Another bump in the road sent Tia's heart in a frenzy, making it jump in her chest, practically breaking through her ribs. She brought one of her sweaty palms to her forehead, leaning her elbow against the car's door, and pushed her hair out of her face, feeling her forehead and rubbing her temple.
This was completely insane, how what she supposed to get away with this? The blinding lights of another car came into the rear-view mirror, and that made Tia's heart beat accelerate yet again. Suddenly she wondered if twenty-six was too young for a heart attack, or if she could simply get out of this situation by kicking the bucket. That would be the end of it. It was still a brighter perspective than to finish her life in prison. After a few minutes, the car rounded the corner, and its lights disappeared.
She crossed yet another car that looked even more suspicious than the first one and she almost let go of the steering wheel when her hands began to shake. She didn't have it in herself to do this, she didn't- she couldn't do it.
Except there was no going back at this point – it was a go big or go home situation – and if Tia was scared shitless (there was no denying that after all) she was far from being a quitter. She survived Law School for heaven's sake, she could manage this!
Her inner pep talk had the immediate effect of calming down her trembling limbs, but her heart was still racing and her palms sweating so much she kept wiping them off on her jeans like a nervous schoolgirl about to ask her crush to the prom.
Without averting her head from the road she glanced at her backseat, checking that it was still hidden under the plaid she had thrown across the seats before driving away. This was by far the most terrifying moment of her entire - albeit pretty short - life, yet Tia suddenly wanted to laugh – not a real laughter, a nervous one – and also call her parents or do something like stupid like cry.
There was no time for a breakdown though, she was extremely aware of that. Still, she wanted to laugh. Her parents had named her Celestia! When she was young her family always teased her about being this cute little fairy princess living up to her name. This was probably miles away from what a fairy princess would do!
She turned left, leaving the tarmac for a dirt road. The track was nearly impossible to see in the middle of this pitch black night, with nothing but a few ray of the moon peeking through the high trees' thick branches and the car's lights turned off. It was cold even for an October night – which made her realize that it might be too cold to do what she had planned.
"Fuck me!" She swore out loud, hitting the wheel when she came to a stop.
Here was as good as any other place and she had driven for long enough. She was off the road, and if someone saw the traces of her tires, they would automatically deduce it was a hunter's pick-up, and not some frail, female attorney's car, who came in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night, to get rid of a dead body.
Yes, right, that's what was lying on her backseat, wrapped in a shower curtain, and then wrapped in a blanket, the whole thing covered with another blanket. Who was it, you ask? That's a long story. One thing after the other, first: get the shovel.
Tia hopped off her SUV – it wasn't even her SUV, goddammit! - and she opened the back door with a grunt. Was it too late to turn around and go turn herself in? Most likely. It's not like anyone would believe her if she said it was self-defense, not after seeing the dead body burrito in her car – well, her roommate's mom's car – and the shovel in her trunk.
Alright, what to do now? How do they go about this kind of business on TV? First, you dig a hole then you bring the body, not the other way around. Tia slammed the back door shut, not caring about making noise, she was literally in the middle of nowhere, and she opened her trunk, grabbed the dirty old shovel she stole in her grand parents' garage, and locked the car before walking away, off to find the perfect spot for a grave.
She walked for ten minutes before spotting a huge bush, it would be perfect behind this and besides she couldn't walk too far, she had to drag the body on this distance after spending hours digging a massive hole in the cold, hard ground.
Luckily for her – I mean, if you can call that luck – it had rained last night, and the shovel seemed to enter the dirt without difficulty when she checked the solidity of the ground. She was starting to feel like this whole thing wasn't turning out so bad, when suddenly she heard the ruffling of leaves and her breath caught in her throat, her grip on the shovel tightening so much her knuckled screamed for mercy.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she mouthed silently, inwardly cursing herself for being such an inconsequential little shit.
She held her shovel like a baseball bat, not caring how stupid she must have looked because it was too big and long to be held like that. If there really was someone here, and if she could handle that person, she would do it. She had already one person's blood on her hands, and if she had to get rid of another one to escape from her fate, then what the hell, she'd do it! One more, one less, who was counting?
Tia felt cold sweat run down her spine, and knowing full well that this could be her very last moment on earth, she walked soundlessly towards the source of the noise – behind the bush, exactly where she planned to go and bury the dead body. She counted in her head: one... take a deep breath Tia, you got this!... two... one more, just one more and you knock him out!... three!
