Breakfall (23 page)

The sight of the two always made Asbjorn smile. “Don. Adrian.” He nodded toward them.

“C’mon, Lund. We’ve been trailing you through three bars already. Won’t you ever sit still so we can catch up on the good ole days?”

F
IFTEEN
MINUTES
later, they were settled inside an aged aluminum-construction diner with twenty-four-hour breakfast service. Way past their bedtimes, they were all running on trucker coffee and adrenaline.

“So where does this put you now, you think?” Adrian’s question was mild, noncommittal.

Asbjorn poked at his potato hash. “I dunno. I guess I put him in a bad situation, and he decided it’s easier to just dump me.”

Don spooned some more sugar into his coffee and stirred, his visage troubled. “You sound like everything’s your fault.”

“It is.”

“How?”

“He took care of me after our fight. I told him to leave. Had I not done that, he’d have been at my place and nothing would have happened. And then, I keep trying to fix it and it’s not working, y’know? Nothing seems to help. He just… he pushes me away.”

“Not all the time, surely.”

Asbjorn paused for thought.
No, not all the time
.

“I drove him away.” He poked the potato some more. “The worst part’s that he and that girl looked pretty good together.”

The other two men maintained expectant silence.

“He pushes me away a lot. Like he doesn’t want any help. But he still sleeps with his light on, y’know? He’s trying to act like he’s okay, but he’s not. I know what he was like before this, and I know what he’s like now, and he just won’t let me help. I just… I just don’t understand.”

Adrian and Don exchanged a look.

“Maybe I can talk to Sean.” Adrian said with a faraway look in his eyes. “If I bring it up, he may be more open to suggestions.”

“Why you?” Asbjorn didn’t try to keep a jealous note out of his voice.

Don draped his arm over Adrian’s shoulders. “Adrian works with trauma victims. Mostly minors, but… he’s good.”

“There are new techniques out there to deal with PTSD. Sean doesn’t have to be going through all this shit,” Adrian said, his voice confident. “It’s a lot better than even five years ago.”

Asbjorn met the dark eyes with a glimmer of hope.

“Thanks. Whatever I can do to help. Even if it’s staying out of the way. Just let me know.”

Half an hour later, Asbjorn was dragging his fight-weary legs up the stairs. He fumbled the keys out of his pocket and stabbed at the lock with his key a few times. He finally got it in.

Then he saw it.

A piece of mail was stuck between the door and its frame. He grabbed it and stumbled inside, slamming the door behind him. He ripped the envelope open and pulled out a sheet of ordinary white paper folded three times. There was no form of address, no signature. Just words written in precise, somewhat angular handwriting.

Is it so hard for

Lucid dreams to lead me

Over rough terrain

Veering onto true path to

Enter your embrace

Yesterday’s mistakes

Overcome together

Understanding ourselves

“Whatever. Fuckin’ joke.”

Asbjorn slapped the poem—if that counted as a poem—on his dining room table. Same table where he and Sean had their argument.

Sean.

The boiling, jealous rage he’d experienced earlier was gone. Lanced. Spent. All he felt now was the disorienting, hollow emptiness within, and a sense of loss. He rubbed his abused knuckles, welcoming the physical pain. It formed an attachment to the present.

His eyes drifted to the precise letters again. What did this mean? A riddle? A joke? He reread the words, rustling the white sheet of paper in his hands.

Some words sounded promising, such as “embrace.” Or “overcoming mistakes together.” As poetry went, he thought the poem sucked. As though whoever wrote it tried to fit certain words onto particular lines while not being particularly good at it. It reminded him of that code-breaking seminar he attended back in his navy days.

Then he saw it.

The first letter of every line.

I

L

O

V

E

Y

O

U

“I love you.”

He grimaced. A secret admirer? Probably some woman. But who? More importantly, did he care? He sighed, crumpling the paper, ready to throw it away.

Wait. Suppose it was from Sean?

Nah. No way.

But just suppose.

I could pretend it’s from Sean.

His rough hands smoothed the white sheet with their precisely written, well-intentioned words. Whoever wrote it, Asbjorn would hold on to it. He chose to pretend.

Not bothering to shower or change, he fell on top of his bed. As he drifted off to sleep, the sheet of paper slipped from between his relaxing fingers and a single, wet tear slipped from between his lids.

I will pretend.

“A
ND
WHAT
makes you think a woman would tolerate being overprotected?” Nell asked the next day. Her eyebrows arched. She bustled around as they talked, fixing dinner for the babysitter and for little baby Stella. Her gi bag and sword case stood ready by the door.

“If something bad happened to you and the perp was still around, would you be okay with the man in your life helping you out, or would you dump him for some chick?” Asbjorn felt like his voice was choked with frustration and pain.

“Neither, Bjorn. I’d talk to him, and we would establish some boundaries.”

The conversation continued all the way to the Watertown YMCA’s sword class.

Yes, it was natural to feel protective, regardless of gender. Yes, both men and women had their pride. No, neither wanted to be smothered in cotton batting.

It may be socially more acceptable for women to give up control and be taken care of, but not so for men.

“Sean must remain in control of whatever’s going on,” Nell said. “Your role is whatever you two negotiate. On the other hand, he shouldn’t just shut you out.” She drove in silence for a while.

“Maybe Dr. Verbosa could talk to him. He’ll listen to her. She’s his de facto sempai.”

“No. Good idea, but please don’t.”

“Okay, Asbjorn. I won’t. But what’s your plan, then?”

“I’ll talk to him.”

