Eastern Lights Page 2

  Whenever I stepped outside, I wished I was a smoker. Not for the enjoyment of it, plus I doubted my heart and lungs could handle a smoking habit, but I would’ve preferred having something to do with my hands when outside. Smokers always seemed comfortable being outside on their own because they were busy doing something. Me, on the other hand, all I could do was people watch, and boy, oh boy, did I stumble onto a gem watching Thor slam his fist into Captain’s face.

  Wonder Woman was there, too—though there was nothing wonderful about this woman. Captain came out of the bar after me, and he seemed unafraid to make a phone call on the streets of New York, probably due to the fact that a guy was less likely to be harassed and attacked compared to a woman. Count your blessings, Cap.

  He pulled out his cell phone but got distracted when he heard Thor hollering, cussing Wonder Woman out. And by cussing out, I meant he was using every foul term that came to his mind. Whore. Slut. Bitch. Tramp.

  Wonder Woman’s back was against the building as Thor spat his words at her, hovering over her body in the most intimidating way. She was already a small woman, but the way he surrounded her made her look even more tiny. Her shoulders were rounded forward as her knees buckled and she took in the disgusting words that were being thrown at her.

  I hated some men and the way they thought they could treat women.

  Captain slowly lowered his cell phone from his ear, becoming more aware of the situation that I, too, had become oddly invested in. I felt the nerves forming in my gut before anything even happened.

  Thor shoved Wonder Woman against the brick wall.

  “Hey!” I shouted. I stood straight, alarmed as Wonder Woman began sobbing. She shoved him back, and before she could speak, he slammed his fist into her face. A wave of nausea twisted in my stomach. He didn’t tap her. He didn’t slap her. No, he tightened his hand into a fist and swung it straight into her face.

  I’d never seen anyone punched before, and that night I’d seen two people get hit. It was nothing like the movies, and it affected me a lot more than I thought it would. As she gripped her face and cried out, I felt an aching along my own jawline.

  I parted my lips to speak up again as I started in her direction, but before I could insert myself into their storyline, Captain America was on the scene.

  “Get the hell away from her!” he barked, marching toward the pair. He had a Southern accent. I didn’t know why that surprised me, but it did. A deep, smoky voice with a Southern twang to it.

  “How about you mind your own business?” Thor slurred, obviously drunk and belligerent.

  “It becomes my business when you put your hands on a woman,” Captain argued back. He wasn’t backing down, getting chest to chest with Thor.

  You tell him, Cap! I cheered in my mind.

  “She’s my property. I can do whatever the fuck I want to her,” Thor said.

  Your property? What a fucking troll. I mean, who talks like that? What kind of messed-up planet was that superhero from where he thought that was okay? He was acting a lot more like Loki than the hero of Asgard.

  “Are you okay?” Captain asked Wonder Woman, disregarding the ignorant man talking to him.

  “Don’t get near her,” Thor hissed, gripping the woman’s wrist tightly and swinging her whole body behind him, where she tripped and fell. She hit the concrete sidewalk with a hard thump. Her hands went to stop her fall, scraping against the ground, probably slicing her skin raw. A sickened chill hit me at the idea of her skin being ripped open.

  Her boyfriend didn’t even look toward her to make sure she was okay, but Captain did. He moved in to help her up but was stopped when Thor’s fist slammed into his face.

  My stomach knotted up again. Watching a second person get punched wasn’t any easier than the first. My chest felt as if it was on fire watching everything unfold in front of me. What amazed me the most was how so many other people walked past without even noticing the intense moment occurring right there.

  Captain stumbled a bit before standing up straight. He went to help the girl stand, but instead of taking his hand, she reacted in a completely deranged way.

  “Get the hell away from me and my boyfriend, asshole!” she hissed, rising to her feet and whipping him with her lasso. She hit him repeatedly as if he wasn’t trying to save her from her abusive asshole of a mate.

  How ironic.

