Neanderthal Seeks Human(125)

I really loved them.

Kat petted my hair to the side and laid her head on my shoulder, “Oh, Janie. We are all going to get so drunk.”

My eyes blurred over with new tears even as a small, involuntary laugh passed between my lips. The buzzer for the building door sounded again and Elizabeth pressed the release button without checking who was calling up.

“It must be Fiona, she said she was getting a sitter until Greg could get home. Ashley has to finish her shift but said she’ll be here by seven.” Elizabeth moved to the apartment door and left it ajar for our friend.

Sandra took the bottle of tequila from my hand and held it to Marie, “We need to get some cups. I love you girls but I have no desire to drink ya’all’s backwash all night.”

“Let’s order takeout.” Kat hugged me from behind, lifting her head from my shoulder. I placed one of my hands on her arm and returned the squeeze.

“Chinese food or pizza?” Marie stood and crossed to the kitchen, pulling takeout menus from their place on the fridge, still holding the bottle of tequila in her hand.

I wiped at my eyes, sniffing, feeling the warm numbness one associates with good friends and three rapid-fire shots of tequila. Love really was a pit and I was at rock bottom. I didn’t know how but I knew these women were going to help pull me out of it, out of the dark place. But first, I needed to order my thoughts, organize the data. I needed to process the last half hour and figure out what- precisely- I saw, felt, and believed.

However, before I could even begin to pick up the pieces of reality let alone study them with the careful attention required, the sound of Quinn’s voice, saying my name, was a proverbial chainsaw to the fragile remnants of my heart.

“Janie!”

I glanced up and towards the sound of my name- confused, eyes wide and… confused- to find Quinn hurrying toward me. He pushed the table out of the way and knelt in front of me, reaching for and sliding his arms around my waist. It took me a moment to register that he was searching me, my body, for something, as though he expected part of me to be missing or damaged.

It took me several more seconds to understand that he was there, that he was touching me, that he was speaking.

“Are you ok? Has anyone approached you? And why the hell was your door open?”

As soon as I overcame my shock I pulled away from him and held my hands up between us. My mouth opened and closed as my brain struggled to understand his abrupt presence, the anger behind his words, the relief in his eyes, as I was clearly lagging behind real-time event comprehension.

I broke the stunned silence, “Quinn- what- what are you doing here?”

As though everyone else was equally dumbfounded by his presence, and my words were the cure to their stunned silence, the room erupted in noisy feminine outrage.

“The hell-!” I registered Elizabeth’s angry growl somewhere over his shoulder.

“Listen, Mister-” Sandra tried to insert herself between us.

“I think you should leave.” Marie walked in to the living room from the kitchen, holding the bottle of tequila as though a viable weapon.

Kat squeezed my hand.

Quinn tried to talk to me, over the insistent gaggle of my friends and Sandra’s angry body barricade, “Janie, please, listen- you are not safe, your guards should have been with you today, we need to get out of here. They never would have let you come to the building-”

The buzzer sounded again and, amidst all the chaos I discerned Fiona’s voice over the speaker. Elizabeth pressed the button while continuing to shoot daggers at Quinn; “Because you were there ‘hiding the salami’ with her sister?” Elizabeth accused, pulling out her cell phone, “I’m calling the police, Quinn. You need to leave. Now!”

Quinn didn’t move from his position in front of me and met her censure with all the flexibility of granite, “I wasn’t- with Jem-”

“We saw you!”

“No- you don’t understand,” He turned to me but Sandra anticipated his movements and blocked me from view, “Janie- I wasn’t with her, we weren’t hiding salami- I was trying to help-”

“Then why was your shirt off, Quinn- if that even is your real name.” Elizabeth punched in three numbers on her cell, sounding a little like a suspicious Sherlock.

“Because Jem is bat-shit crazy and burned me with a cigarette then bit my-” he huffed, pinched his nose with his thumb and forefinger, “We don’t have time for this!”

“Seriously, big guy, you just need to make like a shepherd and get the flock out of here.” Sandra crossed her arms over her chest, her voice low with warning.

Quinn stuttered for a moment, his eyebrow lifting at Sandra’s crude dismissal, “I can’t, I can’t leave until I know she is safe.”