by M. O'Keefe
“You draw a lot of attention, you know?” she said.
“Maybe it’s you.” She was wearing a different skirt and a different tank top, but it was still her outrageous body under the clothes. Her “fuck you” attitude was dialed back and in its place was a kind of peace I never thought I’d see in her. She was easy right now, unwound. Her shoulders relaxed out of her battle stance.
She was painfully pretty. Like punch in the gut beautiful with that smile lingering around her lips.
Apparently fucking each other raw against a wall was exactly what we needed.
“I’m a dime a dozen around here,” she said, glancing across the restaurant. “You’re the only motorcycle club guy who looks like he survived a beatdown.”
I glanced around, too, and saw a lot of suburban dads with their families watching me out of the corners of their eyes. Moms pulling their kids in a little closer. Dudebros with their ball caps on backward, sizing me up.
There were women, too, looking at me. Some turned on by my size and my bruises and my tattoos. Others not so much.
“We never used to go to places like this,” I said.
“Like as a family?”
I laughed. “Like as a club.”
“Yeah, hard to imagine you guys here ordering the mahimahi special.”
Man, that sounded good.
The bartender came by and tossed some cardboard beer coasters in front of us, not giving us any of the happy patter he gave the other couples around the bar. “Happy hour,” he said. “Two for one.”
“Bud draft,” I ordered.
“White wine.”
The guy came back with two drinks for each of us and we ordered some food.
“Are we on a date?” I asked. I turned sideways on my stool and leaned over to shift her so her legs were between mine. If I could put her in my lap, I would. That had been so good between us. The kind of good that made a guy curious.
The kind of good that made a guy obsessed.
“A date,” she laughed. “When was the last time you were on a date?”
“High school. You?”
She opened her eyes wide and blinked. “It’s been a while. There was a girl a few months ago. She used to like going out for movies.”
“Good Girlfriend #1?”
She laughed and I liked that sound. “Something like that. So if this is a date, you buying?”
All that money I had and most of it was going to be going to Dylan’s fancy lawyer. But of what was left, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend it than buying my girl some happy-hour drinks.
My girl.
Just like that. That’s how it was. Joan was my girl. For how long, I couldn’t even begin to guess, but for now and for as long as I could make it work, she was mine. I smiled, thinking about what she would do if I told her that. The ballistics that would go off in this restaurant.
“I’m buying,” I told her.
“Then I should have gotten the crab legs.”
I ran my hand over her thigh, from the top of her knee to the bottom edge of her skirt. I wanted to push it up and slip my hand under there, but I felt the eyes of all those suburban dads.
If we were in the club right now, I’d do it anyway.
“Do you miss it?”
“What?” I asked and took a sip of my Bud. It was icy cold and perfect. Fuck, I was agreeable.
Like she’d been reading my mind she said, “The club? Those places you used to go to? Being king?”
“I wasn’t any kind of king. And no…I don’t miss it.” I had always been looking over my shoulder, constantly braced for disaster. I didn’t miss it at all. It was a goddamn relief not being king.
“I know you told me not to worry and you told Eric the same thing. But those guys in jail…They talked about you.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“But…,” she tilted her head. “Are you worried? I mean between them and what I have to do—”
“I got a lawyer.”
“What? Really?” She lit up with relief.
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if I’m going to need one yet. But when I do. I got one. A good one. Dylan got him for me.”
“Dylan? When did you talk to him?”
“After you tried to kick me to the curb.”
“Well, I can see how well that worked.”
Not at all. We grinned at each other like idiots.
“But what does that mean for you? Getting a lawyer?” She meant what was the cost. Oh, this girl, how well she knew me.
“It means I can’t ever go back,” I told her. “Not to the Skulls.”
“Do you want to? Really?”
“It’s all I know. All I’ve ever known. All I’ve ever been.”
She touched a finger to a tattoo on my hand. A smiling grim reaper. It wasn’t a Skull tattoo, I mean it wasn’t pretty. But it wasn’t club. So I wasn’t going to have to get it covered. That was part of the price of leaving the club, you had to get all the tattoos covered, blocked out.
The big one on my shoulder—like the one my pops had—that was going to be a bitch.
“I’m sorry that it makes you feel bad, but I’m glad,” she whispered. “I’m glad you can’t ever go back.”
I was, too. I just wasn’t quite ready to say it yet.
She tilted her head and took a sip of her wine. The sun hit it and turned it to gold. Her lip was a little swollen where I’d bit it. I ran my tongue over my own lip where it was cut from her slapping me.
My cock got hard. Fuck. She really did that. She hit me and then let me fuck her face so hard she could barely breathe. She was grinning at me like she was reading my mind. “What are you thinking about?” Her eyes dipped to my lap and my obvious erection.
“Your smart mouth.”
“Yeah?” She breathed, leaning in closer. “What are you going to do about my smart mouth?”
Screw the drinks. I nearly got to my feet and would have grabbed her hand and pulled her out of there. Into the nearest room with a door I could find, but a waitress came by and dropped our order of calamari in front of us and I could hear Joan’s stomach growl.
