CHAPTER NINE:
Knock Me Up
-o0o—
Present day, Greenville, Arizona
If Sisco’d been a betting man, he would’ve bet a lot of money on Dawg never being able to keep it in his pants for a woman. He would’ve lost, though, because since Dawg and Edie’d hooked up, the man kept it in his pants.
The other thing he would’ve lost money on was what kind of woman Dawg would be prepared to mark as his. He could see a guy like Dawg with a stripper, or basically anyone who didn’t leave the home without a massive amount of makeup on her face, but Edie wasn’t like that at all. Edie was the kind of woman who quite often looked like she’d fallen out of bed and into her clothes, and he wasn’t fully convinced she knew what a hairbrush was. She’d had her hair in dreads the first time he saw her, and once she’d cut them off he had a hunch about why she’d gotten them in the first place—she obviously didn’t spend a lot of time fixing her hair.
Sisco had to admit she didn’t really need it. She was pretty even with her t-shirt inside out and the shoelaces flapping around the work boots she usually wore. She was basically the direct opposite of her sister, Melanie, Brick’s Old Lady, who always looked like she’d just stepped out of a fashion magazine shoot.
Edie reminded him a lot of Trudy in the way she just was. She didn’t try to doll up or be perfect the entire time, so he could sort of see why Dawg thought she was da shit, because that’s what he thought. She drove him crazy at times. He could go on and on about how fucking fed up he was with her behavior, especially when she ran off mid-fight, but he was still madly in love with her.
When Dawg had announced they were having their first kid, Sisco could tell Edie was a bit nervous about it, and he’d talked to her. She’d told him about her dad and what he’d been like. It hadn’t been physical abuse but psychological, and she’d never felt like it was enough reason to hate a person because there was never any visual proof of what he’d done. Basically, that it didn’t seem like real abuse. He could sort of see what she meant, but having had a father who beat him up on a regular basis, he knew it wasn’t actually the beating that was the most traumatic or nerve-wracking part. It was those minutes or hours when you knew he was working himself up to it. When the hit actually landed it was sometimes a fucking relief because you knew it would be over soon. Sometimes he’d provoked his dad to tip him over the edge, just so he didn’t have to wait for it. Living in that constant state of anxiety, the way Edie’d done, had to have been hell.
When she’d told him she wasn’t sure if she could be a mom, since she’d never had any role models to learn from, he’d told her she’d be fine and pointed out that Mel came from the same family, and she was basically supermom.
He’d thought about that a lot. How Mel and Edie, despite coming from that shit background, had turned into great moms. He was sure Trudy would’ve been a great mom, too—if she’d just gotten the chance.
-o0o—
Seattle, Washington
“Hey, babe,” he mumbled as he slipped under the cover.
“Hey,” Trudy whispered with a smile and pulled him closer to her. “Missed you today.”
“Yeah, why’s that?”
“I’m ovulating.”
“Is that the only reason?” he laughed. “Am I just a big ball sack of sperm to you?”
“No, but I thought this was a good time to try again.”
After Letty’s death, they’d put the baby-making on hold for a while. Trudy’d really taken her death hard—they all had. One would think they were used to people dying around them, but it had been different with Letty. Not just to Trudy and him, but to everyone. The brutality, the rape, just the simple fact that it was a murder, but also that they still didn’t know who’d done it. People still felt suspicious of one another. They all hoped the killer would be caught soon, and that it was someone they didn’t know at all.
It was eventually Laurie and Casey that changed her mind. They’d announced that they were pregnant, and that was when Trudy had brought it up again, saying she wanted to try. She’d gone off the pill that very night, but it hadn’t resulted in anything yet. They were both pretty calm about it, though. She’d been on the pill for years, and they’d been told it could take some time for her body to go back to normal.
He rolled her over onto her back and lay on top of her, holding on to her hip.
“Gotta say, girl, I kind of like this trying for a baby.”
