This story was almost abandoned by (
https://www.literotica.com/authors/Erozetta
) but with some effort, editing, and collaboration, we've managed to build her initial idea out into a witchy little romance with a bit of a dark underbelly. We both hope you enjoy our Halloween collaboration as much as we enjoyed writing it!
Constructive criticism is always welcome and, as ever, any resemblance between people living or (un)dead and the characters below is purely coincidental.
Don't get me wrong
He leaned against a large ad on the wall, staring at his phone while she sat on a nearby bench.
Her bank balance sat at a measly fifty cents with a pending charge of $22.50. Her check would clear on Thursday, but that would be about 12 hours too late to avoid paying out the extra $25 overdraft fee
His thumb hovered over the delete button, but he knew he couldn't unsee the video of his fiancée laughing it up about how short a chain she had him on, while some bulky loser manhandled her on his bed. Not the loser's bed, but
his
bed. The expensive bed he'd bought at his fiancée's insistence even though she didn't want to move in until they were married. He didn't even know who sent him the video. Probably his grandmother.
She'd never liked Annabeth and seeing his fiancée with another man would make her wring her hands together in glee. But anonymous wasn't her style. She would've sat him down across from her big desk and, while trying not to smile, said, "Darling, I know you liked the harpy, but she's just after your money and I have proof. Pretty birds like to collect shiny things and you glimmer like no other." He almost smiled at the thought. She had such a way of making every disappointment into a life lesson, but she was also usually right.
The girl leaned her head back and drew in a deep, ragged breath and that caught his attention. He looked over and glimpsed her eyes closing, causing a slight wrinkle at the corner as her lips pursed and brow furrowed. Her username was visible on the screen above the paltry balance with the pending charge. A 7-day pass for the subway given the merchant's name and cost. He smiled and watched her a moment.
She's cute.
He opened up his own banking app and quickly thumbed in her name, a quick amount and message before hitting send then put his phone in his pocket as the subway rolled into the station. Annabeth was after his money? Fine. He just cleaned out the debit account he gave her and sent every last penny to someone who needed it. That should send the message that he was done being the harpy's ATM.
Her phone chirped and she glanced at it, thinking it was the overdraft fee hitting her account hours early. That would've been just her luck. Instead, she saw a message, "My bad choice is your lucky day," and an option to accept a quick deposit between customers of the same institution. No need to wait for it to clear. Her trembling hand almost clicked to decline, the amount wasn't insignificant cash - it was a little over five-hundred dollars - but she accepted and looked around.
An old man leaned against a cane at the far end of the bench, his phone was an ancient flip-style and hung off his belt in a holster she hadn't seen since her dad's in the early 00s. A woman fussed with a young boy whose eyes were glued to a brightly colored and animated screen. Three older men in business suits were chattering near a trash can, pretending they didn't just toss an empty coke packet in the trash after not so subtly passing it around.
There was an older couple holding hands on a bench too far away to have seen her phone. A college-aged girl at the ticket machine, looking up and hopping nervously, tried to clear her transaction before the subway car rolled out of the station. Then, not too far from her, a handful of tech-types began crowding into the just-opened car in front of them. Nobody
felt
wrong. She might not be practicing these days, but she was always on guard. Pinpointing the kindhearted one usually didn't take long, but there were so many emotions to run through they got lost in a jumble, disorienting her slightly as she stood up.
He didn't make himself known, just quietly shuffled into the car with the tech-types, who were of a similar age as himself, and she followed behind, still looking around as others pushed her into the man in front of her. He groused and pushed back, causing her to lean to the side as she grabbed onto a pole near the doors opposite where she entered. The car was packed, and multiple people bustled into her, trying to push her away from the easiest place to grasp something, but she held firm in her place. At least, she did until the coked-up businessmen came into the car and surrounded her, holding the bar above her grip and pushing her into a tight spot near an older woman with a cane and a brown paper sack of groceries.
The older woman whopped one of the men lightly on the shin and dropped her head down to look over her glasses at him. "You push 'er into my groceries and you'll be payin' for whatever gets broke."
The guy sneered but moved to another bar nearby. He towered over the college student who'd barely made it into the car before the doors shut behind her. She looked nervous and one of the tech-types moved to another bar, freeing up the one he'd been standing at to go and talk to his buddies nearby. The girl rushed to grab it as the train jolted forward.
The no longer painfully broke girl smiled to the older woman, but the other just rolled her eyes and whopped the girl's shin with her cane when she stepped a little too close for her comfort.
"Oww," she muttered under her breath.
The old woman smiled and nodded to the younger woman, who was still trying to figure out who had sent her enough cash to buy groceries and cover the remaining part of her rent in the two-bedroom apartment she shared with two other girls, a dog, a cat, two guinea pigs, a bird, and the sometimes boyfriend of one of her roommates.
"You're gonna get walked all over your whole life getting pushed around like that so easily. Take up space, push 'em back." The older woman made a motion with her hand and the girl stepped back as much as she could. She exuded care and concern even as she appeared hardened to the world. The girl liked her and felt comfortable standing next to her.
She tried to take the woman's advice, but she'd always found it easier to compress herself into a tighter spot than to push others out of her space. Still, while the older woman was watching, she felt the need to do just as she was told, and pushed back on the businessmen, asserting her space next to them while the subway jostled them. The sounds echoed weirdly to her, but it'd become a sort of comfort to focus on something other than the sound of electricity in the air and the miasma of bottom shelf whiskey and stale cigarettes surrounding the businessmen.
It often felt like people were watching her even when they weren't, but she looked over her shoulder to the opposite corner of where she stood and saw one of the tech-types avert his eyes. She wondered how long he'd be on the subway with her. Had he been in that group that bustled onto the train with her? There were six stops before hers then she'd switch over to the commuter rail for the last hour home. Hopefully she'd figure out who sent her the money by then, it was getting easier to pinpoint as the train emptied.
At each stop, she glanced back, waiting for the tech-type to get off, but he remained. As her stop neared, he moved toward the doors, grasping the bar diagonal from hers. She looked him up and down.
He's hot.
He had light brown scruffy hair and a neatly trimmed beard with reddish tones. She didn't get a good look at his eyes before he looked away, but she thought they were blue, or maybe gray. He wasn't in a suit, but he wasn't in unkempt clothes either. Black jeans, a somewhat worn video game T-shirt under a partially buttoned blue long-sleeved shirt. There was a watch on his left wrist along with a dangling silver bracelet of some sort. A medic alert bracelet?
She maybe stared a little too long as he glanced back at her, and she found herself flustered; looking away and inadvertently staring at the crotch of the coked-up businessman she shared a bar with, who noticed and edged closer to her.
The subway train rocked roughly, and she let go of the bar just after the businessman had reached his hand toward her. She stumbled but righted herself as she dodged the man she'd deemed creepy from the moment he stood near her, and maneuvered toward the attractive tech-type.