My girl needed to eat.
“Feed it,” I said. “I’m going to feed you and then I’m taking you home.”
“Then let’s eat fast.”
We dug into the food, which could have been the most amazing calamari in the history of the world, but I barely tasted it. I was too distracted with watching Joan lick her fingers and knock back her glass of wine. For some reason I couldn’t forget what Fern said about finding out about her father. About how that would tell me something about why Joan did the stuff she did. Why she hurt the way she did and spent so much time trying to cover it up.
“Tell me something.”
“Is this about my name again?”
I laughed and took a swig of beer, stalling for time, not quite ready to change this mood. “No, I learned that lesson. You’re not telling me your name.”
She dragged a calamari ring through the lemony sauce that came with it and put it in her mouth, her eyes twinkling at me. I wanted to warm my cold body by her bright and wild light for days.
“Tell me what happened to your dad.”
She practically fell off her barstool she jerked back in such surprise. She swallowed, wiped her mouth with a napkin.
“My dad? What the hell does he have to do with anything?”
Probably everything, I thought. Just like my mom and my dad were the root of all my compromises.
I took a sip of beer and shrugged.
“There’s not much to say.” She drained her glass and asked the bartender for some water.
She wasn’t going to tell me. I could see it in the set of her chin. All stubborn. All fuck you. And it was weird to feel sad about something like her keeping her life private. She didn’t owe me shit, as much as I might want it.
I ordered another beer and then Joan surprised me.
With all her attention focused on the little
cardboard coaster she was bending and then tearing into shreds, she started to talk.
“Dad was…I don’t know…a simple guy. He didn’t graduate high school. He ran this junkyard and we lived there in a trailer—I told you that. He liked that job. He liked hunting and fishing. And us. Me and Jennifer. He loved us. I don’t have a whole lot of experience with that, but we felt loved. When I got old enough, I kind of…did the stuff parents are supposed to do, that he never thought of. Registering for school. Getting vaccinations. Making sure Jennifer did her homework. Buying vegetables. Making us food for dinner and not just chips or donuts.”
I wondered if she saw the picture she was painting. I mean, it’s not like I could objectively look at my childhood. But she was painting a rosy picture with some pretty dark fucking colors.
“What happened to him?”
“I was fourteen. Jennifer would have been twelve and it was October. The end of the month and it was so cold. Really cold. And Dad decided he wanted to go ice fishing out on the lake. He did this a lot. He’d go for a few nights and come back with a ton of fish for the freezer. Jennifer and I got so sick of fish in the winter. Anyway, it didn’t seem any different than any other time. He packed up his stuff and headed out before me and Jennifer even got up. He just…he never came back.”
“Oh Jesus. Joan—”
“When he had been gone for over two days, I hiked out to the lake he usually fished on and the ice had cracked. Even his little hut thing he fished in was gone. The ice must not have been thick enough.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I try not to think about it too much. Him being scared—” She stopped and shook her head as if shaking off the memories.
“That’s when you came down here?”
Joan took a deep breath. “No. Not for a year, really. We kept my dad’s death a secret. And Jennifer and I just kept going like everything was normal. School. The scrap yard—”
“Wait…what?”
“It’s not that big a deal. You practically did the same thing, right? Raised your brother since you were kids?”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t all alone in the woods of Wisconsin! In winter!”
“It was cold,” she said as if it were a fond memory, but then the smile slowly drained from her face and she scooped up all the little pieces of the coaster and put them in her empty wineglass and then shoved the glass away. Almost across the bar. I saw what she wasn’t saying. Like she was covered in graffiti, I saw it. Yeah, it had been cold.
And it had been scary.
The kind of scary that years later came up out of nowhere to make you feel unsafe—even in the safest places. The kind of scary that carved its mark on your bones.
I knew that kind of scary.
I knew how it put up walls you didn’t even see half the time.
“I tried to get her into a fancy gifted school and that’s how we got found out and ended up with Fern.”
The waitress was back with our dinners. I had the shrimp po’boy and she had the mahimahi special and we tucked into our food like it would save our lives. We ate to keep our mouths full. Or I did anyway. Because I knew the shit I wanted to say to her—that she was brave and tough and loyal and smart—she’d tear up all those words and put them into a wineglass so she could push it far away.
And I knew, somehow, that it wasn’t because she didn’t want to hear it. But because she didn’t know what to do with it.
We ate like it was our last meal.
Joan
I had forgotten how sexy it was to eat and drink with someone you wanted to have sex with. How it made me feel sleepy and turned on all at once. Like I’d been cared for. Like I was a pampered pet.
And the way Max watched me eat, it was like it was his job to make sure I got every bit I needed. Everything I wanted. If I’d demanded another meal—he’d lift his hand and make it happen. He would have fed me his dinner. With his fingers.
No wonder dates always happened at restaurants. I had forgotten that it was all just foreplay.
In an indigo twilight, we walked back to the condo, carefully not touching. I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t touching me. But my reasons for not touching him were purely for self-preservation. I needed closed doors for what I wanted to do. I needed darkness and quiet for the things I wanted to say.
