Love

The Incident

Like now.

As we live so close to the shop, we can walk there... The only problem is carrying everything in crappy, cheap plastic bags all the way back.

I don't envy Tobey for having to carry enough stuff back for two people all on his own. I don't think I could manage it.

Tobey's job must pay well if he can afford to live on his own. He refuses to tell me where he works, he probably knows I'm just gonna go and cause trouble. I don't blame him. Even I wouldn't tell me where I worked if I had a job.

At the shop, Tobey and I were just browsing when some asshole tried to rob it.

I know right. The cheek of it.

Well, with me being the courageous idiot I am, I walked up to the fellow and tried to talk him down.

It didn't end well for either of us.

The guy panicked and punched me in the face, I'm used to this by now but it has been a while since the last time and this guy was ripped. I fall backwards and land on my arse and the guy, at this point, was looking very cocky.

"How dare you talk to me." He spat at me.

"How dare you talk to her like that." Tobey surprisingly said back.

Now, Tobey's not a small guy, he's exactly six foot something so he can be quite intimidating to people who don't know him. The other guy was shorter than Tobey but not by much.

By now, I could see the rage in Tobey's eyes and his stance, like a tiger waiting to attack, Tobey was waiting for the right moment to knock this guy out. The other guy seemed to be regretting going there but stands his ground, flinching under Tobey's stare.

"Calm down. Both of you." I said, getting up. I didn't want to be banned from this shop because of a fight.

Imagine that. This happened the one time I decided to go shopping with him. It's almost like this is a story or something.

"He can't just talk to you like that or lay one of his grubby fingers on you." Tobey said quietly, which made him even more scary.

After getting closer to Tobey, I whispered, "Tobey, back down. There's most likely a reason he's doing this. It might not be what he wants to do but he has to do it. You can tell that if you look closely at his eyes. He probably has people he needs to care for. He looks well off so this must be new for him and he doesn't know how to fix it."

"What are you two whispering about?!" The guy said.

"Shush." Tobey replied, quite harshly.

This time Tobey whispered to me, "That may be the case, but he's too cocky and thinks he can talk to whoever he wants however he wants. He did also hit you."

"That doesn't mean he's a bad guy. He's a guy who's done bad things. He's a guy bad things have happened to..." I can tell by the way Tobey's eyes had softened that my words were working, "Look, the police should arrive soon. They can deal with him. I don't want you getting a criminal record for sticking up for me... Also I like this shop. I don't want to be banned from it for something that could have been avoided." My last comment made him chuckle a bit.

"What's so funny?!" He seemed really irked.

"Look, I'm sure you're not a bad person. This must be the first time you've done something like this or you would have done it already. All you've done is threaten to do it, no crime has been committed. If you back down now you most likely won't get into any major trouble." I said, trying to diffuse the man.

"You don't understand. I need to do this." He was panicking more.

"Then help me understand. I don't want to hurt you and I'm pretty sure you didn't want to hurt me." He flinched at this. "Don't worry. I've learnt to take a beating." Tobey curled his fist into a tight ball of emotions. "See? We both have problems. You're not alone."

The man thought about my words for a moment before falling to his knees, silently sobbing to himself.

Before I could move to comfort him, I heard sirens. The man must have too but he didn't move.

Moving his head to look up at me with tear filled eyes, the man says, "Thank you..." All I could do was smile back at him.

After everything at the shop had been sorted, Tobey and I made our way home. I could tell that Tobey was still furious with the man, he really must have wanted to punch him... I don't blame him. I did at first.

Knowing that nothing I say will have calmed him down, I just started telling jokes. At first he didn't appreciate it but once I had said enough, he let a small smile crawl onto his face.

I'm glad everything turned out okay.

You know what would have been better though? Getting discounts on our purchases! We did kind of save the day the least they could do is help us save money.