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Scheduled for Friday
by Anton M.
23: Security Detail
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Thursday, January 26 (cont.)
I sat on top of the stairs after the sixth class, waiting for Edward on the landing of the fourth floor corridor, one that only led to a dimly-lit maintenance entrance with random messages and genitalia scratched on its half-grey, half-white walls. Edward arrived with his backpack slung on one shoulder, skipping every second step as he climbed the stairs, and I handed him his folded jacket.
The sounds of students and teachers echoed off the walls.
"I should get into selling cocaine," I told him as he squeezed his jacket into his backpack.
He glanced up, squinting at me, his tone sharp. "What?"
"I feel like I'm smuggling cocaine with the secrecy and all," I repeated quietly, in stark contrast with his voice. I'd seen him angry but never in a bad mood, and the only reason his expression didn't intimidate me was because I'd made that sharp-jawed frown-face break into twinkly-eyed laughter for an entire evening.
Maybe he received the first A- in his life in something like Music Appreciation I and his life was over.
"Did it hurt?"
"What?"
"When the hedgehog crawled up your ass?"
The way Edward's features softened when he laughed lit up the flutters in my stomach.
"Seriously, Edward. You okay?"
"Fine." He cleared his throat, straightening a few steps below me, his sad eyes drinking in my mouth, eyes and hair. His voice was softer. "I'm fine."
"Okay, don't tell me. But please don't become an actor 'cause you suck at it." I zipped up my bag, ready to leave him in his reluctance to share but then I hesitated. Had he realized that Lauren's interest in him was dependent on my apparent interest in him, and that's why he was sulking? It killed me that everything came back to his girlfriend, but it made sense.
"I can keep my date with Peter on the down low so that Lauren still thinks I'm into you. That's why the sour face, right?"
Edward bit his lower lip and scratched his stitched-up fingers. He didn't look at me when he shrugged.
My heart hurt. I felt high when I was around him but every reminder of his girlfriend made me feel like I was being slowly ripped apart from the inside.
"Do you want to message her so that she can come see us together and throw you against the wall?" I asked, mustering up all the fake enthusiasm I didn't feel. I winked for good measure.
I'd have died if he'd taken me up on my offer.
Instead, Edward looked at me funny, tilting his head on the side, squinting.
"What happened after lunch?" he asked, ignoring my question. "You ran out of the cafeteria like your house was on fire and then spent ten minutes of the next class pacing in front of the school. Are your parents okay?"
I wasn't surprised he'd noticed—a third of the classrooms faced the front entrance.
Needing time to come up with a good answer, I lifted my backpack in my lap and motioned for him to sit beside me. He curled up like a spider settling into a hole, all folded limbs on display. His feet reached a lower step than mine, and his scent sent a rush of affection through me. His hairy, attractive forearms were resting on his knees, his side brushing against mine, and I didn't know how Lauren didn't just spontaneously combust around him. His undivided attention felt incredible.
"My parents are fine," I replied like his mere presence beside me didn't make me feel like a breathless idiot. "It was my director. Some sound recordings were lost in post-production. Backups didn't work and I need to take a few schooldays off next week to make up for it. A few complicated scenes, so recreating them is tricky."
Edward didn't know I was already scheduled for three days at Alec's Studio next week, so it was easy to regurgitate an event that had taken us aback three months ago and pretend it was happening now.
"Does that happen often?" Edward asked, thankfully believing my lie.
"Sometimes. You know how Pixar almost lost Toy Story 2? It's rare but it does happen. In the previous movie I did, the production sound mixer got into a car crash—he was fine, thankfully—but his computer was total cabbage afterwards. Couldn't save a thing. It was just two days of recordings, but they made a rule in the studio after that to back everything up in three different places every day and test backups every week."
"Was that for Little Elf?"
A slow, teasing smile spread across my face.
"Did you Google me?"
Edward stifled his smile, his eyes once again alight with a sparkle that squeezed my heart.
"Maybe," he admitted.
I grinned. It was impossible not to.
"That's very sweet. But don't worry, you haven't missed anything by not having seen it."
"I think I would've." Edward's eyes lingered on my mouth before they locked on mine. Quietly, he admitted, "I'm not surprised you're thinking of dropping out of school. You're… really fucking good. I thought your TikTok was just for fun but Mr. Bahati is just the tip of the iceberg, huh?"