I was lush and exposed and ready. On the very edge of a cliff I’d never seen coming.
Silent, we walked into the condo unit and I was breathing hard. Not from the walk, but from him.
I wanted to ask him what this was between us. If he felt it, too. Like we were standing on the edge of something pretty great. Kind of wonderful. More wonderful, really, than I had the vocabulary for.
Talking about Dad had been stupid. I felt like I’d left a door open. Or I’d lost a key. Like if he wanted, Max could just walk in and ransack me. Take everything I had.
I tried not to let that vulnerability make me lash out.
I tried—and it was hard—to just be.
The shadows were dark in the condo and the crash of the ocean through the windows was the only sound in the room. He tossed the keys on the counter and sighed.
And I felt that sigh wrap around me. Lift me up. Hold me close.
“I’m going…I’m going to take a shower,” I said, inanely. Like some teenage girl terrified of putting out.
“Cool,” he said and I took off down the hallway into the bathroom. I just…needed a second to get my head on right. To ground myself. The shower was as hot as I could take it and I stayed in for as long as I could, so when I stepped out, the cold of the air-conditioning was a total shock. I dried my hair and wrapped the towel around my body.
He was in the bedroom. Propped up against the wall, in his plaid boxers, his legs stretched out across the bed. He was looking at something on his phone and he put it down when I came in.
“Anything from Lagan?” I asked and he shook his head, reaching out for me.
“You don’t need me to bring you Lagan,” he said. “You have Eric.”
“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
He tugged on the edge of the towel and it fell off, revealing me in muted moonlight. His knuckles brushed my stomach and I twitched, ticklish and cold.
“God, baby,” he said. “You’re freezing.”
He untucked the covers and moved out of the way, pulling me into the cocoon made by his body and the blankets. I was instantly warm. My back was against his wide, warm chest and I shifted until my ass was pressed against his hips. I felt him under the cotton of his underwear start to stir and I had a corresponding reaction. My body loose and ready.
A soft kiss landed on my shoulder and his hand came around to softly touch my breasts. It was slow and very nearly tender.
And somehow deeply uncomfortable.
I reached behind my butt and found him with my hand, squeezing his cock through the cotton. He groaned and kissed my shoulder again, thrusting into my hand. But that was all. Me squeezing his dick and him rocking slowly back and forth with his open mouth against my shoulder.
“Touch me,” I said.
“Slow down.”
I didn’t know how to tell him that I didn’t know how to do slow. Or tender. I started to turn toward him, but his arms came around me like a cage and I lost my grip on him.
“Shhhh,” he breathed, like he could read my mind. “You’ve got one speed, Joan. One setting. Annihilate. That’s it. Burn it all. And I don’t want to be burned.”
“One date and you think you know me.”
“You think I don’t?” he whispered. His arm underneath me held me in his grip while his other hand slid down my body to my pussy. Yes, there we go. But he only put his hand over me. Cupping me. His fingers teased my lips, the pressure of his palm a reminder of that fist he’d made earlier. I sighed and arched back into him, encouraging more of that kind of behavior. But he didn’t take the invitation. He just kept slowly stroking me. Across my belly. My hips and thighs.
I wanted to t
ell him to stop. That I wasn’t a cat. But my mouth was dry and my body felt so good. His touch was so beautiful.
“There,” he whispered. “Just relax.”
I sighed, all of my muscles turned to feathers, and I was rewarded with his thumb slipping up high against me, finding the edge of my clit. I was all feathers and sexual tension. He chuckled, laughing again like he knew how I felt. But his thumb was making me feel too good to get mad at him for it. His thumb only rubbed in tiny little circles. Soft, barely there touches.
Normally it wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t even be close to enough. But with the petting and his breath against my shoulder and neck, I was growing electrified. I felt like I glowed.
His other hand cupped my breast, stroking my nipple until it was a hard point. But that, too, was a tender touch.
I whimpered.
“Get the condom,” he said. “It’s on the floor by the bed.” I rolled over as far as he would let me, his thumb giving me a harder touch. The kind of touch I needed. And I purred like the cat I didn’t want to be.
He laughed and I picked up the condom.
“Open it, my hands are full.” He squeezed my breast and his long middle finger slid deep inside of me.
“Yes,” I sighed.
“Babe.” He kissed my ear. “Condom.”
I tore it open and rolled over onto my back so I could put it on him. I would have kept rolling right on top of him. I imagined myself riding him, grinding myself down against his dick. Braced against the wall, I could find the right rhythm and friction—
But he rolled me back over onto my side. His arms were back around me holding me still, but not in the way I usually liked.
He lifted my leg and pushed it over his hips, and I felt his cock notch against me and I pushed down against it, ready to make this happen, but as I pushed backward he pulled away.
“Stop teasing me,” I breathed.
“I’m not teasing you,” he said. “I’m making love to you.”
My body froze at the word love.
“I don’t…” I said, unsure of how I was going to finish that sentence. I don’t love you. I don’t love anyone. I don’t want to be loved.