The Bodyguard 5sos

Chapter Four.

'You kicked the sand up at us deliberately.' 

'Hey man, it's breezy. It happens. We're good aren't we?' Dan shrugs his shoulders and holds out his hand. 

'We're not good,' the guy slaps Dans hand away. He's spent too much time in the gym working on his upper body strength, he's got a bulky body supported by spindly legs. Not a good look. Probably spends his days searching out surfers to pick fights with to make up for it. 

The guys' girlfriend is lying on the sand reading a book. 'You teach em, Dwayne.' She calls across like she doesn't care one way or the other. Which is odd because I guess he's doing this to impress her. 

I walk up and bounce him my best smile 'Hey, hi. I'm sure they're sorry. It's' OK isn't it?' 

'Butt out. This is none of your business.' He spits at me then circles round me to get closer to Dan. 

The kids have stopped crying, girls around us aren't giggling anymore and the single guys reach over and turn their radios down a notch or two. 

'Kick her ass, Dwayne,' the girl drawls from her beach towel without even looking up. 

The guy is caught. He wants a fight with a surfer guy, not a surfer girl. That's not cool. He looks me up and down. Then I can see, he's decided, it's in his eyes. He doesn't like the two old bullet wounds on my chest or the writhing, tattooed serpent on my back. Mind you, I'm with him on the bullet wounds. 

I've blocked his route to Dan. I'm standing in between them, smiling sweetly at him and tugging the hair out of my eyes. 

So he's thinking; he'll go through the girl to get to the guy. He moves up and tries to push me roughly to one side.  

I'm ready for him. I flip the surf board toward him, grab his out- stretched arm, pull him forward so he's slightly off balance and then sweep his legs away from under him with the inside of my foot. 

As he drops, I push his shoulders away from me so he falls flat on his face in the sand and then I drop down hard on his back to wind him. His arm is raised up behind him. I've got his wrist held firmly between both hands. It must hurt like hell. 

There are a few wolf whistles and a sporadic round of clapping. His girlfriend has put down her book and taken off her sunglasses. 

I lean forward and whisper in his ear, 'Not cool.' 

'Get-oo-ff goddamit,' he curses at me and tries to struggle free. 

'Ahh ha, not yet,' I pull his other arm back with the base of my foot, so he is unable to push himself up. 'We can sit here a while longer and get an audience. I've got all day.'  

His girlfriend is picking up her gear. She walks off and doesn't even bother looking back.  

'Break his arm,' someone yells. 

Tempting but juvenile. 'If I let you go, you walk off and leave these guys alone. And we're all fine. No trouble. Agreed.' 

He grunts. 

'What?' I tweak his wrist just a little. 

'Yeah, alright. I said alright.' 

I slip off his back and he stumbles up. Someone shouts, 'Whoa there big boy, watch out for the girls.' 

He looks around, he wants a fight with someone else now. The shouter is in a group of lads, he's one of my students. He waves and calls across, 'We're in the local martial arts club, man. You just picked a fight with our teacher.' 

My student looks like a handful so the guy doesn't know what to do. He turns to his girlfriend- she's gone. He curses me, grabs his towel and walks quickly off down the beach brushing sand out of his hair. He doesn't look back, that's always a good sign. 

Dan comes over and picks up my board and hands it to me. 'Thanks Alexis, I owe you a drink. A big one.'  

'No problem Dan. Really. Let's go.' I smile, take my board and turn around. 

Blocking my way is a big, middle aged guy, with a granite jaw and a heavy gold chain slung round his bull sized neck.