by Claire Adams
“Would it?” I asked.
Zack smiled. “It might have…”
“When’s the last time you came here?”
“Umm… a few weeks before you came to the clubhouse,” Zack admitted. “I come to the house every few months. I just sit in front of it and stare at it and remember my parents. I haven’t ever gone back to their gravestones since they were buried. I do my mourning here… in front of this house.”
We walked down the slope towards the house, and I glanced at Zack. “Do you ever go inside?” I asked.
“No,” I replied. “After Dad moved into the clubhouse… I stayed back for a few months. And then I moved into the clubhouse too.”
“Couldn’t stay behind, huh?”
“At first, I thought it would be nice to have the house to myself,” Zack nodded. “I don’t know; it just didn’t feel right staying on when Dad had left.”
We were standing right outside the house, staring up at its remains. “Do you think you’ll ever make use of this house again?” I asked.
Zack looked thoughtfully at the front door and sighed. “I don’t know… I should do something with it. Otherwise, it’s just sitting here, old and forgotten. I could do it up so that the boys can sleep over maybe… there’ll be more room for everyone.”
I nodded. “That sounds like a good idea.”
“I don’t know that it does,” Zack said. “Most of the older guys have families or partners. They’re not going to end up here…”
He seemed pensive, but there was no sadness in his tone. It felt like he had resigned himself to the inevitable. This club was family to him, but he was also acknowledging that the other men had real families. They had wives and children who needed them.
“Do you want to go inside?” Zack asked suddenly, turning to me.
“I… seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you haven’t been in there for a while?”
“I haven’t,” he admitted. “But there’s no reason not to go inside. I don’t believe in ghosts anyway.”
“I do,” I said.
“You do?” Zack turned to me.
“Well… yeah,” I nodded. “I think very few people actually see the ghosts, but I think it’s possible that people leave behind an imprint of themselves.”
“To finish unfinished business?” Zack asked.
“More like to watch over the people they care about.”
Zack smiled. “That’s a beautiful notion.”
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” I asked.
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t think you’re crazy. It’s nice that you have faith in things. I don’t.”
“You don’t have faith in anything?” I asked.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Faith implies that there’s some sort of cosmic reason for everything. Nothing happens by chance; everything has a purpose and a meaning. I’ve always felt like life itself is one big accident. Things happen every day without any reason. There’s no order or meaning; there’s just chaos and random occurrences.”
“Hmm…”
Zack turned to me with a smile. “Not the most optimistic viewpoint.”
“Well, I didn’t expect you to think any differently,” I admitted. “No offense, but you don’t look like the optimistic type.”
I laughed. “Come on… let’s see what the inside of this ruin looks like.”
The door was sort of wedged shut, and Zack had to push it open with the side of his body. There was nothing inside the house… not even furniture. It was just empty rooms filled with cobwebs and not much else. I closed my eyes for a second and imagined what it would have been like ten or twenty years ago with painted walls and curtains on the windows and the sound of people living amongst its walls.
I turned to Zack, and he was looking around like he really was seeing a ghost. I wondered for a second why he had chosen to bring me here and why he had chosen to come inside after years of avoiding it. Was that significant to him, or was it significant to us?
“When I was a kid, I always assumed I’d spend the rest of my life in this house,” Zack said, breaking the silence.
“You never know.”
Zack turned to me. “You think I’ll come back here?”
“Why not?” I asked.
Zack shook his head. “This house is part of a different story,” he said. “Its purpose is different. I think I may just tear it down and put up a new structure… something specific for the club.”
“Really?” I asked, in surprise.
“My parents are gone,” Zack said. “They raised their family here, and now I’ve moved on too. Maybe a fresh start is necessary.”
I wondered if there was a double meaning to his words. Was he trying to encourage me in the same way? Was he trying to tell me to get on with my life, to start fresh in a new place? Was he trying to tell me that since Walter had vanished into thin air, it was time to move on?
“A fresh start,” I repeated. “It sounds scary to me.”
“It always is,” Zack nodded. “Even if you want it.”
“What if you don’t want it?” I asked.
“Who wouldn’t want a fresh start?” Zack asked.
I nodded. “Yeah…”
Zack was looking around the house with faraway eyes, and I knew he was seeing the house he had grown up in. Not as it was now, neglected and old, but fresh and vibrant and filled with sound. I walked right up beside him, but I resisted the urge to take his hand. That had never been our relationship.
“Show me your room,” I said.
He nodded and started waking up the stairs. I followed behind him, and the stairs creaked beneath our feet. The staircase led to a small landing with a narrow corridor to the left and two doors to the right. Zack took me down the corridor to the last door on the right. He pushed open the door, and we walked in. It wasn’t as small as I had imagined. Or maybe it just looked that way because there was nothing in it.
The windows were large, however, and light streamed into the space, making it seem brighter than the rest of the house. There was nothing left of Zack’s childhood. No posters or mementos… nothing to tip me off as to the child or the teenager he had been.
