Cuffed. [Norman Reedus]

29*Stop Means Stop.

Chapter Twenty-Nine ::: Stop Means Stop.

{*UNEDITED*}

"Pancakes. Wait, no, waffles. And oatmeal, and bacon, and also an orange juice." Boone smiles at the chubby waitress with smudged lipstick. "Please, and thank you." he adds as she scribbles quickly into her green notepad. 

"Alright folks, I'll have your meals out in just a few." she gathers our menus, flips her frizzy eighties-style bangs out of her blue eye-shadowed eyes and then strolls away towards the kitchen. 

"Oh, we all know it'll be way more than just a 'few' minutes." Ella remarks, smiling. 

I look sideways at her. "Maybe she meant a few hours. . ." Ella's face darkens with a comical fear.

"Or maybe days. . . Who knows?! I mean, with a place like this," Boone gestures his arms around, "that's the least you can expect." 

Ella leans over the table, hugging her stomach and squinting her eyes tightly. "Oh gosh, I don't think I could wait days for my hash browns."

I smile at her. "I wouldn't get your hopes up, though. Like Boone said, you can never really. . .tell. . . ." In the middle of my sentence, the door dings and two police officers walk in, laughing about something. They walk together to a booth just three rows down, and just before the second one sits, he makes somewhat friendly eye contact with me and smiles as a polite gesture. But instead of acknowledging him with a smile, I freeze. My heart rips downward through my body like a lead ball and I get a violent hot flash, suddenly scared that they know what I've done.

"Uh, Norman?" Ella snaps her fingers in my face to grab my attention back. "You okay there? See a ghost?"

I blink a couple of times, making myself look away from the cops that are staring at their menus. "Yeah, I'm, I'm fine, I'm good. Uh, yeah, so like I was saying, you shouldn't expect much from your hash browns from this diner, ya' know?" I still obviously sound distracted, my eyes darting to the table as if I'm expecting one of the police officers to receive a call or something about me or my mother and suddenly arrest me. Or maybe they've seen the gun in my car, or, or, who knows what else they could be hiding from me.

By this time, Ella and Boone can both tell what I'm so jittery about, so they attempt to say things to calm me down. 

"Hey, you know it's nearly impossible for them to know about what you've done. You said it yourself! Your mom isn't dumb enough to rat both of you out. . . And once again to remind you, she's kinda crazy so it's unlikely they'll believe her speaking about something that happened years and years ago." Ella explains.

"Yeah," Boone says. "And they're probably off-duty anyway." 

I want to come up with new arguments, such as the fact that she has a cut on her face to prove that I've done some damage, but I reluctantly agree with them to settle things down. While we continue to wait for our food, however, the back of my head is a complete hurricane of anxious thoughts. My leg bounces up and down, and I'm picking at my nails like a nervous wreck. My eyes dart to the table every minute or less, and by this point, I'm probably drawing unneeded attention to myself. One of the men has seemingly taken note of me, and his eyes have met mine nearly five times.

"Babe, you're sweating like you've just ran a mile. . ." Ella leans in to me and whispers in my ear. "You need some air, water?"

I wipe my forehead, deciding to stare at Boone instead of the officers behind him and before I can answer Ella, the waitress arrives with all of our food. As she sets down a plate full of poorly made eggs and greasy bacon in front of me, I immediately get sick to my stomach, suddenly feeling faint and dizzy. It takes me only a couple seconds to give in to Ella's suggestion to excuse myself, so Ella scoots out of her seat to let me out. 

My heart beat gets louder as I start to walk, to the bathroom or outside, I'm not sure yet. My body pulses with heat, and I can hear every word the officers are saying. As I get closer to their table, I feel like I'm walking underwater dragging two rocks behind me, so my only instinct is to speed up. My eyes shift from the officer's eyes, down to the ground, and the entire time, I know I'm digging my own grave by acting so suspicious. 

But I can't fucking help it.

By the time I'm at their table, my forehead is probably dripping sweat, my hands burying themselves deep into my pockets, and they are both staring at me with mistrust and doubt.

I just have to get outside, just get to the bathroom and out of their frame of view and then I'm safe. Just get to the bathroom, just get to the bathroom, just get—

"Buddy!" the man shouts from behind me. "Hey, come on over here, will ya'?"

A spike of chills instantly coarse through my body, and mixed with a complete tsunami of adrenaline instantly knocks out my sense of logic. Without thinking, I hang a right and slam past the front door, sprinting across the parking lot, hoping, praying, wishing. The fear of being noticed by them morphs into a fear of being caught by them, and my legs cannot fly any faster than they were. The sound of keys jingling and mouths shouting pumps into my ears and morphs into energy. I can't get caught, I can't get caught, I'm gonna get caught, oh shit, Lord help me I'm gonna get caught.

The words being shouted at me don't process too well until the feeling of electricity zipping through every nerve hits me like a train, mixed in with the smell of pavement under my face, and the popping of the taser. And all of a sudden I'm understanding everything. 

"Stop means stop, not run faster, you fucking asshole." is the first thing I hear.

The next thing I hear is police chatter on a walkie talkie.

And then, I hear cuffs latching around my wrists. I try to move, to struggle, to fight against the things holding me down because I'm so worked up in this moment, consequences don't exist. But the man's knee pinning me down, and the crooked position of my shoulders pulled back five feet further than humanly possible makes it considerably troublesome. Not to mention the needles embedded in back and the shock that's still lingering in my muscles.

"Yu fckin' tased me!" my words blend into a mess as the cop forcefully pulls me to my feet, that seem to not work correctly. Before we start to walk towards his car, he rips the prongs from my back, which hurts like a mother. 

"Now walk," he pushes me along roughly, my legs tripping over one another.

As we make our way slowly but surely to his car, my eyes meet Ella's and Boone's who both look horrified.

Welp, I look down. That was humiliating.