by Mj Fields
“Tell Lawrence we’re still together,” I hear my mother say over the loud noise inside the Perterbilt’s cab.
Ever since I could remember, my mother, Candace, or Cece as most call her, has been dubbed a free spirit. Sometimes it’d be over a year before she would drop back in to our lives. Then, she and Dad would fight, the house would be clean when I woke up in the morning, breakfast on the table, and she would be in bed sleeping.
Dad and I would sit at the table, eating pancakes, always New Hope Mills pancakes. As a kid, I watched him, mimicked him, and said nothing. Sometimes, she would be gone when I got home. Sometimes, she stayed for a few days or a few weeks. I always knew when she was getting ready to leave, though. She would come in late from one of the neighbor’s, her eyes always red.
When I got older, I didn’t even eat the fucking pancakes. I still don’t eat fucking pancakes.
I asked him once why he let her in. He told me she was my mother. I told him she wasn’t shit. He slammed his fist down on the table and repeated himself. “She’s your mother.”
She was never my mother; she was a fucking joke. She was a woman that the kids on the playground called a whore. And my father: the man who keeps taking her back. When I was younger, it fucked with me.
After Logan and I became not just friends but brothers, I gained a bit of confidence. When the next kid said shit about her, I popped him in the face.
I remember that day, sitting in the principal’s office, Logan beside me, because, well, one of Cameron’s friends jumped in and tried to kick my ass, so Logan jumped in, too.
Our parents were called in. Logan’s dad showed up, but I knew mine wouldn’t. He was on the truck, another haul he couldn’t turn down. I was ten, it was the first year I played fall football, and I told my dad that I wasn’t going, said I was sick of missing school. Truth was I hated school. But football, I loved.
As a threat, trying to get me to go, Dad had told me I would get in trouble if anyone found out that I was home alone. I told him no one would. He talked to a neighbor who checked in on me. Same pieces of shit that Cece smoked up with, so they never really checked in.
I lied to the principal, telling him he would get the message and be there soon.
When the principal left the office, Logan’s dad, Lucas asked for his number.
That day, Logan and I got suspended for three days. Should have been the worst day of my life, but it ended up being the best.
I slept at Logan’s house. A house with a mom, a dad, and food. To a kid like me, it was a fucking castle, a fairy tale.
For three days, Lucas took us everywhere with him, played football with us, took us to lunch and shit. When he took us to get haircuts, he found out I had lice. I was mortified, while he acted like it was no big deal. I begged to go home. He told me he would like me to stay.
We stopped at the drug store where he bought a bunch of shit, and then the man picked nits out of my hair. I remember telling Lucas that, the other times it had happened, my father had just shaved my head. He told me I had good hair. He also told me that the lice could have come from a helmet so, as my coach, he felt he should help. That’s what coaches do.
Looking back, I know it’s possible, but I also know he was doing it to make me feel less ashamed.
For my birthday, he bought me my very first helmet, one I didn’t have to share. I still have it.
“Trucker says cool,” Dad lies to Cece, referring to her announcement that they are still together.
“Thanks for the birthday wishes, old man.” I sit up. “Talk again soon.”
“Talk again soon.” He hangs up.
By the time we get to our favorite bar, I’m already buzzed from shots of Jack as I stumble out of Logan’s truck, Black Betty.
“Place better be filled with holes needing filling,” I say as I stumble out of the passenger seat and onto the sidewalk.
“Not sure you’ll be able to get it up, man.” Logan laughs as he tosses his keys to one of the guys. “You’re driving home. Make sure you keep it between the sidewalks.”
“You better catch up, Links. You know what I want for my twenty-first.”
He laughs as he grabs the handle to the door and opens it. “After you.”
“That’s right. We find the right hole, and I get to fill it first.”
“You won’t make it past closing. Get your ass inside.”
“Don’t fuck this up for me,” I joke.
Logan and I have joked for years that we are going to marry the same chick so we can remain as close as brothers well into our old age. Truth is, we will anyway. Another truth: we wouldn’t be having a threesome. Double penetration wouldn’t be possible. Not only are we equally talented at football and look similar, but we are built pretty much the same in the southern hemisphere, the one known as Cocksville.
We may be known as male whores, and even though I have never trusted a female enough to call her mine, nor do I ever plan to, I don’t hate women enough to want to fucking split them in two.
“Surprise!” rings out as I walk in.
I look around and see a banner with my name and number 21 on it. There are balloons everywhere, my teammates, and even Coach Brown is here. If that wasn’t good enough, there is wall-to-wall women wearing short-ass dresses that are so short I wouldn’t even have to lift them. Better than that? None of them truly know me, and they don’t expect anything but a good fucking time.
I look over at Logan, who lifts his shoulders a bit and gives me a half-ass apologetic look.
“Hate parties and shit,” I remind him.
