by Hazel Parker
“Should be what? Making out right now?”
“Brett…” I said, leaning away as he tried to kiss me.
I wasn’t opposed to it; I really wasn’t. In fact, I dared to say that I craved feeling his lips on mine. My body was most definitely saying yes to him right now.
But if I was going to get Brett back, it was not going to happen while he was on the verge of going from “buzzed” to “drunk” and likely “hammered.”
“What, what are you scared of?” he said with a smile. “This is your chance to make it all right. This is your chance to say sorry.”
“Brett, please,” I said, taking his hand in my own. I hadn’t anticipated that I would be the one having to act maturely and responsibly tonight; I certainly hadn’t anticipated that I would be the one trying to calm the other down. “We came out here to have a conversation and talk about the past. I didn’t mind grabbing a couple of drinks, but you’re getting a little carried away. We’re not supposed to…”
To hook up. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t want Brett getting ideas that he didn’t need to have.
“To hell with what we’re supposed to or not supposed to do,” Brett said. “I’m a biker, remember? I live on the edge of pushing boundaries. I defy the rules, say fuck ‘em, and clean up after the fact, not in preparation before. I say let’s just enjoy the night, give me something good for once these past two weeks, and then we can be serious later. What say you?”
Give you something good for once these past two weeks?
“What happened with that guy back there?”
There was something about him, the way he looked and dressed, that made me wonder if he, too, was a biker. If that were the case, it could connect with what Brett had said last Thursday about feeling that his job was about to be taken by someone else.
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“Brett, no,” I said. “I want to know what’s going on with you.”
Brett sighed. I knew what I was doing was unfair. I was making him open up more than I was. But that’s just how the both of us were right now; neither of us were going to be in a great position to open up about ourselves anytime soon, and it wasn’t helping matters that he was drunk.
“He’s from a club associated with us,” he said. “He’s coming supposedly to help, but I worry he’s going to take over my shit. So… a little tense. But that’s as much as I’ll say right now.”
Good enough, I thought.
“Now,” Brett said. “I want to ask you something.”
Oh, shit. Can’t hide from it anymore. I knew this would come. I just wish he weren’t hammered as hell.
“Do you remember the last night we hung out together?”
This was not the question I expected. But it was one that had me rolling back the clock to when I was a junior in high school, he having just graduated.
“I do,” I said, and it was true. I distinctly remember the feeling because, then as I did now, I was keeping a secret from him—a secret I feared would rip at him if I told him the truth of what I was going through.
But I knew Brett wasn’t remembering that night for that reason, because he never found out about what I was going through.
“What happened that night?” he said, his voice soft, almost like a pillow, the kind of thing I could easily fall into.
I smiled, even with the knowledge that I would withdraw from his life only a day later. It had made the night especially intense; I had treated it like a last hurrah before I would head out for the “wild” and be single, alone, and without the man I loved.
“You took me to a steak restaurant that night,” I said, my voice practically a whisper.
“And then what?” he continued, moving closer to me, his lips but a few inches away.
It was kind of remarkable how quickly I could fall under Brett’s spell. After all these years, after we’d all but erased the memory of each other, the spark still lay dormant. How wonderful a thing it was to know that it still existed.
How wonderful a thing it was to know that we still had it for each other.
“We went to your parents’ backyard,” I said. “You had a tent set up. You knew I loved to gaze at the stars at night.”
“And what did I say?”
Even the smell of alcohol on his breath couldn’t pull me away from the moment. If anything, it intoxicated me into desiring him further.
“You said ‘just as brightly as the stars shine, someday you and I will shine.’”
I turned to him. His eyes shone as brightly as those stars did, hovering just inches before me. I was this close to pulling forward to kissing him.
And then I remembered the rest of the story.
I remembered how, as soon as he had said that, I began sobbing. I told him that I was just overwhelmed at the moment, that no one had ever spoken like that to me, and while that was true, I was really thinking about the thing that would ultimately cause me to leave the next day. I was thinking of how not even—especially not even—my parents could have pulled me back at that time.
I remembered how he had come to comfort me in the tent, but we didn’t even have sex that night. The moment in which I went from beaming with love to crying with sorrow was the moment that I had gone from feeling like Brett and I would be forever to the moment in which I knew it would be never.
Perhaps unwittingly, Brett had taken me back to that very moment in which I had known it would never work out. And with that memory, I knew that I couldn’t kiss him now.
I turned my cheek and let him have it, but I could not give him my lips.
“Cassie?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my eyes welling at the memory. “I just… I came here to tell you why I had left, not for why we should get back together. We can’t have this conversation right now. You’re drunk; I’m emotional and buzzed. This is my fault.”
“Cassie, come on,” Barber said. “It’ll be like old times.”
But that was the problem. It could never be like old times. We were adults now, stars whose trajectories were going in separate directions. I was going to law school; wherever Brett wound up, it was almost certainly not going to be in the same place as my law school. Given Brett’s status as an officer at The Red Door, I figured he had settled into where he would be for the rest of his life.
