by Paula Cox
In the background, the music blares; somebody giggles. A man laughs.
“Thank you,” Pascal says. “I was thinking, Brianna, you should let me take you to dinner.”
“Dinner? Is that what you want? Dinner?” I smile wickedly as I speak, feeling flirty and fun, thinking that maybe I’ll get that tumble in the dark tonight. “I thought you were braver than that, Pascal.”
“Braver? A man would have to be brave to take you on, Brianna. You’re one hell of a lady.”
Is it bad if I am entertaining the idea of having a one night stand with this man? Is it bad that I want a piece of temporary pleasure? As long as he knows . . .
“If we’re going to do this,” I say, feeling tipsy and dangerous and uncaged, “you need to know that I don’t want anything more. And I don’t want it to become a big thing.”
Pascal grins. “You read my mind,” he says.
Then he leans down, coming close to me. But something happens when his lips are almost on mine, when I can taste his breath; I change my mind. Suddenly, all of it seems wrong. Just as quickly as it seemed flirty and fun, it becomes something I have absolutely no interest in doing. I step away.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter.
He follows me across the table. “What?” he says, confused.
“I don’t want—I’m sorry.”
“I thought we—what the fuck?”
“I know, I’m . . .”
But he isn’t saying what the fuck to me; he’s saying it because the music has screeched into silence.
Even from across the room at the entrance, his voice is loud. And even through the crowd of uncertain dancers, I can see him: glimpses of him, arms at his sides, staring through the people at me and Pascal. From where he’s standing, it must look like Pascal and I have just kissed, or were just about to kiss. “What the fuck is this?” Slick calls, striding into the room, dropping the jukebox plug. He has a look in his eyes like a wild animal, unable to control himself, hands shaking.
He’s halfway to me when Zack and Bryan step into his path. The other guys back away from him, but Zack and Bryan must be able to guess why he’s here, why he’s angry.
“You don’t own her,” Zack growls.
I move away from the pool table, going to the dance floor and joining the crowd that gathers around the three men—four, now, because Pascal joins Zack and Bryan, the three of them boxing Slick in. They’re going to kill him. If fighting starts, these three men will beat him to a pulp. It doesn’t matter how tough you are; when three hardened fighters come at you, you’re not going to fare well.
“Wait!” I cry. “Don’t fight! Please don’t fight! Slick, it’s not what you think!”
I shouldn’t have to defend myself, but even so I feel the need to. For some reason the idea of Slick thinking that I’m with Pascal makes me want to scream at Slick that I’m not and I’ve never been: that he’s still my Sky and I remember that night we shared and I remember wanting him for every day of my life since I was a teenager. And Pascal, before Slick came in, following me down the table . . . I don’t think he would’ve tried anything, not with all these bikers here, but the fact that he didn’t back off right away . . . I shiver, and watch, and wish all of them would just forget they were bikers and fighters and walk away.
Slick, not facing me, says, “I never said I fucking owned her. I just want to know what three fucks like you think you’re doing with Boss’s daughter. How do you reckon he’d take the news that a new-patched fuck like you,” turning to Pascal, “was making moves on his daughter, eh?”
“Don’t play games with us, you traitor fuck,” Zack says. “You don’t have any more pull with Grizzly than we do. We’ve all heard the fuckin’ news. Slick Barkley, courier turned traitor, working his ass off for the Skulls for two years—”
“Say one more word,” Slick interrupts. “Say one more goddamn word.”
Zack laughs. “What’re you goin’ to do, fight all of us?”
Slick takes a step back, lifts his hands in a boxer’s stance, and then nods his head. “Come on then, you shitheads.”
I try and scream at them to stop, but my voice is lost in the hoots and hollers of the crowd. Zack dives for Slick, laughing as he does it as though Slick is nothing to worry about, but then his laughter dies as Slick bobs to the left so fast his movements are difficult to track. He bobs, dodges, and then strikes with a solid right hook which sends Zack sprawling in pain and shock. Then Pascal and Bryan are on Slick, beating him madly, but their fists hit his forearms as he cradles his head. Even over the screaming, I’m sure I hear Slick cursing, grunting. Then he spins, using Bryan’s outstretched arm as a handle of some kind, and somehow ends up behind them. It’s like an MMA move, fast and efficient. He grabs a bottle from the bar and smashes it over the back of Pascal’s head, turning the blonde hair crimson, and then swipes out Bryan’s legs with one brutal kick. When he turns, Zack is on him again, swinging a pool cue in wide arcs which smash the glasses and bottles on the bar. Slick ducks, takes a slap across the cheek, and then catches the cue mid-swing, wrenches it from Zack’s grip, and smashes him over the head. The cue snaps. Zack collapses to his knees, and then onto his face.
All of this happens in a matter of seconds, leaving me to look at the moaning, horizontal bikers in disbelief. Slick, bleeding from a cut on his face, walks over to me and offers his hand. “Come with me, Brat,” he says.
“What the hell?” It’s Clint’s voice, from the entrance.
