by Ivy Black
The crowd murmured and muttered to themselves as Seneca came to a stop at the front of the crowd, and she just stood there, patiently waiting for anyone to second. The room was silent, and for as dejecting as that had to have been, she stood there with a look of confidence that was shocking, to say the least.
Nick waited, not closing the nomination for as long as he could, but then he lifted his hand into the air. “Well, I’m sorr—”
Then Seth’s hand went up. “I second.” Everyone’s gaze shot to him. “I talked to Seneca for a bit. She’s never even driven a car before, just bikes. That’s…” He chuckled. “That’s pretty cool.”
Vil’s hand went up after that. “I third.” He smiled. “She’s a punk rocker like me, plus she’s tough as nails.”
After that, Small Fry’s hand went up. “She beat Bucky in an arm wrestle,” he snickered. “Fourth.”
“No,” Bucky spat out, “she’s pretty strong though, I’ll give her that.” His hand went up. “I’ll fifth.”
I felt conflicted. If so many of them had positive experiences with her, why had no one nominated her before now?
As if they’d all heard my thoughts, all the members turned to look at me. “What?”
“I’ll defer to you,” Nick said to me.
“Why me?”
“Because of Tess,” Nick said simply.
That was a shattering statement. Seneca was a woman, and my trust issues with women created more than one issue with Tess. Was I prepared to take on the full responsibility for the way she was treated? No. But, if we were to say who had the biggest problem with her…
“She only needs two,” I replied. “A nomination and a second. She had that four votes ago.”
Nick’s nervous expression melted into a smile. “That she did.” He turned to face her again. “Well, congrats! Do we have anyone else?”
No one said anything and a few of the other silver-flag-wearing people in the crowd deflated. Nick must have seen it, too, because he clapped his hands a few times. “Hey. I’ll have none of that. There was a shit ton of people here tonight and this isn’t the end all be all. If you think the Knights are right for you, come by and see us more often. Who knows, you may find yourself nominated yet.”
This seemed to brighten spirits and as Nick climbed off the bar, the music started up again, and everyone went back to talking, drinking, and dancing. The chosen prospects continued to stand as Nick made his way over to speak to them.
“I’m surprised you cleared that,” Avery said.
I frowned. “It wasn’t up to me.”
Avery tapped my back. “Sure it was.”
With that, the rest of the members walked out from behind the bar and threaded back into the crowd, but I’d had enough excitement for one night. I walked back through the warehouse and used the back door to leave the Taphouse, walking around to the front at a slow, tired pace to get to my bike. I got to the side of it and started to pull my helmet out of the back when a finger tapped me on the shoulder.
I turned around and my heart started to beat faster than I was comfortable with. Celia was standing there facing me, her hip kicked out to the side and a seductive grin on her face.
“Aw, were you just going to leave? Without even saying goodbye?”
Chapter Four
Celia
It turned out to be a better idea than I realized, staying away from Harry until that night. The whole point was to keep him hanging on by a thread, but if I’d seen him prior to that night, I might have lost sight of my goal.
“I know you saw me in there,” I hummed. “I’m surprised you didn’t say hello. Especially after that night we had.”
The memory of it burned over my skin as it fought to recall all the places Harry had touched me. He was just a means to an end, but what a sexy one he was. If it wasn’t the muscles that I knew were hidden under his reserved jacket and jeans, it was the glasses that sat in front of his golden eyes, with the few wisps of his brown hair hanging down in front of them. If my target had been any less attractive, I wouldn’t be struggling so much.
“How have you been these past few weeks?” I asked.
Harry was standing next to his bike with his helmet in his arms. He looked at me with something between a curious gaze and a harsh glare. “You’re kidding, right?”
I pushed out my bottom lip, doing the best I could to achieve faux innocence. “What do you mean?” Instead of answering me right away, Harry climbed on his bike. He watched me, almost like he was waiting for me to say something else, and for a moment, it seemed like an invitation. “Oh, do you want me to come?”
“Do I look like an idiot to you?” he asked. “We go out, and I actually thought we had a good time.”
“We did. In fact, that was one of the best nights I’ve ever had.”
“So then, why haven’t I heard from you? I called you. I texted you. Was it just about the sex? If it was, that’s fine, but I’m not interested in wasting my time, so you can go find someone else to spend the night with.”
“Call me clueless but given that someone else had to convince you to go out with me at all, I’m a little surprised that you’re the ‘all or nothing’ type.” I set my hands on my hips and intentionally stuck them out to accentuate the curves that Harry’s eyes kept flicking to, no matter how hard he was trying to keep them straight. “So I wasn’t trying to marry you after a single date. That makes me a bad person?”
“I didn’t say anything about marriage,” Harry replied, “but I had a certain expectation that you’d at least answer my phone call if I tried to contact you again, not just completely ghost me. If you weren’t interested in anything more than spending the night together, you could have said that so that I wasn’t left wondering.”
To say I was surprised by Harry’s position would be an understatement. He simply didn’t seem like an emotional guy. The point was to lead him on, but I didn’t think it’d be so difficult. Was he really only going to give me one chance?