She jumped from behind the tree she used to stay hidden, and she screamed, like she had seen the vikings do in her favorite TV series when they entered a battle, and Tia made a large circular movement with her shovel. It hit nothing but air, however the momentum made her slip and let go of her improvised weapon. She barely managed to steady herself, wishing she could see where she stepped in this darkness, and when she stopped screaming her lungs out, she realized she had also closed her eyes.
Tia opened one eye, carefully, and saw no one around. Had she imagined the presence she felt before her lame attempt at attacking someone with a shovel?
"Hello?" She called shyly, feeling beyond stupid at this point.
It was so dark she couldn't even see the tip of her nose, and certainly not the hand that grabbed her ankle and yanked her foot forward. Tia gasped and bit her tongue before the scream she was about to let out reached her throat. She didn't hit the ground as she expected, but rather fell four feet lower than she thought she would and her fall was cushioned by something of a strange shape.
"What the hell! What the hell!" Tia began to lose her shit and stood up, trampling whatever was underneath her feet.
"Stop! Stop! Fucking hell, STOP KICKING ME!" A man's voice started yelling at her and she fell again when the ground starting moving.
He, when he started moving, she fell on him. Well, it was his damn fault if she kicked him. Who grabs people by the foot to drag them in the dirt?!
"WHO ARE YOU?! WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!" Tia kept on shouting to the stranger whose face she couldn't even make out in the dark.
And she kicked him again, for good measure. Suddenly he turned on a flashlight and Tia crawled away from him – that is, as much as this hole allowed her to.
"Me?!" He yelled back. "Who are you?!"
"No, you first!" The woman replied, glaring daggers to the man. She could see his eyes now, they were brown, or green maybe, it was honestly hard to tell which one. She pushed him abruptly, hitting his chest and making him stumble back. "What the hell are you doing here?!"
"No, what are you doing here?! And why did you try to hit me with a shovel?!"
"Why are you digging a hole?!" She shouted even louder than him. Her throat was starting to hurt, and she only screamed to hide her fear. She would go to jail, that was it.
"Stop yelling at me, goddammit woman!" The man grabbed her wrists in a tight grip and pushed her back against the ground wall, pinning her in the dirt and making her eyes go wide.
Maybe she wouldn't go to jail, maybe she would die – the heart attack didn't happen but this guy sure would do the trick, he even had the hole already. Her entire being was shaking like a leaf in the wind while her brain still tried to find sense to what was happening.
"Shit!" She heard him curse under his breath. "Shiiiit!" He let go of her and sat in the dirt with his hands on his knees, almost like he was trying to prevent a panic attack.
Not waiting for a better occasion to come around, Tia jumped out of the hole – or crawled out rather – and for a couple seconds, that's all she did, crawling and digging her hands in the humid dirt, feeling the mud seep through her clothes. When she realized what she grabbed next, Tia let out an ear piercing shriek and slid back into the freshly dug hole, right back on the stranger. The yelling resumed.
"The is a nightmare, a bad, bad dream and I'm going to wake up!" She panicked, running her fingers through her hair – she had lost her beanie when she fell in the hole earlier – and practically leaving bloody scratches in their wake. But who cared about the damn beanie? Soon the police would find her body. "This cannot be happening!" She exclaimed, her eyes unfocused.
"Shut up, or I swear on all that is holy I will make you eat dirt, literally."
"A body! That's a body!" Tia screamed right in the man's face. "A dead body!"
"Of course it's dead you stupid egg, why would I bury a live person?!" He screamed right back at her.
"Don't yell at me!" Tia screamed back twice as loud, feeling pressured and panicked the more this screaming contest went on.
"Shut up you lunatic!" He told her, trying to put his hand over her mouth but she dodged it.
"Lunatic?! You're calling me a lunatic?" Tia's eyes almost popped out of their sockets. "I'm having a normal reaction right now, if you think I should be calm then you're the crazy one!"
"I'm not crazy, I'm being professional!"
"Oh so you're not just a killer, you're a hitman?"
"Wha-" He frowned and shook his head as if he thought he misheard her. "No. No," he repeated, still wondering if he heard right. "I killed one dude, and I'm not getting paid for it."
"Oh great, a rookie hitman who works for free." Tia raised her hands in the air then let them fall back to her sides. She might as well say her last prayer now. Hey God, I know we don't talk much and I sorta slipped up but we still buddies, right? "Could this night become any better?" She asked to no one in particular.
"I'm not a hitman, will you stop with that?" The stranger insisted.
"I will stop if I want to!"
