Axle

by Trent Jordan

  That was a completely fair thing for her to say, and I had no room to argue it. It was also a very painful thing to hear her say, especially considering how things had started when she moved here and how they had changed.

  “That’s why I’m applying to a second job, so I can save up money and build toward something better. So that’s one thing. And the other thing? You realize it is really scary to let myself commit to the idea of us trying again, right?”

  Put like that, yeah, it was scary. The idea of us trying to do something that had failed so spectacularly before was terrifying. I had gone through a shitload of stress during our first breakup, to the point that my blood pressure spiked to extraordinarily high levels when I was at my fittest.

  As I slowly started to separate the fun I was having from what may lay ahead, I began to empathize with her.

  “It’s going to take me some time to come around to us being a thing,” she said.

  And then I said the words that I would live to regret, ones uttered in frustration, ones that weren’t indicative of how I really felt, but ones that Rose would nevertheless use to define us.

  “It didn’t take you long to come around to nearly sleeping with me.”

  Fuck.

  Me.

  I knew I’d made a mistake as soon as those words came out. I didn’t even need to see her eyes go wide and her nostrils flare. I could have been a blind man, and I could’ve been able to tell by the way her breathing increase.

  “So that’s what this is all about, isn’t it,” she growled. “You’re just playing the fucking long game so you can fuck me?”

  “No,” I said, desperately trying to regain control of the conversation. “If that were the case, I—”

  “You what?” she snapped. “You what?”

  Shit.

  “If that were the case, I would have just fucked you on Friday. But I didn’t—”

  “Oh, some hero you are.”

  I was trying my best to keep my cool. But now it seemed like Rose wanted to take the gloves off.

  So you know what?

  Fuck it. Gloves off.

  “You know what’s funny? I really am something of a hero to you.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.”

  All stoicism went out the window. There was no self-control at this point. I was just utterly and completely devoid of any calm.

  “I gave you a second chance when you came out here,” I said. “For the way you treated me, I should have burned any memory of you. If memory erasers existed, I would have paid my life savings to forget about you. But I thought, hey, maybe she’s changed. And then you acted like a fucking beggar around me. And still, I rescued your ass when God knows what would have happened at Brewskis.”

  “Oh, fuck off.”

  “I’m about to at this rate. For the number of chances I’ve given you, you won’t get another one.”

  And then she did the worst thing.

  She laughed at me.

  “I should have known better,” she said. “I don’t want another chance, LeCharles. I suppose I should be grateful that you saved me from the Saints, and I am, but for everything else? No, this was all just a ploy to fuck me and then leave on that note. So, instead, leave on this note. Leave on an argument like this. You should be used to that. And never see me again.”

  Jesus. It’s come to that. It’s just like it was ten years ago.

  There was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted to lash back with, and most assuredly, none of it was good or nice. I would have said things that would have scarred both of us for life, her for hearing it, and me for realizing I was capable of saying it. I think the only reason I didn’t say anything was that, at the moment, I somehow figured that not saying anything at all was the most brutal move of all.

  Either way, I stood up, glared at her, and then turned and walked out. The only thing I did otherwise was to briefly say, “bye, Shiloh,” but I kept moving. I didn’t dare stop and pet him, lest I incur the wrath of Rose.

  I slammed the door shut behind me, practically stomped to my bike, got on it, and drove straight home.

  And when I finally got home, when I finally was away from the madness, I took a chance to catch my breath.

  What had I done?

  Just because I’d gotten frustrated by one semi-bad date... just because Rose was, frankly, justified in focusing on herself instead of me... I let everything go to hell? Wasn’t I always the one that said if I ever did get married, it would be to someone strong and independent? Wasn’t I the one that had practically begged for her back the past couple of days?

  And now it had all gone to waste.

  I had acted a fool.

  The best part of my life was gone forever because of my stupidity.

  Rose

  What the hell just happened?

  At first, as LeCharles left, I sat fuming in bed. Shiloh came up, but not even he could pull me out of the unbearable rage that I felt as I heard his motorcycle pull out. I screamed after he was gone in sheer frustration, just wanting to erase the previous five minutes.

  But when he left, I wondered what the fuck had actually just happened. How had I let what felt like five weeks of hard work to give something potentially magical a second chance completely unravel in less than five minutes of a bullshit argument? Why had I lashed out so hard? LeCharles got carried away at the end, and he should have treated my focus with a little more respect.

  But so much of what I said in between...

  “Well, buddy,” I said with a sigh. “The good news in all of this is that I finally get to focus on me and myself. No boys, for the time being, no rekindling of old relationships, none of that. It’s just you and me. And luckily, you’re not an asshole or high maintenance.”

  Shiloh, though, wasn’t having it. He just stared at me with a half-glazed look, as if he was stupefied by what he had just witnessed.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “I know LeCharles could be a great guy. But, buddy, the keyword is could. Not is.”

  Still, my dog gave me that look, as if he thought I was being utterly ridiculous.

