I rev my engine, pull on my helmet and slam my aviators into place.
“And I’m not your baby girl.”
Ana fishtails in front of me, kicking up a cloud of grey dust and gravel in my face. I shake my head and jet after her. I’m gonna have that girl naked beneath me before the week’s end.
Ana
I look at the clock once more. You know? Just in case someone miraculously invented a time machine and I find myself somewhere back in time before three am. The ceiling fan whirs overhead and the summer heat has sweat sticking my PJs to my body. I kick the covers to the end of my bed and resolve not to think about what it is I’m thinking about: Elijah Cade.
Although, if I have to think about Elijah, it’s kinda nice to remember the look on his face when he finally caught up to me last night.
“I take it back,” he’d shouted over the roar of our engines. “That’s sure as shit no grandma bike.”
The look on Elijah’s face when I left him in the dust was priceless. I mean, yeah, I drive a Vespa, but my dad custom builds and restores Harleys. If he couldn’t get me on a “real” bike he at least had to modify it so that I wouldn’t be a laughing stock. He souped-up the engine one night while I was asleep, a fact I was not too happy about as it voided my warranty, but I guess when your dad’s the best mechanic in the state little things like null and voided warranties never really come into play.
I’d given Elijah a smug smile and he’d shoved his sunnies back into place and sped off in front of me, copying my fishtail manoeuvre to a tee. I was so not having that, and I’d let him know by overtaking him at every possible turn. Of course, we’d been speeding and we’d overshot the turn-off by about ten km, but it had been so nice just to drive and play that I couldn’t have cared less.
An almighty crack of thunder had made me glance up at the storm clouds overhead, at which point I’d decided I didn’t want to get caught in the rain and I’d let Elijah zoom past me, only to turn around and head in the other direction when he thought he had me beat. It had been a good five minutes before I’d seen him slip in behind me again and maintain a steady speed. When we’d reached the river, or as close to the river as the road would take us, I’d walked him through the rocky, overgrown trail and down the steep sloping bank. From the obscurity of the trees, I pointed out “Big Gay Bob” and hightailed it out of there, before my dad or the dragon could see me.
“You’re not gonna stay?” Elijah had said.
“Nope.” I’d called over my shoulder.
“What if I get lost?”
I’d turned and walked backwards without any fear of falling or making a complete dork out of myself. I knew that terrain like the back of my hand. When I was younger the bikers would drag their kids along to those bonfires. I knew every twist, turn and protruding rock of that path. “Then you’ll have a really long trek back to your bike.”
My reply had been rewarded with a flash of dimple. For a moment I’d forgotten just how dangerous Ole’ Melty Eyed Dimples was. “Thanks for the ride, Ana No Last Name.”
“Welcome to Sugartown, Elijah Cade.”
Now, as I lie in bed, I can’t stop thinking about him. I wanted to stop thinking about him, needed desperately to stop thinking about him if I was going to be any use at work tomorrow, but instead I found myself tiptoeing through the house, grabbing the keys to the shop and scurrying out into the rain in my singlet top and boy shorts to make pies in the industrial-sized kitchen until the sun came up.
And that’s exactly where Holly found me at 9 am, with my head resting on the flour-covered bench and twenty Triple Chocolate Melted Fudge pies surrounding me.
Holly casts suspicious eyes around the room and arcs her waxed-to-perfection brows. “Rough night?”
“The roughest.”
“Well, considering there’s not some tattooed motorcycle god half naked in this kitchen, I’ll take it as a sign your date didn’t go well.”
“Pfff, he’s hardly a motorcycle god. Bespa” —yes, I named my bike, don’t judge me— “ran rings around that little tricycle of his. And it wasn’t a date.”
“You sound like your dad.” Holly rolls her heavily made-up eyes and dips her equally manicured finger into the pie that I’d taste tested early this morning, “Mmmm, delicious. Wait, did you change the recipe for your surprise pie?”
“No. This is something different.” I rise and stretch out all the aches and pains of spending the night in the kitchen, but not before I see her brow arch and a knowing smile slip across her lips. I busy myself wiping flour from the bench with a nearby rag.
