Nickel's Story: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance

by Cate C. Wells

  Usually, I can’t control the horror show my mind pukes up every so often, but I can hold back the other memories. The good ones. I ration them out cause I’m afraid I’ll use them up, rub the shine off of them with too much wear.

  But tonight…I tell myself no, but I can’t stop.

  Story under a street lamp, up on her toes, her soft lips brushing my chin. The slight pressure of her hands on my chest. The tender hope in her eyes, like she’s reaching out for me in the dark, like she needs me. Like I am needed.

  Story dancing on stage, tripping and stumbling and then throwing her arms in the air like a gymnast sticking a landing while the whole place erupts in hoots and claps. The shiny smile that bursts on her face as her eyes seek me out. ‘Cause she’s happy, and I’m the one she takes that to first. Every time.

  The day she showed me her tits. Earlier, before that mess in the bathroom, when she’s sunbathing on a shed roof, laughing and carrying on with Fay-Lee. All the while, she tracks me, and even though there’s fuck-all to do in the yard that day except hang out with whoever’s flippin’ burgers, I stand there like a dumbass because her eyes on me have always made me feel somethin’ nothing else ever has. Warm. Wanted. Invincible.

  Click-click-click. I stiffen, my hand going to my piece. Then the floodlights in the Dentist’s front lawn are triggered, and I see it’s Sunny comin’ down the drive, wavin’ at me. She’s smokin’ a cigarette, wearin’ a short leopard print bathrobe and high heels.

  Ain’t gonna lie. Story’s ma is hot as shit. It’s dumb luck I didn’t fuck her back in the day.

  I roll the window all the way down, and she leans over, braced on her elbows, all her bangles clanking.

  “Sugar.” She smiles. “You thinkin’ about movin’ into the neighborhood?”

  Actually, I could buy a big ass house on the hill if I wanted. Our dividends are yielding exponential growth. That’s what Heavy says. Don’t know what the fuck it means, but I do know I don’t have to buy Beast no more, though I still do. Best beer comes from Milwaukee. Fact.

  I must be tired as shit if this is what’s goin’ on in my brain. I drag in a deep breath of night air and get a lungful of Sunny’s smoke.

  “Sorry, Sunny.” I hack a little. “Didn’t mean to freak you out.” And come to think of it: why wasn’t she freaked out? “The Dentist tell you what’s goin’ down?”

  Sunny flicks her ash. “You can call him Larry. And yeah. Rebel Raiders. I got some nineteen-year-old called Wash eatin’ me out of house and home and gawkin’ at my ass on the back of it, don’t I?”

  “And you still waltz out here like the neighborhood watch?”

  “Knew it was you, Nickel. It’s a club vehicle.” She eyes the back seat. “I know it well.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “Ask Forty.” She giggles. “And Wall.”

  “Bullshit. Ain’t no way those two both fit in the back seat.”

  “It was more like I was in the back seat, and they was standing at each door, but—” Sunny tosses her big, blonde hair and winks. “That’s neither here nor there. You come to see my girl?”

  A vise tightens on my heart. I want to. So fuckin’ much.

  I shake my head. “Just keepin’ an eye out. I’ll be gone by morning.”

  “You should come in. I’ll set you up on the couch.”

  “Nah. But thank you.” The clock reads three forty-five. Morning will be here soon. “What you doin’ up so late anyway?”

  Sunny glances behind her. “Worrying. About my girl. Can’t stand to see her hurtin’.”

  A lump swells in my throat. “I’m sorry, Sunny.”

  She sighs. “Can’t stand to see her hurtin’, but don’t want her hurt neither. She said you put your fist through the wall?”

  I nod.

  “Over a busted condom?”

  I stare out the windshield, wrap my hands around the steering wheel. This burn is different than the ugly. Worse. I nod again.

  “You got a problem, Nickel.”

  I fucking know. My knuckles blanch white.

  “I ain’t judging. I did, too. Still do if you go by what they say in basement meetings. I hurt that little girl in there plenty. Left her to fend for herself. Didn’t pull myself together soon enough to show her a better path.”