  And maybe I was. Maybe tomorrow morning, both of us would realize we had let ourselves slip into the worst kind of bad habit, and we would work to make things right. Maybe it wouldn’t happen tomorrow morning. Maybe it would happen in a few days or something.

  Or, maybe this was the final straw that killed the camel. We’d already broken its back, but for some silly reason, we decided to try and heal it. No more.

  But was it really the right choice to tell him to never see you again?

  I guess we’ll see how I feel in the morning.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t get to really test that idea out.

  Oh, I made it to morning.

  The problem was how I got there—I just never slept. I stayed awake the entire damn night, replaying the events over and over again. Just when I would think that I was about to fall asleep, a part of the argument would come roaring back, and I would wonder if anything could have been done differently. I wanted to say that I actually did fall asleep around three or four in the morning, but by that point, the fight was so embedded in my mind that I just dreamed about it, making it impossible to differentiate from my waking thoughts.

  I felt like I’d made a massive mistake. I felt like in an effort to compensate for being such a pushover with LeCharles and try to win him back, I had swung too far the other way. Dependency was toxic, but too much independence didn’t allow for anything to develop in the first place. I had needed to find just the right balance of independence and interdependence, and such a thing was now barely worth contemplating given I’d probably never see LeCharles again.

  Actually, no, that was false. I would see him constantly, especially if I chose to go out in this town. This wasn’t Los Angeles. This wasn’t Salt Lake City. This was Springsville, a town a little bit bigger than one street but small enough that there was nowhere to hide if someone wanted a social life. I couldn’t dec
ide if that was better or worse than never seeing him again.

  When I got out of bed, I think even Shiloh recognized that a walk just wasn’t a great idea, not with my current mental state. I more or less zombie shuffled to the bathroom, barely bringing my feet off the ground, and had to literally splash cold water in my face to try and be alert for my shift.

  I guess this was just the inevitable outcome of being overly determined to be independent and strong. Someone who flexed their muscles for as long as possible would eventually cramp and injure themselves or just stop, resulting in a need to recover. I should have recognized it was okay to be weak sometimes. I just had to figure out the appropriate times.

  For now, though, I had to get myself through the workday.

  Surprisingly, good things started to happen.

  First, Dr. Clovis pulled me aside before my shift started and said that they had found someone to bring on as a second vet tech. He said that because of this, I could become a senior vet tech and get a pay bump of two dollars an hour more. While such a pay bump barely moved the needle in my socioeconomic status—if I did the math right, it was about an extra four grand a year, a nice bonus but by no means life-altering—it was just barely enough to help me get my bearings straight and some of my debt paid off. Unfortunately, I still needed a second job, but at least it felt like the universe was giving me something resembling good news.

  In the afternoon, on my lunch break, I headed to Bottle Revolution for an interview for the cashier position. I felt hopeful that this would give me the break I needed. It wasn’t a bartending position, so it wouldn’t be hectic, but it wasn’t as passive as being in a grocery store, either, so it hopefully wouldn’t bore me. The manager, a man named Isaac with gray hair in a ponytail, a long white beard, and a light blue polo shirt, shook my hand and took me to an outside table behind the store.

  “So, Miss Wright,” he said.

  That was a bit odd to hear. I didn’t like being called by my last name. Call it a quirk or whatever, but I much preferred hearing Rose.

  “So it looks like you went to USC for undergraduate school. Briefly attended med school. Worked in a lab in LA. Moved to Utah. You’ve had quite the journey, huh?”

  I smiled, but that was partially a mask for the embarrassment I felt. That was probably the nicest way he could say that I was overqualified. And of course, I was. Any job that I was qualified for would not allow me to work part-time. Nor, for that matter, would it allow me to remain in Springsville.

  Maybe that’s what this was all building toward. Maybe the new vet tech to come was not someone I would train, but someone who would replace me. Maybe I’d get that job in Los Angeles that actually paid what my intellect could provide.

  Or maybe I was just looking for anything to be a positive, uplifting note after the disaster that was last night. Just keep moving up. Keep moving up. Eventually, you’ll work someplace amazing, and you’ll date someone that’ll make LeCharles feel like nothing.

  Except you know in your gut that that’s probably just not true.

  And even if it is, what is your end goal?

  I tried my hardest to stay focused in the interview, but that question I asked myself nagged at me throughout the entire interview.

  “So, do you have any experience working behind a register?”

  Is this what you want to end up as?

  “Yeah, in high school, I worked at a grocery store the summer before my senior year. I know technology has changed since then, but it shouldn’t be too hard.”

  Maybe your end goal should be in tech.

  “I see. And do you have experience in the alcohol industry?”

  What industry do you want to end up in? Not this, that’s for sure.

  “I don’t, but I’m a quick learner.”

  Which is why, a decade after graduating college, you’re here, right?

  “Well, I’ll tell you what, Miss Wright.”

  Ugh, please stop.

  “You have a great attitude, I know you’ll be a hard worker, and so if you want the position, we’re more than happy to have you on for weekday evening hours. That’s the hardest time to fill.”