“Listen, I thought everyone enjoyed a little cat and mouse. It’s not like I’m the only one who played hard to get.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but once I agreed to go out with you, you didn’t have to try anymore. I wasn’t so lucky.” I opened my mouth to retort, but before I could get any words out, Harry started up his bike, cutting me off with its loud rumble. “There are plenty of people in that bar who would be happy to have you. Go play around with someone else.”
With that, he pulled his helmet over his head and revved his bike a couple of times, then he pulled out of the parking spot and roared away without looking back.
Insulted would be putting it mildly.
Our first night together was one for the history books. Why would anyone turn down the opportunity to have that again? With my arms crossed, I watched Harry pull out of the parking lot and ride off down the street until he was out of sight. I knew I had to go home, but I didn’t want to face what awaited me there.
Did I wait too long to contact Harry again? Did I mess everything up by playing it a little too cool?
With nothing left to do, I fished my keys out of my pocket and made my way over to my car. I got in, and even waited a few additional minutes to see if Harry was going to double back, but he didn’t. Defeated, and unsure of how I was going to explain my failure, I finally left Hoppa’s Taphouse and made my way home.
Part of me was hoping that the late hour would save me as I pulled up to my godfather’s house, but pulling into the driveway, I could see the lights were on and the television was flickering in the living room. I let out a sigh and slowly crawled my car into the garage. I turned the car off before dropping my head to the steering wheel in frustration.
“Sorry, Daddy,” I said out loud.
There was nothing to be gained from continuing to linger in the car. He heard the garage door open; he knew I was home.
It was time to just face facts.
I climbed out of the car and made my way through the door that
led from the garage into the kitchen. I hung my keys on the hooks next to the door and waited to see if I heard any sounds.
“Celia?”
I dropped my head. “Yeah, it’s me.”
The next thing I heard was the sound of wheels squeaking their way across the carpet. It wouldn’t help to move or run, so I just waited and eventually, my godfather, Darrien, entered the kitchen in his wheelchair. His curly, brown hair was a mess and there was already a look of fervent disappointment in his green eyes.
“I didn’t expect you home tonight,” he said in a tone that was as judgmental as it was accusatory. “I thought you were going out with Harry again.”
“Yeah, uh, things didn’t quite go as I expected them to,” I explained.
“What do you mean?”
“I think I may have waited a little too long to strike again. He was… less than thrilled to see me.”
At this, Darrien rolled over to the fridge where he kept an article about his accident hanging. He smoothed a finger along the edge of it, brushing specifically over the words “paralyzed” and “dead”. “Well that’s unfortunate. Isn’t there anything a smart girl like you can do?”
“He was pretty pissed off,” I replied. “I told him I was just trying to be coy, but he wasn’t going for it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, knowing him. Still, it’s nothing a little hounding can’t fix. You said he seemed to really enjoy himself. Surely, if you continue to dangle the fruit, he’ll take a bite at some point.”
“Dangle it how?” I asked.
He looked up at me. “Don’t let him loose so easily. Call him. Text him. Contact him on social media. Tell him you just want a chance to explain yourself and lay it on thick that you’re still really interested. Eventually, he’ll take the bait, if for no other reason than to get you to leave him alone, and in that moment, you reel him back in.”
Darrien’s finger on the article on the fridge glided under the image of my dad. One of the last smiling pictures he took before he died. “You owe this to your dad, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t just want him to get away with what he did to us, do you?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
“Good. So, figure it out. You can do this.”
“Yeah. I’ll figure it out. I promise.”
“Good.” He wheeled back a little and opened the fridge and I could see that the dinner I’d made him was still inside. I glanced over and saw the pills he was supposed to take were still on the counter as well.
“Why haven’t you done any of this yet? It’s after midnight,” I asked. “You’ll be uncomfortable all night now.”
He waved his hand in my face. “Don’t worry about me. You just worry about how you’re going to get back in Harry’s good graces. We’re not messing up this opportunity.”
“Fine.”
With that, I stepped around Darrien and made my way up the stairs to the second floor. I spent some time prepping his bed, including powering the machines which would help get him from his wheelchair into his bed, and then I went into my bedroom and changed into more comfortable clothes. I climbed into bed and pulled out my phone and navigated to Harry’s number. Now having to beg him to see me again left a sour taste in my mouth. I didn’t want to have to beg anyone for anything, and I could only imagine my dad wouldn’t want that either.
Still.
My dad would still be with me if it weren’t for Harry. Darrien was right. I couldn’t waste the opportunity I had. So, I swallowed my pride and pressed the button to call him, my skin sizzling with anger when it only rang once before going to voicemail, but I took a deep breath and tried again.
And again.
And again.
For the next couple of weeks, it felt like that was all I was doing. I started out just calling and texting. Everything from sexy innuendos to blocks of text of me trying to explain away why I ghosted him, but nothing seemed to work. Eventually, he blocked me so I couldn’t call or text, and he didn’t have many social media outlets, just one, which I was blocked on before I even got to that method.