This entire evening was the definition of Murphy's Law. Celestia had never witnessed such a disastrous series of events happen all within the span of twenty-four hours. A small, silly part of her brain wondered if she broke a record. If the situation wasn't so ridiculous she might have been inclined to flee in fear.
"Why do you have a dead body here?! What the- what... what's going on?!" She asked him again, as if she had any right to be questioning him right now.
Except he didn't know that she came here with shady intentions, as far as he knew she was just a witness to his dumping a body in the middle of nowhere. This was bad, this was so bad Tia couldn't find a proper synonym of 'bad' to qualify the situation. A minute ago she was ready to kill any potential witness to her little nocturnal walk, it would make sense that this stranger thought the same and decided to make her eat dirt metaphorically since she already had both feet in the grave, literally.
"I don't know, now would you please shut your cakehole?! I need to think and your screaming is not helping!"
"This is insane, this is completely-"
"Be quiet!" She suddenly felt herself being pinned down again, the man's face inches away from her face and his breath making a little puff of warm air. "Jesus, you really have trouble grasping the notion of silence, do you?"
He must have seen the indignation on her face because he kept talking without giving her a chance to reply.
"Don't even give me this look, Lady Shovel! I'm sure you're so innocent. Your hands are probably just as dirty as mine!" He told her, sounding impressively cocky for someone who just got caught red-handed trying to bury a body.
The anger who filled her when hearing him say that had Tia's face on fire and she felt so hot from within that she forgot about the cold, and her trembling hands became steadier. An increasingly fiery need to strangle this rude stranger washed over her like a wave, and Celestia's hands clenched into fists a couple times before she managed to calm down.
"You can't bury this thing here!" She protested, her left foot stomping the ground like a child throwing a tantrum. "I came here to bury a body, this is my spot!" She declared firmly, very aware of her irrational behavior but utterly unable to reason properly at this time being.
A smug smirk spread the man's lips, adorning in with a somewhat charming, boyish grin. Tia gave herself a few inner bitch slaps for thinking that, and focused on what was happening.
"I'm pretty sure I was here first," he snorted, and gestured to the hole they were still stuck in. "Or did you think this hole dug itself? If I were you, I'd start searching for another spot before the night's over."
"That's very selfish," Tia replied, fighting the urge to cry and laugh simultaneously.
She had crossed her arms over her chest when saying that and the man rolled his eyes at that. So much for looking determined and inflexible. It was a legit reaction though, she would have done that too if someone came up with such a lame comeback.
"Selfish, seriously? That's what's bothering you? C'mon, you can do better," he said, leaning on his own shovel a giving her a condescending look, still smiling like she was a little girl, like she was cute but inadequate.
"Better? Better?!" She squeaked. "I have the body of my ex-husband wrapped in a shower curtain in the back of my car, I don't have time for a cat-fight with you, just let me share your hole!" Tia started panicking again.
This guy didn't seem like he was going to murder her, that was a relief, but now she had another problem on her hands. Since it was obvious that she was nowhere near pushing up the daisies, she still have a murder to cover.
"That's the first time a girl asks me that," he teased her, somewhat managing to make her blush.
Yet another boyish grin split his face. His dimples popped out and Tia fought the urge to poke them. Being nervous and freaked out made her want to do weird shit. Perhaps she should just punch him in the face for looking this charming while digging a grave. She hadn't even started and she knew she was sweaty and gross.
"Don't be a smartass, you're a murderer! Whose body is that?!" She whisper-shouted, pointing her finger to his chest, hoping her tone was threatening enough to compensate for her lack of height or strength.
Surely he had to take her seriously, she did kill a man after all.
"We are murderers, buttercup," he scoffed, pushing away her accusing finger. "Listen, I don't have time for this. In case you haven't noticed, I'm kinda in the middle of something, so begone you and your skinny little ass."
"This goes straight in the top ten of my weirdest conversations," Tia said to herself.
"I'm surprised you've had nine other conversations like this."
"This is not funny, we're both burying a body and this is bad enough in itself, we can't be arguing like an old, married, bickering couple!" She groaned in frustration, finally getting out of the dirt and standing on her two feet. Her hands instinctively tried to get rid of the leaves and mud clinging to her clothes but it was to no avail. This outfit was going straight to the trash.
"You started this!" He said for his defense, raising both hands up in surrender. When they were both standing each side of the tomb, glaring at each other in sullen silence.
"Wha- what if I help you dig the hole and then we put both bodies in it?" Celestia suggested, finally settling down enough to find a mutually beneficial solution to their problem.
