How It All Ended

Chapter 22

 Everything was quiet. Like, everything went completely still. My ears were ringing from the gunshot, and I couldn't hear my surroundings.

Eventually, my hearing returned. It was muffled, but I could hear the woman shouting.

"Shit. Andy," I thought. I lifted my head up from the ground and saw Andy struggling to get back to his feet. At first, I thought I shot Andy, but I didn't, he was okay.

The man was trying to get up, and I noticed that he was clutching at his right shoulder: The bullet had just grazed his arm.

"You bastard," The man said to me as I approached him and Andy. "You shot me."

I pointed back towards the man's partner, "Blame her," I replied. I handed the pistol back to Andy. "You okay?"

Andy dusted himself off, put his Red Wings hat back on, and took back his pistol. "Yeah." Andy then turned to the man.

The man was holding his shoulder and grimacing in pain. Andy punched the man in the face with a right fist. "You fucker!"

I pulled Andy away from the man. "Screw them. Let's go."

"You can't just leave us here," The woman protested.

"Watch us," Andy responded.

The man got back up to his feet and spit some blood out on the asphalt. Andy's punch had split open the man's lower lip. He glared at me and Andy for a couple of seconds, but he wasn't saying anything.

"Yeah?" I asked him. "Do you have some other bullshit you're going to try?"

"No," The man answered.

His partner ran up to him and she started checking his wound on his shoulder.

"You got lucky. It just grazed you," She said to her companion. "Go on, leave us alone if you're not gonna help," She told me and Andy.

"Hey, you're the ones that started fucking with us," I said. It was pouring gas on a fire, but I was more than a little agitated.

"Fuck you!" The woman screamed at me.

Andy and I dismissed the two of them and started to walk away, "You're not the first woman that's told me that. It was lovely meeting the two of you," I remarked.

When Andy and I were walking down the road, I was expecting the couple to run up from behind and try to attack us again, but the two of them just stood there in the middle of the road, watching us leave. I took a quick glance behind me when I was two blocks away, and I saw the couple disappear in between two houses.

"Well, that sucked," I told Andy.

"Damn right it did," Andy replied. He was pretty pissed off. "Not only are we returning empty-handed, but we also got into a little brawl.

"Yeah. And there's the issue with that Tommy asshole," I responded.

Andy sighed. "Son of a bitch."

"It just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?"

Andy just shook his head for an answer. The two of us walked in silence for a little while.

"When we were a couple of blocks away from our street, I said, "There's a pretty good chance that Tommy and his crew heard that gunshot. They might show up and look around."

"It's a good thing we got out of that area when we did then," replied Andy.

"Yeah. I just hope Tommy and his group don't investigate things a little further."