Nickel's Story: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance

by Cate C. Wells

  She pops her gum. “I mean the envelope in my locker. That was you right? Two hundred bucks? You’re fuckin’ nuts.”

  “He touched you.” I sink a ball off a bank shot.

  “It was a lap dance.”

  “There’s no touching.”

  “Bullshit. You watch me do more in the champagne room on the regular.”

  “You gonna give it back then?”

  “Fuck no.” She laughs. “I’ll put a handy in the bank for you.”

  I snort, and catch a flash of blonde out of the corner of my eye.

  Story’s started for me. Her impossibly huge eyes are spitting fire. I know that look, even if I haven’t seen it on her face before. She’s pissed. Jealous.

  My first instinct is to put my hands up, back off. Something deep in me needs her to calm down. Her upset cramps my guts and sends adrenaline roaring through my veins.

  But hold up. I could use this.

  Don’t know why I never thought of it before. Maybe I’ve been hopin’ I could keep her around forever, dangling. I could watch her like a pretty bird in a cage, and make sure no asshole got near her. When she was in school, it was easy. It couldn’t be nothin’ real. She wasn’t even eighteen.

  But she’s a woman now. She’s laid her cards on the table. She ain’t out-growin’ this. I keep letting her dangle, I’m the asshole. I need to make a decision.

  “Can I cash in now?” I ask Danielle. I slide an arm around her waist, slow and deliberate. I’m so fucking awkward. I ain’t never been one for PDA.

  “Seriously? With Sailor Moon Barbie right over there?” Danielle raises a razor-thin eyebrow. “You gonna do my girl dirty?”

  “You and me both know she got no business sniffin’ after me.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re gonna cause me work problems. I got no beef with Starshine. ’Cept her music sucks.”

  “Come on, Danny.”

  “Fifty.”

  “You said I got money in the bank.”

  “Okay, twenty.”

  “Done. Now stick your tongue in my mouth.” I pull her in, and she’s a pro, ‘cause she has her hand on my dick and her lipstick smeared all over my mouth before I can think twice.

  Or close my eyes.

  So I get to watch Story’s stupid, kid crush break in real time. Her eyes expand until they eat up her entire face. Her lips part. A soft “oh” floats across the room. Then her shoulders slump. Her knees sway, knock together, and her dress bags where her gut sinks in.

  Oh, shit. I need to think.

  Danielle guides my hand to her tit.

  A cold sweat trickles down my back. This is the right thing to do. Isn’t it?

  The sick rising in my throat says it ain’t, but my body’s backwards. It don’t know right from wrong. My daily life is proof of that. Danielle comes up for air, tries to wipe the lipstick from my mouth. Story stumbles over, closing the distance between us, the prospect doggin’ her steps.

  “What are you doing?” She stops in front of me, her fists clenched at her hips. Her voice cracks.

  I need to fix this. I need to staunch whatever wound I just ripped open, but I don’t know how. Tears gather along the bottom rims of her eyes, beading on her thick lashes. I have to make it stop. I can’t breathe through her hurt.

  But I got to. I need to let this play out. A little hurt now is gonna save a whole bunch of pain later.

  This perfect girl can’t be kissin’ on head cases ten-years older than her in strip club parking lots. She needs to give this up, but she won’t. She’s gonna end up warping herself into thinner and thinner versions of herself—tryin’ to fix the unfixable—until no one, including her, believes her life is worth shit.

  I can see it clear as day. She’s young; she has no idea, but I’ve lived this. Front row seat. I have to kill this thing now.

  “Do what now?” I narrow my eyes, tugging Danielle closer to my side. I don’t know where to put my hand so I rest it on her ass.

  “What are you doing?” Story asks again, her voice almost a whisper.

  “About to get my dick sucked. Why? Did you want to? Ain’t waitin’ for you to finish off the prospect first.”

  Each word scores my throat like acid. This is harder than listenin’ to Ike the other night. Harder than watchin’ her walk off with Dean the hang-around. Harder than puttin’ her top back on and all the no’s I ever told her put together.

  “But…” Story glances over her shoulder, wildly, as if rescue is comin’. As if someone’s gonna show up and let her down easy about how she’s been barkin’ up the wrong tree for years. The prospect should take her away now. Why the fuck is he standing there with his dick in his hand?

