Laurel turned as a huge man passed in front of her, striding toward the fighting couple. Laurel grabbed her bag and fished for her phone, ready to announce her intentions to call the cops, but steps interrupted her-heavy, purposeful footfalls on the wooden walkway. Laurel heard the squeak of a sneaker and whipped her head around as the guy grasped his girlfriend by her fleshy upper arm, rough enough to bruise. She felt powerless and pissed and worthless, probably just how this obnoxious girl felt. “I know you fucked him, so just admit to it.” Laurel gave them each a disgusted look and pretended to go back to her reading, praying she’d at least embarrassed or annoyed them enough to prompt a relocation. The woman crossed her arms and cocked her head. “Don’t touch her like that,” Laurel said, hoping she sounded assertive, glad her voice wasn’t as shaky as her hands. The guy turned to give her a cursory study. “Why you foolin’ with me?” the guy demanded, shaking his girlfriend by the shoulders. The altercation paused until the woman had gone, then escalated. The walker, a middle-aged woman dressed for the office, gave them a wide berth, also pretending to ignore the fight. A walker entered her periphery and Laurel’s cheeks burned, embarrassed to be here, acting as if she couldn’t see what was going on. He had a mean, dog-fight look about him and the fact he was posturing made him seem even more likely to snap. She wanted to find the balls to say something, to do the right thing, but she was afraid of the guy.
“An’ you need to tell me the fuckin’ truth.” “You need to back the fuck off,” the girl said, holding her ground but looking rattled. His tone was half threat, half jeer, and he came nearer with each repetition until their faces were frighteningly close. Don’t lie to me,” over and over, drowning her out. The girl tried to argue back but he just kept chanting, “Don’t lie to me. “Don’t you call me a liar,” the girl shouted and stood, shouldering an elaborate gold purse.
Laurel tried her damnedest to block them out and focus on her book but it was like ignoring a wasp in her ear. The girlfriend wore a similar top but her jeans were two sizes too small, the crazy-low-rise style girls constantly fussed with to keep their ass cracks from peeking. That stereotyped look-baggy black jeans, pristine work boots, awful pencil-thin chinstrap facial hair and a white undershirt, which in this case looked as if it deserved the nasty nickname “wife beater”. The guy was white but dressed as though he’d prefer to be Puerto Rican like his girlfriend. Every fifth word that left the man’s mouth was a nasal “fuckin’”. Young, probably early twenties, with accents that suggested both had grown up in the area. They’d been arguing even before they’d taken up residence two benches down from Laurel. A pleasant escape from her un-air-conditioned apartment and the glares of her bar exam-obsessed roommate. The afternoon had started out idyllic-a perfect July day in Boston, sunny with a cooling breeze, a prime, shaded bench all to herself off the waterfront’s beaten tourist path. Laurel gritted her teeth, stared down at the book in her hands, the paragraph she’d been trying to read for the past five minutes.
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