I could've bathed in his compliment, but I did not want to show just how much his words touched me.
"You did not watch it," I replied in disbelief.
"Of course we watched it."
"We?"
"Gramps and I."
"Was that for your cousin Riley or do you just hate yourself?"
Edward laughed. It blew my mind that he'd spend an evening watching a mediocre kid's animation with his gramps starring yours truly rather than sneak out and have hot sex with his hot girlfriend.
"I will have you know that Riley was not even visiting us."
"So you do hate yourself." I felt all aflutter at his compliment. "But how? No streaming services have it."
Edward's eyes were playful and alive in a way that gave me goosebumps as he leaned just a bit closer to me and whispered, "Torrent, Bella. Torrent."
He narrowed his eyes when my grin widened.
"What, you going to lecture me on how sad it is that multi-billion dollar companies can't squeeze a cent out of me?"
"Nah, I was going to ask if you use qBittorrent or Transmission."
"Tixati, Bella. The best one." Edward paused. "But how do you know them? Aren't you morally obliged to think torrenting is evil?"
"I mean, if being poor is evil I've been Voldemort more than once."
He laughed, and I suppressed the wild, precious energy that ran through me. Unrequited crush or not, Edward was ridiculously easy to get along with. Every conversation we had could've lasted all night and still feel like a minute. I adored making him laugh, and I was thrilled we got along so well but I was doing a horrendous job distancing myself from him.
"What happened with Alice?" Edward asked. "Diabetes?"
"No, no," I denied. "She's fine. She just struggles to eat when she's sick or stressed and her dad refuses to let her stay home if she can so much as use the bathroom or form words in the morning. He just sent her to school too soon after her flu. And when I say just, I mean… I will not argue if you help me hide his body."
"You're a good friend," he said, kindly.
I shrugged. "It's how Alice and I met. I had extremely low blood pressure as a kid, still do, but it was worse then because my parents weren't sure why I kept fainting all over the place. Alice and I were stuck in a special corner in kindergarten together for a few weeks under special supervision, and… been besties ever since."
"Is that what happened, that morning when you were sitting on the floor when Lauren and I passed you?"
Oh, man. I would've struggled to explain that one had he not given me an out, but at least I didn't have to make up a stupid lie. My biological father, I'd read, had the same issue.
"Yup. Been a while since it made me dizzy, though."
"What helps, then? Coffee? Salt?"
"Salt more than coffee. Snacks are good, too. Used to keep a packet of cheese cubes or salted nuts with me when I was younger, but… I haven't had a problem for a few years, so I stopped doing that. But Peter was sweet and came to my rescue."
Edward clenched his jaw, eyes blazing before he averted his eyes, scratching the place his fingers had been stitched up. He cleared his throat to reply when the bell rang.
We pushed ourselves off the staircase, and I couldn't shrug off the feeling that his eyes followed me when I jogged to the other end of the hallway.
I'd called my parents and kept a near-obsessive eye on the news through the day. With bated breath, I searched each consecutive article for more than what the previous ones had said.
I had written three smudged sentences on the sides, referencing what Nala had felt in the books, and yes, the words revealed my handwriting. Fortunately, I did not dot my i's or cross my t's in any (too) specific way, but it was still surreal to see a photo of that one page of my sides circulate in the news.
Who was Mel B? Was it an actress who could sing well? Someone with roots in St. Kitts and Nevis? A British actress? Someone obsessed with Spice Girls?
I'd never been closer to being discovered and felt further away from it.
The whole thing was causing quite a stir, enough that I began to hear (and participate in) excitement and speculation in the hallways. Tanya had been right—Mike's possible involvement was in the news, but so was speculation about a dozen other actors suspected to be in Atlanta, including some that made no sense—when, exactly, would Noah Shnapp have taken the time to film a full season of an entirely different TV show?
Lucky for me, not a single news story had included my name. Lots of famous actresses were suggested, mostly those known to sing well (Mel B couldn't have been a better diversion) but I was holding my breath for the mention of my coat. While my coat wouldn't have directly revealed me to the world, it would've immediately revealed me to Edward, and the mere idea of him knowing twisted my stomach in dread. I liked that he thought I had decent voice acting chops in a mediocre animation, but I was not ready for him to know I was Nala. Not that it would've made much of a difference but, painful as it was, it was nice getting to know him as myself, however short-lived our friendship was going to be.