  I hear what she’s sayin’. Story don’t need another person in her life controlled by demons. I get that. Not sure how many more people are gonna tell me that today, but…

  “I did get help, though. Look at me now. Queen of the Suburbs.” She gestures to the houses, bracelets jingling. Then she reaches in and lays a hand over mine. “Would be nice if someone in Story’s life was strong enough to get it together for her. Would be nice for her to know she’s worth it.”

  Sunny coaxes my head up with a finger under my chin. “You got to talk to someone. I’ve got a guy. Well—” She flushes. “Larry and I have a guy, but he does singles, too. He’s real good. Has an office in one of those business complexes out on Arrowhead Road.” She fishes in her bra for a little white card and then slides it onto the dashboard.

  I squint to make out the writing in the faint lamplight. “A shrink?”

  “Hey. It’s was good enough for that mob guy. Alto? Soprano?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Are you?” There’s a long pause, and then Sunny pats my arm. “They say you have to do it for yourself, but I don’t know about that. I didn’t. Besides, if I get a long shot grandbaby out of this whole debacle, don’t you want to be the best daddy you can be?”

  “Fuck, Sunny,” I groan. She’s crackin’ up. “Funny, is it?”

  “Hey, if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, right?”

  I try to smile, but I get distracted by the dark upstairs windows. “How is she?”

  Sunny rolls her eyes. “Oh, she’s great. She finally nails the man of her dreams, and he loses his shit over something stupid, disappears, and leaves her on read.” Sunny slaps the back of my head. I had it comin’. “That’s for makin’ my baby do the walk of shame all alone.”

  Oh, fuck. Yeah. I know how the brothers can be. If any of them said shit, I’ll…what? What am I gonna do if not beat the shit out of them?

  “You know what she’s most upset about?” Sunny says, distracting me from that train of thought.

  I shake my head.

  “That you didn’t even try.”

  And that—that’s a blade in the gut.

  “You know, I’ve watched you all these years.” Sunny smiles, so like Story except wonky on the left side, maybe from age, maybe from hard living. “At first ‘cause I was worried you were gonna perv on my kid, but then…I liked how you looked at her.”

  “How was that?”

  “Same way I did the first time I held her. Like she’s a miracle.”

  There’s a moment when we’re frozen, starin’ at each other, both knowing the other part but not saying it. Story’s a miracle all right, one neither of us deserves.

  A bullfrog honks and the moment breaks. Sunny slaps the car door and straightens. “Call the number on the card, Nickel. I think I get a discount for referrals. Mention my name anyhow. Just in case.”

  I sit in front of the house another hour, flippin’ that card in my fingers, watching the sun slowly rise in the distance over the Luckahannock. The air is sharp and cool with dew.

  There’s maybe fifty feet between Story and me. I could cross it in seconds. All that’s holding me back?

  It’s me.

  I am the only thing holding me back.

  CHAPTER 17

  STORY

  I hate automaticity, contractility, elasticity, excitability, and extensibility. I hate the endomysium and the perimysium and the epimysium and fascia.

  I hate Medical Terminology for Health Occupations, and I hate that Ma and Larry have forked over three hundred bucks for a zero credit class that I have to pass but doesn’t teach me anything about teeth. At least it hasn’t yet. I’m stuck in the muscular system—on page six
ty-four of Introduction to Medical Terminology—and I can’t get out.

  I start reading, and then my mind goes swirling off, and I have to stand and move. A half hour later, I’m doing plies using the dresser in Larry’s spare room as a barre.

  I’m stuck in this room and this house and this stupid, stupid head that won’t give up thinkin’ about Nickel Kobald. It’s been almost two weeks. I should be bouncing back. Dealing with it.

  Wash is takin’ me to class and to work, and I’ve been going through the motions, but everything feels wrong. This bed is lumpy, my steps are off beat at work, and damn and hell but I don’t give a flying fuck about dental hygiene.

