Catherine

"Why buy a new car if you're barely going to use it?" He was sorting through the cassette tapes on the dashboard while humming a tune. I started fidgeting with the ribbon at the end of my blouse, admiring how I can finally see my arms. After The Last Waltz stopped playing, with the applause of the audience on the background, nothing else was played. Maybe Benjie just wanted that song to play over and over when he got it recorded during its live performance.

I could have made the comment about our choice of vehicle earlier but he looked far more tense than I was.

I had something to say, and I had my chance during the whole car ride to the same bakery where I bought his cake. After getting coffee and two sandwiches, we hopped back in and I never questioned him on where we were going. He kept on driving until the sky turned to this beautiful faded purple color. When he did kill the engine, it was already dark, and we were at the pier. I could barely see the ships except the twinkling lights coming from the inside.

It was a little windy and the floral blouse I was wearing did little to help on keeping a warm-blooded mammal such as myself, well- warm. I got out and wrapped my arms around myself as the sea breeze tried its best to calm my nerves.

Be brave Catherine.

"Why here?" I turned to see him shutting his door, holding something in his hand.

"You looked bothered when I opened the door for you, and thought maybe you needed some fresh air." I felt something brush my arm and looked down to see the leather jacket he wore the first time we met. (And would have probably been the last if he didn't stop just in time.) Of course he may have other leather jackets but I've seen his wardrobe, which mainly consisted of white, black, and blue shirts. His polo shirts were a little more colorful.

The guy owns a lavender shirt. I haven't seen the pink one he wore when we visited my uncles. It was through the phone that my mom told me that Damon, the guy who couldn't even lift a broom for his dear life, pulled out a calf from Betsy. The poor guy must have been traumatized.

"Well it's a little salty, but thank you. I'm fine." He held the jacket out for me as I slipped my arms on its sleeves, shrugging as I pulled out my hair that caught on the back.

"You didn't look fine to me." Damon made me move aside as he tinkered with something on the back of the truck. He then pulled the tailgate down, and held out his hand. "Come on."

Confused, I took it and quickly felt his hands down my waist, lifting me from the ground with a grunt. He sat me down and followed.

"You know, you can talk to me about things. I'll try understanding whatever it is that's happening inside that pretty head of yours." He jumped off and walked back to get something inside the truck. When he resumed to his current position, he was holding the plastic bag that had our sandwiches on one hand, and the paper cup holder with our now lukewarm coffee. "Okay, I'm ready."

I looked at the sky for a little boost. Unlike the last time, the sky was generous enough to have stars scattered with a few clouds occasionally passing by.

"I always wondered how you stayed the way you are." It was this statement that made me look at him.

I held onto the jacket, his scent overpowering what little cologne I put on earlier.

"You get used to it." I was playing with the jacket's zipper when I said this. He looked funny with his eyes wide and his hands gesturing like crazy at me; like he couldn't believe that I was even saying these words.

"Well I'm not exactly sure on what I'm doing that you find unacceptable. It saves me time and money. Imagine all the ice cream I would have bought." Moving the strands of hair away from my cheeks, I tried making out his features.

He was facing me; the lamp post nearby wasn't much help to help me see him better. In fact, it only made him look darker. I would have thought of him as someone who would kidnap people and smoke cigarettes back in high school. I still think of him as the rebellious kid who always said no.

That was before I saw him belting out to the Bee Gees during the wee hours of the morning.

"I saw you talking to Glen. Didn't your parents ever teach you to not talk to assholes?"

"You should really stop calling people names. It's immature."

You hypocrite. You called him Gwen just a couple of hours ago.

He grimaced and placed his hands on my cheeks, a look of annoyance clearly plastered on his face.
"And you really should stop taking every piece of crap and saying thank you afterwards." He was practically shouting now. I've never seen him this pissed before and I'm not sure on how I pushed all the wrong buttons for him to finally explode. I thought he was finished talking when he let go of me, but he moved to lay down and opened his mouth to speak again.

"I just don't get it. You know what bothered me when I was told about you? That you have yourself so put together; like you were never bullied back in school or got cheated on by your own sister. I saw you inside that restaurant that night. You never shouted at him or at Audrey. And when you walked out, it was like you were madder at yourself than at them."

Be brave.

I was going to do something that I never thought I would be doing unless I was in a quiet room, with a psychiatrist asking me on how I feel about it over and over until the session was done.

"I don't have a problem for you to solve." I smiled at him, catching him off guard. "But I want to tell you a story."

He never replied. He just looked at me as I took a deep breath.

Here goes.

"Okay, so there's this girl. Let's call her Fiona. You know Fiona, right? Shrek's princess? Only she wasn't cursed on her birthday and she's not a princess." From the corner of my eye, I saw him get up. "Fiona's a little different. She didn't have an extra nose or anything. She just liked being-"

"Alone."

Smiling, I nodded.

Holding my cup in my hands, I continued. "But Fiona still wanted to have someone. Not necessarily prince charming. But just someone. Like her own special person. Someone who she knows would hold that part of her, and would make sure that it would be defended just as much as Leonidas defended Sparta." After a moment, I chuckled. "They lost. But he tried."

"Well did this Fiona get stuck in a tower like the other damsels, too?" He started unwrapping one of the sandwiches and it was nice to hear the sound of paper other the ships signaling each other.

"Here's the thing," I nudged his shoulder just as he was about to take a bite off his sandwich, owning me a glare from him. "she put herself in the tower."

If I wasn't being such a nervous mess right now, I would have taken a picture of him with his right cheek puffed out. He actually stopped chewing, and scrunched his eyebrows. "Why?"

