I’m standin’ here, waiting for that feeling—like a cold beer on a hot day—to hit, but it ain’t comin’. I check her closer. She’s obviously unhappy, but is that all? Her skin’s usually pale, but is it paler tonight?
I think she’s lost a few pounds. It’s hard to tell, but if her upper arms get thin, she ain’t been eating good. She looks so delicate in the silk gown. I bet she ain’t been eating right.
“Nickel?” She gives a meaningful look past me to the hall, raising her eyebrows again.
“Are you okay, Story?”
She exhales, the slightest sigh. “You don’t get to ask me.”
I understand this, but I still need to know. I try another tack.
“I didn’t fuck her. Danielle.”
“Ain’t my business one way or another.”
I swallow a snarl. I’m getting frustrated. Not with her. With myself. My skin starts itching with it. I really need to move. Pace. But if I do, she’ll be out of here. I need to let her leave, but my body’s a firm hell no on that.
“I just wanted you to stop comin’ after me,” I go on, but I ain’t makin’ it better. That perfect, plump lower lip is wobbling now, and I feel like I got a kitten in my hand, and I’m tryin’ to pet it, but I can’t help but squeeze too hard.
“I know. Message received.” She firms her chin to stop the wobbling, and that only ends up making her look sad as hell.
I roll my shoulders, try to stave off the ugly. I can feel it gathering in my arms and legs; I know it so well I can predict it like weather. Cloudy with a one hundred percent chance of me losin’ my shit.
“I’m no good for you,” I say.
“I know you think that.”
“Fuck’s sake, woman,” I raise my voice. I don’t mean to, I don’t want to, but still, I’m almost shouting when I ask, “Can you say anything besides I know?”
She sucks in her cheeks and crosses her arms tighter. “Seriously, Nickel? Now you want to have an actual conversation? Two minutes after my break’s ended, after I’ve spent literally years trying to get you to talk to me. Now?”
“Now.” I am aware that I’m being a complete asshole, but she’s talkin’ to me, ain’t she?
“Well, okay.”
She straightens her spine. Her eyes spit fire, the hurt disappearing as bright pink spots bloom on her cheeks, and a weight lifts from my chest. She’s pissed, and by some magic, I settle.
“For one, I get to decide who’s good for me and who isn’t. You don’t get to decide nothin’ for me. And second, I deserve a man who will kiss me when I smile. Buy me a big house on top of a hill. Who’ll park my car in the garage if I need it, which I don’t, ‘cause I can park just fine.”
She pauses. I don’t know what the fuck she’s talkin’ about, and she looks like she kind of lost herself there for a minute, too.
“Oh. And three. I know I’m better than this. And you are, too.”
A cold wave crashes through me. It’s so strange, it takes me a minute to place. It’s fear. Her words terrify me. I don’t want her to decide I’m not good enough.
And since I asked for the words, I need to make them stop, and I don’t know how, so I do the only thing I can think of. I close the space between us in one stride, walk her back into the wall, and shut her mouth with mine.
I don’t kiss women. I mean, I have in the past if that’s what it takes to seal the deal, but it’s not really my thing. So maybe I’m not the smoothest, but the instant her soft lips meet mine, I’m converted.
She’s so warm, so sweet. She tastes like the apple juice Cue pours for the girls when the customers buy them a drink. She’s open to me, and I’m so hungry, all I can do is take.
I cup her cheek, but she wrests her head away, clamping her lips tight together. She gives me the side eye.
“What was that?” she asks, breathless.
I need to back up, back away, but this girl’s my anchor. I’m locked in place, her chest heaving against my ribs. I rest my forehead lightly on hers.
“Kissin’ you,” I answer low like a confession. I hold her hands, twine her fingers in mine. Please don’t make me stop. She furrows her brow, clearly thinks I’m talkin’ nonsense, and then she raises her mouth.
“That’s not kissin’. Lean down.” Her voice is low, bossy.
I do.
She sips at my top lip, gently tugging. I plunge my tongue into her mouth, and she ducks her head away again. I’m trailing her, desperate for another taste, and she pulls a hand free to press a finger to my lips.