Asbjorn’s heart felt like it was falling apart into many pieces. Sean had moved on, perhaps even dating somebody else. He was still a friend, though. There was some indefinable quality about him that gave Asbjorn hope—no, a certainty—that no matter what happened between them, they would always have the ability to remain friends.

“I
CAN
see you, Sean.”

Phone in his ear and heart in his throat, Sean kept walking. The ground around him seemed to heave, the timid lawn of the quadrangle all too eager to meet his face.

One point. Center on your one point.

He visualized the place right below his navel and forced himself to feel the way his body moved around it. His legs became heavier again, and the lawn around him steadied.

“You’re on campus, then?” Sean asked, surprising himself at being able to make his voice sound casual.

“I can see you all the time. I saw you going out for pizza with your girlfriend, Sean.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he replied automatically. “Why do you follow me around?”

“To make sure you’re all right. You liked it, didn’t you? We could do it again.”

Sean forced his feet to fall to the ground, one in front of the other, maintaining a regular rhythm.

“We could be good together, Sean.” Joe Green’s voice bore a note of wistful desire.

“If you think I enjoy being attacked in the middle of the night, beaten up, and raped, you’re very much mistaken.” Sean was amazed to hear his own words emanate from his throat, calm, tinged with anger.

“I didn’t rape you, Sean!” The allegation upset Joe Green, reflecting in his voice and volume.

“I gotta go now. I have a class.”

“Go to your class, skip your court date on the fifteenth—if it ever comes around, that is—and if you’re good, I’ll show you a good time.”

“A
ND
THAT
call occurred today, November thirtieth,” Mark reiterated, probably writing it all down. “Did you record it?” he asked.

“No—I don’t have anything to record it with.” Sean hedged some. He hadn’t approached Asbjorn about that student of his who was such a wizard with electronics.

“We need you to record these calls. I don’t care what you use. They’re evidence. You’re being stalked, Sean.”

The line went silent for a while, both of them thinking dark thoughts.

“I don’t want you to be alone. I’ll come over right away. Where are you?”

Sean emerged from his math class later that afternoon. He’d hustled to maintain his class schedule, his brain was fried, and his stomach ran on empty. As he stepped out of the long, brick building, he looked both left and right, scanning the area. A shock of slicked-back blond hair to the left. Mark. A writhing mass of students, almost homogeneous with their dark attire and backpacks, streamed past him, moving from class to class. It would be easy for Joe Green to get lost in the crowd.

Sean felt his heartbeat calm somewhat. Mark was here. Presumably, Mark had some answers. His thoughts flitted back to the night when he was giving his statement in Mark’s office, supervised by Hastings and attended by the disagreeable Mrs. Curry from the dean’s office. He still remembered the coffee, sweet and creamy, and the donuts Mark brought him then.

“Come on. You need it more than you think you do.”

Mark had been right back then. Hopefully, he’d be right again.

“Whaddaya mean, he’s not talking to you? I thought you two were together.” The young detective gave Sean a disturbed look. “You can’t be dealing with this on your own, Sean. We don’t have enough manpower to put a guy on you. The best I can do is put you in a safe house.”

“What do you mean, ‘put a guy on me’?”

Mark sighed. “In most cases like these, we’d have you under surveillance to ensure your safety. We’d look for the guy stalking you and apprehend him. Except there is this big case going on right now and most of us are tied up with that. So… the best I can recommend right now is moving you into a safe house. Regular patrols would give you a lift to class and back until we nail this sonovabitch.”

“No.”

“Think about it. He’s armed. There’s deadly force involved. You’re alone. If you were with somebody else”—and Mark gave Sean a significant look—“I might give you some slack on this.”

“I’m not a girl.”

Mark grinned. “Oh. Let me guess. You think only women accept police protection? Think again. You may be a serious martial artist and all, but a bullet in the back will stop you the same as it will stop me or anybody else.”

Sean got that itchy feeling between his shoulder blades, hearing Mark say that. “But I don’t want to expose Asbjorn, either. It’s bad enough your guys beat him up.”

“Yeah. Just for your information, we handled that incident internally.” Mark blew some air on his knuckles, and only then did Sean notice they were skinned.

“S
O
THIS
is what we’re gonna do,” Mark said a while later in Sean’s room, ensconced in his favorite reading chair. “I can’t give you a gun since you can’t legally carry one, and I doubt you have the training anyway—last thing I need is you shooting your own ass off. However, I can give you my pepper spray.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slim black canister with an orange push-tab on top. “Now this here’s a police-quality, marking pepper spray. You aim for the chest and the fumes go up to the face. If you aim for the face, you can miss. This is how you use it.”

He demonstrated the general principle.

“This is the guard you flip down so you can push the trigger. It’s like a safety on a gun so it won’t go off in your pocket. Carry it with you at all times and don’t lose it. Don’t show it around, and don’t tell anyone where you got it from.” Mark paused in thought. “Unless you’re under oath.”

Sean eyed the slim piece of plastic dubiously. “Will this really stop someone?”

“Yeah… here, gimme your finger.” Mark wiped the area under the spray nozzle with Sean’s index finger. His skin turned pink from dye residue. “Now touch it to the skin under your eye. No! Not inside your eye—just above the cheekbone. Yeah, like that.”

Sean did. Within seconds, his eye reddened, tearing up. The pink polka dot on his cheekbone burned with pain. “Wow. No way!”

“Yeah.” Mark grinned. “It’s the good stuff. Now go wash your face and hands, and don’t spread it in your eyes.” Before Sean headed for the shower room, Mark stopped him. “Hey… never use it in a stairwell or another enclosed space, okay?”

“Why not?”

“It will get you about as badly as it will get him. But if it does, remember it’s only pain. It will go away.”