Although the baby was still prominent in my mind, it would be kind of fun to go hit someone.
After some asking around for Daryl's whereabouts, I found him smoking a cigarette and standing haughtily by the group's vehicles. He gave me an acknowledging head nod.
"What's up?" he graciously offered me a drag off his cigarette. I took it more out of politeness due to how huge the gesture was rather than desire for a puff.
"You wanna fight?" I asked playfully, putting my fist up and taking a few fake jabs at the air.
He snickered, "that's not actually your form, right? 'Cus that's garbage, Dude."
I let him finish his cigarette as we headed back to the cell blocks together. We both stayed silent for the most part until he led me into an unused cell block. He told me to help him take the mattresses off the beds and arrange them on the floor as mats.
He took off his leather vest and boots, and set his crossbow down lovingly in a chair, like it was a little spectator. He asked me to take off my boots and any jewelry. I didn't have any of the second thing, I'd lost my only ring I owned a long time ago, but I obliged with my boots. He stood facing me on the mats in a sleeveless t-shirt and jeans.
He informed me he only really knew how to bar scrap as he called it, he just wanted to see if I'd be able to handle myself if I ended up in trouble during a run and no one could assist me.
I rolled the sleeves of my dirty, long sleeve shirt up and swung my ponytail out of my way.
Then he told me to attack him. I came straight at him and he simply picked me up and threw me. I landed with a heavy thump on a mattress.
He reached down for me and helped me up, straight faced.
"You realize you have like, sixty pounds on me, right?" Even as I said it, I knew it shouldn't be a problem. Especially for me. I knew perfectly well what I was capable of, but maybe the circumstances had to be different in order for me to access that particular brand of brutality.
"Come on, Grey," Daryl said, angling himself towards me again. I tried attacking him a couple more times, but he fended me off easily. I attempted from the side and he put his arm between my legs and lifted me all the way onto his shoulder, easy as doing a bicep curl, then threw me backwards.
He shook his shaggy hair out of his face. "Come on, girl, I feel like you're holdin' back on me."
I was getting irritated. This last round he'd smacked my raw shin scrape and I could feel it bleeding again. I was hurting and getting sore. We'd played around long enough and I had some pent up frustration I felt like taking out on someone. I decided to prove a point to the damn Redneck this time. With us in position one more time, I threw my left arm in the air as a distraction and then jabbed Daryl straight in the nose with my right hand. I hit him hard enough to not do any damage, but enough to startle him.
He let out a growling sound and instinctively tackled me onto the mattress. He fell hard on top of me and pinned my right arm above my head, but I had reacted on instinct too: My left hand was in a claw around his jugular, my fingers digging in.
Oddly enough, I felt an emotion somewhere; an emotion that had nothing to do with the adrenaline coursing through me.
Daryl actually smiled. "See? You gotta little bite in you."
He released me and helped me up for the umpteenth time that day. He dabbed at the trickle of blood coming out of his nose.
We redressed and left the mattresses on the ground. He must not think I'm completely hopeless then. I'd gotten my point across.
We got out to the yard during dinner. Everyone was eating. Eating and coughing. Rick spotted us from a low wall he was leaning against, away from the crowd. I'd forgotten about the baby the whole time I'd been with Daryl. Remembering it made me feel slightly sick as we headed towards Rick.
"How'd she do?" Rick asked Daryl, looking between the two of us.
Daryl snorted and answered while dabbing at his nose again, "Ah man, she punched me in the nose."
Rick smirked at me amusedly.
"Oh yeah, ha ha," said Daryl, grudgingly, "you let her sock you next time, Chief."
I took up leaning against the wall as Daryl stalked away. I was starting to really feel my aches from being thrown around for the good part of an hour.
Still smirking Rick turned to me, "You punched him in the nose?"
"Yeah," I said, grinning a bit too, "He was starting to tick me off, so I smacked him."
"That's good. The man needs to get put in his place every so often."