  At least Nickel hasn’t been at The White Van. Neither has Forty or Cue. Grinder’s been filling in as management, and they’ve been leaning on Austin and the prospects to do security. They’ve also been bringing in old timers like Boots and Gus and Eighty to sit in the booths and round out the numbers. I’m really worried someone’s gonna have a coronary. I don’t think Bev’s let Eighty relax and watch some titties in decades.

  I’m even more irritable tonight ‘cause I don’t have to work. I got no reason not to study except I hate it, and I have less than zero interest in it, and it’s killing my will to live. I want to quit so bad, but I don’t think I can give up on both Nickel and community college at the same time.

  If I’m not dealing with shit and sticking it out, what am I doing?

  I’m stuck, that’s what I am. Alone, going nowhere, with hardly nothin’ to my name. Walking around for twenty-one years and still in the same damn spot. When you have your eyes on something out of reach, you don’t notice you’re happily sinking in place. That’s another shitty lesson I’ve learned recently.

  I slam the textbook shut, and I get on my feet. This room is too small to dance, but I shove the bed flush against a wall and make myself a dance floor. I do some rises, using the dresser, and then I do a few more plies before I begin tendus. My blood starts flowing, and I settle some.

  I should turn my music on, but there’s no song I love that doesn’t remind me of Nickel. That’s why it’s so quiet when I’m mid-ronde jambe that I can hear my phone chirp.

  It’s probably Fay-Lee. She’s been trying to get me to stay with her at Dizzy’s for a change of scene. I don’t think I can handle hanging with another happy couple, though. Ma and Larry are bad enough.

  I finish through the grande battement before I check my messages, and good thing I’m warmed up because when I see the text, my breath leaves me with a whoosh and I wobble on my feet, collapsing cross-legged on the floor. It’s Nickel.

  He’s sent a picture of a hallway. At the end is a wood door with a narrow window running next to it, floor to ceiling. There’s a sign on the door I can’t quite make out. It looks like an office building, but not a really nice one. The kind with low ceilings and slow elevators. There’s a message under the picture.

  i am trying.

  I can’t help it. My skin heats, my pulse races, and I have no idea what this means. After two weeks, this is what I get? A picture of a door? What’s he trying to say?

  Maybe it’s a glitch, a message being delivered after service is finally restored, but no. The time stamp is five minutes ago. Besides, Ma told me she spoke to him the night it all fell apart. He’s sent different brothers to watch the house since, but still. His phone has been in range at least once during the past two weeks.

  Should I text back?

  I shouldn’t. I’m done with him. Done with his mind fucks. But what is that a picture of?

  Maybe it was an accident. His fingers slipped while he was typing.

  Who cares? I’m not curious. I’m pissed. No, not pissed. Over it. I’m totally and completely over it. Well, getting over it. Any day now, I’m going to be so over it that it’s not even funny.

  I zoom in on the sign. It’s blurrier now. It could say anything.

  What am I doing?

  I thump the phone back on the desk as if it bit me. It’s too little, too late. Hell, I don’t even know what it is.

  I go back to my dresser and start my plies again. My phone chirps again, and I dig my fingers into the wood. I push myself through my barre exercises, and then I make myself go downstairs and pour myself a bowl of cereal. I force down three bites before I give up and race back upstairs, two steps at a time. My stupid, stupid heart. Leading me at the end of a chain.

  i just need you to know im trying

  i dont know what to do to fix this but id do anything for you

  so ill try this

  you dont have to txt bk. i just need you to know

  My palms sweat. It’s like I’m a yo-yo drooping on a slack string and somebody just snapped me up and spun me around.

  An angry voice in my brain screams, But he gave up!

  The busted, careworn part of me adds, And didn’t you give up, too?

  I had to. I have to. I can’t be a yo-yo.

  I should block him. Why didn’t I block him already? Because I’m soft-hearted and weak. That’s why it’s so easy for this man to squish my heart into pulp over and over again.

  I turn my phone off, shove it in a drawer, and then I flop on the bed, staring at the ceiling. It’s too early to sleep, and the bed’s lumpy. I roll onto my side.

  What was that picture? Did he get an office job or something?