“Like we didn’t have sex before,” she laughed.
“True.” He leaned down and kissed her. “Really glad you’re such a horny woman.”
She wrapped her legs around him, and he grabbed on to the back of her thigh, pushing his dick against her. Trudy let go of his mouth and tilted her head back with a moan. He kept moving down her body while pulling up her t-shirt to get to those cocky nipples he loved, but was interrupted when she pushed on his shoulders to get him away from her.
“I wanna blow you,” she groaned.
There was no fucking way he’d object to that.
“Okay,” he said and rolled over to his back, taking her with him to lie on top of him instead. “Give me a kiss first.”
With a smile, she got up on her knees and leaned down to give him a long, deep, wet kiss—ending it by sucking on his lower lip. Then she sat up straight and pulled off her t-shirt, an old Riot Act one that belonged to him, over her head. His hands went up to her tits, circling her nipples with his thumbs. She looked down on him with a smile.
“I love you, Sisco.”
He moved his hands even further up to hold her face and sat up to give her a kiss.
“Love you, too, baby.” They sat there for a while, before he lay back again with a smile. “Get those sweet lips around my dick.”
“Such a sweet-talker,” she laughed and moved down to sit between his legs. He’d already taken off all his clothes. He always slept naked, but she only did so if they went to bed together. He didn’t really know why, it was just how it had always been. She circled his dick with her hand and looked at him with a crooked smile. “I really like your cock.”
“That’s good, becauaaahh…” He was interrupted by her taking his dick into her mouth. “Fuck, babe!” he groaned.
She kept going, taking him all the way inside her mouth and down her throat while gently squeezing his balls, then pulling back to swirl her tongue around his glans, ending with a final suck just around the tip. She did it over and over again.
“Trudy, babe,” he eventually squeezed out. “If you want my cum inside of you, you need to stop.”
She let go of him, climbed up to straddle him, and then basically impaled herself on him with a satisfied moan. He held on to her hips, meeting each movement with a thrust. He was trying his best not to hold on to her too hard but it wasn’t easy because he was already close, and she was speeding up. Finally he sat up and held her closer to stop her from riding him too fast.
It didn’t help as much as he’d hoped, since she buried her tongue in his mouth, groaning and moaning into him, driving him mad. So he lifted her off his cock and turned her around onto all fours. That was the best way to get her to come fast, and after shoving his dick inside her, he reached around to tease her clit.
“Come on, babe,” he mumbled before biting her earlobe. “Come for me.”
“Oh shit, Sisco. Fuck I love it when you do this to me.”
“I know,” he chuckled while doing his best to ignore her soaking wet insides trying to milk him dry.
“I wanna see you come, too,” she said and tried to get away from him. “Please.”
“You first,” he said and held on to her tighter, still rubbing her clit. “I’ll hold off. Now,” he added a with a slap on her clit, “come!”
She did. With a high pitched yell she came, and Sisco had to close his eyes and focus to not come, too, and to his own astonishment he made it.
Once she was relaxed again, he pulled out, and she turned to her back. He slid inside again with a smi
le.
“Want me to knock you up?”
“Yes,” she said and grabbed his face to make sure he kept his eyes on her. “Knock me up.”
He did his very best. Twice.
They’d had several O.D.‘s, one murder, and then came the suicide.
As suspected, all the press and demands had finally taken its toll on the singer of Haven, and he’d killed himself.
Sisco had to admit it; he wasn’t surprised at all. And no matter what anyone said, he didn’t think anyone else was. The guy had basically already tried several times, but they’d kept him on the road, doing the tour and the press to promote the new album. An album the label had forced them to polish before it was released, because they weren’t happy with the unpolished, ‘uncommercial’ sound.
