by Jadyn Chase
She got into the car and started the motor. She beamed at me through the windshield, put the car in gear, and waved before she drove off.
This was not a date. This was not a date. I had to keep that in the forefront of my mind at all times. This was not a date. She said so, but I didn’t care. This was the first glimmer of hope I experienced in a long time. I’d been mummified since high school and I didn’t even know it.
5
Ruby
I got out of my car and instantly spotted Eli standing by the diner. A surge of thrilling excitement raced through my insides. Did I make a mistake agreeing to this?
This was just dinner and a little conversation, maybe a trip down memory lane to remember the good times—nothing more. This wasn’t going to turn into anything. I made up my mind about that, so why did I get so fluttery at seeing him again?
This was nothing. I could walk away anytime. Having dinner with him and maybe a few laughs and a few drinks wasn’t turning it into something.
I spent years resolved that I would never have anything to do with him again. Was I already in over my head if I felt this way about him? How did this happen to me?
If I wanted this to become nothing, if I wanted to go back to my life of never seeing him again, I should walk away right now. I should get in my car and drive home to my dad and my son and my two jobs. I should go right on slogging through the days and paying the bills. That’s what this being nothing meant.
I couldn’t face that. I needed one tiny scrap of something for myself outside the slavery of work, parenting, and responsibility. I needed one thing that was mine alone that no one else could take away from me.
I needed the way Eli looked at me. He made me believe I could be something more than a wage mule for other people. Fuck, that was an awful thing to say, much less think, but my life sure felt like that sometimes.
I needed someone to look at me and see more than a paycheck, more than the next meal, more than the rent and the bills. I needed someone to see what I was before I got locked into this life. I needed someone who knew I was more.
Eli knew. Of everyone on the planet, he might be the only person alive who did know. He knew I was that inner ember of being that I was before I had Christopher, before I got roped into taking care of Dad and carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. He didn’t expect me to be anything else.
Seeing him meant that, and I couldn’t live without that. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I fell in deeper than I planned, but I couldn’t escape now. I needed this too bad.
I took a firm grip on myself and strode up to him. I was doing this come Hell or high water. He nodded toward the diner. “Are you sure you want to eat here on your night off? We can go somewhere else?”
“It doesn’t matter to me where we go,” I told him. “We might as well eat here. At least we know it’s good.”
He held the door open for me. How long had it been since anyone held the door open for me? No, wait. I didn’t need to ask. The last time was the last time I went out with him. No one treated me with that kind of dignity and respect since.
I cast a sidelong glance at him while we waited for Tina to seat us. He still wore his gang jacket and hobnailed boots. He looked as much like a biker as ever. He was a biker, but he looked different to me now. Whatever else he did and became in his biker gang, it didn’t change him. It didn’t take away his respect for women. He was still the same guy.
Tina gave us a booth in the back and she didn’t look sideways at Eli’s patches—unlike everyone else in the diner. For some reason, I didn’t care if they did. I thought I would. I thought their judgments would make me uncomfortable, that I wouldn’t want to be seen in public with him.
I wasn’t sure beforehand if I wanted to be seen with him in my workplace, but it didn’t matter now. I just didn’t care if anybody knew I went out to dinner with a known gang member. I didn’t think of him as a gang member anymore. He was just Eli.
I picked up the menu and started studying it like I really needed to think about what I might find on it. I had the whole thing memorized, but what else do you do on a…..? This was not a date. I made that clear. We were not on a date.
I decided to keep it simple by getting a burger. I put the menu aside and discovered Eli staring at me across the table. He didn’t even look at the menu.
I fidgeted in my seat. Then I jerked my chin at the menu. “Do you know what you’re going to have?”
“Huh?”
“What are you going to order?”
He snapped out of a deep trance. “Oh. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter.”
I shifted in my seat again. “Well, aren’t you even going to look?”
Right at that moment, Tina came back. “Are you ready to order?”
“I’m having a cheeseburger and fries,” I told her.
She turned to Eli. “Do you need more time?”
“I’ll have what she’s having,” he replied, “and a cup of coffee.”
Tina left and I fell to studying him again. “Coffee? You ordered coffee the other night, too. Don’t you ever drink anything else? They have beer here.”
“I like to stick to coffee,” he replied. “I hardly ever drink, and I have a meeting with my boss later. I need to keep it clean.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You don’t drink? That surprises me.”
“Why does it surprise you?”
“I don’t know.” I had to think about it. “I guess I thought since you joined Los Diablos that you would be living hard, drinking a lot, and getting in fights and stuff like that.”
“I get in my share of fights, but that’s all the more reason to stay sober. You can’t think so well when you’re all liquored up.”
I had to smile at that. “I see what you mean. Is it bad?”
“Is what bad?”
“Life in the club,” I replied. “It must be extremely violent and dangerous.”