  A door slams downstairs, and Ma’s laugh rings out. She was in the basement, checking on Roosevelt. He’s recuperating down there, playing video games with Wash. They’re the world’s lamest security detail—literally in Roosevelt’s case. They were on high alert for like a few hours before they got bored and helped themselves to Larry’s scotch.

  Ma’s rummaging in the kitchen now, and it occurs to me she might know about the picture. All she said was Nickel came by to make sure I was safe, but I know her. He’s a man; she’s Sunny Jenkins. She definitely chatted him up.

  I should leave it. Crack the textbook open again. Get on with the brand new me.

  Fuck that.

  I snatch the phone on my way out the door and fairly sail downstairs. Ma’s chopping veggies for a salad, and she has a roast in the oven.

  “Do you know what this is?” I pull up the pic and shove it under her nose.

  “Damn, Story. No hello?”

  “Hello. Do you know where this is?”

  Ma sighs and grabs her cheaters from a basket on the counter. “Let me see.”

  She makes a big show of putting on the glasses and squinting at the picture. She’s loving this.

  “Ma!”

  And then she makes a soft “huh” noise and passes the phone back to me. “Well, I never thought he’d actually do it.”

  “Do what?”

  Ma takes up her knife again. “That’s Dr. Rosenthal’s office.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s mine and Larry’s couple’s counselor. That’s his office.”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean—what? You think making it work between a Jewish dentist and a Methodist sex addict is easy?”

  “Ma, you’ve never gone to church.”

  “I’m a cultural Methodist.”

  “What does that even mean?” I shake my head, sigh, and try again. “Why is Nickel sending me a picture of your couple’s counselor’s office?”

  Ma slides chopped carrots into a bowl. “I gave him Dr. Rosenthal’s card. The other night when he came over. Dr. Rosenthal doesn’t just do couples. He does all sorts.”

  “So, what? Nickel’s going to counseling?” I don’t think I’ve ever been more surprised by anything in my entire life.

  “Looks like it. Photos kind of blurry. Could be the office next door. Maybe he’s getting insurance.”

  Sunny snickers and grabs me under the chin. “It’s nice to see you out of that room.” She lays a wet kiss on my forehead. “Don’t get your hopes up, though. Leopards don’t change their spots.”

  No, I guess they don’t. And it’s not like Nickel’s standing
outside my window with a boom box. He sent me a few texts after ghosting on me. I fight the urge to text back, and I leave him on read.

  A few nights later, he sends me a pic of a brick wall and concrete steps going down to some basement.

  still tryin baby. miss you so fucking much.

  After tossing in bed for three hours, I get Larry to lock my phone in his office safe so I can leave it alone and get some sleep.

  Next Tuesday, I get another picture of Dr. Rosenthal’s office.

  still at it, baby

  wash says you look good

  i want to kick his ass for sayin it but im learning to reframe my emotions

  i want to kick my own ass cause i aint there with you

  im happy you are good tho

  Friday, I get another picture of a brick wall.

  still tryin

  aint givin up anytime soon but got to tell you this sucks

  A good five minutes later my phone chirps.

  aint complainin tho

  I don’t text back because if I do, I’ll say come over. I’ll say how could you leave me, and I love you, and I need you like air, and you’re suffocating me every second you’re not around. I’d beg, and I’m still too bruised to take another hit. That’s kind of a lie, though. I’m a bop bag for him; I’d pop right back up.

  But I am terrified. This feels so fragile. Like we’re playing Jenga, and if I make one false move, whatever he’s doing will fall apart, and he’ll be lost, not just to me, but all the way and forever.

  So I keep him on read, and I go to work and classes. It’s quiet. Painfully quiet. The Rebel Raiders have gone to ground again, and things eventually go back to normal. Wash stays with us and keeps driving me places, but Roosevelt goes back to the clubhouse. Cue comes back to The White Van, but still no Forty. And no Nickel.

  I make noises about going back to my apartment—it’s killing me to pay rent for an empty place—but Larry says that Heavy still has old ladies and kids on lockdown, so I have to stay. I don’t really mind. I miss my stuff, but I’m so lonely. It’d be worse at my place.