He seemed to ponder the pros and cons for a while, his hands resting on his hips and his eyes narrowed at her, like he was trying to determine if she was trying to screw him over.
"Alright," he finally said, make Tia sigh in relief. She was cold, so cold, and tired. She wanted this to be over as soon as possible. "But I already made half the work, so I'm warning you: I'm not helping you get your ex-husband here and I'll complain the whole time."
"Fine."
"Fine."
"Fine!"
"FINE," he shouted, grabbing his own shovel and getting to work again.
That was Celestia's cue and she planted her shovel in the ground before turning on her heels and walking back to her car, all the while grumbling profanities to herself, about karma being a real bitch and life being unfair. The walk to the SUV was significantly shorter without the shovel, and when she was face to face – figuratively speaking – with the ex-husband burrito on her backseat, Tia sat down on the ground and sulked for a couple minutes – she deserved a break. Honestly, her sole consolation was that she would never see this jackass' face again. He had taken her money, her dignity, wasted four years of her life and forced her to take a roommate in order to keep her house, but now he wouldn't be able to come back and fuck shit up in her life anymore.
After five minutes of this, she stood up with a renewed determination, grabbed the body by the feet and starting pulling. It made an awful sound when it hit the ground and she quickly locked the car again. Then started the twenty minutes long travel from her car to the grave, while dragging an inert mass behind her. It was exhausting, and Celestia didn't refrain herself from insulting the dead man for gaining weigh in the last weeks of his life. When she had reached the stranger, letting go of the corpse's feet and groaning of exhaustion and relief for arriving, she was drenched in cold sweat.
"What took you so long?" He grunted as greeting, purposely throwing a shovelful of dirt toward her. Celestia shrieked and jumped aside to avoid getting covered in even more mud. "Get to work, princess."
"No need to be rude!" She huffed, grabbing her shovel and jumping in the hole to dig alongside him. "Since we're both stuck here, can we at least talk? This silence is freaking me out."
He sighed, like she was annoying the hell out of him.
"What do you wanna talk about, buttercup?"
"Stop calling me buttercup, and tell me who you want to bury. I already told you who I killed."
"Not my problem if you're a thoughtless amateur murderer who tells a stranger who you killed," he replied, making a point. As a lawyer, she should know that. She knew that. But knowing something in theory and doing it in practice was drastically different. "What did he do?" He asked just when Tia was about to hit him with her shovel again.
"Huh?"
"Your husband," he said. "He hit you?"
"You're blaming me for spilling my guts to a stranger and then you ask questions?" Tia laughed – at this point she had the right to.
The man shrugged.
"Ex-husband. And he was my ex long before tonight," Celestia explained. "He never hit me but he was a douchebag, he moved out of our house a few months ago and he tried to screw me over during our divorce – he used the fact that I cheated on him against me - and tried to get the house – which he didn't get – and he wanted half of the money on our join account, even though over three fourth of it was mine."
"Real prince charming your man," the stranger snickered.
"And today he had the nerve to show up to our door – to my door – and demanded I let him take my dog away!"
"That's a low blow, I probably would have killed someone too if they tried to steal my dog from me."
"He said he was his because he's the one who bought it," Celestia stopped shoveling for a second and turned around to meet the man's eyes. They were brown, no more doubt. He was young, probably around the same age as her. His hair stood in odd directions, and he was closely shaved. "But he bought him for me!" She exclaimed. "We argued, and he tried to push me out of the way to get to the dog, so I lost it, and I pushed him down the stairs."
"He had it coming," he shrugged, going back to digging.
"Now you have to tell me who you forced to take a dirt nap," she told him. "Hey by the way what's your name?"
"Wowow!" He said, turning toward her. "No names."
"Alright, alright!" Tia said. "Give me something to go by at least!"
"Just call me… Han Solo," he said suddenly, in a way that implied it was something he had probably waited his entire life to say. A Star Wars nerd. Celestia was stuck digging a grave in the forest with a Star Wars nerd, and that fact along made her picture herself sitting in a cell in a women's prison. How would she get away with this?
"Hey well, Han Solo, I think I'll go by Lady Shovel," she rolled her eyes.
She was somewhere between utter panic and peace of mind. It was a strange state of mind considering their compromising position.
"It's my thesis director. He tried he appropriate my work and we fought over this. Until I ran him over with my car."
