A Hard Headed Woman

I stood there having an intense staring contest with Donny, my fists clenched tightly at my sides. It was completely silent in the room because the tension was beyond thick.

“Hey Amber, maybe you should take it down a notch,” Gwen suggests making me turn to look at her, “I mean you’re obviously pissed off about something else besides Donny’s idiotic not to mention sexist remark.”
“Damn you Belgium diplomat,” I mutter darkly knowing that Gwen was right. I was pissed off for a lot of reasons and Donny’s tone of voice only reminded me of them.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she says with a weak smile.

“It is, I just realized all three of you hate guns, fighting or any form of violence, do you know have any idea how hard that’ll be to avoid in our current situation?”
“I am not entirely versed in our current situation, probably not as much as you considering you’ve seen this over a dozen times.”
“Are you making jokes right now?” I retort.
“Damn you are really pissed off, I thought that joke was right up your alley, is Arizona really that bad?” Gwen responds taken back by my snappiness.
“I’m living on Nathaniel’s couch and working at some bar where most of the patrons have gingivitis.”

“Wait lets back track here….I thought you were living with-”
“I really don’t want to go into details more than once with that so just wait until Tweedledee and Tweedledum wake up,” I say tiredly as I yawned giving a good stretch bringing my arms up and arching my back. My back gave a rather loud crack.
“What happened?” Gwen questions looking at me wide eyed.
“Nathaniel’s shitty couch is what happened, I think it’s been rearranging my spinal cord,” I grumble as I placed my hand at the small of my back bending again with another crack.
“I’m not talking about your creaking back bones, I’m talking about the intense bruising on your skin,” she states lifting the front of my shirt up to reveal my bruised torso, “Oh my god Amber seriously this looks awful.”
“Damn I thought I pulled off the Tina Turner look really well.”
“Please tell me that’s not what happened.”
“No I don’t think he has a massive drug addiction.”
“You are the only person that will joke about spousal abuse, its disturbing how calm you are about something like that. Knowing you, you didn’t even report anything,” Gwen scolds me.
“And this is when we stop talking and wait to go in depth later,” I yawn as I walked off to the kitchen where I could sit in peace. My ears picked up Gwen’s unintelligible angry rambling that went off into French then Finnish and some other language I could only describe as gibberish.

My legs lead me to the old wooden kitchen table and the bench next to it. Sitting on the bench I tried to stop the anger that boiled inside of me. I had a hell of a past two weeks and being stuck in the movie world really was the cherry on top of the cake. It was frustrating and my back ached a bit.

“Alright, maybe we should talk about we’re gonna do,” Aldo says coming into the empty kitchen.
“Okay shoot,” I reply massaging my shoulder as best I could. He sat down on the bench next to me.
“I can’t be havin’ yew attackin’ my men.”
“Well maybe they need to learn to respect women.”
“Yer a real hard headed woman yew know that?” he counters.
“I’m aware, so what are we going to do about this situation? I know yall don’t need to have four women to distract you from the task at hand, but we aren’t completely useless,” I respond honestly.
“What do yew mean?”
“Gwen speaks French fluently, Paulie and I speak Spanish,” I answer.
“And yew ain’t afraid to fight,” Aldo comments
“Right.”
“How good are yew at distracting?”
“Not too bad,” I say as I rolled my shoulders hoping to get the kink out. I winced feeling the kink clench causing me to feel more irritation.
“Turn around,” he says to me.
“Why?”
“So I can fix yer back.”

I looked at him not knowing exactly how to react except to turned around on the bench with my back to him and my legs straddling the bench. His hands went to my shoulders and I tensed even more. My breathing hitched in my throat and I was sort of frozen. Aldo applied pressure gently kneading the knots out and gradually I relaxed under his care. Admittedly the man was a fucking genius at back massages but I wouldn’t expect anything less from those exceptional hands. When his hands trailed further down my back I wasn’t tensing even if they were now at my lower back. Fuck I hadn’t had such a good massage ever. But then his hands grazed the beginning of my bruises and I let out a small gasp because they were not fully healed. Quickly I brought my hands back and removed Aldo’s hands off my body then got up from my seat.

“Um thanks, I think I’m okay now,” I mutter before walking off.

My eyes landed on Gwen who was talking to Hugo Stiglitz seemingly in depth and I decided to leave her be and just went upstairs.

“Rose wait up,” Gwen’s voice rings in my ears making me stop halfway up the stairs.
“Yeah?” I answer to my middle name that some of my very close friends and family would call me every once in a while.
“You beat the hell out of him right?”
“I broke his nose and punched him in the throat, then kneed him in a very unkind place,” I reply with a small smirk, “You don’t know how liberating it is to be able to take down someone twice your size especially when they’ve done you wrong.”
“I still feel as though you should tell someone maybe your dad and then you don’t have to sleep on a couch at Nathanial’s,” she comments.

“Its suggestions like those that remind you that you have yet to meet my father,” I muse with a slight chuckle, “Besides what’s wrong with crashing at Nathanial’s place?”
“He’s a woman hating man whore.”
“He doesn’t hate all women.”
“You don’t count, he thinks you’re his future ex-wife,” Gwen states waving her finger at me.
“What can I say? The man has some high hopes,” I shrug.
“Yeah well I still think he’s awful, bloody git slept with my mother,” she grumbles angrily with her arms crossed in front of her. I tried my best not to burst into laughter and when I knew I was going to laugh I turned to the side muffling my giggles with my hand.

“You’re laughing?! Damn yank, it was mortifying to walk in on my mother going at it with him especially when he’s more than half her age! Mortifying I tell you!”
“Aw Gwyneth I will not condone you’re criticism against your mother being able to get a younger man, I say bravo to her.”
“You did say bravo to her you wench, then you and Nora proceeded to give her a high five.”
“I thought it was well deserved,” I state then smirked at Gwen, “Oh that reminds me he was asking about your mother the other day.”

“To Hell with you,” Gwen retorts throwing her hands in the air and walked away leaving me to laugh some more. It was so much more fun to get Gwen angry because she’d go off on what I’d call the angry U.N. Tangent, this is where she’d curse in every language she knew, hence the term U.N., as well as ramble about how awful I was.

Gwen stopped ranting in foreign languages and her eyes grew wide like Paris Hilton’s legs. She turned to me with an indescribable look on her face then simply said.

“What are we gonna do when Nora spots him?”

It took me a moment to register who ‘him’ was then my eyes darted to Wilhelm Wicki.

“Oh my god I didn’t think about that,” I mutter knowing damn well how Nora was going to react.

Nora could not resist a man in uniform let alone Wilhelm Wicki and his deep sexy voice. She was the modern day Victory Girl and Wilhelm Wicki was definitely guaranteed a good ole fashioned Nora ride to pound town.

Fuck I don’t even know if he’ll know what hit him.