  The whipping sound felt so aggressively intense I forced myself into the picture, grabbing the whip from the woman’s hand and tossing it to the side of the road.

  “He was trying to help you!” I barked, disgusted by everything happening.

  She looked at me with her bloodshot eyes and rolled them so hard I was surprised her vision wasn’t impaired from the dramatics of it.

  “Shut up, will you? Come on, Ronnie. Let’s go,” Wonder Woman said, taking Thor’s hand into hers. He wrapped an arm around the woman and kissed her temple as if they weren’t in an insanely toxic relationship. I swore they even had a bit of bounce in their step as they walked away.

  Halloween is weird.

  I wished Mario were there to witness all of it with me. I wondered how he would’ve handled the situation. I bet he would’ve stepped in to help. I bet he would’ve been his own kind of superhero. I bet—

  Wait, no. Screw him.

  Why was I thinking about my ex-boyfriend Mario at that very moment? Was I drunk? No, just sad. Funny how my sad and drunk thoughts sometimes were interchangeable.

  “Shit,” Captain groaned, rubbing the side of his head. America’s sweetheart had really taken a beating. He started walking back toward the bar entrance, and I did something completely out of character for me—I inserted myself into someone else’s world for the second time in the span of a minute.

  “Hey, you dropped this,” I called out, bending down to the ground where he’d dropped his cell phone and shield. I picked up his items and walked over to him as he kept massaging his jawline. It was a nice jawline, too, the kind you’d imagine Captain America would have: chiseled to a godly point of perfection.

  He turned to me, and my breath caught in my throat. He was beautiful. I knew men probably didn’t want to be considered beautiful, but that was the only way I could describe him. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen in my life, almost as if the ocean had decided to reside right inside his spirit. His lips were full with a small Cupid’s bow, and his facial hair was groomed to a T. Unfortunately, his left eye was already swelling from the punch, but that did nothing to take away from his good looks. If he wasn’t a superhero, I was almost certain he could land a Calvin Klein ad.

  “I must look like I feel.” He chuckled, shaking his head as he took his items from me.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “The way you’re looking at me makes it clear that I look like I got my ass kicked, which is…well, accurate. Did you see that?”

  “Every second.” I wrapped my arms around my body and tried to ignore the slight chill that hit me. I needed to head inside before I got too cold. “For the record, Thor was a dick, and what you did was noble.”

  He held his arms out and smirked. “Comes with the suit.” His smile disappeared for a moment as he lightly touched around his eye. “Though, in my mind, that situation was going to end differently.”

  “Let me guess: in your mind, the woman was thankful for you saving her from an abusive man?”

  “Yeah, something along those lines.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “You aren’t from around these parts, are you?”

  He laughed. “Does the accent give it away?”

  “No, the fact that you tried to help in that situation did. Most New Yorkers keep their heads down and stay in their own lane.”

  “I never was any good at that staying in my own lane thing. Plus, my mama would kill me if she knew I saw something as shitty as that and kept walking.”

  I didn’t know why, but I liked the way he said mama. He really was a Southern boy.

  “Well, I’m sorry
that moment didn’t turn out like the fairy tales.”

  “It’s okay.” He smiled. “Maybe next time it will.” His smile somehow seemed to make his eyes brighter than before. He brushed his thumb against his nose and nodded in my direction. “Thanks, Red.”

  “Red?”

  He gestured toward me. I glanced down at myself and rolled my eyes at my slowness. Right—Red, as in Little Red Riding Hood.

  “Oh, right. Thanks to you, Cap, doer of good.” Doer of good? Could you sound any more lame, Aaliyah?

  He kept smiling as his eyes traveled up and down my body, not in an invasive way, but as if he was simply taking note of me overall. It happened quickly, and I didn’t feel an ounce of disrespect, because my eyes had done the same thing to him.

