by Lena Bourne
“It’s just that I said I’d meet up with the guys…” Ace says, but stops talking when Stormi gives him one of her sharp, warning looks. With all her boyfriends before Ace, she was all lovey and accommodating all the time, never really speaking her mind, never really protesting anything, never being truly herself. I love that she can be like that with Ace.
“Come on, Stormi,” I say. “I don’t feel like going home yet.”
We’ve reached the car and the sound of the merriment from the street outside the casino is just a distant, muffled echo now. I miss it already. Stormi gives me an appraising, head-to-toe look, her gaze lingering on my chest the longest.
“I’m fine,” I say and smile at her. Plus I haven’t seen Brenda in ages. And neither have you.”
She gives me an apologetic, kind of guilty look, making me realize she had every intention of coming back after they dropped me off at home. It’s more than a little irritating, to be honest. Though I am grateful for everything she’s done for me and continues to do.
“Oh, why not?” she finally says with a loud sigh, and opens the back door of the car wide for me. “But you’ll tell me if you feel faint or would rather go home. And no more alcohol.”
I had half a glass of wine with dinner, it’s all she let me have.
“I promise,” I say and climb into the back seat before she can change her mind again.
I’m glad to be off my feet which are aching like…well, I don’t really have anything to compare the ache to. I’ve never worn high heels before. And I probably won’t wear them again for a long time.
I roll my window down as we drive off, glad for the breeze on my face, glad for the lights and the noise and the energy of all these people around me. I wish I’d experienced all this before now. I wish it was as normal as it must be for Stormi and Ace. And at the same time, I’m glad it’s not. This way I can experience it all for the first time. The way they never can again.
To simply live life. That’s always been my biggest wish, the one I never confided in anyone because it was too sad to speak out loud.
Blaze
As per usual, The Lounge is noisy and smoky and loud. Rock music I don’t recognize, nor can actually decipher the riffs of, much less the lyrics, is blaring, yet women’s laughter and excited men’s voices are still heard clearly above the din.
This bar has been around since the time of the great casinos of the 1960s and 70s and the walls are covered with black and white photos from that time. This nightclub has always belonged to Devil’s Nightmare MC, just one of the many places where money is laundered. I assume. I’ve only been a member of the MC for about two years and there is a lot about its running I don’t know yet. Most of it, I never will, I’m sure of that.
This place isn’t just for club members though. Businessmen still in their suits are rubbing shoulders with young, hip, social media influencer-types or whatever the hell they call themselves. I even saw a few women I vaguely recognized, probably from TV or movies. I haven’t watched much of either in the last two years.
The ladies in here—cocktail waitresses or whatever they’re called—are much prettier than the club girls back in the Pleasantville bar, or the one at the clubhouse here in Vegas. Not that our club girls aren’t top-notch. That’s because they’re treated right. Not like the girls at the club my father and brother rode with back in Nebraska. Here they’ve all got long, shiny, flowing hair, legs for days, and every curve in the right place. At the clubhouse, they’re a little more wild, a little less put-together but just as perfect. Not that I’m interested in taking any of them home.
One thing I’ve learned during my time with the Devils is that the perfect woman is not necessarily the one I’m looking for. Or the one that can get me off the fastest. Back when women who looked like these were way out of my reach, I thought different. Not that finding a woman is high on my list of priorities. I’ve seen too much death and destruction lately. Hard to be at peace having seen all that. Hard to think of bringing anyone in to share it.
I had hoped I’d see the moonlight lady tonight, but we’ve been here for hours and she’s clearly not coming. I might take off soon, since I’ve had just about all I can take of Colt and Brenda being all over each other. I don’t think they came up for air more than three times since we got here.
It’s not jealousy or envy. I’m happy my best buddy has found a woman willing to put up with him 24/7. Speaking from experience, I know it’s not an easy job. It’s just that it sucks being the third wheel.
