seat and swallows visibly. “I don’t have any angle I’m trying to work here, Maggie.”
He doesn’t say anything more. I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.
For the next several minutes we just eat. Well, he eats and I pick at my food and pretend that I’m actually consuming it, yet all I can think about is how hurtful my words must sound if he actually doesn’t have any ulterior motive. Right as I’m about to open my mouth to apologize, Ran opens his.
“If you think I feel sorry for you, you’re wrong.” He’s looking right at me, his palms planted firmly on the gritty tabletop. “But you know who I do feel sorry for?”
I shake my head like a nervous tick, unable to control its rhythm.
“I feel sorry for the families of the girls whose bodies they pull from the cars whose hearts no longer beat.” Ran doesn’t blink as he speaks, and I try to keep my eyes open to hold his gaze, but the dryness forces me to shut them swiftly. I almost don’t want to reopen them. “I feel sorry for the kids who have to hear that their brain tumor is inoperable and they only have a few months to live.” My chest rises and falls too quickly, and I fold my arms over myself until I’m twisted up like a pretzel, trying to hide my increased, instable breathing. “And I feel sorry for the girls whose moms didn’t just walk out on them, but those whose moms are dead and aren’t ever coming back.” He pushes our now-empty food tray to the side and slinks down in his seat like he’s making himself comfortable. “So no Maggie, I don’t feel sorry for you.” He crosses his arms behind his neck. “And I suggest you stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
I don’t know if I want to cry or scream, so I choose to do neither and just sit there, radiating under the heat of my flushed cheeks. I look up at Ran and notice he has something—probably leftover traces of mustard—stuck to the corner of his mouth. Telling him about it feels like the safest thing to do right now.
“You have a little something,” I say, mirroring him, pointing to my upper lip with the tip of my fingernail.
“You wanna lick it off? Just one more compliment and it’s yours.”
“I don’t even know if I want to sit in the same restaurant as you right now,” I groan, glaring out the window at the bustling street outside, wanting to be swallowed up in it, wanting to disappear.
“You’re always trying to get away from me. First you wanted to get out of the ambulance, now the restaurant.” He laughs and I feel the tension slip slowly out of my rigid frame. I tighten my shoulders back up, still wanting to stay mad at him. “I’m not holding you hostage, you know.”
“It kinda feels like it. You pretty much came to my house and kidnapped me with my own brother’s car.”
“So that’s what you think? That I’ve kidnapped you and I’m holding you hostage?”
“Yeah, and now you’re demanding a kiss as ransom.”
Ran’s previously wide eyes nearly disappear as a loud bout of laughter overtakes him. Several people eating their lunch at the tables near ours look our way, but they shift their intrusive gazes when I challenge them with my own assertive stare.
“I think you mean I’m demanding a kiss for Ransom.”
“As ransom, for ransom. It’s all semantics.” I’m beginning to find this guy impossibly difficult to communicate with. Maybe English isn’t his first language.
“I don’t think you truly see the humor in all of this, Maggie.”
I pull my chin back. “What? You think it’s funny to keep me here against my will?”
“No, I think it’s funny that my name is Ransom and you’re joking about offering kisses as ransom.”
I gag on my Diet Coke. “Your name is Ransom?”
“Yeah.”
“I just figured it was Randolph or something,” I admit.
“I’m not a reindeer.”
I try not to spray my soda out through my nose. “That’s Rudolph, idiot.”
“I’m not that either.” He gives me a smug smile.
“What? An idiot?” I challenge. “What are you then?”
Ran rises slightly in his seat and I think I even hear him clear his throat before he begins speaking. “I’m a twenty-two-year-old paramedic named Ransom. I live in my own apartment in the historic district and I drive a Ducati Diavel Cromo. I’m an only child and was adopted by an older couple when I was four. My mother