  “But what?” I press forward. Embrace the pain. I deserve it. “You think I’m into makin’ out in parking lots?” I force myself to laugh. It sounds like a death rattle. “I’m a grown man, little girl. Now, you wanna get down on your knees, or you wanna leave the grown-ups alone?”

  “I—I—”

  And for a moment, sheer terror seizes my chest. She’s gonna say yes. She’ll do it, she’ll get on her knees, and I’ll be damned a hundred times over. Too late, the prospect grabs her elbow.

  I keep my eyes boring into hers, a sneer on my lips. My stomach pitches, but I hold the line. Finally, she chokes on a swallow and shakes her head.

  “You know what, Nickel? You could have just said. You could have said leave me alone.”

  Goddamn, but I have, a hundred times. Never meant it once, and she knows it. She draws in a deep, shaky breath and lowers her gaze to the floor. The ugly rattles my bones. Story shouldn’t ever hang her head. And I did this to her. But hell, if I let her in, how much worse I would do?

  She dashes a tear off her cheek. “You don’t need to break things all the time, you know.” She skewers me with those huge blue eyes. “You can just let things go.”

  That’s where she’s wrong. I do. And I can’t. So I say nothing at all.

  Then my beautiful, perfect girl wipes her palms down the sides of her dress, nods to Danielle, and hoists her purse higher on her shoulder.

  “Well. You guys have fun.” She lifts her chin, and she heads straight for the front door.

  I force myself to kiss Danielle while she walks away. I’ve got another woman’s tongue in my mouth while a gaping hole explodes in my chest.

  When Story’s finally gone, disappeared down the hall to the front door, I make it a solid five seconds before my fist slams into a wall. And you know something I never realized before now?

  Doin’ right and doin’ wrong?

  There ain’t no difference. It all feels like shit.

  CHAPTER 7

  STORY

  I lose Roosevelt by the front door. I ask him to get me a beer, and I bail. I need to get out of here so bad. I’m crying, and half these people see me naked on the regular.

  I make it to the Kia in record time, kick my heels off and drive, heading away from town. I have one hand on the steering wheel, and another pressed to my chest. I guess I’m trying to hold my heart in.

  I’ve never been kicked in the stomach before so I’m not entirely sure, but this has to be close to how it feels. My belly aches, I can hardly breathe, and my heart feels like it’s been fed to a shredder. And it’s so much worse because it was on purpose. I’ve been kicked in the stomach on purpose. God, I’m so stupid.

  I turn the radio up, but it doesn’t help. I sing along, at the top of my voice, and that doesn’t help either. I see Nickel’s hand squeezing Danielle’s ass. Red lipstick smeared across his face. Danielle’s taller than me. She can reach his mouth.

  I see his eyes, cold and blank, asking me if I wanna get on my knees. Well, he’s put me there. This hurts so bad, and I don’t know what to do to make it stop. It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday night, and I guess I could drive into Pyle and find a place to dance, but I’m weepy and alone and I don’t want to dance. For the first time in my whole freakin’ life, I don’t want to dance. That’s such bull
crap.

  I feel like a glass that somebody knocked over—on purpose—and I’m in tiny pieces, and I don’t know what to do because I’m not a glass anymore; I’m shards on the floor. I’m obviously not thinkin’ real straight, so I put on my clicker, pull a u-ey, and drive up to Gracy’s Corner. I scrub my face with my jacket sleeve before I pull up to the gatehouse.

  “Good eve—shit. What’s wrong, baby doll?”

  Lucian’s working the gate. He’s a sweetheart. A regular at The White Van. He tips real good.

  “Boy trouble.” I blink, puttin’ on my stage face. More like delusional-girl-finally-gets-what-she’s- been-askin’-for trouble, but he didn’t ask me for all that.

  “That’s why you need a man,” he jokes while the gate rises.

  “They’re double the trouble from what I hear,” I joke back and wave as I pull off.

  I guess I’m not totally broken if I can still banter with the customers.

  Shit.

  Now I’m sad that I’m not totally broken.