“I’m sorry, Brett,” I said. “I can’t. We go down that… it’s too painful.”
“Then tell me why you left before. We can work on this; we can!”
He was adamant and forceful with his words, though still respectful. Perhaps that was the most painful part of all, knowing that Brett hadn’t turned into an asshole who would force me to sleep with him. If he had, then maybe I’d feel more justified and more at ease with pushing him away.
But no.
“We have to do this sober,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t do it when we were at Starbucks. I should have. But the conversation was so easy and so light, I prevented us from having it. It’s very easy to get swept up in the fun moments with you, Brett. It always has been. But my cowardice in addressing the hard issues means that they sprout up at the worst possible times.”
Brett finally seemed to get the picture. I wasn’t worthy of his time. I was someone he considered pretty enough and sweet enough, somehow, to date, but in the end, I avoided the hard questions like the plague. I was too good at keeping things lighthearted, and when it came time to pay the price, the price had escalated quite quickly.
He leaned back away from me, a drink in his hand, his eyes looking everywhere except at me. He looked over my shoulder a couple of times, but I didn’t dare look back. I didn’t want to accidentally provoke a brawl between him and his rival.
“Come home with me,” Brett said without looking at me.
So much for getting the picture.
“I’m sorry?”
“If it’s easy to get swept up in the fun moments, then let’s have one right now,” he said.
He’s starting to s
lur his words more heavily.
“Get on my bike. I’ll take you to The Red Door. I’ll sneak you in the back so Mama doesn’t fucking find out. Or I’ll take you to your apartment. And then we can pretend that we’re sneaking past our parents again.”
“Brett, please don’t talk like that; you’re drunk,” I protested. “You want me to get on the bike when your words are starting to slur and you’re having trouble keeping eye contact?”
Brett bit his lip, dropped his head, and then said the words that hurt like nothing else either of us had said that entire night.
“So you’re abandoning me again.”
My first reaction was one of extraordinary guilt. Maybe I was abandoning him. Maybe, by leaving himself to stew at his club or his home, he was going to feel isolated and alone.
But then my second reaction was one of anger, one of standing up for myself.
“No, and don’t you dare compare the two situations,” I said.
I tried to sound stern, but there was an undercurrent of tears starting to form that were making my voice shaky.
“The first time I had no choice but to run. This here? You asking me to get on your bike while you’re hammered so I can be a quickie for you? Hell no. I’m choosing to run if that’s what you’re going to make me do.”
Brett lifted his eyes and glared at me, and I back at him. I could have sworn he, too, had tears welling in his eyes. The twitch in his eyelid. The heavy breathing out of his nostrils. The dabbing at his right eye that he tried to pass off as having an itch.
I was breaking his heart again, but what choice did I have when his actions were threatening to break my life apart?
“You won’t tell me anything, just like fifteen years ago,” Brett said, his voice growing angrier by the second. “I don’t see how things are different.”
“I’m not doing this drunk,” I said, frustration mounting.
“Yes, you are,” Brett said. “Do you know what kind of hell it is to have you suddenly walk back into my life right when I don’t even know if I’m going to be the goddamn sergeant of my own club? Right after one simple mistake? One fucking mistake, Cassie. One goddamn fucking mistake, and Richard kicks me to the goddamn curb.”
“Brett…”
“Please, Cassie, come with me,” he said.
I realized now that his words were not of anger, but of begging. He wasn’t someone frustrated with me. He was experiencing deep-seated sorrow, and a hope to return to the old ways, even when there was no way.
“Brett, I’m not going home with you tonight,” I said. “I will talk with you when you’re sober. I should have done it tonight, and I’m sorry. You can force me to tell you anything you want when you’re sober. But right now… I can’t.”
I could. He’s not that drunk. You’re just looking for excuses, Cassie. It’s all you’ve ever done. Look for excuses, for a way out. You run, you run, and then you run some more.
It’s no wonder that you’ve made a life out of it for the last fifteen years.
Brett looked at me, looked down, and then abruptly stood up. I remained glued to my seat, numb with shock and disappointment in myself. A few seconds later, I heard the revving of a motorcycle before it peeled off past the cocktail bar.
I put my head in my hands and started to cry. I may not have abandoned Brett as I had before. I’d see him Thursday.
But I sure had disappointed him and disappointed myself.
Why was I such a coward?
Chapter 7: Barber
Was there anything in life more goddamn cruel than the former love of your life showing up, being seconds away from kissing you, and then abruptly pulling back out of some misplaced sense of not wanting to do things while drunk?
What the fuck was that all about, even? Why the fuck did she care if I was sober or drunk or high or what the fuck ever? She was no fucking saint, that Cassie. I’d had to cover for her to her religious parents. I’d had to guard her when she acted like a fucking moron in the past. And now, suddenly, she was the moral authority with me?
