Page 52 of The Compass Series

AALIYAH - PRESENT DAY

“ A ll right, that’s a wrap on the depressed, emo girl vibes.

Aaliyah. Look at you. You look awful from head to toe.

You’ve been eating like shit to the point that even your ankles are getting fat,” Sofia said, shaking her head in complete disgust. Nothing like a roommate telling you how shitty you looked to make you feel better about yourself.

I grumbled in response.

She rolled her eyes. “See? This is what happens when you lay around for weeks, crying over a dude who cheated on you. You’re literally mourning a cheater. That’s embarrassing. Now, get your ass up. It’s Halloween. We’re getting drunk.”

That conversation got me off the couch and into a Little Red Riding Hood costume.

Sofia and I weren’t really even friends.

We’d been living together for a few months, and we were complete opposites.

She was a party girl, while I’d rather be home reading comic books.

Over the past few weeks, I hadn’t been able to read as clearly, though, due to the tears wetting the pages.

Sofia pitied me. I knew because she said the words, “Damn. I really pity your sad ass.” She was very straightforward that way.

That night she dragged me out for a girls’ night before she ditched me within ten minutes of finding some guy to make out with in a bathroom stall.

I shouldn’t have expected anything else from her. She was pretty much a stranger to me yet still my closest friend.

Talk about a sad life story, Aaliyah.

After uncomfortably standing around, feeling oddly alone in a very crowded room, I’d stepped outside of Oscar’s Bar for some fresh air.

I tried to call Sofia, who hadn’t been answering her phone for the past twenty or so minutes.

The infamous Sofia disappearing act. I probably wouldn’t see her for a few days, but she’d randomly reappear at the apartment with a pack of cigarettes, a stockpile of crazy stories, and a request for twenty bucks to buy lottery tickets.

The October breeze brushed against my skin as I witnessed Thor deck Captain America square in his chiseled jaw. If that wasn’t some kind of civil war, I didn’t know what was.

I watched the whole situation unfold before my eyes.

I always felt awkward going outside alone for air because I had nothing to keep me distracted.

I never stood on the streets of New York with my cell phone in my face when I was alone because I didn’t like the idea of some random psychopath coming up and killing me.

That was where my mind always went, at least. If I were on my phone at night, I’d be murdered—end of story. I knew I suffered from an overactive imagination, but I couldn’t help it. Probably watching too many episodes of Criminal Minds could be blamed for that.

Whenever I stepped outside, I wished I was a smoker.

Not for the enjoyment of it, plus I doubted my heart and lungs could handle a smoking habit, but I would’ve preferred having something to do with my hands when outside.

Smokers always seemed comfortable being outside on their own because they were busy doing something.

Me, on the other hand, all I could do was people watch, and boy, oh boy, did I stumble onto a gem watching Thor slam his fist into Captain’s face.

Wonder Woman was there, too—though nothing was wonderful about this woman. Captain came out of the bar after me, and he seemed unafraid to make a phone call on the streets of New York, probably because a guy was less likely to be harassed and attacked than a woman. Count your blessings, Cap.

He pulled out his cell phone but got distracted when he heard Thor hollering, cussing Wonder Woman out. And by cussing out, I meant he was using every foul term that came to his mind. Whore. Slut. Bitch. Tramp.

Wonder Woman’s back was against the building as Thor spat his words at her, hovering over her body in the most intimidating way.

She was already a small woman, but the way he surrounded her made her look even tinier.

Her shoulders were rounded forward as her knees buckled, and she took in the disgusting words being thrown at her.

I hated some men and the way they thought they could treat women.

Captain slowly lowered his cell phone from his ear, becoming more aware of the situation that I, too, had become oddly invested in. I felt the nerves forming in my gut before anything even happened.

Thor shoved Wonder Woman against the brick wall.

“Hey!” I shouted. I stood straight, alarmed as Wonder Woman began sobbing.

She shoved him back, and before she could speak, he slammed his fist into her face.

A wave of nausea twisted in my stomach. He didn’t tap her.

He didn’t slap her. No, he tightened his hand into a fist and swung it straight into her face.

I’d never seen anyone punched before, and that night I’d seen two people get hit. It was nothing like the movies, and it affected me a lot more than I thought it would. As she gripped her face and cried out, I felt an aching along my own jawline.

I parted my lips to speak up again as I started in her direction, but before I could insert myself into their storyline, Captain America was on the scene.

“Get the hell away from her!” he barked, marching toward the pair. He had a Southern accent. I didn’t know why that surprised me, but it did. A deep, smoky voice with a Southern twang to it.

“How about you mind your own business?” Thor slurred, obviously drunk and belligerent.

“It becomes my business when you put your hands on a woman,” Captain argued back. He wasn’t backing down, getting chest to chest with Thor.

You tell him, Cap! I cheered in my mind.

“She’s my property. I can do whatever the fuck I want to her,” Thor said.

Your property ? What a fucking troll. I mean, who talked like that? What kind of messed-up planet was that superhero from where he thought that was okay? He was acting a lot more like Loki than the hero of Asgard.

“Are you okay?” Captain asked Wonder Woman, disregarding the ignorant man talking to him.

“Don’t get near her,” Thor hissed, gripping the woman’s wrist tightly and swinging her whole body behind him.

She tripped and fell, hitting the concrete sidewalk with a hard thump.

Her hands went to stop her fall, scraping against the ground, probably slicing her skin raw.