  I drive toward my ma’s new place, and I notice they’ve put up a new gazebo at the circle where all the streets in the development meet. It’s real pretty, like the one from The Sound of Music. For a second, I get distracted, I forget about tonight, and then it’s even worse because crash, bam, I remember again. Every painful second. Nickel tugging Danielle into his arms. The remark about leaving the grown-ups alone. How he didn’t watch me leave ‘cause his tongue was in my co-worker’s mouth.

  Even when I left with Dean, he watched.

  I set my jaw, and then I break into a fresh wave of tears. I don’t know how to do this. Normally, I buckle down and keep going. That’s how I do life. But how do you buckle down through a broken heart?

  When I roll up to Larry’s place, I’m relieved to see Ma’s new Lexus in the drive. She’s terrible at parking so Larry puts her car in the garage at night and backs it out for her in the morning. Guess he hasn’t valeted her yet tonight.

  That’s true love, I think. Parking your girlfriend’s car so she doesn’t ding her paint job on the garage door. And bam. I remember again, and more tears dribble down my cheeks. I haven’t wiped them away by the time Ma throws open the front door, cocktail in hand, crying, “Oh, good God, Story! What’s wrong?”

  And then I’m in Ma’s bony arms, enveloped by the smell of gin and apricot moisturizer.

  “Is it the car? Is it work? Is Cue steppin’ out of line? I’ll cut his balls off.” She drags me to the kitchen and shoves me onto a stool, calling, “Larry! Get a bottle of Cuervo! We’re in the kitchen.”

  Then she rummages in a cabinet, finds a package of Oreos, and sets them between us. I love my ma.

  I’m twenty-one, and she’s only thirty-seven, so she’s more like an older sister to me. She got together with Larry two years ago, and for a while, she tried to be all mother-y and make up for lost time, but we both got bored with it. I’m happy she’s back to being wild and crazy Sunny Jenkins. I haven’t needed a real mom in a long time, anyway.

  Ma grabs three shot glasses from the cabinet, and then she splays her hands on the kitchen island, a ring on all ten fingers, leaning back to take me in.

  “It’s that asshole Nickel Kobald.” She purses her lips, holds one palm open as steps sound on the basement stairs. Larry enters a second later and slaps a bottle in her outstretched hand.

  “Thank you, baby,” Ma coos, and gives Larry a smooch while she untwists the cap.

  “What’s wrong, Ray?” Larry asks, brushing a kiss on the top of my head. He calls me Ray for Little Ray of Sunshine on account of Ma’s name being Sunny.

  It’s a dumb nickname, but I don’t care. Larry’s awesome.

  He’s short, balding, and wears boat shoes with no socks. At the moment he has a white cardigan draped around his shoulders. He’s a dentist, not Ma’s dentist or mine, and she won’t say how they met. Since she’s been with him, she’s quit dancing, stopped doin’ the guys in the club, and she gave up smoking. Plus she sold the trailer, and she’s living large in his McMansion.

  That’s not why I love Larry, though. I love him ‘cause he thinks my ma walks on water, and he’s not afraid to show it. Like now? He’s gone back around the island to wrap his arms around Ma while we talk.

  And ouch. A wave of hurt washes over me again, pooling in my tummy. I toss a shot back, trying to replace the pain with tequila burn.

  “You gonna talk, or we gonna have to guess?” Ma prods. Larry reaches forward to refill my glass.

  “Nickel,” I grit out, and my face heats. Ma knows about my...well, she calls it a crush. She thinks it’s cute. Reminds her of how she had it bad for a dude named Joey Lawrence back in the day. It’s not like that. I’m not like that. No one seems to get it. They see me going after Nickel or dancing, and they think I make bad choices. Maybe, but it’s ‘cause I want hard. What I feel for Nickel? It’s deeper than a crush. It’s real.

  You wanna get down on your knees?

  Well, shit. Maybe it is like that. Worse than that, because whoever Joey Lawrence is, I don’t think he’d talk to my ma like that.

  “My baby.” Ma taps my glass with hers and tilts one down the hatch. “Condolences.”

  “Nickel…” Larry’s forehead furrows. “The angry one? With the crazy eyes?”

  I sigh. That does about sum him up.

  “He’s the best of a rotten bunch,” Ma offers, her nose wrinkling. “The Kobalds are pieces of shit. To the man.”

  “I’m not familiar with the family,” Larry says.