The death meant journalists flooded Seattle. He hadn’t thought it was possible to fit more press into their town, but he’d been dead wrong. They were looking for anyone who’d even remotely known the guy, or who was at least prepared to lie on camera and say that they had. Sisco’d known him but not that well. It wasn’t anything personal or that he hadn’t liked the guy—they’d just never gotten to know each other. They ran in the same circles, had been to the same parties and gigs, but that was pretty much it. Either way, Sisco definitely wasn’t interested in talking about it on camera.
Trudy was pissed off as hell, and it took him a while to fully understand why. She thought it was cowardly. The man had a family, friends, even a kid, and committing suicide was the ultimate selfish act according to her. She was usually pissed about the ones who O.D.‘d as well, but this seemed to infuriate her even worse, and he had a hard time seeing the difference.
It didn’t matter what he said, and soon he realized it was a very personal thing to her. If she hadn’t committed suicide with her history, she thought other people should be able to fight, too. He tried to point out that not everyone was as strong as her, and that was when she really flipped and started yelling.
“That’s not the point! You’re missing the point. Look at me! Look at what I have, us two, our future. Life can be so fucking beautiful, and… It pisses me off when people can’t see that no matter what shit-hole they’re in, it can be so beautiful and perfect.”
“Baby,” he mumbled and caught her in his arms. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’m just saying that not everyone can see that when they’re at the bottom.”
“I’m just angry about it. I don’t get suicide. I understand using drugs to try to hide to some extent, because I tried to hide in different ways, too, but ending it all on purpose…. I don’t get that.”
He dropped it. It was her opinion, and she had every right to feel that way.
Pete and Frank came back to Seattle the following week for the funeral and stayed with them for a while. They didn’t talk much about the funeral, or what had happened. They had other things than death to talk about—more exciting things. Because just the day before they arrived Trudy’d done a test, and it had been positive.
She was pregnant.
She’d been really nervous about it, and he’d spent many hours during long nights hugging her and telling her she’d be the best mom ever. He understood why she was worried, because he was worried for the very same reason. How the fuck did you become a good parent when you’d never seen good parenting first hand?
Then she just did one of those weird Trudy things and decided. She decided she could do it, and that was all there was to it.
During the following months, she threw herself into becoming a mother, and it even showed in her paintings. They were all of fetuses or babies in bright, happy colors.
He was quite impressed with her resolve but didn’t comment on it. Instead he helped her with what he could, and most nights when he came home from work she was working in the nursery. Trudy didn’t believe in different colors depending on the gender, she wanted all colors. It looked insane, almost like her fetus paintings, and he was a bit worried the kid would have an epileptic seizure when they eventually put it in there. The first time he had tried to protest, and she had started to cry. She cried a lot, and he soon realized it didn’t matter what the nursery looked like because by the next week she would’ve changed it all again.
When she was about six months pregnant, he came home to find a forest full of animals painted on one of the walls, and the rest of the walls were in a soft green shade.
“Hey,” he said, as he wrapped his arms around her from behind, cradling her baby bump, and looked at the room. “I like this.”
“Me, too,” she said as she turned towards him. “Think I’m done.”
“Good,” he chuckled and gave her a kiss. “Getting to the furniture?”
“Yeah.” She took his hands and put them back on her stomach. “I’ve been thinking about names.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Noah for a boy.”
“As in Noah in the bible?”
“Yeah, because he survived.” She moved closer to bury her nose in his chest. “And because I like the name.”
“Okay,” he said after thinking about it for a while. “I like it. Short, good name. Can be barked out.”
“You’re not gonna bark at our baby.”
He leaned down and gave her a kiss. “And for a girl?”
“Lorna.”
“Why?” The question was more to win time so that he could find a good way to tell her he thought it was a horrible name. Really fucking bad.
“You’re gonna laugh.”
“I’m sure I will. Make me laugh, I know you like my laugh.”
“I liked the book Lorna Doone when I was a girl. It’s kind of doomy, but it gave me… I don’t know. Hope?”
“Lorna?” He tried to hide the grimace, but she noticed it.