  Then his blues locked with my browns. “You think I can buy you a drink?” he asked, bruised eye and all. The amount of confidence it took for him to offer me a drink after I watched him get his butt kicked was inspiring. If it were the other way around, I’d be on the subway, licking my wounds and avoiding human interaction for the remainder of my life. Perhaps that was how my villain origin story would’ve begun—beaten up by Wonder Woman and Thor outside a New York bar.

  But Captain? Nope. He still seemed as confident as ever.

  I hesitated on the drink invitation for a moment. On one hand, interacting with the opposite sex was at the bottom of the barrel as far as things I wanted to do. On the other hand, my other option was going home, drinking wine, and crying as I played Taylor Swift and looked at old photographs of Mario and me while reading old text messages.

  “Oh, Cap.” I walked over to him and patted him on the back. “Let me buy you a drink. You need it more than I do.”

  2

  Aaliyah

  His drink of choice was whiskey, which made me think he was a lot older than he looked. What guy my age drank straight whiskey? Most guys I knew were drinking beer or the cheapest shots they could find. My drink was a Long Island because I was a wild child. When I reached into my purse to pay for said drink, he’d somehow already had the bartender put it on his tab.

  “Hey!” I argued, shooting him a stern look.

  He shrugged. “Sorry. Where I come from, the man pays for the pretty lady’s drink.”

  He called me pretty, and I pretended not to notice. “You came from like 1918, sir. Times have changed.”

  “So you know your Captain America trivia.”

  “I’m a comic book nerd. On top of that, I went through a Chris Evans phase—which, honestly, I’m still in.”

  “I can’t blame you. Have you ever seen that man’s butt?”

  “That’s America’s ass,” I joked, lifting my drink. “Thanks for this, but just so you know, just because you bought me a drink doesn’t mean I owe you anything. Not my time, not my attention, and not my body.”

  He laughed and nodded. “Thank you for making that clear. Would that go both ways if you bought me a drink?”

  “Oh, no.” I shook my head. “You would have to give me your time, your attention, and your body.”

  “That seems ass-backward.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t make the rules. I just follow them. By the way, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-five. You?”

  “Twenty-two. I could tell you were old because you’re drinking straight whiskey.”

  He laughed. “I’m only three years older than you.”

  “A lot can change in a person’s life in three years.”

  “You’re not wrong there. Three years ago, I probably wasn’t drinking whiskey, but somewhere along the way, I started making business deals with older gentlemen who poured me expensive glasses. So, I’ve adapted.”

  “Do you actually enjoy the whiskey, or is it just something you were told to enjoy?”

  “Ah, the old question of what’s truly a person’s choice, and what was chosen for them based on their surroundings.” He tapped his pointer finger against his chin. “I think I like it because I like it.”

  “I guess it’s possible to grow into things society introduced you to, too.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he looked at me as if trying to uncover some secrets about me. He blinked and turned away to lift his drink, then his stare came back to me. For a moment, it felt as if we were the only two standing in the middle of the packed bar. I lost myself in his eyes for a moment—up until Big Bird bumped into me, bringing me back to reality.

  “You want to find a table to drink these together?” he asked, very attentive. Even when the bird bumped me, he didn’t look away. He stayed focused on me, making it easy for me to return my attention to him.

  “If you’re able to find a table in this packed place, I’ll have two drinks with you,” I joked, knowing it was damn near impossible to find a vacant table in any bar on Halloween night.

  He cocked a brow and gave me a mirthful grin. “Challenge accepted. Follow me.”

  I did as he said, and we circled the bar not once, not twice, but three times. Each lap was unsuccessful. We ended up standing by a staircase that led upstairs to where the bar kept their inventory. Captain clapped his hands together, walked over to the staircase, and took a seat. He patted the step below him as a clear invitation for me to join him.

  “This isn’t exactly a table,” I said, sipping at my Long Island. “Which means you failed the challenge.”

  “What makes a table a table exactly?” he urged. “It’s a made-up concept that some man or woman created in their mind, and then they told everyone about it.”