Zack walked to the window. “It’s been years since I’ve been here,” he said softly, as though he were talking to himself.
“Zack?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you bring me here?” I asked.
His eyes focused in on me, and the beautiful hazel seemed to sparkle a little brighter for a second. “I don’t know,” he replied after a moment.
I frowned. He didn’t know? What did that mean? Maybe he was still confused about his feelings for me. I could understand that to a point. I had been confused for the longest time too. But I had come to terms with how I really felt about Zack in the last few days. I could just never admit it out loud to him. I decided not to think about it. What would be the point? What would happen would happen and worrying about it wouldn’t change a thing. So I decided to simply make the best of the moment.
I walked up to him and kissed him softly on the lips. He seemed taken aback but pleased. I realized I had never initiated sex with him before. He was always the one who approached me. I felt his hands on the small of my back, and I felt that familiar tingle between my thighs as I moistened in anticipation.
I acted on instinct, driven by the need to live in the moment and my desire for Zack; I slipped to my knees and unzipped his pants. He stood still and watched me as I pulled down his pants and yanked his erect cock free of the material. I had never given head before, but I decided to do what I had done so far and simply go on instinct.
I slipped the tip of his cock into my mouth, and I heard him moan. Encouraged by the sound, I opened my mouth wider and took the length of him inside me. I could feel him at the back of my throat, and I almost gagged, but I managed to keep from choking. Saliva engulfed his cock, and I sucked on his dick until I felt his body shiver. He was
the one that stopped me, and I knew it was because he was close to cumming, and he wanted to prolong the moment for as long as possible.
He got to his knees too and pushed me down on the dusty floorboards. I could tell that he didn’t want to wait or go slowly. He was ready to fuck me, and that was exactly what I wanted, too. He pushed inside me desperately, and I moaned in delight at the thread of sensations that enveloped me. He started pumping into me harder and harder until all I could hear was the sound of his balls slapping up against my thighs.
I tried to cling to his back, but he grabbed my hands and pinned them down against the floor. His chest was pressed up against my breasts, and I could feel the perspiration on his body wipe off on mine. He was fucking me so hard that he couldn’t kiss me, but it didn’t matter. There was nothing more personal than this. He was as deep inside me as a man could be in a woman. When I sensed he was close to cumming again, he changed position and flipped me over before fucking me hard doggy style. The wooden floors scraped my hands and knees, but I didn’t care. It barely even registered. All I could concentrate on was Zack’s cock slamming into me.
For the next position, Zack positioned me on top of him, and I had to ride him to my climax and his. My breasts bounced around with the urgency of my movements, but I kept going, spurred on by the way his hips moved in rhythm with mine. Afterward, we lay side-by-side, naked on the hardwood floors and looked out the open window at the sky above us. It was a pale blue dotted with little tufts of cloud that moved slowly past us.
“This is a good house, Zack,” I told him softly. “I know it’s not my place to say so… but I don’t think you should tear it down.”
He took my hand unexpectedly, and I felt myself freeze in response. “It is a good house,” was all he said.
Chapter 27
Zack
“Hello, Zackary,” Miriam said, sliding into the seat opposite me. “Where’s your beauty you brought here the last time?”
I smiled. “She’s at home.”
“At home, you say?” Miriam asked. “I didn’t realize you were living together.”
“We’re not,” I said, realizing how it sounded.
“Oh… just visiting then?”
I had to nod. “Yes, I suppose she is.”
“I like her,” Miriam said voluntarily. “She seems the right sort of girl for you.”
I frowned. “How do you figure that?”
“She’s beautiful, and she has this delicate nature about her… but you can tell she’s strong too. And that’s what you need: a strong woman.”
I nodded. Then, I realized I was painting the wrong picture of Mila and me. “We’re not together,” I said, but it felt like a lie on my tongue.
“You’re not?” Miriam asked, with raised eyebrows. She clearly thought I was lying.
“No,” I said. “We’re just… friends.”
“Hmm… ok.”
“I’m not telling you a lie, Miriam.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” she said, without missing a beat. “She’s a great girl. You shouldn’t let her get away.”
I sat back in my seat. “I’m really just waiting for my food.”
“It’ll get here,” Miriam replied impatiently. “Take it easy.”
I sighed. “I thought this place was supposed to be fast.”
“We’re not fast food,” Miriam said pointedly. “We’re gourmet. And you can wait ten more minutes. You know something tells me that this is more serious than I thought, which is why you’re getting so uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable,” I denied quickly.
“Please… why would you be in such a hurry to run out of here then?”
“Because the boys are waiting for me back home.”
“The boys?” Miriam asked. “Or your girl?”
“She’s not my girl,” I corrected.
“Why is that?” Miriam asked seriously.