“Let’s celebrate.”
I nod. “Got nothing else to do.”
Two hours later, I’m on the dance floor, getting grinded on by a dozen women. One after the other, they offer up anything I want. I should be fucking stone by now with the amount of action my legs have gotten. And straight-up, whiskey dick’s never been an issue. What is an issue? Desperation.
I need a game. I need someone a yard or two away, giving me a signal, waiting for a pass.
When Pitbull’s “Time of Our Lives” starts playing through the speaker system, I look for my boy. I raise my hands over my head, still dancing as I make my way to the edge of the dance floor where Logan’s dancing between two blondes with huge tits. Definitely his type.
I push between him and the girl behind him and start dancing against him, knowing it will piss him off when he figures out it’s me.
When he turns slowly, giving what he assumes is the chick in the back some attention, and our eyes meet, he laughs.
“You’re fucked up, huh?” I ask.
He winks as he takes another pull off the red straw in his lowball filled with Jack. And then … then he grips my hip with his free hand and dances a little too fucking close for comfort.
“Oh, my God, how hot is that?” the blonde I pushed past shrieks from behind me.
I turn my hat around then get close enough to his mug to make him uncomfortable.
“You kiss me, you’ll be missing teeth.” He gives me a sloppy, drunk smirk then throws his arm around me.
We laugh.
Stepping back, I tell him, “Gonna take a piss.”
When I turn around, I run right into a chick looking down at a tray full of drinks now laying against her chest.
“Gotta watch where you’re going, babe. It’s tight in here.”
She snaps her head up and glares at me.
Deep as fuck brown eyes, with thick, black lashes fanning out around them, but not thick with makeup. Nah, it’s natural as hell. Her face is the shape of a heart, framed by thick, long, wavy black hair. Her lips are full and pink, and her skin is light caramel.
I’ve just been served fucking perfection.
“You just gonna stand there, or are you gonna move your ass?” she snaps.
“Never seen you around, little ray of sunshine. No need to be hostile. I crashed a drink tray; you crashed a party and are giving the man of the hour shit.”
&
nbsp; “Well, excuse me, your highness, but you just cost me over a hundred bucks.”
“Lou!” I yell to the owner at the same time she does. I continue before she can. “Fill Ray’s order again. Put it on my tab.”
“Keeka can get back here and do it herself,” he says, looking flustered as hell with the bar five deep.
I look down at her and notice she’s not in a dress; just a white t-shirt and black shorts.
“Do you mind?” She tries to step back but ends up getting pushed forward against me again.
I reach between us and grab a few cups, the ones not emptied completely, so they don’t spill on her like the others did.
“I can get it!”
Ignoring her, I take the empty tray and hold it above my head. “I double dog dare you to jump.”
When she looks down at her shirt, her eyes widen.
As I start to look down, I tell her, “I’ll buy you a new o—” I stop when I realize her shirt’s see-through, but that’s not the fucking reason I continue looking. She’s braless and her little pink nips are saluting me.
As she instinctively covers herself with her hands, I reach behind her with the hand full of glasses and pull her tightly against me.
She tries to push me away. “What the hell do you—”
“I like tits bigger than pint-size, Little Ray, so cut the shit and walk with me so you’re not high beaming the entire football team and every other guy in the place who’ll see those and be a fuck of a lot less worried about your virtue than I am.”
“Worried about my virtue?” she huffs but stays splayed against me as I move us toward the back of the bar and head for the office.
When I reach above the doorjamb for the key to the office, she asks, “How do you know—”
“I know Lou,” I answer before she finishes.
“You work here?”
I look down at her fucking eyes that are even better than those little tits. “No.”
She walks past me and, with her back to me, she pulls off her shirt.
“Jesus, Ray.” I shut the door so no one sees her.
She grabs a new shirt from the shelf and throws it over her head. Pulling her long, wavy black hair out from under the collar, she turns around and looks at me. “You can open that door right back up and think again.”
“Think about what? Your barely B’s?”
She reaches behind her, pulls the oversized t-shirt tight against her body, and then ties it with something she pulled off her wrist with her teeth.
“My boobs are just fine, your highness.” She mock bows then starts walking toward me.
“I don’t believe you. Prove it.”
“I’m a grown-ass woman. I’m not playing kid games. Now move it. I have money to make.”
On the tip of my tongue is, I’ll pay you what you’ll make tonight to show me. Instead, I step aside.
When she doesn’t move, I wave toward the door. “After you.”
She crosses her arms over her chest, pushing those little things together.
“You have something against bras?”
She rolls her eyes. “Go, so I can lock up behind myself.”
“Do you? I mean, they’re small, but damn, Little Ray.”
She fucking stomps her foot and points toward the hall. “Go.”
“Fuck that. I need to know.”
“They’re restrictive and I’m a free spirit,” she answers in a monotone voice.