“Whatcha doin’?”
“Cleaning.”
“No I mean whatcha doing?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” I feign innocence but she sees right through it. I am so busted.
“What’s it called, Ana?”
“I haven’t named it yet.” I work real hard at scrubbing the imaginary stain on the bench.
Holly lets out a gasp. It’s so loud, it has me jumping up on the chair, thinking she’s seen a bluetongue lizard in the kitchen, “You sneaky little slutsky! You totally made him a pie!”
“I did not make him a pie!”
“You dirty whore!” she shrieks as she picks up a nearby broom and starts prodding my butt with the handle.
I swat at her with my floury dishrag. “Would you cut it out?”
“Oh Elijah, won’t you try my pie? I made it just for you,” she taunts in a high-pitched, girly tone that sounds absolutely nothing like me. “What’s that, you wanna stick your fingers in my deliciously silky, warm pie?”
I’m so focused on Holly’s taunting and the wickedly jabby broom handle currently tenderising my rump that I don’t hear the bell signal a customer. And this is how Elijah finds us as he stares through the serving window: me in my underwear, covered head to toe in chocolate and flour, standing on the chair I’d slept on and having my arse poked by a very dead best friend—or at least, she will be, once I get him to leave. For a minute we are frozen, all three of us just gawking at one another.
“Mornin’.” Elijah grins. And there they are, both dimples popping out to say hello. And it’s not even ten am yet. The snide bastard makes no attempt to hide the fact he’s ogling me from head to toe.
With a squeak, I drop the rag and attempt to cover myself, but in my haste the movement throws me off balance, which then causes my chair to tilt at an angle that’s not conducive to keeping me on my feet. I fall flat on my face and, to my absolute horror, while I’m down there acquainting myself with the checked lino and the dust bunnies, Elijah sidles right up to the window and starts up a conversation about our brand new pies. Like he didn’t just witness the single most humiliating moment of my life, and neither he nor Holly can see my half-naked arse sticking out from behind the island bench.
I. Am. Beyond. Mortified.
And, just when I’m thinking this day couldn’t possibly get any worse, I hear the shop door open and my dad’s gravely greeting. Big Bob enjoys mornings about as much as I do.
I quit trying to dig myself a shallow grave through the linoleum floor, shoot up from behind the safety of my counter with a very calm head and nod to each of them.
“Elijah. Bob.”
Dad’s eyes narrow and his ever-present scowl threatens to divide his forehead in half. “Ana?”
Oh crap. I know that voice. I haven’t heard that voice since I was ten-years-old and he caught Holly and I with a stolen packet of cigarettes. We hadn’t even had a chance to light up before he was pulling us out from behind the supermarket and humiliating us in front of the whole town. The look on my dad’s face now says he’s about two seconds away from picking me up by the scruff of the neck and crucifying me where I stand.
And yeah, okay, maybe from his standpoint this looks bad, but despite me being a nineteen-year-old woman, Dad’s still struggling with the fact that I’ve moved from training bras to push up bras, and thinking boys were stinky to maybe wanting to sleep with on
e. And since Elijah seems to be the only male within a 5 kilometre radius and he just caught his daughter half naked in the kitchen, things aren’t looking good for any of us.
He turns the full weight of his scowl on Elijah, who is still smiling like he just won the freaking lottery and a Christmas ham. “Son?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Haven’t you got a bike to fix?”
Elijah still hasn’t taken his eyes off me, but my dad’s tone brokers absolutely no argument, and what’s more, when he gets an eyeful of Bob Belle’s infamous scowl, he clears his throat.
“YES, SIR! I’LL GET RIGHT ON IT ...” he yells. And why wouldn’t he yell? After all, it is what I told him.
Dad winces at the volume. Holly is laughing again, like a whacked out chimpanzee and I’m just too mortified for words. Elijah scurries back through the shop with a nod in our direction and an exclamation of, “I freaking love this town!”
“I’m. Just. Gonna. Go ... now,” I mutter and exit through the back door with my tail between my legs.
