by Nicole Fox
I answer. “Hello.”
“Cora?” he says, voice husky. “Ash?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Did the guy at The Devil give you my number?”
“Yeah, he gave it to me. And I called you. Funny, ain’t it?”
“Are you drunk?” I ask.
“Drunk.” He laughs gruffly. “Can’t a man have a drink the day he puts his father in the ground? I didn’t throw the dirt, Cora. I didn’t throw the goddamn dirt. I’m gonna go back there and dig him up and throw the dirt. You’ve gotta throw the dirt. Disrespectful. I’m going, now.”
“Wait!” I snap, jumping to my feet. “You’re drunk, Logan. You can’t drive—or ride!”
“Drunk? A little, sure. But I can ride. I’ve ridden way drunker than this. Don’t worry about me. I’m putting on my jacket. I’ll call you back after I’ve sorted this out, all right?”
“Wait!” I hiss. “Just wait a second. Listen to me. Don’t do anything rash. Just sit down for a second. Can you do that for me, at least? Can you just sit down for one second?”
He slumps down so loudly I hear it over the phone, and then mutters, “What, Cora?”
“I’m sorry about your dad. That really sucks.”
“Sure it does,” he says. “But I don’t care. Can’t care. Can’t let that shit show. Can’t let that shit show, ’cause then it’d be a shit-show. How about that, Cora? Staying in school worked out in the end.”
“Logan, I …” But what can I say? I can’t tell him now, when he’s so drunk he can barely talk. He probably won’t even remember in the morning. I won’t be able to trust his reaction. Maybe he’ll make promises about marrying me and keeping half the cash and then in the morning only remember the marrying part, or the cash part, and everything will become muddled. If this plan is going to work, both of us need to be clear about the arrangement. Otherwise it’ll just get confusing.
“What?” he asks, though maybe “asks” is a nice way to put it. Maybe “barks” is more accurate.
“Nothing,” I reply. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Why’d you call me?”
I giggle. I can’t help it. It’s a reflex. “You called me,” I say.
“Shit, yeah. I did. I remember now. Goddamn. So, are you coming over?”
He says it as though he’s already asked it and we just need to hash out the details, as though we’re so close we can just casually go around each other’s place and it’s not a big deal. He says it as though we’re not strangers who fucked a few weeks ago. I should say no and wait until he’s sober, but I want to try and sort this out now, or as soon as possible … And yet I know that that’s only half the truth. The other half is that I want to see him again. It’s not lust, or even affection, that drives this desire. It’s something deeper, more primal.
In the Viking Age they believed that their fate was woven by fairy-like creatures called norns, who wove out the fabric of destiny so that a person only had some leeway to the left and right of their fate, but the basic course was mapped out. I wonder if this is one those instances where my fate was already determined a long time ago. Then I remind myself that I just read these tales, don’t believe them. If only I could believe it was possible to read something without it becoming a part of you.
“Cora?” he urges. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. What’s your address?”
He gives it to me. After fixing my face, I drive to his place, hoping that he’s a bit more sober when I get there. It’s eleven o’clock. Maybe I can get some coffee down him and he’ll sober up by one or two, and then I can drop the news about the baby and we can go from there. His apartment is in a surprisingly nice neighborhood, in a building with a receptionist and smooth marble flooring in the lobby. The receptionist nods at me and tells me the floor number, and then I ride the elevator up.
I find myself looking in the metal panel where the elevator numbers sit, running my hand through my hair and rubbing my lips together to evenly spread my lipstick. I wish I had put on more makeup while also wishing I was wearing less, and then the doors open and I’m greeted by Logan standing at the end of the hallway, leaning against the wall and staring at me.
I approach him slowly, my body doing things I do not ask it to, like firing up engines of lust and sending sex signals to my mind, telling me to leap on him and kiss him and let events go where they may. I repress the urges and stand close to him, looking up into his face. He looks terrible, dark, intense. His eyes are red from whisky and there is something dreadful in his expression, like he could kill a man and think nothing of it. He’s wearing a vest and shorts, nothing else, looking like a lion after a hunt.
“Come in,” he says, backing into his apartment.
I don’t know what I expected, but it’s not this. Instead of some dark, grimy outlaw’s den, I’m welcomed into a standard-looking apartment, somewhat bare and a little untidy. The only dangerous-looking thing is the pistol resting on the kitchen counter. As he goes into the living room and drops onto the couch, I make sure the safety’s on and put the weapon in a drawer. I won’t allow any Chekhov’s gun here.
“I’m glad you came over,” he says, sipping whisky directly from the bottle. “Sittin’ here on my own … Oh, Jesus … you’ve got to fuckin’ kidding … no, fuck this …”
“Logan?”
I approach him slowly. He makes choking noises from deep in his throat, sounding like they come from much lower: his chest, his soul. He hacks and trembles and that’s when I realize he’s crying. I sit on the couch next to him and watch in disbelief as this giant, dangerous-looking man trembles violently, tears turning his eyes redder. His hair falls over his eyes and he keeps muttering to himself, “Stop it, fuck’s sake, stop it.” But he can’t stop. The tears come for several minutes, tears that completely take him over, tears shake him with the force of an earthquake.