He shrugged. “I guess it is compared to sitting in an office all day. We have to enforce our position and not let anyone step on our toes. Other than that, it’s like being in any other business. We contracted another organization in Mexico to deliver a certain number of units of their product so we could sell them on in LA. Our counterparts decided to jerk us around, invented a few delays and other obstacles to delivery, and even tried to attack us on the side so they could cut us out of the picture. We have to retaliate to make sure they fulfill their end of the contract. That kind of thing.”
My attention riveted to his face. I swallowed to get my voice working. “Are you talking about drugs? Is that the product you’re talking about?”
He glanced sideways. “Guns, actually. Los Diablos doesn’t deal drugs. Our business is totally legitimate. We only bought these guns to defend ourselves from a rival club that wants to destroy us. That’s the only reason we need them. We wouldn’t sell them on the streets the way our enemies do, and we wouldn’t let them fall into the hands of anyone outside our club. We have a code of honor.”
I snorted. “Code of honor. That’s a joke.”
“Why is it a joke?”
“You’re criminals,” I fired back. “You’re hooligans. You use violence to assert your control over others. Admit it.”
“We aren’t criminals, Ruby.” He kept his voice low. No one would have known we were talking about anything more mundane than the weather. “I just told you we don’t deal drugs or guns, and we don’t use violence for anything other than to defend ourselves. Other groups want to destroy us—and not just us. They want to wipe out every man, woman, and child in our territory. They want to turn the survivors into slaves and to destroy everything we’ve built. That’s the only reason we resort to violence, and we almost always wait until they start it. We can’t rely on the authorities to protect us, so we do it ourselves.”
I shook my head and looked away. We weren’t going to come to any understanding on this. I could see that now.
He sat in silence for a while bef
ore he spoke in a barely audible murmur. “You dumped me because I joined Los Diablos, didn’t you? That’s why you cut me off and never spoke to me again.”
“Of course it is,” I fired back. “What did you think?”
“I had no idea. You never gave me any explanation. I tore my hair out for about six months trying to puzzle out what when wrong. You should have just come out and told me. It would have saved a lot of trouble for both of us.”
“Can you blame me?” My voice cracked. Where did all this emotion come from all of a sudden? I never thought sitting across from him would bring up so much buried pain. “I saw you going down a dark road and I couldn’t live with that. I had to cut you out of my life to save myself.”
“I don’t blame you,” he breathed. “I understand it now, but it would have been a lot nicer if you had just told me the truth at the time instead of just wiping me out of your life.”
“Would it have made any difference?” I never thought I’d get a chance to voice these ancient questions. They left my nerves and my heart raw and vulnerable. “Would you have turned your back on Los Diablos if you knew it would have kept me with you? Would it have made any difference at all?”
He lowers his gaze to the tabletop. “Probably not. I had to go. I had to find out for myself.”
“What did you have to find out?” I asked.
He jerked one shoulder backward and scanned the diner. “I can’t really explain it. I lived without that all my life. I had to know what it would be like, and I found out. I don’t think I would give that up for anything, not even you.”
Those words cut deep, and tears flooded my eyes. I don’t know what exactly he’s talking about, but whatever it is, it means more to him than I ever did. Did he ever really love me?
Tina came around and set our plates in front of us. We both remained silent until after she left. What more was there to say? I should just eat this burger and get back to my life.
I took up my knife and fork to cut it in half when Eli surprised me by speaking. “That was then, though. Things are different now.”
I looked up. He sat across from me completely oblivious to the food in front of him. His glinting black eyes rested on my face to the exclusion of all else.
I gulped down the taste of the burger I just anticipated eating. “What do you mean?”
“I know what the club is about now,” he told me. “I don’t need to find out. Other things are more important to me now.”
“Like what?”
“Like family. Like having a future. Like building something of my own.” His lips twitched up into a smile. “I see my boss and some of my friends getting married and settling down to raise families. I might like to have that one of these days.”
I stiffened at the mention of raising families. I set my knife and fork down. They made a louder clatter than I intended. “I don’t see how anyone could raise a family in that environment.”
“I agree it’s not the most ideal. My boss’s wife got killed in a drive-by shooting. There are always dangers living in such close proximity to our enemies, but it’s a nice idea. I see my friends with their wives and their children. It looks pretty good, you know.”
I gazed down at my plate. I knew what it was like to raise a child, but I didn’t bring up Christopher. I didn’t want to talk about that. I thought Eli and I would keep our conversation light and casual. I didn’t know it would turn into this intense personal revelation.
To my horror, he nodded to me and said straight out, “You have a son. That must be nice. Do you mind telling me who his father is?”
I couldn’t drag my eyes away from my plate. “Yes, I do mind.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “I was just trying to make conversation.”
I stole a peek up at him and floundered for some way to change the subject. “How is for you being back in Barstow after all this time? Have you visited your family since you got back?”
His features hardened and he gritted his teeth. “My parents are both dead, but I don’t suppose you knew that. I didn’t expect you to look them up when you came back to town.”