“Stop.”
I force myself still. It’s so fucking hard.
“Like this,” she whispers, and then she brushes her lips across mine, and after my brain goes fuzzy, she deepens the kiss, suckling, tasting. My dick throbs, beating a rhythm against my cold zipper, and I want to thrust into her sweet mouth, take everything she’s offering like a greedy bastard, but I don’t. I stay stock-still and let her show me what she likes.
She likes soft kisses. Nibbles. Fuck, but I guess I like that, too.
She’s moaning between kisses now, squirming against me, and I crowd her, so scared she’s going to shake this spell off and go back to ignoring me.
Oh, Lord, what am I doing? The taste of her is a drug, the kind when you know with the first hit that this is a hole you could happily fall down forever.
“We can’t do this,” I mumble into her mouth.
She slips her sweet tongue past my lips, and it tangles with mine. Precum dampens my boxers.
“We got to stop.” I’m clinging to that like a drowning man, even as I know I couldn’t back away if I was on fire.
“This can’t happen.”
And then her hands, which were tentatively exploring my chest, slam against my pecs. Hard. Once, twice, and a third time.
“Stop,” she says, jerking her lips away again, and the loss is so sharp, I whimper like a kicked dog. “Uh, uh. No way. Nope.”
She shoulders past me, grabs her purse, and books it to the door before I know what’s going on. She stops in the doorway, pupils blown, chest rising and falling as if she’s run a mile. She holds up a finger, and I swear, she looks so much like Fay-Lee in this moment that I’m expecting that mountain twang when she speaks.
“You kiss me, you’re gonna say sweet things. Not ‘we can’t do this,’ ‘it’s soooo wrong,’ blah, blah, blah. I deserve better. I deserve someone who feels so damn lucky he gets to kiss me that he praises the God- damn-Lord while he’s doin’ it and thanks Him after!”
She’s almost yelling, and she never yells, and it’s so weird, it’s kind of…soothing. The ugly is totally quiet, and I actually feel like…laughing?
“You’re right, baby.” I chuckle.
She blinks her big eyes at me, her chest heaving. She’s speechless.
“Come back over here,” I say. “Take me to church.”
I grin, and her face turns beet red. She shrieks, whirls around, slams the door, and I don’t see her again that night.
I’m in such a good mood, though, that at closing, when Cue waves me over to the bar, I go. He pours us both a shot of Jameson 18 and leaves the bottle out.
“Saddle up, young’un,” he says, dusting off the seat of the stool next to him. I oblige. “I see you chased off my best dancer two hours before the end of her shift.”
I shrug and take a sip. “Story chases me.”
“Hard life, eh?” Cue cackles, and then he grows quiet, staring into his glass. “You know, she’s gonna smarten up one day.”
“Yeah.”
“Yup,” Cue goes on as if I didn’t say anything. “She’s gonna finally say yes to one of these stockbrokers from Pyle. He’s gonna buy her dinner, bang her a few times, knock her up, and then dump her for his real girlfriend.”
“Shut the fuck up.” The ugly raises its head, my mellow blown.
“Creech is always sniffin’ around her. Maybe she’ll finally let him hit that. He’ll give her the world. And by the world, I mean t
he clap, but nothin’s perfect.”
“What are you doin’, Cue?” The ugly’s roiling my belly, and it burns twice as bad since I had a few hours break from it.
“Pointing out that a gainfully employed brother who worships the ground she walks on ain’t really the worst Story Jenkins is likely to do.”
His words. They reach deep and stir up shit I ain’t felt in years. Hope. It almost worse than the hopelessness. Hope’s got the taint of fear in it. You can lose hope.
“I ever tell you about Bananas?” I ask.
“If that’s what you call your dick, I don’t wanna hear.”
I shake my head, help myself to another shot of the good stuff. “Bananas was a goldfish. I won him at the St. Andrew’s carnival.”
“Your folks took you to the carnival?” Cue went to school with my dad, so he knows that shit’s unlikely.
“It was walking distance. My brothers and I would spend all week there, causin’ trouble, sneakin’ back in once they kicked us out.”
“Good times.”
I nod. In relation to everything else, it was.
