It wasn’t my first fight or even my tenth, and as far as grappling went, I wrestled with Dante, a boy twice my bodyweight, for fun.

These girls were nothing.

I didn’t lash out indiscriminately.  I’d learned a long time ago to go for the spots that debilitate.

The first girl I punched hard in the nose.  I heard a crunch and blood started spurting everywhere.

One down.

The second girl, Mandy, the sheriff’s princess daughter who had freaking started it, I kneed hard in the stomach because she was almost on top of me, still trying to get me into the stall that I’d just escaped from.

She doubled over.  The third girl was grabbing my hair, trying to pull me away from her friend, but I grabbed the side of Mandy’s head and viciously slammed it sideways, right smack into where the stall protruded sharply.

Third girl started backing away when she realized that both of her friends were crying huddles on the floor, but I wasn’t having it.

I stalked after her.  When she turned to start running away, I grabbed the back of her long black hair and yanked.

She went flying like a rag doll and ended up on her back.

I was raising my foot up to stomp on her when the gym teacher walked in.  She was a big, athletic woman, and she had to physically drag me away from the girl before I stopped fighting.

Of course I got blamed for all of it.  I’d broken the first girl’s nose.  Mandy they thought had a concussion, and I assumed she did.  I’d smashed her head hard into the stall.

The cops were called, three besides the usual on-campus officer, and they took turns threatening me, chewing me out, and trying to scare me.

When I tried to argue that they had started it, I’d been defending myself, and there had been three of them, my stutter predictably came out to play.

I almost decked one of them, a large man that kept getting right in my face, close enough that I could feel his spittle and smell his breath, but I managed to control my temper at least that much.

After about an hour of them harassing me behind a closed door (they’d borrowed the principal’s office to interrogate me), I heard a commotion outside, someone getting loud.  Someone losing their temper.

My chest warmed and I felt instantly safer.  I even managed to get out a few sentences through my stutter.  “Th-th-they attacked m-me!  There were three of them.  H-h-h-h-how can you not see that there were th-th-th-three of them?”

One of the cops (the second girl’s father!) took a menacing step toward me.  “Are you calling my daughter a liar?”

Oh no.  I was going to lose it.  Nothing got my temper going hotter than injustice like that, the supposed mediator in the situation blood related to one of the culprits!

I nodded at him, glaring.  “Y-y-y-yes.  H-h-h-how can you deny it?  Th-th-there were three of them!”

Dante crashed into the room, the principal, a small middle-aged man, right behind him, grabbing at his arm, clearly trying but failing miserably to hold him back.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” he started shouting the second he cleared the door.  “Four male officers harassing one teenage girl behind a closed door?  You can’t detain her like this!  You need to arrest her or let her go, but just so you know, my lawyer will be here in ten minutes and Vivian Durant will be here in five.  You might want to start acting like real cops now.”

I ate up every rage-filled inch of him with complete adoration.

I don’t know how he made it across the room to me, it wasn’t easy, no one wanted to let him, but he made his way to my side, touching my cheek lightly, crouching down beside my chair.

“You okay, tiger?” he asked me softly.

Even with how angry I was that made me smile.

In short order Gram showed and barely kept them from taking me into custody.

It was the first time I’d gotten to see her in action.  She was a glorious sight to behold.  She had a way of declaring a thing and making it so.  She was like Dante, the opposite of me, able to articulate exactly what she meant to with absolute, precise effect.

I made a promise to myself right then and there to grow up to be just like her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“When you trip over love, it is easy to get up.  But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.”

~Albert Einstein

PRESENT

I thought Dante would head back to the reception, but instead he headed the opposite way, casually grabbing my arm as he walked by, tugging me with him.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Scotch,” he answered.

It was a good answer.

He poured us both a full glass and we toasted to Gram.

“How do you like the flight attendant gig?” he asked me.

I fucking hated it.  For so many years I’d been so determined to devote my life to being an actress, waiting tables and tending bars to pay the bills.  Making a career move that monopolized a huge chunk of my potential auditioning time had felt so much like giving up on my dreams.  It still did.

“I fucking hate it.  It’s not where I saw myself at this stage of my life.  I was so sure I’d have gotten my big break by now.”

“You’re only twenty-seven.  You still have all the time in the world.”

I rolled my eyes.  He didn’t get Hollywood.  Every year that I slipped closer to the Botox phase of my life, the less likely it was that I could be the next ‘fresh’ face.  And I wanted to be that.  I wanted to be the beautiful young ingénue that all the guys wanted, and all of the girls wanted to be.  I craved it more than anything.  What better way to shove my success in the face of all of the people that’d ever wronged me?