Fighter

Chapter 1: Pursuit

At 8:47 I was running out the door. My first job of the day, manning the cash register at a Lingerie shop, La Vilaine Fille, starts at 9 and is a ten minute walk from my apartment. Typically I'm quite punctual to all of my jobs, but not today.

As I hurry down the steps and onto the street, I nearly trip over a crouched set of haunches. I scream and the man is jolted from his slumber.

"Astrid!" Niall jumps up and snatches my wrist before I can run away.

"What the hell are you doing here!" I demand.

"Well, I followed ya here last night and you wouldn't answer my calls so I decided to wait for you to come outside and I guess I fell asleep."

I gape at him.

"But now that I can talk to ya, I have a business proposal...sort of."

"Niall, I have to go, I'm gonna be late for work." I try to tug my arm away, but his grip is infuriatingly tight.

"No, Astrid just listen. What happened last night-"

"I don't want to talk about it." I spit, wrenching myself away. "If you'll excuse me, I have somewhere to be." I turned and fast-walked down the street quickly and with as much sass as I could muster.

"I just want to help!" Niall shouts after me.

Ignoring him, I shiver in my puffy coat. I want to turn around and make sure he isn't following me, but I don't. Something about Niall makes me uneasy. I know I should trust him, but I can't. Besides, who sleeps outside in the snow all night just to talk to some girl? Not any guy I want to talk to.

Actually it's kind of endearing. But creepy. The ratio of creepiness to endearment is about 1,000 to 1. Give or take.

My internal battle between what is logical and what is not raged on as I walked to the store. I arrived with just a minute to spare.

The outside of La Vilaine Fille looks somewhat normal in terms of typical lingerie stores, the words in a loopy, red script on the sign above the door. In the windows are mannequins posed in provocative positions clad in cheap lingerie and wigs. The door to the store is wooden and has a open/closed flippable sign and stickers on the glass pane in it that read, This establishment is a smoke-free facility and Proud retailer of Enya's intimates. The bell attached to the door jingles as I enter and I switch the sign to the open side. As I take off my jacket and purse and hang them up on the coat rack behind the cash register, I'm greeted by the odd concoction of scents, all equally pungent and potent, mothballs, scented candles, and the knockoff Abercrombie cologne that my sleazy boss, Jerome wears.

"Astrid! My favorite employee! What shift are you taking today?" Jerome emerges from the storage room, holding a box full of thongs.

"9-2." I sullenly mumble, ignoring the fact that I'm Jerome's only employee.

"Great! We just got a new shipment of thongs and I need you to pick one to put on display." Jerome is shorter than me by a few inches, he is of Indian descent, in his mid-thirties, has a dark goatee and is constantly making horribly awkward references to sex. Being an employee here, I get unreal discounts on the underwear that I have yet to use. Who would I wear any of this crap for, anyway?

I bend over the box and comb through the variations of colors, lace, and slinky straps. I feel Jerome's burning stare at my ass so I quickly squat.

"Um, this one." I pluck a black lace one from the box and hold it up.

"Perfect." Jerome agrees without even looking at the underwear. "Now go put it on display."

Sighing, I amble over to the windows and disassemble a mannequin with a blonde, Hannah Montana-esque wig. I slide its current neon green g-string off and replace it with the thong, then I reattach the legs. I amble back over to my position behind the scarcely-used cash register.