Earthquakes are caused when Loki shudders under snake’s venom; that’s what I learned as a girl. But now I wonder if they’re not really caused by the pain of a son losing his father. I was sad when my dad died, of course, but Logan’s pain is something else. It’s something animal. It’s something that makes me feel small as I try to sooth him, but I try anyway.
I rub his back and whisper meaningless words until the crying gets less violent. He wipes his face and takes a long sip of whisky, drinking down the equivalent of three or four shots, and then slams the bottle down on the coffee table. “Fuck,” he says. “Goddamn. I didn’t plan for that. Don’t know what I was thinking. It’s just …” He looks at me. For a moment he’s like a lost little boy. “I miss him, Cora. I miss him a whole lot and I can’t even let anyone know, ’cause I’ve gotta be tough. I can’t let anyone see how badly it hurts. And it hurts badly. It hurts worse than anything I’ve ever felt.” He takes my hand with surprising tenderness. “Goddamn, I’m glad you’re here.”
This is another one of those moments where, if another man was doing this, I would want to run away. But with Logan I’m not uncomfortable, or at least I’m comfortable enough to flip my hand and interlock my fingers with his. We sit in silence for a while. He cries again for a couple of minutes, seeming less embarrassed about it this time, and then his head begins to nod and his eyes begin to close. I lead him into the bedroom, laying him down on top of the covers and lying down next to him, resting my head against his shoulder. He doesn’t try and touch me, and I’m glad for it. This is enough right now.
“It was cancer, by the way. Lung cancer. Don’t remember if I told you that.”
I stroke his hair. “Go to sleep, baby. It’s okay.”
“Big man like that …” He chokes back a sob and buries his face in my neck, kissing me and nuzzling me. “Big man like that, dead to cancer. Makes a man feel human, doesn’t it? But I can’t act human, Cora. That’s the last thing I can do. I’ve gotta be tough. I’ve always gotta be tough. Sometimes all I wanna do is be a man, just some normal man who doesn’t have to put up this front all the time, who doesn�
��t have to pretend like shit don’t get to him. But that’s the world I live in, and … I shouldn’t be unloading on you like this. I’ve never talked to anybody like I’m talking right now. I should shut my fuckin’ mouth.”
“It’s okay.” I kiss him on the forehead. “You don’t have to be tough all the time.”
“That’s the thing,” he says sleepily. “I do …”
I stroke his hair, kiss him and whisper to him until he falls asleep, and then I wrap my arms around him and lay my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It beats loudly, like a drum, so loudly that it travels through my head and down my neck and into my chest, joining my heartbeat, and as I lie here it’s like our hearts beat in unison, a song with the exact same tempo.
I wonder if this is what it’s like to really feel something with a man.
Chapter Thirteen
Logan
I dream that I cried last night. I dream that I invited Cora over and humiliated myself by weeping like a little kid. I dream that I told her how devastated I am. I dream that I made a complete goddamn fool of myself. I bury my face in the pillow so that I can go on believing that that’s all they are: dreams. I don’t need to bring them into reality. I can’t bring them into reality, because admitting that I did that is just too fuckin’ much.
Crying in front of a woman is a thing we don’t do, we just don’t fuckin’ do it. Maybe if you’re married to a girl you can cry in front of her, but not someone you just invited over. What if this shit gets out? What if she tells a friend and that friend tells a friend and that friend happens to know one of my men’s girls? Goddamn.
I roll onto my back, head pounding, listening to Cora breathe softly next to me. I take a bottle of water from under the bed—I keep them there for really brutal hangovers—and drink one in two giant gulps. Then I drink half of another and turn over and look at Cora, wondering if she drank anything, too. I can’t remember. All I remember is crying, humiliating myself. What sort of man does she think I am now? What sort of outlaw lets his emotions take control like that? I want to punish myself. I want to slam my fingers into a car door for being so stupid.
She needs to know that I’m not that guy: the weepy, helpless, defenseless guy, the sort of guy who cries about his problems instead of sorting them out. She needs to know that I’m still a man. So it’s good that she’s curled up like that, her knees to her chest so that her ass is sticking out. I feel my animal lust rising, and that’s way better than any weepy emotion. My cock gets hard and I reach down for that perfect ass, remembering what it felt like the last time. I’ll take her hard again, harder this time, and then let her think that I’m not a man. I grab her ass, massage it. She moans, sticking her ass out. One of her eyes opens and then closes, and she sticks her ass out even further. I keep rubbing it and then move my hand between her legs, pressing against her pussy.
She’s already wet. Damn.