“Come with me,” Slick repeats, more urgently.
The crowd stirs as Clint makes his way through. I know I shouldn’t go with Slick, not after this, not when Clint is here to report back to my father. But the way he looks right now, with his sky-blue eyes intense, his hair over his eyes from the fight, huge and sexy and handsome and dangerous in his leather . . . I shake off the shouldn’t and grab his hand. He smiles, and then leads me to the back, behind the bar and out the back door. Dimly, I hear Clint calling, but I no longer care, not when Slick pulls me out into the street and together we run toward his bike.
I’m laughing, I realize as I climb onto the back of his bike. For the first time tonight, I’m having a real good time, a good time that doesn’t have to be forced. As he fires the engine, I remember being a teenager, giggling just like I am now, arms wrapped around Slick just as they are now, feeling more excited than I ever had before. When Slick turns around to pull the helmet onto my head, that same excitement comes over me.
Chapter Five
Bri
As Slick drives us away from the city and toward the mountains, the wind whipping at my dress and my hands gripping his leather, I feel exhilarated. I remember feeling this way as a girl, a tomboy with an older friend who I had yet to fall for. I remember riding the bus with a fifteen year old when I was a young girl, innocent and playful, just pals then. I remember exploring the mountains, how Slick would protect me; I remember one time I cut my foot on a rock, and Slick cleaned and bound the cut and brought me home. These were times before I had responsibility, a baby girl to take care of, a life that needed to be maintained. These were wild times, Eden times. As the bar, the city, and my life becomes smaller and the mountains become bigger, I begin to feel like a little girl all over again. Only Slick can have this effect on me. Nobody else.
When we begin winding our way up a mountain road, I know where he is taking us. When I turned eighteen, Slick and I began to journey to the mountains more and more, me on the back of his bike, or sometimes me on my own bike riding beside him. We would go up to the mountains to this one spot, beneath a large old oak tree which provided shade from the sun and privacy from the road. There we would sit, sometimes saying nothing, just looking down at Denver. Watching it. Sometimes he would hold me; sometimes we’d make out. But it never got further than that, not until that one night stand.
When the tree comes into view, looking like a many-limbed creature of darkness in the half-moon night, the past rushes into me. Emotions long dormant
swirl around my chest. A hundred days and nights of a hundred intimacies with Slick rush into my mind. I grip his jacket harder, his returning finally hitting me as hard as it should have when I first found him in the garage. But I was too stunned, too cynical, too adult. Here, in our teenage refuge, all of that falls away.
He stops the bike, killing the engine, and I whisper, “I’m glad you’re back.” But I can’t kill the adult in me, not entirely, and I follow it up with, “But there was no reason to do that, Slick. You could’ve gotten yourself hurt. Hell, you could’ve really hurt one of the guys.”
Slick kicks the stand and we climb from the bike, moving with instinct and memory to the trunk of the tree, where sometimes he’d lean into the tree as I leant into him, his arms around me. We don’t hold each other now, just stand in the deep darkness of the shade. “I went a bit crazy,” he admits, without shame. “I just couldn’t stand the way that Pascal fuck was leaning over you, Brat.”
“So you killed the jukebox and started a fight with three men? What were you thinking?”
He laughs bitterly. “I wasn’t thinkin’, I guess. Which is a damn shame, ’cause I promised myself I’d try and think a bit more from now on.”
I approach him, lay my hand on his arm. “Listen, Slick. If something happened in Seattle. If something bad happened . . . if you had to do things you’re not proud of . . . you can tell me. You know that, don’t you? We’ve always been friends.”
“Friends,” Slick mutters. “Since you were eighteen years old, we’ve never just been friends.”
“It would’ve been sooner, if I had my way,” I say, glancing away from him, embarrassed by my words. But needing to say them, unable not to say them. “Ever since I was a teenager, if I had my way.”
“That would’ve been wrong,” Slick says. “So let’s be thankful I was the responsible grownup.”
He winks at me, and I giggle. “You—a responsible grownup? Look at your face!”
I go to him, take a packet of tissues from my pocket, and dab at his cut.
“You just carry around tissues?” he asks, wincing.
“When you’ve got a baby girl, the habit is hard to break. I’m sure most of my jackets have a few bits and pieces buried in various pockets.”
“A baby girl,” Slick echoes.
Tell him. Tell him now. I should; I could. This is the moment. And yet something stops me. This is the moment: the moment Slick and I can finally reunite. I don’t want to ruin it with a revelation that will lead to a long, muddy conversation, maybe even an argument.
“I meant it,” I say, taking his hand and pressing it against the tissue. “Hold it there until the bleeding stops. It’s only a cut.”
“Meant what?” he asks, pressing the wound.
“If something happened in Seattle—if you had to do things for them, the Skulls, that you didn’t want to do—you can tell me. I would never tell anybody else. I’m . . . I’m loyal to you, Slick. I’ve always been loyal to you.”
