Page 65 of I Did Something Bad
“Woah there, sweetheart, slow down.” He laughs like I’m blowing this out of proportion. “We know how hard you always work,” he says, voice coated with condescension that makes me clench my jaw, “so we wanted to make sure you’d be home. Don’t know how late movie shoots run. And this isn’t really a search, more like… a conversation. We kept thinking about that pen—”
“Which was May’s—”
“Right. But just like we missed it the first time around, maybe there’s something you missed from that night, too. Maybe youhaveseen this man before and forgot? Like I said, we just wanted to have a small chat. Nothing that needs lawyers involved.”
Tyler looks like he wants to reach into the phone and strangle theprick. “Are you going to go to May’s and Tyler’s homes, too? And Yasmin’s?” I ask, hoping the edge in my voice covers up my fear.
His quiet “What?” tells me he wasn’t expecting me to be so confrontational.
“Well, if you’re going to come tomyapartment, surely you’re going to go to all of theirs and question them, too. Especially May. It washerpen, after all.”
His hesitant throat clearing gives me a boost of confidence, which I snatch and stretch for the duration of this conversation. “Well… we were…”
“Or are you honing in on me because I’m not American?” I ask, making a point to sound civil so they have no way to accuse me ofoverreactingor beinguncooperative. “You thought you could bully and intimidate me, even though you have no evidence or just cause, because I’m not American and you don’t have to answer to an embassy if you barge into my apartment without a warrant?”
“That’s—”
“I know my rights, Detective.” I pause to see if they’ll throw back any arguments. They don’t. “Didn’t you say you had a daughter? It’s late. Why don’t you go home and tuck her into bed? You guys workso hard,” I amp up the saccharinity. “You should at least get to go home in time to kiss your children good night.”
After a few silent seconds, all he says is, “Good night, Khin,” and hangs up.
I check the phone to make sure the call is over before I put it down beside my plate. I look over to find Tyler still glaring at it. “Those motherfuckers, trying to corner you when theyknewwe wouldn’t be around,” he says through gritted teeth. Making sudden eye contact with me, his brown pupils flash and he says, “Tell me if they ever try to pull something like that again, and I will have Legal call—”
“No!” I say quickly. “Don’t tell Legal. Or Yasmin or even May. I don’t want to have to build on the lies.”
“But they—”
“Tyler.” I put a hand on his shoulder. He looks down, but doesn’t react. “I got this.”
He looks at my hand again, then back at me.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re literally trembling,” he says.
At that, I snatch my hand back and interlace my fingers in front of me. “I’ve got—”
“If you say ‘you’ve got this’ one more time…” he says, eyes narrowing before he blows out an impatient puff of air. “How many times do I need to tell you? You can trust me. You don’t have to do this on your own. You’renotdoing this on your own.I’vegotyou.”
I don’t quite know how the sequence of events unfolds, but the next thing Idoknow is that I’m sobbing, palms pressed onto Tyler’s chest, face folded into the crook of his neck, while his hands rub small circles on my back. “I’m so scared,” I say, a sob interjected between each word. “I’m so tired and scared and stressed and I don’t know how much longer I can do this. Any of this.”
Despite me bracing for it, he doesn’t try to shush me, or tell me everything will be okay. Instead, he leans down and simply whispers, “I know.”
“I—”Hiccup. “I miss—”Hiccup.“Normal. I miss my old, normal life. Before all of this.”
“I know,” he repeats. “It’s… a lot. And I know you’re exhausted, but I need you to push on for just a little bit longer.” My face sinks deeper into him, wet tears sticking my cheeks to his shirt. “They don’t have anything. They’re just trying to scare us.”
“Well, it’s working!” I cry.
His chest moves with a short snort. “Hey now,” he says, sounding like he’s smiling. “You don’t scare easily, remember?”
I let out an inadvertent snort of my own. “That I absolutely do not. Clearly.”
I sniffle and pull back at last, ignoring the horrid snot stain I’ve left on his shirt. I blink away the tears and look up at him. He is smiling, soft and sweet, and for some reason, that’s what finally prompts me to exhale.
“We can do this,” he repeats. “We’ll see this through together.”
“Together,” I say, realizing that I mean it. In this moment, it feels like he’s carrying the both of us on his back, and I don’t mind it at all. I don’t mind that I just fell apart in his arms, or that he’s seen me at my worst, time and time again. I don’t have to be always-have-it-together Khin around him.