Rick was in a good mood the whole night. I have no clue how he was doing it. A huge group sat in a circle around a fire and swapped stories after dinner. Stories about what we missed most, secrets from our pasts that didn't matter anymore. We were all laughing and when it got to the point that one woman admitted she missed her sex toy the most, I snorted, loudly, which led to even more laughter and Rick tormenting me about it. The mood was infectious and soon we were all getting rowdy. Not worried for once about the stupid walkers, or the illness, or the fact that near a dozen and a half people died earlier that day. Moving up and on. What other way can you do it?
A guy brought out a guitar and played a few popular songs I'd practically forgotten about. I slow danced with Rick through one of them, feeling Herschel's self-satisfied eyes on me the whole time. I thought he might burst from smugness.
The fire crackled with merriness and a few pieces of fruit were spread around to everyone for dessert. Some of the older kids were playing some game with their arms that apparently kept getting messed up, because they'd laugh and start all over. Glenn was telling Maggie a raucous story, wild hand gestures included. The only dampener on the fun was the persistent coughing around the yard.
Daryl was nowhere to be found; I looked for him. He doesn't seem like the socializing type, he must've chosen to do guard duty tonight.
We'd all stayed up late and I was surprised to find myself put out when Rick dropped me off at my cell and started to walk away. We'd been flirting and having fun and I was sad to have to let that go. Knowing me like I do though, I usually don't have those sort of feelings. I never thought I'd have them again.
Running through a brisk pep talk in my head, I let the mood from the night bolster me up. I slipped out of my cell and ran up behind him. I grabbed his arm and turned him around to find him smiling at me in a relaxed way. I leaned in and pressed my lips in the hollow of his jawbone. I backed up to find his smile gone, and him looking at me with a mixture of surprise and intensity.
He reached up and placed his hand on the side of my neck and pulled me into him, his lips pressing into mine. Aside from the beard, his kiss was soft. Now that I felt him kissing me, I think he had been looking at me with passion. The way he was touching me said everything. It suited him well.
He smelled like smoke from the fire and a little bit of sweat. I slid my tongue forward gently and touched his bottom lip, feeling his entire body completely closing the gap between us. I was dimly aware that we were in the middle of the cell block, there were people all around us.
My hands were on his back, keeping him against me. His hand snaked up into my hair, his other arm wrapped around my waist. And that was when the absolute sheer blinding panic hit. I froze, my eyes snapped open. It took everything I had to keep from trying to claw myself away from him. But, luckily, he noticed immediately.
Completely breaking the kiss, he pulled his arms out and away from me. He looked mortified.
"Grey, I'm so sorry," He whispered in a humiliated way.
I couldn't think of what to say to explain myself, so I just stared at him, like a scared deer, my heart rate beating loudly in my throat.
"Rick… it's not you."
That was supposed to be comforting, but it was a weak justification to what just happened. Just like out in the fields when we had my first shooting practice together.
He backed up a bit, watching me warily, like he thought I might snap and breathe fire at him. Like I was crazy. Well, ok, I guess he's kind of right, there.
He turned and left. His footsteps echoing in the block with a certain amount of finality.
Uncomfortably aware of the other resident's eyes on me, I rigidly walked back to my cell.
Laying down into bed, I felt tears welling out of pure frustration. I didn't think this would happen again. Nothing had gone wrong in my very physical training session with Daryl.
This wasn't my fault, and it was getting in the way of making some positive movements in my life. It seemed trivial to be so upset, taking into consideration the current state of the world, but this little prison was my world now. And I wasn't doing as well in it as I would have liked to have been.
The next day people were being rounded up for quarantine. Were you coughing? Have a fever? Go live in that block over there, thanks. I couldn't help but notice Rick seemed to be avoiding me. Perfect.
The injustice of the situation surged inside of me. None of this is my fault! I wanted to scream at him. If I told you what was wrong with me, it would just stamp and seal in your brain that I truly am a complete and utter psycho and I'd rather avoid that.
I watched him taking his kid into the administrative area and I aimed a kick at a nearby water cooler to vent some feelings.
"You tell that water, Grey," said Daryl snidely while passing by.
I glared at him and actually took a minute to take a breath and calm myself down.