Page 120 of The Fractured

“Yeah. Fine.” His smirk evaporated as he coughed and stammered through a quick run down of our forms, this time avoiding looking at me. “W-When you’re done, I’ll get you some PPE.”

Just as fast as he sucked back the gum, he excused himself to use the restroom.

Kira, excited about getting the day started, glossed over the interaction, called out a “Great, thanks,” to the guy as he disappeared around a corner, and then skipped over to the bean bags and hand-shaped armchairs that made up the waiting room to our left. She fell into a giant beanbag.

Lily was less enthusiastic with her movements and gently lowered herself onto a bean bag of her own.

Seb nudged my arm as we wandered over. “You know him?”

I shook my head and took a seat in an armchair. “No idea.”

“He definitely knows you…” Seb opted to lean against the wall as he filled out his forms. “His name tag said Scott.”

Scott emerged from the bathroom again, glancing at us and then averting his gaze as he sat down at the computer along the back wall behind the desk. With his back to us, I got a clear view of the back of his buzzed head. And the small scar there.

“Scotty motherfuckin’ Richards,” I muttered. There was no happy nostalgia dedicated to the prick.

“Who?” Seb asked, chuckling.

I leaned back in my seat. “High school bully. He enjoyed picking on the weak until I punched him in the face and slept with his girlfriend a few months after.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Lily whispered, looking up at me from her clipboard. She raised an eyebrow.

My smugness faded, and I cringed. “Sorry.”

“You mean to tell me, you punched him once and he’s still scared of you?” Seb tucked his clipboard under his arm.

“He hit his head and needed some stitches,” I shrugged, turning my attention to the forms and signing the bottom. “When he came back to school, I told him it’d be worse if he bullied anyone again.”

“We needed someone like you at our school,” Kira said.

Seb straightened with a frown. “Who bullied you?”

“No one that matters anymore,” she grinned, clambering from the bean bag. “Now fill out your forms so we can get started.”

Kira left for the desk to hand her form in, with Seb following close behind, rushing through his forms.

I stood and gave Lily a hand getting out of the beanbag.

“If you ever spot anyone in public who gave you a hard time in school, let me know. I’ll thump them on the head. Or hit them with my car,” I joked… Sort of.

She laughed quietly. “Who said chivalry was dead?”

After getting our protective gear from Scott, who still refused to look at me, we were directed to the change rooms in the back. Seb and Kira took one, me and Lily took another.

Right up until that moment, Lily and I had done a good job of masking the subtle aches in our bodies. We wore layers that kept us comfortably warm against the cold. But it wasn’t until we started getting changed, paired with the unheated air of the change rooms, that those aches felt worse.

Mine was a dull throb in my quads that made pulling on denim coveralls that much more of a challenge. My legs felt like lead.

Lily’s soreness was the yellow bruise on her tailbone. She realized after our shower this morning that bending and twisting was a no-go for today.

Unable to bend to lace her borrowed boots, I did them up for her. Sitting on the one bench in our change room, I had her foot planted on the bench space between my legs as I wove the laces around the silver hooks.

“Okay, so maybe doing it against the door wasn’t the best idea,” she muttered, tucking her hair behind her ears as she watched. She was already wearing the coveralls and helmet, with its built-in face shield and earmuffs. It made her look like a cute construction worker.

“We could rain check.” I tapped her calf, indicating for her to switch legs.

“Kira is really looking forward to today, though.”