No, fuck that. I knew what she said about her being afraid and all that, but that was bullshit. She had me sober as a stone at Starbucks for half an hour, and it wasn’t until I saw BK that my night began to unravel. Even then, she had plenty of time to fucking tell me, and no…
Fool me once, shame on her. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’d agreed to meet her so she could spill the beans, and when the time fucking came, it was as if someone had put duct tape over her mouth.
Well, fucking hell. Fucking hell! Life was really going to be a bitch at The Red Door now. At least the initial shock of the previous week and a half was starting to wear off. BK and Cassie weren’t going anywhere. Fuck almighty.
Maybe if you didn’t get drunk and act like an idiot in front of BK, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Fuck that! She knows to stay out of club business.
Does she? You weren’t in a club when she was your girlfriend. You barely were even getting into motorcycles.
She should have gotten the goddamn hint.
Focus on the road, asshole!
I had to pull over to the side of the road when I ran a red light and nearly hit a Ford truck. I took a few seconds to catch myself, wondering just what the hell had gotten into me.
Driving drunk because of BK and because of Cassie… how fucking mature of me. What the fuck was I getting into? What the fuck was wrong with me?
I knew that I had handled the last week and a half poorly. I held myself up as a man who was relatively calm under pressure, although apparently only if that pressure involved actual fighting and not emotionally turbulent situations. I was the sergeant-at-arms partially because I could handle violence and knives well, yes, but also because I wasn’t afraid to clean up messy shit. I didn’t have a reputation to defend; whatever the club needed done, I took care of.
Does whatever you need done for yourself get taken care of?
I knew that the only place where I would feel safe and emotionally at ease was the clubhouse. The club members would have just begun their initial prep for the party, what with it barely being after nine in the evening. In some ways, maybe this was the best of both worlds. I’d get to have my evening coffee with Cassie, and I’d get to party with the chicks.
I reminded myself that the last time I tried to fuck my way past my feelings, it hadn’t gone very well, but my still-intoxicated brain didn’t care. It just wanted a release of some kind, a freedom from emotional burden that could be found in the pussy of a stripper or the tits of a porn star.
You know this won’t—
Shut up, Barber!
I got to the clubhouse by driving unusually safe for my standards, walking in as Richard, Dom, and about four other club members stood by the bar, the women congregating in the now-open theatre. Dom saw me first, yelling “Bar-BER!” and then embracing me.
The one that meant the most, though, was Richard. Natasha was just by his side, but he left her to come up and give me a hug.
“Everything all good, brother?” he said, patting my arm hard. “You look like you’ve had a few to drink.”
“Eh, yeah, I have,” I said. “But I’m good.”
I wasn’t here to have heart-to-hearts about Cassie or to confess what I had done tonight. I just wanted a place where I could relax, know I wasn’t going to face any shit, and have an easy night until Thursday rolled around. By then, I’d be sober, I wouldn’t have a hangover to deal with, and I could figure things out with Cassie in a calmer manner.
Ideally.
Or maybe you just need to open up a little bit more and get comfortable with uncomfortable conversations. That would go a long way to helping you out.
“You sure?” Richard said.
It took a second for me to realize he wasn’t referring to Cassie; what little he knew extended only as far as what Mama may or may not have said, and while the two of them were pretty damn close, she wasn’t one to spill club secrets easily. He was talking about B
K.
“We’re good,” I said, patting his arm.
Still deflecting. Still great at dodging the hard questions. Some things never change, huh, Barber?
“Alright,” Richard said. “Grab yourself a drink. More are about to—”
And then, right on cue, about six other club members, including Pork and Walker, arrived with a caravan of about two dozen girls. We’d had some pretty great parties in my time with the club, but I was quite certain that this was the greatest number of women I had ever seen. Dom and Pork had pulled the right strings to get the right girls in.
“Who knew Pork could pork?” Dom said with a snicker. “Damn, buddy! Well done!”
“The Porkster is in the building!” Pork said as he patted Dom firmly on the chest while eating a bite of a candy bar. “And in this case, it’s me who entertains you all. You’re welcome.”
I took a seat at the bar as one of our regular bartenders, Katerina, quickly and easily made drinks for all of us. I ordered a Black Russian and had it in front of me within a matter of seconds; there was a reason we comped our bartenders as well as our dancers. While she brought it to me, I stared at the sea of women, admiring them.
Everyone came to this party with the kind of clothes that were easy to tear off; they often just wore a button-down or a slutty dress over a bra that was easily removed or, in the more daring of cases, didn’t even have a bra on. The girls who came here held no illusions of what they were coming for, and it wasn’t conversation.
It was easy to see why Richard had resisted bringing Natasha for as long as he had; a person who was not as crazy about bikers as most of the girls here would have either gotten offended at the sight or just so blown away by the sheer amount of sexual energy going around that they would have left in shock.
As for me, a member who’d been coming to these parties for years? I was pretty well used to them. There was a time when I felt like a kid in the candy store, bouncing from one set of tits to the next, one ass to the next, but now, at the old age of thirty-three, I didn’t feel as much of a compulsion to “try the samples.”
Instead, I homed in on exactly what I wanted. Which tonight was…