Elijah
Two weeks on and I still can’t forget seeing hot waitress Ana standing in her underwear. Not that I’d want to forget. In fact, that image has been on replay in my spank bank twice a day for a fortnight now. I’d give my left nut to get beneath those lacy little boy shorts. The fact that she’s still playing hard to get is pissing me off and turning me into a fucking horn dog. I don’t usually walk away from a challenge, but sometimes life throws you so much shit you’ve just gotta quit while you’re ahead.
And other times life throws you a bone, or in my case, a raging boner for the hot waitress in the pie shop across the road. If I were a smart man I’d walk away, I’d cut my losses and move on to the next hot piece of arse, and I’d be better off—hell, that waitress would be better off. But no one ever accused me of being smart. Like all men, I think with the little head more than is good for me and I can’t walk away without a taste of that girl.
And speaking of the “little head”, I’ve got a date with a slice of pie and a hot waitress who’s about to fill my spank bank fantasies for another fortnight.
I slide out from under the hood of a 1971 GTX Plymouth Road Runner. It’s the kind of car you want to drape a warm body over the hood and fuck till you’re both senseless. And, with all the bikes I’ve been workin’ on lately, it’s been nice to slide beneath a machine as beautiful as this. I’m pretty confident that I’ll have this thing purring like a kitten before the afternoon is out.
I wash up in the sink in back, scrubbing the pungent smell of grease and brake fluid from my hands. My stomach growls.
My cock twitches when I think of the way Ana smells as she leans across the table to set my pie in front of me. I always sit in the very last booth, closest to the counter. I face away from the windows so I’m looking directly into the kitchen and sit as far back in the booth as possible so she has to lean in to slide my plate in front of me. It’s kind of a dickhead move, I know, and I’m sure she knows exactly what I’m up to, but I don’t care.
Fuck, I’m getting hard just thinking about her in that cute little uniform, those gorgeous tits spilling out the top. I squeeze my eyes shut and think about old ladies and nuns and sweaty old man balls, anything to take my mind off Ana’s big, beautiful tits that are making me so hard I can’t see straight. I’m playing these things on a loop and whispering, “Old ladies, nuns, sweaty old man balls” over and over, and just praying that the meat muscle will chill the fuck out and let me get through one friggin’ day without getting a boner in public for the hot waitress, when I glance into the mirror above the sink and see Bob standing behind me. His arms are crossed in front of his chest and he’s scowling. Nothing new there; he’s always scowling.
“You heading to lunch?”
“YEAH, YOU WANT SOMETHING?”
“A word before you go.”
“ALRIGHT.” I tear off a chunk of paper towel and take the opportunity to readjust things below as he walks toward the back seat of a sawed in half Ford Falcon that Bob uses as a couch. I follow him over and sit on an old milk crate that someone strapped some foam to at some point to make a stool. The tape is worn around the edges, it sticks to my jeans and the foam has worn down to nothing, picked away by tiny fingers.
“You got a problem with your ears, kid?”
“NO, SIR.”
“Then quit friggin’ yellin’ at me.”
“But I thought—”
“Son, do you own a shirt?”
I glance down at my tattooed torso, taking a minute to appreciate the fact that, although I haven’t seen the inside of a gym for six months, my work, the mini workouts I do in my room every morning and my daily runs are enough to keep me pretty built. I look back up at Bob and he’s not at all happy with the way I look. Maybe he’s into hairy guys?
“Yeah, of course,” I say, feeling a little uncomfortable at the way he’s glaring at me.
“Well, why the bloody hell don’t you ever wear it, instead of parading around here like it’s the fucking Mardi Gras?”
I grab the shirt tucked into my back pocket and pull it over my head, utterly confused. “I thought ... I thought you were into that?”