But there was no mention of a coat in the news.
Whoever stole it kept it, and did not think or realize how much it could've began to trace the role back to me. I started to hope it would never show up.
'Spoke to Tanya. Taking off to LA until next Sunday,' Mike texted me. 'It'll confuse them until this blows over. I think you're pretty safe for now but message me if I'm wrong. Agree on a hotel with your parents, though. It'll help to know where to go. - Cheers, M.'
Mike's text reassured me, not just because he agreed that this was just a bump on the road but because he offered a solution for if shit did hit the fan too soon. Amazed by how much our tête-à-tête on Wednesday had changed our friendship, I thanked him.
I searched for a TBX 9021 license plate after my eighth class. My task was made near-impossible by all the parents and relatives picking kids up, so I sat on a bench overlooking the parking lot, waiting. Tired of the numerous news articles that made me anticipate and fear the next few days and weeks (and months), I instead scrolled through videos of Jake and made up little stories about his brand of destruction on humanity today. I sent mom a message to keep an eye on Alice (health and how to react to any news Alice might read) when a shiny black Ford F-150 pulled into the parking lot. Trucks like that were a dime a dozen but this one had tinted windows.
It pulled up not too far from me before my phone rang with an unknown number.
Not gonna happen, dude. I barely take calls from people I do know.
Letting his call go on voicemail, I got up and walked behind his truck, confirming his license plate, and I was just about to message him back when he stepped out of the truck and slammed the door shut. Emmett was a black hulk of a man wearing grey pants and a white button-down under a black jacket. Sunglasses hid his eyes. His facial features were unexpectedly soft, though, like someone attached the head of a fifteen-year-old on top of a professional football player.
"Why didn't you answer your phone?" he asked, clearly recognizing me. I did not like having to guess what his eyes were doing behind his sunglasses.
"I don't answer to calls from unknown numbers," I replied.
Checkmate, buddy. I definitely didn't take your call because of security.
"Didn't your parents give you my number?"
They did. I just didn't save it because I had no intention of calling the man.
"Off," I said, snapping away his sunglasses and tucking them in his front pocket. I motioned for him to zip up his jacket but he stepped away from me and gripped my forearm when I reached for it myself. I felt tiny next to him. He could've probably snapped me like a twig.
"Please," I whispered, glancing around nervously. I was forever grateful that my friends and Edward were nowhere to be seen. "You have security guard written all over you. At least hide the tie."
His face was a young, soft, jarring contrast to the protein shake of a man, and he raised his eyebrows in warning before letting go of my forearm and zipping up his jacket. Not saying a word, he opened the truck door and put on rectangular, silver glasses, further complicating my estimation of his age. Judging by his round face, he looked… fifteen, honestly. Below the neck? Thirty. Together with his glasses? Twelve. A hundred and seven.
Heck if I knew.
"Emmett McCarthy," he said, holding out his hand. "Don't ever touch my sunglasses again."
"Bella Swan, sir," I replied as we shook hands, remembering my manners. "Only if you promise not to wear them until the teaser is out."
He pressed his lips together, assessing me. I was glad he'd signed an NDA for us because it would've been all kinds of strange to have to hide why a fifteen-year-old girl needed the services of PXO Security Services Ltd.
"It's… negotiable." He slammed the door of his truck shut and locked it with his key fob. "A gift for you." He threw a book in my hands. "Call me Emmett. Let's take a walk."
Still getting used to his abrupt manners, I found myself holding a worn copy of The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker.
"Lucky me," I replied, sarcastically, squeezing it between my textbooks before I threw my backpack over my shoulders. "Do you know how much shit I have going on in my life without extra homework?"
"Read one page a day if that's all you have time for," Emmett said as we began taking a walk around the school and away from students. He scanned the crowds with such thorough intensity I almost wished I hadn't made him take off his sunglasses. "Read the Wikipedia summary. Watch the guy on YouTube. Listen to some podcast. I don't care. Your parents are already criminally negligent of your security, so I need to see some effort from you."
"Hey! My parents are amazing."
Emmett stopped walking and narrowed his eyes at me. His voice was low, and my God, his size alone intimidated me. "If you were my kid I would've assigned you a bodyguard and sent you to private school a year ago. You had a photographer behind your window in the middle of the night not even two weeks ago, and you didn't move to a hotel? Your coat was stolen and script is all over the news, and you're still not moving to a hotel? Do your parents even love you?"