  “Don’t surprise me. They’re not big on dental work.” Ma catches my eye, shrugs. “That one of yours is all right, but I grew up next to James Kobald down in Happy Trails. Nasty man. Nasty.”

  “You never said.” I would have remembered. Especially in high school, I studied Nickel Kobald like a subject I needed to pass to graduate.

  “Nothing nice to say.” Ma sinks down onto a bar stool, and Larry takes the one next to her. “There were five of ’em in a two-bedroom single wide, and it sounded like they were constantly tryin’ to fight their way out.”

  “Which trailer?”

  “Gone for scrap by the time you would remember. The dad passed, and the boys drifted off. James, that’s Nickel’s dad, he married a girl who used to babysit me. Farrah. I always thought Farrah was the prettiest name.” Ma smiles, and Larry swoops in to kiss her. He does that a lot. Kisses her smiles. The hurt flares in my gut.

  How come she’s tellin’ me this now? I would’ve killed to know all this before. She saw the doodles I drew all over the inside of my binder. Nickel and Story with the S entwined with the N. I’ve still got the binder somewhere.

  God, how hard I hold onto the impossible. He didn’t want me then. He doesn’t want me now. Or if he does, not enough. I need to let it go. And I will. In a bit. After gettin’ good and drunk, and then crying myself to sleep.

  “What was she like?” I ask. “Nickel’s mom?”

  Ma smiles. “Sweet. Too sweet. She lived with her grandma, and she wasn’t allowed to date or even talk to boys on the phone.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Larry asks. He’s in his late forties, and he’s real conservative.

  “What’s wrong with that,” Ma teases, patting his thigh, “Is that the only boys Farrah could chase were the Kobalds who lived across the way. And she caught herself a real asshole.”

  “What happened?”

  I can’t believe Ma’s been holding out on me. She’s had all these pieces to my puzzle all along and now she’s handing out clues like Halloween candy when it doesn’t matter anymore.

  “She got beat on all the time, got hooked on pills, then smack, and then she kind of fell off the face of the earth. Toward the end, she worked at The White Van for a hot second, but Cue fired her. She stole from the till.”

  “That’s freakin’ horrible.”

  “She was so sweet.” Ma fingers her amber beaded necklace like she does when she’s praying. “She let me watch cartoon
s for hours and eat ice cream out of the carton.”

  Larry can’t stand Ma lookin’ sad for a second, so he stands again and wraps his arms around her. His forearms are so hairy. And I’m so jealous.

  I had stopped crying, my eye sockets are tender and my sinuses ache, but now another wave of tears is gonna make it all worse. I grab a paper napkin from the holder and blot like crazy. The last time I cried this ugly was when I watched The Notebook with Fay-Lee. At least that couple ended up together in the end.

  “You gonna tell us what Nickel did?” Ma pours us both another.

  “He hurt you?” Larry’s forehead furrows and the muscles in his hairy forearms pop.

  “No, he wouldn’t do that,” I say. Ma believes me—she knows the guys in the MC—but Larry raises his eyebrows.

  “I myself have given that man two bridges for teeth he lost in fights.”

  I didn’t know that.

  “You’re his dentist?”

  Larry’s eyes go shifty. “I do some work for Steel Bones on the side. Cash basis. At the home office.”

  “He’s been here?” Tonight is blowing my mind. How do I not know all this? Ma is my best friend. I thought we didn’t have secrets.

  Hold up.

  “Is that how you met Ma? Workin’ for the MC?”

  If so, that’s got to be one hell of a story. Ma’s worked her way through most of the brothers, like, at least twice.

  Ma blushes bright red and fans herself with her hand. “Story for another time, Story.” She grins like she always does when she works my name into something. “Now tell us what happened.”

  I drop it. For now, and I try to think of a way to put it. “The other night, I—”

  What? Attacked Nickel in the parking lot with cuddles? Oh, God. This is so embarrassing.

  “I tried to kiss him. And tonight he was hooking up with Danielle Martin.”

  “He was?” Ma frowns, surprised. “That’s new.”

  The images flash in my head again, the world’s suckiest photo montage. Here’s his hand on her ass. Here’s his tongue in her mouth. The tequila sloshes in my stomach.

  “He was trying to get rid of me,” I admit, and the words feel cold and hard and true. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”