My jaw dropped and I gasped out loud. “Oh, my goodness! I’m so sorry, Eli. That was rude of me. I can’t believe I said something so thoughtless.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He scooped up his burger and took an enormous bite. He consumed almost half of it in one chomp. He chewed it into his cheek and mumbled while he ate. “I was sorry to see how much your dad has deteriorated. That’s gotta be hard on you. He was such a sturdy, sharp guy in his time.”
“Yeah, well….” Now that we were talking about something else, I took up my half-burger ready to eat it. “He had a stroke a few years back that knocked him out. It flattened him in a matter of days. He hasn’t recovered and he probably never will.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. You’re a real brick for stepping up to take care of him.”
I bit back a laugh. “I am not a brick.”
He broke into laughter, too, that infectious laughter I couldn’t resist. “You know what I mean. It must be hard to cover all his medical bills—plus everything the boy needs.”
“Like I told you, I have a second job,” I told him. “I just need to figure out how to change my schedule.”
“How are you going to do that? If your dad isn’t with it enough to take care of himself during the day, then he’s not with enough to keep an eye on your son at night.”
I slid my knife back and forth across the plate. “Yeah. I thought of that.”
“So what’s the solution?” he asked. “You could get a babysitter, but that will eat into your wages. It would hardly be worth the cost.”
“I know.”
I saw the wheels turning in his mind. He was trying to come up with a way to help me. I ought to resist that. I didn’t need his help. I certainly didn’t need the help of any gang member.
At the same time, it endeared me to him even more. He still cared. He didn’t just care about the past. He cared enough in the present to want to come up with a solution to my problem.
I didn’t want him solving my problems, but then again, I did. What if….? No! That couldn’t happen. He wasn’t staying in Barstow anyway. He would leave as soon as his friend got out of the hospital and he completed whatever business he came to town to complete. End of story.
He took another bite and ate in silence, but his eyes never left my face. He finished the burger in the third bite while I still picked away at my first half. I didn’t know what else to say to him.
He finished long before me and sat there staring at me while I did my best to eat. He sipped his coffee like he had all the time in the world.
In the end, I gave up. I laid my utensils aside and pushed the plate away. “I’m done.”
“What’s the matter?” Eli asked. “Is it no good after all?”
“I guess I’m just not that hungry.”
“Do you want to leave?” he asked.
I glanced down at his half-empty coffee cup. “Finish your coffee first.”
“I don’t need it.” He slid the saucer across the table. “Let’s just go.”
He flagged Tina. When she brought the check, he snatched it before I could see the total. “Hey!” I cried. “What are you doing?”
“Paying. What are you doing?” He took out his wallet and put a fifty on the table.
I blinked at him. “You can’t do this.”
“I just did.” He stood up and headed for the door without so much as a by-your-leave.
I stumbled after him and caught up with him near the parking lot. “You can’t do this, Eli. You can’t go around buying my meals and leaving me enormous tips.”
“Why not?” he called over his shoulder.
“Because we’re not together anymore!” I heard myself shrieking those words to the universe. If I yelled them loud enough, maybe I could make myself believe them.
He turned around in front of his motorcycle. “I never said we were. You made it pe
rfectly clear how you feel about me. If that’s the way it is, I’m man enough to accept it. I’m not doing this to get back together with you, although I’d like to.”
I gaped at him in shock. “You would?”
“Of course, Ruby.” He sighed. “You know I would. I would have liked to get back together with you way back when, but if it’s not going to happen, it’s not going to happen. That’s the breaks, as they say. I just want to help you out in any way I can, so take it and be grateful. I’m not trying to buy my way back into your life. I respect you too much for that and I wouldn’t want you under those conditions anyway. I just want to see you happy and living your life with your son and your dad. I’d like to think we can still be friends, but if that’s too much to ask, so be it.”
I couldn’t look away from his chiseled visage. He wanted to get back together. I didn’t hear anything else. He wanted to get back together.
He wanted me to be happy. Now I knew for sure he was the only person alive, definitely the only man, who wanted that. My dad might say that, but he no longer possessed any agency to make it happen.
No one cared about my happiness. I couldn’t think of one person on the face of the Earth for whom my happiness meant a thing.
Eli did. He never stopped caring about me. He went off to Los Diablos to find something he was missing, but he only did that after I broke up with him. If I hadn’t squandered my chance at his heart, he might never have gone in spite of what he said.
He was here now. He was saying those words. I just want to see you happy. He said that in the same breath as saying he wanted to get back together.
No, no, and no. It couldn’t. I couldn’t. I made a choice and I had to stick to it. No matter what he said or thought, he still belonged to Los Diablos. That was my deal-breaker.
A few scattered raindrops touched my cheek and woke me from my stupor. Eli nodded toward my car. “You better get going before you get wet.”
I looked around me in a daze. My car sat right next to his motorcycle. He didn’t show any concern about getting wet, though.