A sickened chill hit me at the idea of her skin being ripped open.

Her boyfriend didn’t even look toward her to make sure she was okay, but Captain did. He moved in to help her up but was stopped when Thor’s fist slammed into his face.

My stomach knotted again. Watching a second person get punched wasn’t any easier than the first. My chest felt as if it was on fire watching everything unfold in front of me. What amazed me the most was how so many other people walked past without even noticing the intense moment.

Captain stumbled a bit before standing up straight. He went to help the girl stand, but instead of taking his hand, she reacted in a completely deranged way.

“Get the hell away from me and my boyfriend, asshole!” she hissed, rising to her feet and whipping him with her lasso. She hit him repeatedly as if he wasn’t trying to save her from her abusive asshole of a mate.

How ironic.

The whipping sound felt so aggressively intense I forced myself into the picture, grabbing the whip from the woman’s hand and tossing it to the side of the road.

“He was trying to help you!” I barked, disgusted by everything happening.

She looked at me with her bloodshot eyes and rolled them so hard I was surprised her vision wasn’t impaired from the dramatics of it.

“Shut up, will you? Come on, Ronnie. Let’s go,” Wonder Woman said, taking Thor’s hand into hers. He wrapped an arm around the woman and kissed her temple as if they weren’t in an insanely toxic relationship. I swore they even had a bit of bounce in their step as they walked away.

Halloween was weird.

I wished Mario were there to witness all of it with me. I wondered how he would’ve handled the situation. I bet he would’ve stepped in to help. I bet he would’ve been his own kind of superhero. I bet ? —

Wait, no. Screw him.

Why was I thinking about my ex-boyfriend Mario at that very moment? Was I drunk? No, just sad. Funny how my sad and drunk thoughts sometimes were interchangeable.

“Shit,” Captain groaned, rubbing the side of his head. America’s sweetheart had really taken a beating. He started walking back toward the bar entrance, and I did something completely out of character for me—I inserted myself into someone else’s world for the second time in the span of a minute.

“Hey, you dropped this,” I called out, bending down to the ground where he’d dropped his cell phone and shield.

I picked up his items and walked over to him as he kept massaging his jawline.

It was a nice jawline, too, the kind you’d imagine Captain America would have: chiseled to a godly point of perfection.

He turned to me, and my breath caught in my throat.

He was beautiful. I knew men probably didn’t want to be considered beautiful, but that was the only way I could describe him.

He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen in my life, almost as if the ocean had decided to reside right inside his spirit.

His lips were full with a small Cupid’s bow, and his facial hair was groomed to a T.

Unfortunately, his left eye was already swelling from the punch, but that did nothing to take away from his good looks.

If he wasn’t a superhero, I was almost certain he could land a Calvin Klein ad.

“I must look like I feel.” He chuckled, shaking his head as he took his items from me.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The way you’re looking at me makes it clear that I look like I got my ass kicked, which is…well, accurate. Did you see that?”

“Every second.” I wrapped my arms around my body and tried to ignore the slight chill that hit me. I needed to head inside before I got too cold. “For the record, Thor was a dick, and what you did was noble.”

He held his arms out and smirked. “Comes with the suit.” His smile disappeared for a moment as he lightly touched around his eye. “Though, in my mind, that situation was going to end differently.”

“Let me guess: in your mind, the woman was thankful for you saving her from an abusive man?”

“Yeah, something along those lines.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You aren’t from around these parts, are you?”

He laughed. “Does the accent give it away?”

“No, the fact that you tried to help in that situation did. Most New Yorkers keep their heads down and stay in their own lane.”

“I never was any good at that staying in my own lane thing. Plus, my mama would kill me if she knew I saw something as shitty as that and kept walking.”

I didn’t know why, but I liked the way he said mama. He really was a Southern boy.

“Well, I’m sorry that moment didn’t turn out like the comic books.”

“It’s okay.” He smiled. “Maybe next time it will.” His smile somehow seemed to make his eyes brighter than before. He brushed his thumb against his nose and nodded in my direction. “Thanks, Red.”

“Red?”

He gestured toward me. I glanced down at myself and rolled my eyes at my slowness. Right… Red, as in Little Red Riding Hood.

“Oh, right. Thanks to you, Cap, doer of good.” Doer of good? Could you sound any more lame, Aaliyah?

He kept smiling as his eyes traveled up and down my body, not in an invasive way, but as if he was simply taking note of me overall. It happened quickly, and I didn’t feel an ounce of disrespect because my eyes had done the same thing to him.

Then his blues locked with my browns. “You think I can buy you a drink?” he asked, bruised eye and all.

The amount of confidence it took for him to offer me a drink after I watched him get his butt kicked was inspiring.

If it were the other way around, I’d be on the subway, licking my wounds and avoiding human interaction for the remainder of my life.

Perhaps that was how my villain origin story would’ve begun—beaten up by Wonder Woman and Thor outside a New York bar.

But Captain? Nope. He still seemed as confident as ever.

I hesitated on the drink invitation for a moment.

On one hand, interacting with the opposite sex was at the bottom of the barrel as far as things I wanted to do.

On the other hand, my other option was going home, drinking wine, and crying as I played Taylor Swift and looked at old photographs of Mario and me while reading old text messages.

“Oh, Cap.” I walked over to him and patted him on the back. “Let me buy you a drink. You need it more than I do.”