"You already know she liked being alone. But you know what's so nice about being alone in a tower? She gets to see prince charming coming. And she'll be there waiting until he climbs up. Now that I think about it, princesses stuck on towers are far too young. And so was Fiona." I took a sip of cold coffee and stared at a particular dim star, slightly hidden by a cloud.

"And princes passed by, only to look at her tower's window to see Fiona's sister. She had a nicer tower. Newly painted and all. While Fiona's looked like it was almost hit by a bomb. Every time a prince climbed down, Fiona would be by the window, watching him go. It happened a couple of times that she knew the routine. Fiona never cried because she was left behind, she looked at it as a good thing."

Putting down my cup, I rubbed my chin. "She wanted to have a prince. But she wanted him to be her prince. Not necessarily own him. Glob knows that's impossible. People aren't possessions you can just claim."

He swallowed the food he was chewing and sighed loudly. "So Fiona took a realistic perspective then?"

Keep going.

"You can say that. And you know what she did while she was waiting? She got out of the tower and made a woman out of herself. Her own woman. She didn't sit by the window all the time, daydreaming about a guy in an armor. She decided to have a life beyond the tower. Like a backup plan." I nodded, suddenly realizing that this made me stay afloat the whole time I was struggling with my self-image.

"But Fiona started getting tired of climbing up and down the tower." At this point, he put down his sandwich and wiped his hands on his jeans. "Then one night, she decided to joke about it. That maybe it was about time, he found her and climbed his sorry patoot up. And guess what?"

"What?"

I turned to him slowly and gave him one nervous smile. "He did. It took him a while, but he climbed the tower, carefully. Like he knew how battered the it was... He even tried fixing it along the way."

Smiling, I emptied my cup of coffee and just held it in my hands.

"Didn't Fiona have a dragon guarding her? A male dragon secretly cursed by an evil wizard or something like that?" Frowning, I turned to see him swallow. He wasn't even eating anymore so maybe he was really into m- Fiona's story. I stared at him in awe as he tried calming himself.

I was expecting a joke from him, but he surprised me when he held my hand; bread crumbs still on them. "You know what I think about Fiona, though? I think-" Damon jumped off of the truck and made me follow him. "Fiona's a wonderful woman. The problem with her is that she thinks too much. She always finds a logical and mature way of viewing things that she forgets that she has the right to feel. The right to feel angry, and sad, and happy. I think whenever Fiona leaves her tower, she leaves her feelings behind and wears her own armor to protect herself. Maybe that's why the tower's battered but she's still seems fine. It took all the blows for her. That's why everyone thinks she's broken."

We just stood there and as I looked at his face, with him looking at mine. When he pulled me down from the pickup, his face was finally hit with what little light we had.

"If that someone came sooner, he would have beat the sh*t out of those princes."

We both turned our heads to the sea when a ship nearing the port honked just in time when Damon cursed.

"If he came earlier just to beat guys who aren't worth the time, he would have been thrown to jail for battery assault." He snorted and pulled me closer to him. I wasn't going to complain. It was cold.

"You act like you've been breaking rules. Have you ever spent some time in jail? I might be living with a reaper with a criminal record to back up his bad boy reputation."

"Reapers don't need to go to jail, bonbon. We're given something more than sitting inside a cell. Like working for eternity. Although I did spend a night in jail. When I was sixteen, I think."

That made me look up at him, my nose bumping his chin. "Ow." Rubbing my nose, I heard him chuckle. "Why?"

He sighed. "I still wasn't used to the job and I decided to man up and go on my own. The fellas taught me how to tell the difference between dead and undead people." He scratched his nose and looked away. "I found one. I could just smell how rotten it was... It's just that I couldn't tell which one. I could smell it but I didn't know who seduced who."

His ears were turning pink and I tried to stop myself from smiling. "We were getting a lot of incubi so I figured that maybe the guy in the suit was...yeah. I was in jail for a night. But enough of that." He let go of me and I shivered as I felt the wind touch my skin. His lower body was all that was visible as he leaned inside the truck.

"What are you doing?"

He ran back to me, leaving the door open and held my waist. I was going to mouth a protest when I heard the familiar recorded applause. He grinned, clearly proud of himself. "Tom Jones just happened to be on my dashboard."

When he started moving his hips, the music playing from inside the car, I couldn't help but laugh.

"I'm trying here. I'm Shakira. My hips don't lie and I suck at it." He looked annoyed and embarrassed that I had to look at our feet so I would stop laughing.

We ended up looking like two adults dancing like crazy people at the pier.

When the music was over, and the applauding faded, he looked at me, wiping the sweat from my nose.

Remember the last tape he played?

Well it came next.

https://youtu.be/aBiepqrfsS0

And The Last Waltz continued playing as he placed a hand on my waist. While he took my other hand and intertwined it with his. While he started guiding my body to slowly sway with his.

"I need to tell you something."

He placed a hand on the side of my neck, and smiled. "Then tell me, bonbon."

"I found him. Well... he found me." I made sure to say it as quick as possible.

I know I said the words correctly.

The hand he placed on the side of my neck suddenly felt colder as he took a shaky breath. He looked like he was about to panic that I was tempted to shake him.

You know, I sometimes wish cellphones never rang during these kinds of moment.

I stepped back and he had a blank look on his face. He pulled out his phone and answered the call.

From the way he frowned, I knew something was up. He said a quick okay and ended shoved his phone back in his pocket.

"Take my truck and go home. The guys from The Garage are just nearby. That guy's lucky The Garage has no space for him tonight." He practically shoved me inside his pickup and asked me to drive home.

He told me to text him once I got back to the apartment. I did. And I sat on the couch, waiting anxiously for him to come home.

My hands felt cold. Looking down on my bare arms, I laid down on the couch.

The tattoo that I had of him was gone now.

And the next morning...

so was he.