Bob turns three shades of pale. No shit, it’s like I’m staring at a fucking ghost. “Look mate, you’re a real good worker. You keep your head down, you don’t carry on like a pork chop when I ask you to close up late Fridays. Now, I gotta be honest, I wasn’t too sure about this whole ... arrangement in the beginning, and despite riding some import pushbike, you know your way around an engine. I know you’ve had some trouble in your past and I can see you’re trying to make amends for that. You’re a good kid and what you do in your free time is none of my business. I like you, Son. As an employee. If you like blokes then ... we’ll find a way to co-exist, but you’ve got to start wearing a shirt. It’d be a shit fight if OH&S came in and saw you—”
“Wait. You think I’m gay?” I start laughing at how fucking ridiculous that notion is, considering I’ve been jacking off to the image of the same girl for the last two weeks. The same girl that told me my boss was partially deaf and that he’d require me to work half naked. That sneaky bitch. She is so going down for this. “Dude, I’m not gay. I thought you were.”
“Son, I am not gay. I’ve been married twice. I have kids.”
“I didn’t know you had kids.”
“Well, you should, you spend enough time with them at the pie shop.”
“Hot waitress Ana is your daughter?”
“Hot waitress?” Bob’s eyebrows shoot all the way back into his hairline. “Whaddya mean, hot waitress?”
Fuck! I just said that out loud, didn’t I?
I shoot up from my stool. Bob’s standing now, too. His enormous arms are folded in front of his enormous body and I’m not afraid to say I’m shitting myself at the scowl I’m seeing on his face. This scowl is different from all his other scowls: it’s a don’t fuck with my daughter kind of scowl, and yeah, I may have seen plenty of those in my twenty-three years, but none have ever been this scary. It’s the disapproving dad scowl to end all dad scowls and what makes it worse is that it’s also coming from the dude who pays my wage.
Fuck! I am so screwed.
“I’m just gonna head out now,” I mutter, as I take a step back, and then another, and soon I’m half way across the shop.
“Take one more step and I’ll bust your nuts with my favourite wrench.” He smiles but it’s not a friendly smile. It’s a we’re-going-to-have-us-a-little-chat-and-then-I’m-gonna-cut-off-your-balls-for-even-thinking-about-what’s-between-my-daughter’s-legs smile. In other words, this is the moment where I’d normally run. “We’re gonna have a talk you and me.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Really? ‘Cause right now, son, my thoughts aren’t fuckin’ pretty.”
I put my hands up in surrender. “I haven’t touched her, I swear.”
“You’re not gonna touch her, are you, son.” That
really wasn’t a question. He meant: do not fucking touch my daughter!
“No, Sir.”
“You keep your mind on the job and your dick in your pants, are we clear?”
“Yes, Sir.” I gulp. “Crystal.”
After that, Bob leaves to beat the shit out of a rusted old engine. I skipped lunch that day, and the next.
* * *
By closing time on Friday I was itching for a way to get back at Ana and, yeah, I’m not gonna lie, the thought of her tits spilling out of that uniform may have been responsible for my feet carrying me across the road to Belle’s Pies instead of releasing the throttle on my bike and travelling as far away from hot waitress Ana as I could in order to keep the family jewels intact.
I smile at the girls behind the counter and slide into my usual booth.
“Hey, Ana Belle. How you doin’ today?”
“What’s up Cade? We haven’t seen you here for a couple of days—” Her eyes widen, and she tugs her bottom lip in tight with her teeth. “You just called me Ana Belle, didn’t you?”
“Jigs up, baby girl.”
From the counter I can see Holly chortling, though she’s such a tiny thing it sounds more like a cat sneezing. Ana chuckles too, like having me on is the funniest damn thing in the world. “You know I spent the last two weeks screaming at your dad and parading myself around half-naked in front of him because I was worried he’d fire me if I didn’t. Now I think he might fire me because I was dumb enough to listen to you two little girls.”
Ana frowns like she’s honestly offended by that and by the way Holly guffaws and throws herself over the counter, I’m convinced she’s off her rocker and may need to be sedated before she starts throwing pies at the customers. “We’re hardly little girls.”
“No? What would you call yourselves then? Grown women?”
“Yes.” She says indignantly. I know she’s anything but little, still I can’t resist.
“Prove it.”
Shut the fuck up, you dickhead, Bob is going to have your arse for this, I think. My mouth opens anyway and my Johnson dances a fucking jig inside my pants. “Go out with me tonight.”
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