I opened my mouth to say something snippy, but then I really thought about her question. I had been battling with it the last couple of days too. My relationship with Mila had found a happy place of comfort. We trained together regularly, we fucked almost every day, and afterward we would stay up and talk, sometimes for hours. It looked like a relationship, and it felt like one. We were both just refusing to call it one. Perhaps because we both knew that at the end of this thing, Mila would leave for another state and it would be that much harder to get over.
I thought about Walter Black, and I realized that my interest in him had faded fast in the last two weeks. I was starting to believe that maybe he didn’t really exist. Maybe he was just a random guy who disappeared right after because he was scared of retaliation. Maybe he had nothing to do with the Knights, and I had constructed that narrative because I had been so consumed by revenge.
Now I actually hoped that the narrative I had built was wrong. That way, I could forget about Walter Black and I could concentrate on Mila. But what would I do in that case? Ask her to stay with me? That was a huge step, and it was a declaration of my feelings for her. There were moments, however, when we were lying in bed together that I felt as though she wanted the same thing.
It felt as though she wanted me to tell her to stay. But I wasn’t sure if that was just wishful thinking on my part. She had made it clear from the start that I was the wrong type of guy for her and this was the wrong lifestyle for her.
“Zackary?”
I blinked and focused on Miriam. “You’re married, right?” I asked, turning the questions around on her.
She smiled and nodded. “Twenty-four years this winter.”
“And what’s it like being in a long-term relationship?”
“Fucking irritating,” Miriam replied. “Eighty percent of the time.”
“I see.”
“But the other twenty percent… well, that’s magic right there,” she said. “And it’s worth it.”
“Twenty-eighty,” I said. “Doesn’t seem like it is.”
“Oh, trust me, you’ll only realize it when you’ve found the right person,” she said. “But it’s totally worth it. Can you imagine what it’s like to have a partner in life, someone you can trust and rely on? You’ve got a best friend and a lover all rolled into one; you have someone you can yell at for no reason who won’t hold it against you the next day. You’ve got someone who can pick up the slack when you’re sick or tired. You’ve got someone who will have your back when no one else will. I mean, who wouldn’t want that?”
I smiled. “How did you meet him?” I asked.
Miriam seemed amused by my questions. “It’s interesting that after all these years, you’re finally interested in my life.”
“Sorry…”
“Don’t be,” Miriam laughed. “Sometimes you need to relate first before you can be interested in someone else. I suppose you never had a reason before Mila.”
It was painfully obvious that she knew why I was asking so many questions about her marriage. She saw the same need in me that I had recognized. I wondered if I was that transparent to everyone or if Miriam was just very perceptive.
“I met Darren when I was twenty-seven,” she said. “I was doing my Ph.D, and he was a surf instructor.”
“What?” I asked.
Miriam laughed. “Which part are you surprised by?”
“Every part,” I replied. “The fact that you have a doctorate, for starters… and the fact that you’re apparently married to a surfer.”
Miriam winked. “It doesn’t sound good on paper, does it?”
“No.”
“That’s what everyone thought too,” she laughed. “Hell, that’s what I thought. But we had this connection that was impossible to deny. He had just come off a messy divorce, and I was still figuring out my life, so it was just supposed to be a fling. We actually broke up for about six months. I ended things with him because I thought we were too different. Our lifestyles would never meld together.”
“Then what happened?”
“I
realized that the six months we were apart were the worst of my life. I even had to take a break from my Ph.D. because I couldn’t concentrate. We ended up getting back together, and three months later, we were married.”
“Wow.”
“I got my doctorate, we bought a house by the sea, and somehow… things worked out.”
“How did you end up here?” I asked. “Running a burger shack in this tiny town?”
“It was the one thing we had in common,” Miriam laughed. “He loved to cook and experiment with food, and so did I. We decided that when the kids left the nest, we would start up a burger shack together… and amazingly, we did.”
I nodded. “That’s quite the love story.”
“It’s beautiful when you hear it in a couple of sentences, but we’ve had our rough patches, too. We separated for a couple of months when the kids were really young, but we always found our way back to each other.”
“Why do you think you did when so many other couples don’t?” I asked.
“Because we tried harder,” Miriam replied. “And we loved harder too. No relationship comes easy, Zack; you’ve got to fight for it if the person you’re with is worth fighting for.”
I nodded, wondering if my mother would have given me the same advice had she been here. I decided she would have. “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
“Good,” Miriam nodded. “Gregory, bring Zack’s order up please.”
I shook my head at her. “Have you been holding out on me?”
“You wouldn’t have stayed to chat if you’d gotten your order right away.”
I laughed and got to my feet as Gregory came out with my order. “Thanks, Miriam,” I said sincerely.
“Anytime,” she winked at me.
I left the shack, stowed the food safely away, and then headed home on the back of my Harley. I had wanted to surprise Mila with her favorite burger from the shack, and I was counting on a quiet night in her bedroom. The boys would be around today, and even though most of them knew what was happening, we didn’t like to parade it around. No one really knew what the deal was between us anyway… least of all Mila and me.