I nudge Colt’s arm, while he’s busy enjoying a private lap dance from Brenda in the leather armchair next to me. I have to punch him before I finally have his attention.
“I’m gonna go now,” I tell him as he glares at me, his eyes are glassy and unfocused.
“Why, man? Stay,” he says, his voice about as distant as that look in his eyes.
“This isn’t my kinda scene tonight,” I tell him. “I need the peace and quiet of the clubhouse.”
He chuckles at that, proving he did actually listen to me complain about life these last couple of weeks. But of course, I knew that already. He has my back and I have his. It’s how it’s always been between us. The only difference is that he’s busy with other things now.
“Have fun,” he tells me and chuckles again then buries his face between Brenda’s soft-looking breasts, which I shouldn’t be looking at.
I sigh, finish my beer, grab my jacket and stand up to leave. Then plop right back into my chair so hard it hurts.
There she is. Sandwiched between Ace and Stormi, she glows the way holy apparitions always do in movies and TV shows. I hear nothing anymore, and everything and everyone else in this bar are suddenly of a meaningless blur of color and light.
That’s gotta mean something.
I’ve always been a superstitious man. I’m not ashamed to admit it, especially since it’s saved my ass more times than I can count.
But this connection I have to the moonlight lady, to the White Lady…I’ve never experienced anything even remotely like it.
It’s gotta mean something, something important, but I’ll be damned if I have the first idea what.
But I do know I want to touch her. I want to know if that glow around her is as warm and pleasant as it looks.
Misti
Where the casino we just left was majestic, this new place we came to is timeless. Elegant, yet shabby, laid-back, yet somehow upscale. Heavy purple velvet drapes with golden tassels cover the windows, pooling on the hardwood floor, which is somehow still gleaming despite all the people walking and dancing on it for decades, I’m sure. The old photos in ornate black, white, brown, and silver frames covering the walls seem to suggest this has been a happening place since way back. Marilynn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and other long-gone celebrities are lounging before the velvet drapes in the photos.
“This place is like old Vegas, isn’t it?” I ask.
Stormi gives me a puzzled look. “What do you know about old Vegas?”
But of course, she wouldn’t know just how much I know about this town. And how many nights I lay awake in my small bedroom fantasizing about one day seeing it all. Being part of it.
My sister had such deep, heartbreaking guilt over being healthy while I was so sick that I never shared any of that with her. She always believed, and I’m sure she still does, that I’m sick because she took all the nutrients while we were in the womb together. No amount of scientific explanation has ever been able to convince her otherwise.
So, to her, I was poor Misti who loved cats and was content with her lot. I had to be. Else she’d blame herself even more. Even though my heart condition was in no way her fault.
“Old Vegas is gone,” Ace says and chuckles. “At least that’s what the old-timers keep telling me. But I think that’s just them missing their youth and not an actual fact. Vegas is still a very cool place.”
He laughs and I join in.
“Come on, the guys are over there,” he sa
ys and points across the room, at a black leather sofa right next to one of the velvet curtained windows. Or right at a man who’s staring at me so intently, I feel like his gaze like a laser beam, burning holes right through me.
He’s tall, with a head of dark brown wavy hair that kind of gleams copper in the deep yellow light from the overhead chandeliers. He’s wearing a black t-shirt, and both his arms are so covered with tattoos barely any skin is still showing. He looks like someone from a wild dream of mine, not a man who would ever have eyes just for me. But he does.
I walk behind Stormi and Ace, not daring to look at him, not daring to look away. It’s only when we’re right next to them and Ace is greeting everyone, that I realize I’ve seen him before. Outside my house on the evening Ace came to get Stormi. And even then, this guy was looking at me with this same level of…I don’t even know what to call it. Interest doesn’t quite describe it. Wonder’s too tame. Intensity? Yes, burning intensity, that’s it.
“And this is Stormi’s sister, Misti,” Ace says and claps the man who’s still got his eyes fixed on me so hard he stumbles half a step forward and finally releases me from his gaze.