“Anyway, I won Bananas. I stuck him in big ass pickle jar, and I fed him bread crumbs. That little dude was tough as shit. Ike and Dad put out cigarettes in his jar, he swum past. Markie thought it’d be funny to put him in the toilet and take a piss on him. Little dude kept swimming.”
“Don’t tell me how you got him out.”
I grin. “I won’t. Anyway, this goes on for months. At one point, Keith hides him under the trailer to fuck with me. I don’t find him for three days, and he’s still swimming. It was, like, November, and there was ice in the jar, but Bananas did not give a shit.”
“This story don’t end well, does it?” Cue lights up one of his Cohibas.
“I got pissed off. Don’t even remember about what. Probably some petty shit. Things got ugly, and after, when I’ve got out the broom and dust pan, there’s Bananas. Dead on the floor. Half squished from where I stepped on him. I didn’t even realize I’d knocked his jar over.”
Cue nods, his thick brow wrinkled. “I take your point.”
My shoulders slump. I knew he would.
“Yeah,” Cue hacks and slaps my back. “You probably shouldn’t keep your bitches in a pickle jar.”
“Not what I’m gettin’ at.” I’m losin’ my patience. I’m sittin’ here, spilling my guts, more than I ever do, and Cue’s makin’ it into a joke.
“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” He smirks. “Moral of the story is fry your bitches up and eat ’em before your brother gets a chance to piss on ’em.”
“The fuck, Cue?” I set my whiskey down hard. He winces. He’s really sensitive about the glassware since the break in.
“So is it that you shouldn’t even bother bringing your bitches home from the carnival?”
I’m pissed, the ugly’s got me out of my seat, and normally I’d have bucked at this point, shoved Cue in the chest at least, but something is holding me back. Maybe ‘cause kissing Story somehow eased my hair trigger a touch. Maybe ‘cause Cue ain’t laughin’. He’s dead serious. Braced for impact, but dead serious.
“Or, and you can call me crazy, but maybe—” He says this slow, as if I’m hard of hearing. “Bitches ain’t carnival goldfish.”
It’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. I sink back onto my stool.
Cue freshens up my glass. “You break that, I don’t give a fuck. I’ll fire you.”
“I own a stake.” All the Steel Bones brothers do.
“Then I’ll shove the glass up your ass.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes, listening to the filler music echo in the empty club. Trudy, Cue’s niece, has closed out the till, and she pads back to his office to put the take in the safe. Austin, the other bouncer for the night, hangs out at the back door, waiting for her to finish so he can bust out, too.
The place is sad with the lights up. You can tell the booths with the high, tufted leather backs are made of plastic and the stage is only plywood painted black. Ain’t nothin’ sadder than a strip club after hours.
“Shit, Cue. You know me. I don’t know how to be with a woman.”
“You’re around women all the time.” Cue gestures around the club with an open hand.
“You know what I mean.”
Cue sighs and swipes a hand over his bald head. “You think you’d end up beatin’ on her.”
The words are a blow to my guts, so much that I sway back and hiss in a breath. But he ain’t wrong.
“She drive you crazy, then?” he asks. “Push your buttons until you lose it.”
Never. I mean, she does drive me crazy, and she does push my buttons. All the fuckin’ time whether she means to or not. But…
“That don’t matter,” I say. “Beatin’ on females is fucked up no matter what.”
Cue nods, his big fish-lips turnin’ down. “See, I do know that. Not surprised to hear you know it, too. So why do you think you’re gonna end up like your asshole father and those piece of shit brothers of yours?”
And ain’t that the heart of the matter. Cue might look dumb, but he’s wise for all the brain cells he’s burnt breathin’ in hair spray and body glitter.
“’Cause I am like them. The ugly gets loose…there ain’t no brake, Cue. There ain’t no second when I can make a choice and take a deep fuckin’ breath.” I laugh, and it sounds bitter as hell. “She’s standin’ around when it happens…she might as well be a goldfish in a pickle jar.”
“Yeah.” Cue nods his fake solemn, smart-ass nod again. “No legs to get out the way, cain’t speak so no way to talk sense to you, no pretty titties to remind you that she ain’t the one you’re pissed at. Just like a fuckin’ goldfish.”