"Fuck you," I growled, touching the tip of his sunglasses hanging from his pocket just to piss him off. I narrowed my eyes. "My parents have gone through hell to raise me. Everything they've done has been to give me a better life than theirs. I could live a thousand lifetimes and I'd want them to be my parents in every single one of them. Can you say the same about yours?"
Emmett blinked before he made a sharp movement with his head, almost like a tic, and his lips spread into a smile that transformed him into a friendly, boyish teddybear, all bright teeth and dimples, and I nearly got whiplash from the change.
"First time I hear a teenager defending her parents," he said, quieter. "There may be hope for you yet."
I took a calming breath. "They just want me to have a bit of normalcy for a while until… it's no longer possible, forever. Is that such a crime?"
"No, but if they realized that their choice is knowing you're safe and well but mildly inconvenienced by a bodyguard, and hearing about the death or injury of their daughter I'd only hope they'd rethink their approach."
"Nobody knows, though," I defended. "I'm perfectly safe when nobody knows."
"You don't get it." Emmett eyed the crowds heading for the school bus before he snapped his finger in front of my face. "There. That was the sound of news breaking, at this second. Sure, you'd have a few minutes as the information reaches people, but would you know the very moment news breaks? Now, five minutes later, you're here in the parking lot, unaware of the news. A student comes up to you, mouth open and stuttering and asking for your photograph. Of course, you'd do it because it's just one person, but then someone else notices that something's going on. Within half an hour, you're surrounded by half a thousand people."
"Yeah but even if that happened it's not like they'd want me dead," I joked.
"Irrelevant," he dismissed me. "At a certain density, a crowd begins to act like a fluid. Did you know that? And you know what happens with celebrities? Crowds flock to them. Security is not just there to look for nefarious intent. We're there to make sure crowds don't harm you." He paused. "Okay, second homework: google a list of fatal crowd crushes. It will blow your mind."
"Yes, very ominous indeed," I replied. "Truly, nail-biting stuff. Except you're forgetting that I'm not stupid. If the news broke I'd probably call for my parents to get me, and my mom would be here within seven minutes. There. Crisis averted."
Emmett took an annoyed breath. "Fine. Let me give you another example. You say that nobody knows, but that's not entirely true, is it?"
"You mean Alice?"
Emmett pressed his lips into a thin line. "I was not informed that your best friend knows."
"She doesn't yet. She's sick right now. But she'll figure it out the moment she has enough energy to read today's news."
Emmett paused, giving me an annoyed, disapproving look but ignoring what I said. He motioned for us to keep walking. "No, I'm not talking about her. I'm talking about the photographer behind your window. There is no way that man, whoever he was, doesn't know, and where is he now? You think he just magically disappeared to give you a convenient few extra months of normal childhood?"
My heart dropped into my boots.
"You think he's watching me?"
"I'm not saying he is or isn't," Emmett replied. "But doesn't it strike you as odd that he just… gave up? He got unpublishable photos of a minor in the middle of the night, if, indeed, he was taking photos of you, but… a man willing to spend a cold night in your yard doesn't really inspire thoughts of the kind of man who'd give up easily."
I felt blood drain from my face. He might've been right, but I preferred my previously fearless ignorance.
"Okay," I said quietly. "It is possible. If he's watching me, that's certainly creepy, but… not dangerous."
"You don't consider a breach of your privacy dangerous? Knowing when and where your parents are going, knowing exactly when you're home alone, that doesn't send even a small chill down your spine?"
Well, now it did.
"So what do you suppose we do?"
"You move," he replied with no hesitation. "You move now."
"If you've met my parents you know that they're even less eager to do that than I am. And the photographer hasn't been back… that we know of."
"But why, Bella? What is he waiting for? Why hasn't he been back?"
I did not have an answer to his question.
It was a surreal moment, one I'd probably remember for the rest of my life, walking around my school with my first security guard, a man who probably spent more hours on a lat pulldown machine than he did in his bed. He scanned faces of students, stepping closer to me when we walked through crowds. He drew attention to himself with his sheer muscle mass, and the entire walk next to him felt like an out-of-body experience.
How many days of normalcy did I have left?