Which left showing up at the bar.
The new prospects that the Steel Knights had nominated the first night I went back had the place regularly packed with new people and a fresh, electric energy. Harry wasn’t wrong, more than one man approached me looking to have some fun, but I had to keep my sights set on the prize. I would buy him drinks, try to coax him into a corner with me, even straight-up challenge him to a game of pool or darts, but he flat out ignored me.
Finally, I threw caution to the wind and approached one of the other club members, looking for some advice. I’d heard them calling him Dynamite, and he was closer to being my age than Harry was, not that it made much of a difference.
“Oh, you’re the one who ghosted him?” Dynamite asked.
Word had spread. “I wasn’t trying to,” I lied. “I just got busy and I thought a little push and pull was sexy.”
“Sure, maybe for anyone else, but you’re lucky he even went out with you to begin with,” Dynamite explained. “Harry hates women.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Yeah, I know it sounds kind of shitty to just say it like that, but that’s what it is. He has, like, no respect for them. Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t attack them or hurt them or anything, more like he just ignores them.” He took a sip of his beer. “When we heard that he agreed to go out with you, we were all shocked.”
“I never would have guessed from our date that he didn’t like women.”
Harry did everything from pull out my chair to try and convince me to wait to let him take me home. He was a perfect gentleman. Well, until we got back to his place, then he was perfect in other ways. If he did have a hatred for women, it wasn’t evident that night.
“You got lucky. Real lucky,” Dynamite said. “The fact that he went out with you at all is crazy. He gave you a shot and you blew it, so you can forget about ever talking to him again.”
Harry was sitting at the bar talking to one of the bar’s patrons as I spoke with Dynamite. His broad shoulders and straight jaw were a sight to behold and something about thinking I’d never get to be with him again bothered me.
A lot.
Without saying anything else to Dynamite, I stood up and walked over to where Harry was sitting. I slipped in between him and the person he was talking to, facing the other person. It was an older man, probably Harry’s same age if not a bit older, and there was nothing impressive about his look, but he wasn’t unattractive.
“Hi,” I greeted, setting my hand on his chest. “I’m Celia.”
His eyes nearly bugged out of his skull. He grinned back at me, letting one of his hands come up to skirt along my hip. “Well, hello there. I’m Mark.”
“Mm, Mark,” I replied. “That’s an easy name.”
“Easy?” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied, “to scream.”
Mark’s jaw dropped and he looked all around him before bringing his eyes back to mine. “Am I being pranked or something? Did one of my friends put you up to this? There’s no way you’re real.”
“I’m very real,” I replied. “I’d love to show you.”
“Uh.” Mark downed everything that was left of his beer in one large gulp before slamming the bottle on the bar. “Hell yeah.”
I took Mark’s hand and turned around, but to my shock, Harry was still sitting there, though he had his back turned to me and was speaking to someone else on his other side.
“They could take it all the way this year,” the man he was now talking to, said. “The Suns are looking nice already.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Bucky,” Harry replied in his gruff voice, and it sent a shiver down my spine. I still had dreams about him from that night we were together. That voice in my ear. “I’m gonna go with the Celtics, just like I do every year.”
The other guy, Bucky, laughed. “Yeah, yeah,
yeah. Damn traitor.”
“Let’s go,” Mark said in my ear. “I can barely hold back right now.”
We continued past Harry and Bucky talking, but Harry didn’t even look up. It was frustrating and irritating. I was throwing everything I had at the man and he just wasn’t picking it up. The thought that, after everything, I might have blown my one shot being a little too arrogant was enough to make me want to pack up, leave Hoppa, and never come back, but I simply couldn’t give up. Not just yet.
So, Mark got lucky. At least at first. I let him take me home, more as an outlet for my frustration than anything else, but he wasn’t even half as good as Harry and I ended up leaving halfway through. I didn’t feel like sitting under my godfather’s disappointed stare, so I went to crash with my old college roommate Laura. She was used to me coming, and even left my room in the apartment the same, so I used my key to enter, walked right past her on the couch, and went into my old bedroom and plopped down on the bed.
“Rough night?” Laura asked from the doorway.
I didn’t look up from my pillow to respond. “You have no idea.”
“What happened?”
Laura didn’t know what I was up to. “I… like this guy.”
“Seriously?” she yelped. “What’s his name?”
“Harry.”
“Wow. I wouldn’t have expected it from you. You do the whole ‘no strings attached’ thing. So why the long face?”
“I tried to play hard to get,” I said, “and I failed.”
Chapter Five
Bullet
I got the last of my beer down just as Nick shut and locked the front doors.
“Whoo, we’ve been packin’ the place ever since the prospects started up,” Nick said. “Y’all sure know how to attract a crowd.”
The timer on my phone beeped to let me know it was three in the morning. On occasion, I’d get a little too caught up in hanging out at the Taphouse and forget I had two cats at home that got really angry when I came home too late. I slid my empty beer bottle over to one of the bartenders who was cleaning up and then stood up from my barstool.