“Blaze, meet Misti,” Ace says, chuckling.
I offer my hand and get a jolt reminding me of the electrical shocks they use to start my heart at the hospital, only much stronger. And much more enlivening. It fills my body with life the way none of those shocks ever did.
“Well, why don’t you two get to know each other a little bit,” Ace adds and laughs. Stormi slaps him on the arm, her eyes hard and admonishing.
He rubs his arm and grins at her sheepishly. “What? I’m just saying.”
“Would you like a drink?” asks a voice so perfectly balanced in richness, tone, and timbre, it floods my chest like a drink of warm caramel milk.
I turn to him and smile, my heart fluttering with glee as his breath catches in his throat and he looks lost and confused for a second.
“I’d really like that,” I say, trying to speak softly and sweetly like classy ladies always do in old movies.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Stormi says, but I shake my head and smile at Blaze.
“I’ll have a soda,” I tell her.
Everyone except Stormi is looking at him, smirking, especially the long-haired guy in whose lap Brenda is lounging. Their eyes meet and Blaze shakes his head, mutters something under his breath then turns to me with a wide smile.
“Why don’t you accompany me to the bar and you can pick out exactly what you want?” He extends his bulky arm to me, elbow out and I lace my hand through the opening with a practiced gesture, as though I’ve done it a thousand times before and like it’s the most natural thing in the whole wide world to do. As though it belongs there.
I’m glad for the support of his steady strength as he leads me across the crowded dance floor towards the gleaming, golden wood counter at the bar.
“I won’t tell your sister if you’d like something stronger than a soda,” he says, grinning at me once we reach our destination.
My hand flies to my chest, where my heart is fluttering a mile a minute. Not irregularly, but far from steadily either.
It has been a long night, and one full of excitement. Stormi is not wrong about me needing to take it easy. And that playful light in Blaze’s dark brown eyes is plainly telling me the excitement is only just beginning for me. I have never had a guy this hot, this manly, this tough-looking give me this kind of attention. In fact, only three guys in my life have given me the sort of attention a man is supposed to give a woman and two of them were total pervs. But I won’t think of that now, there’s no point.
“I’ll start with a club soda and see where that takes me,” I tell him with a grin which I hope is seductive and conspiratorial at the same time.
He shrugs, nods, and orders for us, while I navigate the rickety step on the barstool next to me in my tight skirt and too-high heels. He offers me his arm to use for support and I gladly accept, even though the last thing I ever want is to be babied. And the last thing I want this guy to think is that I’m too weak and clumsy to ascend a barstool on my own.
“So, you’re Stormi’s younger sister,” he says.
“Twin sister, actually,” I respond and get the same confused look I always get when I reveal this. Stormi is taller, curvier, and much healthier than me. No one ever suspects we’re twins.
“I don’t blame you for not figuring it out, though,” I add.
“I’m sure Colt, or Ace already told me, but I forgot,” he says, taking a long swallow of his beer.
“Do you think I’m a freak?” I blurt out before the question even fully forms in my mind. But I’ve gone pretty much my whole life going without what I truly wanted and desired where men are concerned, and I’m not about to let myself get suckered in by this guy if all he wants is to add a white girl to his list of conquests.
He looks me dead in the eyes, completely unabashed and unfazed by my direct question, but there are two faint spots of red on his cheeks as he grins at me.
“I think you’re the most striking woman I’ve ever seen,” he says.
There’s a lot unsaid in that statement, and it leaves most of my actual question unanswered, but damn does it feel good to be told this by a handsome man who only has eyes for me in a fancy, crowded nightclub full of gorgeous women.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” I say and take a sip of my club soda because I suddenly very much need to cool off. Wherever this is heading, it’s going there fast. At least for me. I really wish I had more experience with men, or just flirting in general, I really do.