I rub the fabric of her panties, glad she took her jeans off at some point in the night. The feel of her clit and lips crushing flat against my hand is so hot I can barely contain myself. I tug her panties down her knees, pressing my forefinger and middle finger firmly against her clit. She moans, eyelids fluttering open and closed, and I reckon this is going to be it: my way to show her, my way to prove it. We didn’t fuck last night and that was a mistake. I can’t invite women over just to cry on their shoulders. I don’t need a fucking therapist. I slide my finger up inside of her, the warm wetness of it making me think of my cock in there, tight and as hot as a bike engine, but then she rolls over and leaps to her feet.
“Oh, fuck.” She covers her hand with her mouth and sprints into the living room, into the bathroom. Even from in here I hear her puking, projectile vomiting against the toilet bowl.
Maybe she did drink last night, then. I get up and go into the living room. The whisky bottle is empty on the coffee table. Maybe I drank a whisky bottle at the bar and another one here; it wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened, but then, maybe she helped me with it. Maybe she doesn’t remember what an ass I made of myself, either. I go into the kitchen and start brewing some coffee.
“Want some?” I call to her.
“Sure,” she calls back.
I make two mugs of coffee and take them to the coffee table. She comes and sits next to me. It’s silent, awkward, as we sip our coffee. I sense there’s a lot of stuff she wants to say to me, or maybe she wants me to be the same weepy bastard I was last night. That’s the thing; I need to find out if she remembers or not.
“Last night was weird,” I say.
“Weird, how?”
“Don’t you remember?” I ask, hoping.
“I remember.” She looks at me, and then glances away, maybe not liking the expression on my face. “You don’t have to be embarrassed. You’re allowed to be upset.”
That’s where she couldn’t be more wrong, because I’m not allowed to be upset. In fact, I’m never allowed to be upset. The last thing I’m allowed to be is upset, because being upset means that you’re a person, and I’m not a person. I’m a man. I’m an outlaw. I think about saying all that to her but then decide against it, because that’d be just another form of sharing myself, and I’m done with that.
“Right. I’m hungry. Can you make me somethin’ to eat?”
“Are you serious?” She places her mug down, a little too hard. “I mean, I don’t have a problem making you something, seeing as you’re hungover. But you don’t have to play the Neanderthal with me. I’m not judging you for last night. I don’t think you’re less of—well, less of anything.”
“What about your Vikings, Cora? I bet they never cried their—I bet they never showed their emotions or shit like that.”
“Actually, they did. Some of their greatest warriors even composed poetry.”
“Right. Well, I guess bikers’n Vikings ain’t really the same, after all.”
She sighs. I get the sense that part of her—the feisty part—wants to tell me to go fuck myself. But there’s another part of her that wills her to stay. I don’t know what drives that half. She stands up and goes into the kitchen. Opening the fridge, she says, “You have bacon, but no bread, no eggs, so how’d you feel about bacon with a side of bacon?”
“Fine. Fry yourself up some, too.”
This is the way to do it: make her see that last time was the exception, not the rule; make her see that it’s not always going to be hearts worn on sleeves, that from now on I’m going to be the president of the Demon Riders, and the president of the Demon Riders doesn’t weep.
“How’re you feeling this morning?” she asks over the sound of sizzling bacon. The smell wisps into the living room. My mouth waters.
“Great,” I say. “A bit of a headache. Otherwise okay.”
“No, I mean …”
She wants me to finish the sentence, which essentially means she wants me to pry my chest open and give her a target. I wait silently.
“I mean about your loss, and everything. I lost my dad, too. I know how hard it can be.”
“Well, the fuck am I gonna do, spend the rest of my life wishing he wasn’t dead? I can’t go back in time and knock that first cigarette out of his hand, can I? So I don’t see what use there is in thinking about it.”
“It’s okay to be angry.”
I won’t turn and face her, even though I feel her eyes on me. If I turn and face her, if I look into those bright green eyes and that sympathetic mouth, frowning and half-smiling in support, if I see that she really is there for me, I might be tempted to collapse again.
“What about you?” I say, ignoring her question. “You must’ve hit the whisky pretty hard with me last night.”
She pauses, and then says, “Just a couple, but I’m not really a spirits girl.”
“What drinks do you like, then?”
“Do you really want to talk about my favorite drink? Logan, you don’t have to be like this. I’m not judging you, or anything like that. I don’t thin
k of you as less of a man, for Christ’s sake.”
“Who said you did? I didn’t say that. If you don’t wanna talk about drinks, let’s talk about that tattoo on your back.”
“What about it?”
She brings two plates of bacon over with some ketchup. I tuck into the food ravenously, speaking between mouthfuls. “I was just looking at it this morning. Where’d you get that? Is it quite a common tattoo? I’ve never seen it before.”
“Oh, it was just something out of a magazine. It was my first-ever tattoo. I used a fake ID. I was fifteen years old. You know how reckless you are at that age.”
“Out of a magazine? Where was that?”
“A place in LA. It was called Ink Stop, I think. Why’d you care so much?”
“One of my boys has a daughter, and she was saying she wants a tattoo like that. Said I’d ask where you got it, is all.”