie-drawstring-tugging. “Second, I saw him again two weeks ago when Mikey
went to the ER.”

“How many times has this hottie come to your
rescue?” she asks, twirling her gum around her finger this time rather than her
hair.

“Two times too many.”

Cora turns to face me, her eyes surveying me
head to toe. “I think the fact that he came to your house and
still
took you out after seeing you
dressed in that ratty sweatshirt and those faded jeans proves he’s into you,
Maggie.” Her gaze scans me once more. “Believe me, this is not you at your
best.”

I tug the hood of my sweatshirt up over my
head, almost wishing the act would drown out Cora’s incessant chatter, but no
such luck. She continues for the next hour—and the entire duration of our
car ride back to Davis—talking about how I need to get some and ‘how long
has it been since Brian, anyway?’ I tuned her out somewhere around exit 46B and
forced myself to focus on other things while I faked sleeping in the passenger
seat of her daddy’s BMW.

Unfortunately, the only images I could summon
on the underside of my eyelids belonged to Ran: his nice face, lips, and newly
discovered body art. Every time I closed my eyes, it was Ran I saw in my head.
And it was his voice I heard rattling around in my brain, not Cora’s much too
high tenor that sounded like it belonged to an eight-year-old girl.

“Maggie?” Something pushes my shoulder and my
head wobbles unsteadily. “Maggie, we’re here.”

I blink rapidly, forcing the lingering effects
of sleep away, and unbuckle my seatbelt. “Yeah. Yeah, I see.”

Slipping out of my seat, I unlock the passenger
door. Cora’s already out of the car and pulling open the lid of the trunk to
withdraw my suitcase from inside it.

“Sawyer!” She calls out to a black haired boy I
recognize from one of the frat parties we’d attended the first week of school.
“Help Maggie with her bags.”

Sawyer jogs over to us and scoops my luggage
out of Cora’s grip. “Hey Maggie. Glad you’re back.” He flashes me a pearly
smile, though his bottom lip is packed with dip.

“That crap will give you cancer, Sawyer,” Cora
scolds, hiking her designer purse up her shoulder. Her three-inch heels click
across the asphalt as she walks.

“Not the kind that will kill you.” The three of
us skirt around the mad rush of bicycles and students scurrying across campus.
For a Saturday, it’s unusually jam-packed.

“Any kind of cancer can kill you, moron.” Cora
gives me a sympathetic look, but I wave her off. If coming back to school means
being on the receiving end of insincere empathy and false compassion, then I’m
ready to hop back in Cora’s car to drive ninety miles straight in the opposite
direction. I came back to Davis to escape all that I’d left at home, pity being
one of those many things.

“Sorry, Maggie. I heard about your brother.”

“It’s fine.” I hobble into the entry of our
dorm lobby, wishing my stupid leg would stop giving me such grief. I know the
original injury was bad, but I figured I’d be patched up and good as new by
now.

The three of us ride the elevator to the fifth
floor, and I’m grateful when Sawyer offers to carry my belongings all the way
into our room. It’s taking all of my effort to walk without a noticeable limp,
and being weighed down by a suitcase full of clothing probably wouldn’t make
that any easier to do.

“You’ll be in O-Chem on Monday?” he asks,
setting my bag onto my bed against the far wall. Our room isn’t big; Cora had
arrived on campus a day before me and claimed the half closest to the long
stretch of windows, leaving the bed against the cold, cinderblock wall for me.
I didn’t complain at all, because truth be told, I’d figured I wouldn’t
actually be spending much time in our dorm. I had assumed I’d be sleeping most
nights over at Brian’s off-campus apartment. How wrong I’d been in that
assumption.