Chapter 34 Chapter 34: Nothing In Common

Chapter 34 Chapter 34: Nothing In Common
Leila Ryker's POV:

"You can't possibly mean that!" I heard Alaric call after me as I was about halfway across the street, watching for the cars that were passing at that point.

I did the best I could to ignore his calls. However, just as I was halfway across the street, right across from the stairs that would lead down to the river, I couldn't help but hear something amid the passing cars. It almost sounded as if someone were crying.

Little did I know that Alaric had followed me across the street. I didn't see him until I made my way over to the opposite curb. As I began to look around, I noticed that a short distance from where I was standing, there was an old-looking park bench with a young woman sitting there. She was obviously upset about something.

I silently started to walk over toward her when Alaric walked up to my side, trying to be my guard as I closed the distance to her. I was glad that at this time he didn't say anything to me. When I finally managed to reach her, I took a seat next to her on the bench.

"What happened, if you don't mind my asking?" I said in a soft tone as I laid my small bag there on top of my lap, when I looked over at her.

It was the first time that she looked up at me, and I saw her eyes were tear-soaked. I didn't think twice when I reached into my pocket, pulled out a folded tissue, and handed it to her.

"Thanks," she said, taking it with a broken voice as she proceeded to blow her nose before she said anything else. "I just had a hard day, that's all."

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked, trying to make her feel better.

"Leila," Alaric said, reaching out to grab my arm by my elbow. "It's time we moved on."

The young woman looked up to him in shock, and I saw a look I knew all too well. It was a look of someone who was bullied and mistreated... The look of someone who was at their wits' end and no one to care for them... The look I have seen in the mirror staring back at me many times when I got home after a hard day's work.

Alaric pulled me up to my feet and a few steps away as I forced a smile to the young woman, who looked at me shyly.

"What are you doing?" I asked him in a hushed, irritated tone, as if he didn't seem to care about another person.

"There's nothing you can do for her," he told me, his voice plain and stripped of any empathetic notion whatsoever.

"How can you be so cruel?" I asked him as I pulled my arm out of his grasp. "Can't you see that she needs a kind ear? Someone who might have been in her shoes?"

He stood up straight, placing his hands behind his back, and I could tell he grabbed his opposite wrists as he didn't pay her a second look, but did indeed look down at me.

"There is nothing you can do as this is part of normal society," he said, even more plain than before. "It's normal for the weak to be placed in a position where their betters show them their true place."

"What?!" I asked, even more stunned at his arrogance, and on top of that, the words he spoke to me right then. "Her place? You act as if she is beneath the feet of others. She's a human being, and that deserves respect!"

With my last statement, he turned to the side and took several steps away from me, in the opposite direction, as she was still sitting there on the bench. Knowing he was my ride home, I had no choice but to follow him as he walked on in silence.

There was a definite difference between him and Klay. He was the one who spoke so badly about Klay, with his examples and such. Klay had told me before to watch out for Alaric, but at the time, I didn't see any reason to. However, as time went on, I realized something in that very instance. Something I would consider rather important. We had absolutely nothing in common.

No matter how Alaric might parade himself around, his character was pitiful if he was going to treat another human the way he was treating the young woman just now. It's like he didn't even want me to show her a kind hand, even though she had been sitting there crying about a hard day.

Heck, I've had hard days, and it was always Klay who came to me. He even came to me in the alley behind the Copper Cafe that night. I don't think that if the roles were reversed, and it were Alaric who sat inside the cafe that night, I highly doubt that he would even bother to give me a second glance by coming around back and helping me out, as it turned out, I needed that very thing.

Soon, the car we rode in drove up. I stood there, waiting patiently as I watched Alaric walk around the car to the other side and climb in without a second thought. What is he doing? He just sat there in the vehicle behind the driver. Well... I thought to myself. When we first got here, he made sure to come get my door. Now that we don't see eye to eye on something, he's just going to act like I'm not even here?

"Here you are, Miss," the driver said as he walked around the back of the vehicle, getting the door for me so I could get in, too.

Once I was seated, I fastened my seatbelt and crossed my arms in front of me just as we pulled away from the curb.

I sat there in silence, looking out my window, wondering if I said anything, if it would even do any good. My thoughts weren't helping me when I turned to face him, only for him to speak up.

"You'll understand how the world works, soon enough," he told me, taking my words away.

"What is that supposed to even mean?" I asked him, narrowing my eyebrows, still staring back at him.

It was at that moment that he turned to look away from me.

"You don't see someone like me associating myself with someone like that," he said in that moment.

"Like who?" I asked, confused that he was starting his conversation, acting as if I knew his very thoughts.

He then turned back to face me when he added, "So, the next time I take you out. I would suggest that you stick close to me and don't run off to help someone who is out of your league."

"League? I don't play baseball..." I said this time. "You know what, I don't care about your verbiage. I'm better than this stuck-up, holier-than-thou nonsense. Oh, and by the way, there won't be a next time."