  “I’ll take it,” I said without even thinking about it.

  I didn’t care if it was a difficult time slot to fill. I didn’t care if Shiloh would suffer while I was there. I just needed something, anything to pull me through. And this was my “something, anything.”

  “Oh, but I haven’t even gotten to the details yet,” Isaac said with a laugh.

  “I trust you. You seem like a nice guy.”

  Honestly, I didn’t know him well enough to trust him. I didn’t know enough about him to form an opinion of any kind. I just knew I needed a job, and as long as this met California state laws for payment, I would be fine.

  But where are you going? You know you need to go up, but you can go up into a lot of ceilings if you’re not paying attention. Where is your up?

  “Well, that’s very kind of you, Miss Wright,” Isaac said. “Welcome aboard.”

  He extended his hand. I took it and shook, feeling a little bit empty as I did. I was going through the motions of getting work to improve myself, though I didn’t have a target in mind. Maybe that wasn’t necessary yet. Maybe I just needed to scramble like mad to survive, and then, with the benefit of some financial cushion, I could do a little more.

  But the fact that damn voice wouldn’t shut up...

  “I’ll email you details later this evening.”

  “Sounds good, thanks, Isaac.”

  I then left and headed to the car with a second job that could ensure I could pay my bills... and yet without a smile or the feeling of confidence that I had expected would come, especially with how much good news had come today.

  I didn’t know what my ideal was. Med school was, sure, and then vet school was, sure, but I hadn’t thought on a fundamental level in so long. And what was I going to do dating wise?

  At the very least, it was much easier to rationalize why dating in this town wouldn’t work nearly as well as it would elsewhere. Springsville had LeCharles, and... that was about it. And given how last night had gone, I think I’d have better luck finding a future husband among the high school seniors than I did with the existing crop of bachelors.

  At some point, I hoped my mind would settle down because I didn’t have any faith in me figuring out the hard questions while it was racing like this.

  I managed to get through the rest of my workday without too much distraction of the mind, though much of that came in part because of some rather crazed pets making their way through. I was pretty sure at one point, a Fallen Saint came in with an asshole Border Collie, but he wasn’t one of the Saints at Brewskis, and if he recognized me, he didn’t say anything.

  When seven o’clock hit, I headed straight home, walked into the door, and saw Shiloh bounding toward me, expecting me as always to complete my duty to take him on a walk.

  “Buddy, you sure you want to go for a walk right now?”

  Naturally, he responded with a demanding bark that made it clear that that was not something that was up for negotiation. It was walk him or have him make noise all night long.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I have some good news, you know. I got a second job.”

  Shiloh wagged his tail and dropped his jaw into a smiling pant. God, he was so cute I wanted to smother him.

  “You’re such a good boy,” I said, leaning forward to kiss him. “You never argue with me... well, sometimes you do about walking. But you never call me names. You never criticize me.”

  You never hold me like LeCharles. You never kiss me like he does. You never...

  I leashed up Shiloh and went out the front door in record time, determined to get away from this madness before it consumed me too much. I barely got out of the apartment parking lot when I heard what sounded like an explosion a couple of miles away.

  Even ignoring the fact I could not see anything yet, let alone any smoke, I knew from th
e distant rumble that whatever had just happened was nowhere near me. I knew that if there was an MC fight going on, the odds of me getting caught in the crossfire were slim.

  But if the slim happened?

  I didn’t want my good streak of today to end like that. And God forbid if anything happened to Shiloh...

  Just the thought was enough to put me in an incredibly foul mood as I headed back to the apartment. Thankfully, even Shiloh knew staying here was a bad idea. I could see the concern and the increased panting in his breath to know that he wouldn’t want to stay any longer than he had to.

  “Yeah, let’s get inside.”

  As soon as I did, I opened my laptop to the local news and read the headline with some shock.

  “Brewskis Attacked, Authorities Blame Reapers.”

  The Black Reapers? Wait, that’s LeCharles’ group, right?

  I clicked on the article and watched a video. It showed the local media filming Brewskis having been apparently bombed from the side, with interviews with local Fallen Saints describing the attack as bringing gang warfare to the public. The damage didn’t look severe enough to ruin the building. In fact, it didn’t even look like the blast had blown clean through. But it was obvious that if someone had been near it, they could have gotten killed.

  And then, just as the minute-long clip was about to end, I heard something I could not believe.

  “We have reached out to the club’s VP, LeCharles ‘Axle’ Williamson, for comment.”

  LeCharles was the one who spoke for the club to the media?

  My curiosity was getting the best of me. I really should have let it be and told myself never to go to Brewskis again, but every twenty minutes, I kept refreshing the story to see if LeCharles would have something to say. For someone I said never to see me again, I sure do seem to keep up with him an awful lot.

  Finally, about an hour after the story first broke, LeCharles was shown emerging to some cameras with that same, grim look he always wore on his face. Someone who didn’t know him might have thought he was just calm and cool, but I knew he was incredibly pissed off.