Suddenly, I felt like my parents, looking at the world and myself in it with that nostalgic, bittersweet eye of these-days-are-numbered.
Because they were.
I learned that Emmett was 27 years old but often still got carded due to his boyish face. Born and raised in Tallahassee, Florida, he was a middle child with an older sister and a younger brother, went to Georgia Tech on a partial football scholarship, and majored in Economics.
He criticized nearly every choice my parents and I had made so far to an extent that made me remind him that, technically, I was interviewing him, but he shrugged me off. He wasn't interested in protecting people who didn't want to hear about the impact their choices had on their security. It was a risky move, telling me that in the full knowledge that we could've just hired someone who didn't fight us nearly as much on our preferences as he did. But I found myself respecting him for his grumpy, disapproving comments.
Would I really have wanted a bodyguard who agreed with the choices that put me at risk?
"Didn't my parents tell you to dress casual?" I asked him as we passed the front door of the building and began to approach his truck again.
"This is casual."
I stifled a smile. "A pair of jeans wouldn't hurt."
My stomach flipped over when I saw Edward crouched over his open backpack next to his motorcycle. I desperately tried to figure out how to convince Emmett to take a circle around him when Edward turned his head. His mouth fell open, his eyes flickering between me and Emmett, and my security detail, of course, noticed the friendly nod I gave Edward.
"Is that boy your friend?" The corner of his mouth rose as he switched directions to head directly to Edward. "Introduce us."
"No," I whispered, pleading. "Please no."
Emmett pretended not to hear me. I had absolutely no chance of veering that ship of a man off course, so a few seconds later, Emmett and I walked up to Edward. With his confused, careful eyes locked on mine, Edward straightened slowly and dusted off his hands against each other. He stood an inch or so taller than Emmett.
"Edward," he said, voice firm as he held out his hand. "I'm a senior here."
"Emmett." Emmett grinned with all the boyish dimples on display, and I could've sworn their knuckles cracked when they shook hands. "A senior in South Cobb. Bella's boyfriend."
Say what now?
I may have made it into the Guinness Book of World Records with the fastest anyone had gone from a fifteen-year-old virgin to a polygamist.
Edward's mouth fell open and his confused, wounded eyes snapped to mine, daring me to argue. It took all my energy not to reveal the straightening my neck needed after that level of whiplash.
"Don't get ahead of yourself," I told Emmett, nudging him, giving them both a light-hearted smile. "You know I'm also going out with Peter on Saturday."
Emmett recovered beautifully by squishing me against his side and grinning. "But have you seen the guy? Who in their right mind would pick him in the end when you have a date with me next week?"
"All right, Casanova."
Edward held my gaze. His wounded, blazing eyes were full of questions, not that I could blame him, but Edward turned his attention back to Emmett as Emmett started to circle his motorcycle.
"XS 650," Emmett said. "Beautiful. Which year?"
"'79."
Either unaware or deliberately ignoring Edward's stiff-lipped reply, Emmett whistled. "Haven't had one myself but my uncle does. Does the partial advance also give you an erratic idle? We bent the tabs to hold the springs but they just kept breaking."
"You can't do that," Edward replied tersely. "You'll get holed pistions. Just replace the springs and clean the components. Never failed me."
Emmett raised his eyebrows, nodding slowly, happy or impressed that Edward could hold a conversation about his bike, and I could feel Edward's gaze burning holes on the side of my head. As Emmett finished walking around the motorcycle, Edward zipped up his backpack, threw it on his back and pocketed his phone. Emmett put his arm around my shoulder, casually, and Edward made eye contact with me for just the briefest of moments but long enough for me to see a guarded, indecipherable energy in them. Accusation? Betrayal? Sadness? Maybe he was suppressing a lecture on dating two guys at once.
Speaking of which, I really needed to find Peter tomorrow to make sure he was okay with this.
Edward took his helmet. "Hey, I promised my dad—"
"Don't let us keep you," I interrupted. "We just wanted to say hi."
Emmett's hand fell from my shoulder after Edward had rumbled out of the parking lot, and we began to walk back to his truck in the silence that followed. The weather was cold, mid-forties, but the sun finally peeked out from behind the clouds.
"I think he may have broken a few bones in my hand," Emmett complained, curling and straightening his fingers before he massaged his palm with his left hand. "Boy shakes hands like he's meeting the Russian president."
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