“You don’t like it.”
“No.”
“I can read you the book,” she tried, and when he shook his head she grabbed his collar, bringing him down to her mouth. “I’m not gonna give up on the name. I’ve wanted a girl to call Lorna since I was a little kid.”
“Think we’re gonna have to talk about this again.”
“We will, but if you want a different name you’re gonna have to come up with a better one.”
He couldn’t think of something right away, but when he knew the option was Lorna, he was going to make a real effort to find another name she liked.
“Wanna order in?” he asked instead.
“How about we cook something? I’ll make the base and you can make some meat sprinkles for yourself.”
“Okay.”
Jane came by later that night. She was so eager about the baby, and Sisco found it pretty cute, even if he’d never use that word out loud for anyone to hear. She kept talking to Trudy’s belly while referring to herself as ‘Aunt Jane.’ He didn’t object, since he definitely considered her a part of the family of misfits they’d created for themselves when their own blood had turned out to be a complete bust.
CHAPTER TEN:
This Is Her Husband
-o0o—
Present day, Greenville, Arizona
Tommy was the newest member, and Sisco quite liked him. His intelligence wasn’t dazzling, but he had a lot of heart, and that counted for something. As opposed to a lot of biker clubs, the Marauders didn’t have many ex-military men, but Tommy’d been a Marine. He’d been injured and his best friend had died in the same attack. He’d taken his discharge as soon as he could after that. Tommy didn’t talk much about what’d happened, but Sisco knew some of it. He’d become a prospect while Sisco was doing time, but they’d caught up pretty quickly once Sisco was released. Often while they were watching strippers.
He was a pretty-boy in his early thirties; the sweetbutts were just dying for him to pick them, and he did his best to oblige them all. Not in a Mitch or Dawg kind of way, but he was single and liked to fuck, so he got around.
“I heard you were working in Seattle during the grunge era?” he asked one night while they were watching a woman p
retzling herself around a stripper pole at the Booty Bank.
“Yeah.”
“Like, in the music industry?”
“I wouldn’t say I was in the industry, but I worked for some of the bands.”
There was a tangible silence from Tommy’s direction, and Sisco knew what was coming.
“So… do you still know some of the guys?”
“I still talk to some of them, yeah.” He turned his head and smiled. “Just fucking ask.”
“Which bands?”
“Riot Act, mostly. Pete was a schoolmate. I was the tour manager for his bands long before he was in any band you’ve ever heard of.”
Tommy was staring at him. “Mr. Epps?”
“Fucking hell,” Sisco laughed. He hadn’t expected that, and he knew Tommy must be a real fan if he’d heard about Mr. Epps. “Okay, yes, I was their tour manager at the Mr. Epps tours. You a fan?”
“Yeah. Like… since I was a kid.”
“Are you calling me old?”
“If you were around for Mr. Epps, I fucking am.” Tommy kept smiling. “It must’ve been so cool.”
Sisco nodded, but thought to himself that it hadn’t just been cool. Maybe at first, but then the money people came along, and with them came a lot of other shit. A lot of their friends turned to drugs, and maybe they should’ve said something, done something, but they were just fucking kids. They didn’t know how to deal with other people’s messes, since they couldn’t even deal with their own. Those broken people in combination with the music industry that hit them like a bomb, it was a recipe for disaster, and a disturbing number of them didn’t make it out alive. Grunge didn’t die when the singer in Haven committed suicide. That was just the end stage of a disease that had been plaguing them for a long time. When he thought about it, it probably started when Roz, the singer in Pete and Frank’s earlier band, O.D.‘d—when heroin became a factor. He didn’t know. He just knew that he lost a lot of friends during those years. To drugs, murder, and suicide.
And he lost Trudy.
-o0o—
Nineties, Seattle, Washington
“You need to come to Harborview right now!” someone yelled at him through the phone line.
S-Duality: A Marauders Novella Page 9