Slick turns to the city, to the lights shining yellow into the sky. “Do you remember the time I stole those CDs from the supermarket and that guy in the parking lot saw and was going to tell the security guard?”
I grin, remembering. “I remember a little girl in pigtails saving your ass.”
“You marched right up to him and said, with a tear in your eye, ‘Please, sir, don’t tell on my friend. He’s very poor and he’s going to sell those CDs for food.’ You evil, evil girl.”
We laugh together. Then I join Slick, looking down over the city.
“I want to be more than a courier, Brat,” he says. “That’s all I can think about right now. Not all that shit—Seattle, pain, blood. I can’t afford to think about that. I want to make my dad proud. I want to be somebody.”
“To them, with them, be that, but with me you can be honest. You can always be honest with me, Sky.”
“Sky.” He smiles, sadly, longingly. “I miss that night; I miss being Sky, sometimes.”
I place my hand on his shoulder, wishing he wasn’t wearing his leather, wishing he was naked like that night: that night which seems long ago, now, a night shared by two different people, two different lives. Slick was not this Slick then, and I was not the woman I have become. I squeeze his leather, and then rest my head on his shoulder. “You can tell me, Slick,” I say. “If something happened . . . I will never judge you. You were away from home. If you were lonely, or afraid—”
Slick turns quickly, grabbing my hand at the wrist and bringing his face close to mine. “The only thing I was afraid of,” he says, his breath tickling my face, his eyes burning blue in the night, so attractive to me that my body roars out for him, every fiber roars out for him, “was that I would never get to kiss you again.”
It’s a cheesy line and if any man other than Slick said it, I would laugh. But there’s nothing funny about the way he’s looking at me, nothing funny about the way he brings his face closer and closer to mine, until his lips are almost pressed against my lips. “Well, I’m here now,” I whisper, though I know it’s wrong. I can’t do anything with Slick until I’ve told him everything. I can’t do anything with him until he knows the whole truth about everything he left behind when he went to Seattle. But he’s so damn sexy. And I remember too well the pleasure we shared, and the anticipation I felt when I was a teenager, watching him, fantasizing. It’s not a fantasy anymore.
He kisses me, hard, pressing into me with the passion of two years spent apart. As we kiss, I imagine all his longing pouring into me, all the times he wished we could be together spilling out in this one display of closeness. I want to stop it, but at the same time it feels too incredible. His lips are warm, and somehow tingling. His body is pushed against mine, his jeans thrust against me. One of his hands moves through my hair, fingers trailing over my scalp, sending more fingers trailing down my body at the tickling sensation. The other is wrapped around my waist, holding my lower back. My hands are wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer, sinking into the kiss. But more than the physical sensations, the bare fact of it drives me wild. I am kissing Slick. After two years picturing him in my dreams, I am kissing him. The older boy who became the older man who became my lover and then disappeared . . . I am finally kissing him.
I jump up and Slick knows what to do straightaway. He grabs my ass and holds me up as I wrap my legs around him. We back up, hitting the tree, all the while kissing passionately. I open my mouth, hungry for him, and our tongues brush against each other. I taste him, tasting the man I’ve wanted for so long, for as long as I’ve wanted anybody. He tastes like home; he tastes like pleasure. He tastes like something I’ve waited a long, long time to taste. His hands are firm on my ass cheeks, grabbing the flesh, massaging it. Sometimes, his finger slips between my legs, to my pussy, pushing up against my panties and my clit. Fuck, this feels incredible, and I just know where it could lead . . . bent over against the tree, fistfuls of bark, with Slick sliding his huge cock into me from behind. Bouncing up and down the length of it, feeling it deep inside of me, his hands on my bare ass cheeks, spanking, rubbing.
Charlotte . . . Charlotte . . . her name comes to me as though through a mist, a mist of pleasure, broken only by the knowledge that if I do this, I am doing Slick a great disservice. He still does not know that Charlotte is his. He still has no clue that that one steamy night resulted in something much more special. More importantly, I don’t know how he’ll react. How can I fuck a man when I don’t know if he’ll hate or love our daughter? How can I fuck a man when he has no clue what it means to me to be with him again? As far as he’s concerned, this might just be a quick tumble under the old oak tree; it might have absolutely zero meaning to him.
As these thoughts come to me, my pleasure and my passion wane. Slick must be able to sense it because he breaks off the kiss, tilts his head at me. “Somethin’ wrong?” he asks.
“I just . . . can you put me down, please?”
He does so, and we just watch each other for
a time. “What is it?” he says, at length.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I say.
Slick turns back to the city. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” he mutters.
“No?” I say, stung.
He grins at me. “I can’t tool up three guys and then fuck the Boss’s daughter in the same night, now, can I?”
I nudge him in the shoulder. “Shut up,” I say, laughing.
But behind the laughter, I am aching. Aching to tell him, aching to be with him, aching to go back in time and fix everything so that right now, in this moment, we would not be standing overlooking the glinting yellow lights of the city, but standing over Charlotte’s crib, hand in hand, before going into bedroom to make love.