  I laughed. “If you look at it that way, everything is just a made-up concept.”

  “‘There are no facts, only interpretations.’ Nietzsche said that.” He gestured for me to sit, and I did because honestly, I found this guy amusing. I hadn’t felt amused in weeks. All I’d really felt was sad and lonely. It felt good to feel something different for a short period.

  “Are you big on philosophers?” I asked. He seemed surprised that I knew he was referring to Friedrich Nietzsche, but he didn’t say it out loud.

  “I took a philosophy class before I dropped out of college. It changed my life, and I fell into a deep pool of seeking truths by following the greats. You know, Plato, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Socrates. I could nerd out on any one of them.”

  Something was sexy about a man who was nerdy. It seemed as though the two concepts should’ve canceled one another out, but alas, the sexy nerd was something that was here to stay.

  “Okay. Nerd out about Aristotle,” I urged, tipping my glass in his direction before I took a sip. “Give me one of your favorite quotes from him.”

  He sat up a bit straighter, pleased with the challenge. “‘Hope is a waking dream.’”

  I liked the way words left his mouth. It wasn’t just his words, but the way he connected to them, to the person he was delivering them to. Captain spoke to me as if I were the only person who existed at that very moment, and that fact sent chills down my spine.

  Hope is a waking dream.

  “Do you have any waking dreams?” I asked.

  He smiled and sipped his drink. “I hope so.” He scratched at the side of his facial hair and wiggled his nose slightly. “Speaking in philosopher quotes kind of makes me sound like a pretentious asshole, though. So, I think this is the proper time to inform you that I am also trained in bad jokes.”

  I laughed. “I’ll need proof.”

  He leaned in toward me, and those eyes of his made my heart skip a few beats. “Why did the ketchup blush?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “He saw the salad dressing.”

  I laughed out loud, shaking my head in disbelief. “You’re right—that is a bad joke.”

  “Why did the mermaid wear seashells?”

  “Do tell.”

  “She outgrew her b-shells.”

  It took a moment for me to connect the dots on that one, but when I did, I burst out laughing. “You really just have these random quotes and bad jokes in your head, don’t you?
”

  He tapped his temple. “It’s a very scary place inside this noggin. The number of useless facts I have up here is terrifying, but I think I have a lot of good information, too, it’s a balanced place.”

  “I can see that already.”

  “Did the bad jokes make me less of a pretentious asshole?”

  “Yeah, they just made you kind of dorky, but I hear dorks are in this year.”

  He wiped his head in relief. “Good, because otherwise I’d be fucked.”

  I smiled at him, and he smiled back effortlessly. For a few moments, all we did was grin at one another, but the silence didn’t feel uncomfortable. It felt satisfying, as if being silent with him was normal.

  Then, we fell back into conversation, and that felt normal, too.

  We talked about a lot of things, but what shocked me the most was that I was laughing so much. Gosh, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so freely and openly.

  “Uh, can you two not sit on these steps?” an employee said, standing in front of us with a tray of dirty dishes.

  We instantly stood with our now empty glasses and moved out of the way. The employee muttered something under her breath about how annoying people were, and I couldn’t blame her. The Halloween crowd had to be a handful.

  “Well, our drinks are gone,” Captain observed, waving his glass in the air.

  “That’s a shame. I was having a good time talking to you.”

  “If only there was a way to get another drink,” he said, shaking his head.

  I smirked. “If we have another drink, I’m paying for it. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

  “If the only way you’ll let me continue talking to you is if you buy the drink, I surrender my wallet and leave it all up to you.”

  Good boy.

  I could feel the cocktail I’d had making my body feel a bit relaxed in a good way, but I knew my drink of choice would be a water this time around. I had a very solid rule about drinking water after every alcoholic beverage. I never gone out to get wasted. My idea of a good time was to have a nice buzz that hovered over me. It left me still feeling like myself, but a heightened version of me.