Possessive by Lena Little
9
Poppy
When all your worldly possessions fit in a single bag, you tend to notice when something new is introduced into it.
When I dug to the bottom of my bag to show my ID at the bank, the tiny tin of breath mints was a clear giveaway something was off. When the lady took my ID to get approval from her bank manager to share the details of the will, I had a second to look at what I’d found. The minuscule antenna attached to my discovery was a dead giveaway that this was Paul’s work. Or at least it was until I laid my eyes on the bank records.
How in the world did my grandma even have a will, let alone an executor and beneficiary in the Cayman Islands?
And a wire of over five million dollars to such an account is beyond a red flag. No one in their right mind would subject not only their granddaughter to abject poverty but themself too. Who would want to live their twilight years struggling to stay alive when they were sitting on a fortune?
Only someone who wasn’t privy to such information. That’s who.
I need to start things with Paul with a clean slate. I can’t have him thinking I’m some damsel in distress that’s just coming to him for help. We need to be on equal footing, always. Even if he makes some rules for me, it’s not like he’s above me. He’s only going to make rules to protect me from myself. I benefit more than he does, although in the end everything we do we do together.
I just need to do this one more thing for myself.
Having ridden this bus hundreds of times before I know the next stop has a bit of a blind spot. Clearly, Paul is somewhere behind the bus, not far, or knowing him maybe he’s pulling a Mission Impossible and hanging from the bottom of it.
I shake my head at the ridiculousness of it and jam the tracking device between seat cushions before slowly sliding from seat to seat, moving toward the front of the bus without standing, in case he’s right behind us or can somehow make out my shape as my own if I fully stand and exit normally.
No. Way.
As soon as the bus comes to a halt I’m pressing my hands to the double doors as they open, throwing myself behind an advertisement that lines the back wall of the small bus stop. The engine whirrs and spits a few times and gets back up to speed as it takes off down the road. And who do I see not five seconds later? A big body on the same motorcycle that was sitting outside the tattoo shop the day I went in. Paul’s motorcycle.
I ditched him. He’s going to be following that bus to the end. Am I’m going to do something I’m not sure I’m going to be able to pull off.
‘Just dinner.’ But no guy goes to dinner to wipe away that amount of debt. A gigantic debt that suddenly seems minuscule, if my grandma truly had millions of dollars.
Nothing makes sense right now. Nothing.
I feel like the only person in the world I can trust right now is…strangely enough…Paul. But the most beautiful thing about him is I can almost feel his presence on my shoulder, whispering in my ear in a paternal tone. “Trust in yourself. Believe in you, just like I do.”
And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Whitney Houston was right. Learning to love yourself, is the greatest love of all.
And it’s time I started trying.
I take a deep breath and march straight to the front doors.
“Hi,” the nurse at the administration desk says. “I…I heard what happened to your grandma. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you, Gina.” I pause, not sure what to say next.
“Can I…help you?”
“Yes, I’m here to see Doctor Bane.”
“Oh. I’m afraid he’s in surgery,” she responds, shocked at my request.
“Just finished,” a voice over my shoulder says, as the man in question removes a face mask and flashes me a plastic smile. “I’ll take it from here, Gina,” he adds, his hand reaching for my lower back, but I push my stomach out and arch my back in so his hand whiffs, catching nothing but air. It doesn’t phase him in the slightest, which makes this situation even creepier than it already is.
“Right this way,” he adds, not missing a beat as he extends his hand down the hallway.
“After you,” I counter, not letting him get the upper hand, not to mention there’s something inside me that says Paul is close, just over my shoulder watching me…and he’d snap if this man got one look at my backside.
The problem is judging by the look in his eye he wants to do a lot more than just take a look.