"What a jerk." Celestia winced at the thought of having her work stolen from her like that. Her work or her dog. "We're the lamest murderers ever. We killed over a dog and a thesis." She didn't mean to say it out loud, but now that she did, it sounded even more stupid.
"Okay I think you can stop now, if we keep digging we'll reach China," Han Solo told her.
Not complaining, Tia put her shovel down and the man helped her get out of the hole now that it was too deep to simply crawl out. They admired their work once they were out.
"We're a good team," he said, smiling in pride.
"Yeah we should totally do that again some time," Celestia laughed uneasily. "Let's get those two fuckers in there, I don't wanna stay here longer than necessary."
"Are you in a hurry, buttercup? Eager to get away from me?" The guy smirked, once again way too attractive for someone who's getting rid of a dead body.
Some people were just naturally stunning while other looked like potatoes with eyes even on their best days.
"I need a shower- No better! A nice, warm bath, with hella lots of bubbles, and a glass of wine," she said dreamily, already picturing the scene in her head. "Maybe candles."
Han Solo whistled at that.
"Yeah, sounds neat," he approved. "It'll be very early in the morning though, so maybe not wine… I'd kill for a coffee… literally," he shot her another smirk, even winking at her.
Celestia blushed and then glared at him.
"Not amused."
"It's hilarious and you know it!"
"Absolutely not," she denied, although lacking conviction.
"Why can't you appreciate my sense of humor?" He asked, grabbing the ankles of his former thesis director while Tia grabbed him by the shoulders. They lifted it up after a few failed tries because Tia's hands were too slippery and threw it to the bottom of the grave.
"It's too soon, maybe I'll laugh about it when I'm sure I don't end up in jail for predicted murder for the rest of my miserable life," Celestia grumbled, grabbing her ex's shoulders this time.
"Aren't you a real ray of sunshine?" The man laughed. "You know, when this is over, we should totally have angry sex."
Celestia was taken aback by that and her foot slipped in the mud, making her fall on her butt and let go of the body which hit the ground in a muffled thud.
"Why on earth would we have sex?!" She exclaimed.
"To unwind. "He shrugged again. "Get rid of tonight's tensions?" He suggested very reasonably. For a split second she almost considered his offer. Almost. "And covering up two murders brings people together apparently."
"You're funny." She surprised them both when saying that. "But I'm sticking to my warm bath."
"Fair enough," he sighed in acceptance. He somehow managed to sound disappointed, and Celestia felt bad. It was completely crazy but this guy was cute and he wasn't wrong when he said that covering up murders brought two persons together. Focus, Tia! Focus!
They worked in a comfortable silence for a while, putting the ex-husband in the hole with the intellectual property thief, and then putting the ground back in the hole. This part was considerably less tiresome than digging the hole, and they were done in under thirty minutes. When the earth was all were it was supposed to be, Celestia hit the ground with the flat of her shovel, as if putting a final point to this whole adventure.
"No. Regrets," she said, hitting it again, as if her dead ex-husband could still feel it.
"Easy Lady Shovel! I'm pretty sure he can't feel that anymore," the guy said, grabbing her shovel when she was about to beat the earth again.
"No but I do and it feels great. Go to hell asshole!"
"Same for you Professor Stevens," Han Solo said.
When they were done, they gathered their stuff and made their way back to their respective cars. He was enough of a gentleman to walk her back. It was four in the morning. Or maybe he just wanted her plate number, at this point she was beyond caring. She needed at least half an hour to go back to her house and take that much needed – and deserved – bubble bath.
"Hey," he said when they reached her SUV, digging his hands in his pockets. "That was unexpected, but- it was cool. Well, I mean-"
"I know what you mean," Celestia cut him off. "And my name's Celestia, Tia for the people I bury dead bodies with."
He smiled sheepishly, his left dimple popping out again.
"I'm Stiles," he said, shaking the hand she was offering him. "Still not up for that coffee?" He ventured to ask her.
Tia grabbed his phone and quickly put her number in it.
"Not tonight," she said. "I'm covered in dirt and I smell like a wet dog."
"Fair enough," Stiles said with a nod, scratching the back of his neck. Clearly he must have taken this as Tia blowing him off, but he only took a step back before speaking again. "If you change your mind, I'll be at the diner on the main road this afternoon," he told her, his lips pinched but his eyes hopeful.
"Will you recognize me with in the daylight and with a clean face?" Tia asked with a laugh.
"You'll have to come to find out," he declared with a wink.
After that he turned around, and for some reason, Tia felt warm and tingly. Tonight did get better.