“You know I’m right.”
“I know you’re a pussy.” Cue stands, slaps me on the back, and shuffles behind the bar. “And considering my profession, I do know a pussy when I see one.”
CHAPTER 9
STORY
I blame Nickel’s kiss.
Not the first few. Those were truly heinous. So much tongue. But after. When he caught on. Dear sweet Lord. Even now, in this quickly spiraling situation, my clit tingles. I agreed to come with Fay-Lee on this misadventure to clear my mind, but instead, I’m distracted, and it looks like I’m about to be in deep, deep shit.
I clutch my purse tight in my lap and scan the empty linoleum dance floor at Twiggy’s one more time. Twiggy’s is the dive bar we drove an hour into the boondocks to reach, an hour and a half if you count Fay-Lee getting lost and turning down that rural route.
“I don’t want to be a pussy or anything,” I whisper. “But is the vibe in here kind of…?”
“Every roadhouse movie when the fresh meat walks in and all the scary biker dudes stand up and crack their knuckles?” Fay-Lee offers.
“Uh…” I take another quick peek around. “Yeah?”
“Pretty much.” Fay-Lee scrunches further back in the corner booth.
The clientele is seriously grizzly, and to top it off, three Rebel Raiders just stomped in through the swinging, western-style doors.
We only came with Roosevelt, the prospect. We wouldn’t have even brought him except he guilted me about ditching him at the clubhouse after the thing with Nickel. Anyhow, he’s up at the bar getting us beers, so if the Raiders see Fay-Lee’s Steels Bones cut that says she’s Property of Dizzy, we’re fucked. And if they see Roosevelt’s cut, he’s fucked.
We’re basically fucked.
“Why are we here again?” I ask.
Here is all the way out by the county line near Gifford. I’ve never been before, but Fay-Lee knows the joint from her travels with the nomad.
“Well, I’m doing that thing where Dizzy pisses me off, so I run away and make him chase me, and then he spanks my ass red, and we have crazy monkey sex.”
“And what am I doing here?”
“Probably driving my corpse home in your trunk.” Fay-Lee’s joking, but she’s tearing up her napkin an
d rolling the pieces into balls.
She’s worried. So am I.
“I thought you said this place was all rednecks and cowboys. No bikers.”
“It was.”
“When?”
“I dunno. Like six years ago?”
I groan, and I will Roosevelt to abandon the beers and come back to the booth. I can’t phone him cause the ring would draw attention, and I don’t want to text him and distract him from getting his ass back here.
“You got anything in that bag of yours? Knife? Gun?” Fay-Lee looks hopeful.
“Expired mace and a nail file.”
“Get to diggin’, Story-girl. I’ll take the nail file when you find it.” Fay-Lee’s head is down, her fingers flying over her cell phone. She must be texting Dizzy.
I open my purse in my lap and start going through it by feel, all the while praying the Raiders don’t notice Roosevelt. He’s a good guy, my age, and he’ll dance to whatever, even the two step. He’s never put the moves on me ‘cause he says he’s into older chicks. I think it’s more like he’s into one particular older chick—I’ve heard him drunk-cry over some lady named Camila—but he don’t talk about it, and I don’t ask.
The bar is filling up, slow but sure. Every time the door swings open, I hold my breath. The more people, the less likely the Raiders are to make us. On the other hand, what if three Raiders sidled up at the far end of the bar are meeting friends?
After what feels like forever, Roosevelt grabs three longnecks and heads back to our booth. I keep my eyes glued on the Raiders.
“Come on, come on,” I mutter under my breath. It takes him thirty seconds to cross the bar, but it feels like an eternity. The Raiders don’t turn in their stools. They’re watching the game and talking amongst themselves.
I stand as soon as Roosevelt gets to the table so he can scoot past me. He winks. “You want me in the middle? Guess I can do that.”
“Sit the fuck down,” Fay-Lee hisses.
“What?”
Oh, dear Lord. I grab his pant leg and tug. “Sit!”
Nickel's Story: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance Page 8