He grins, his full, candy apple red lips curling up in somehow exactly the perfect way. What I really want is for him to kiss me. But I don’t know if it’s appropriate at all to tell him that. I doubt it. I don’t want to come across as easy. But at the same time, I want what I want.
He’s looking at me like maybe he wants to kiss me too. Or I may be completely wrong. I really don’t know much about the way guys look at women they want to be with. I never knew my dad, all my mom’s boyfriends were transient and cold at best, and Stormi hid most of her boyfriends from me. The best I have to go on is movies and TV shows, but I know love is exaggerated in those.
He lights a cigarette and blows the smoke past me. All the smoke hanging in the air in here wasn’t doing wonders for me, and this up close whiff of it positively turns my stomach. I hope I didn’t turn green as a wave of nausea assaulted me. My skin does that sometimes.
“Does the smoke bother you?” he asks, concern so genuine and thick in his voice I don’t know whether to be happy or mad. Mostly I’m mad. I don’t want him to think I’m some sort of fragile weakling the way everyone I meet always does.
I shake my head and take a few gulps of my club soda. It works to settle my stomach a little bit, although the lemon floating in it has already shed enough of its zesty sourness to make the bubbles less effective for that purpose.
“Can we go outside for a breath of fresh air?” I ask, bracing myself against the counter to descend the rickety stool. I’m not as steady on my feet once I’ve got the solid ground beneath my feet again.
A ballad is playing and Stormi and Ace are slow dancing to it in the middle of the dance floor. They’re so into each other it’s like they're the only two people in this whole crowded, smoky place. Even the overhead light is forming a soft sort of spotlight around them. I want that kind of closeness to someone so bad I can feel it in every cell of my body. But even a slow dance might always be too much for my heart.
“Sure, let’s go outside.”
Blaze stubs out his cigarette and offers me his arm again. I take it, though not in an as carefree way as before. This time, he’s offering it because he thinks I’m sickly.
As before, he expertly wends his way towards the exit. Or maybe it isn’t a skill at all. Maybe it’s just because he’s so burly that people naturally get out of his way. Either way, we’re outside in the dark parking lot in
moments, the cool desert night breeze welcome on my overheated skin.
“I’ll probably need to sit down soon,” I say, realizing the nausea isn’t going to go away just because I’m in the fresh air and it’s better to ask for help now rather than just collapse on him.
I might not. My heart is still beating regularly and steadily. But my knees are jelly and my whole body feels very heavy.
“My bike’s just over there,” he says and leads the way to a huge chopper with gleaming silver handlebars and wheels, and a black leather seat that somehow glows silver in the moonlight too.
We reach it and I just stare at it. I’d like to go for a ride, but it’s a distant wish now that my strength is failing rapidly. Distant in the way all my wishes always were my whole life. It’s something that would be nice to have, but is so far out of my reach, out of the realm of possibility even, for me, it was useless to even dream about having it. I’d like to feel healthy and steady and energetic all the time. But that will never be my reality.
“How do I sit on it?” I ask.
He gives me a confused look again, and this time it seems like he’s not sure about being out here with me at all. Like he’s thinking it was a mistake talking to me. Telling me I’m striking. Smiling at me and offering me his arm.
“Just sit down on it,” he says and smiles. “It won’t topple, not under your featherweight.”
He chuckles at his own joke and it echoes off into the nighttime silence all around us as I sit like he told me to.
The silence grows and grows, until even the rustling of the bushes lining this parking lot, moved by the wind, seems to be coming from some other world. Not this reality. Not the one where I almost got one of the things I always wanted, and dreamed about often—to be kissed by a man who looks like a bad boy Greek god.
“You’re very sick, aren’t you?” he asks, kindly and softly. Not at all how I want him talking to me.
“And I’m not getting any better,” I reply, finally looking into his eyes again. They’re silver too, somehow catching all the light from the moon, which pools there like a scene from a dream where everything is beyond perfect, where everything is exactly how it should be.