I can’t help smiling. “How free?”
“Go,” she says, trying not to return the smile.
Out in the bar, I sit at a high-top table, close enough to the bar to watch her as she fills glasses and rolls her eyes a hell of a lot at the guys.
Little Ray has attitude, and even though I have never liked that, I seem to like it a hell of a lot with her.
Every time she looks my way, I know damn well I should look away, but fuck if I can. She’s too damn interesting to watch. Plus, when she looks over at me, I know damn well she’s watching me, too.
When Mitch comes over with Logan, their arms around each other shoulders, I’m pretty sure they are both holding each other up and are about done for the night. Then Lou comes over and sets a tray of shots on the table.
He grabs my shoulder. “Happy twenty-first birthday, Trucker, again.”
Lou’s always been liberal with the team. He knows we don’t abuse the privilege. He also knows we bring in a lot of business.
“Thanks, Lou.” I nod.
“Now, which one of you fools are driving?” Looking at Logan, he shakes his head. “Clearly not you.”
“Not tonight. Tonight, Mitch has the wheel,” Logan slurs.
“Mitch, huh?” Lou shakes his head and holds out his hand. Mitch hands him the keys. “Tonight, I’ll get one of the girls to drive your asses back. You just make damn sure she gets a taxi home.” Still shaking his head, he runs his hands through his red hair. “Don’t care how good-looking my girls are, you touch them, your names will be shit here and at every bar on Marshall Street, you hear me?” He doesn’t wait for a response before he walks away.
The table is quickly surrounded by a bunch of women.
Logan throws back a shot then puts his arms around the two girls next to him. “Which one will it be tonight, birthday boy and this year’s co-captain of the Orangemen?”
I hold up a shot. “Whoever’s up for the challenge of giving massive amounts of head then getting the fuck out of my bed.”
“Classy,” I hear, right before another tray of shots is set on the table.
I look down. “Little Ray, no need to be jealous. You want to give it the old college try, I’ll let you. Hell, you’ve already undressed in front of me.”
She rolls those big, brown, doe eyes. “You ruined my shirt. And honestly, how desperate do you think I am?”
Some of the girls mumble shit under their breath, but I’m not paying attention to them. I have already decided who I will be lying down with tonight.
Little Ray.
“I don’t think you’re desperate at all. I just think, being new here, you’re probably wondering if the rumors are true.”
She starts to turn around when I grab the back of her elbow.
I sure as fuck do not expect the elbow to the stomach, any more than I expected that much force to come out of Little Ray.
Chapter Four
The Boys of Fall
Keeka
Five months ago, I left behind the Brooklyn Bridge to come to a place where I remember being happiest for the longest amount of time. I was five years old and went to kindergarten here in Syracuse, New York. Mom had her first nine to five job. She was a secretary at an accounting firm. As much as she always said she hated feeling confined, she seemed anything but. She still danced, just not as a dance teacher. She also bartended for extra money. We lived in the apartment above the bar, the same bar I’m now slinging beers.
When I came here and saw the sign in the window that they were hiring, I almost didn’t come in. I was in Syracuse to start a life of my own. But through the window, I saw a red-headed man I thought I recognized from back then.
He didn’t recognize me, and the fake ID I had acquired and showed him when he asked if I was old enough to work in a bar, said the name Keeka, and that I was twenty-one years old. There have been a couple of times I have seen him look at me, and not in a creepy dirty uncle way. I was sure he had figured it out, but he hasn’t yet, and I’m grateful.
~~ Two hours ago ~~
I pull open the door and walk inside the bar
“Thanks for coming in so last minute.” Reda, the bar manager, smiles. “When the boys of fall call, Lewis caves.”
“I live right upstairs, Reda,” I remind her. “Besides, I need the cash.”
“Should make plenty of it tonight. And baby girl, you’ll earn every cent.”
I walk over to the high-top with boxes on top of it and grab one to bring them back to the office.
“That one say Links
on it? If yes, it stays,” Reda says with her back to me as she places liquor bottles on the glass shelves behind the bar. “Feel free to open it up. Should be party decorations for the birthday boy inside.”
I open the box and see orange and navy streamers, balloons, and a rolled-up banner.
Reda walks over as I pull it out. “Let’s get to decorating.” She grabs one end of the banner while I take the other. Together, we unroll it, and I see the letters alternating between orange and navy spelling out the words: Happy Birthday, Trucker.
“Trucker.” She shakes her head at the silliness of his name.
Trucker, I think as I allow myself to imagine who the person is that came up with a name like that.
Half an hour later, the bar is decorated and the place is filling up with bear-sized men full of testosterone and shitty pickup lines. The first of many to come on to me is a huge white guy with red hair.
“Are you Jamaican? Because your ass is Jamaican me crazy.”
I give him a disgusted look.
Reda nudges me and whispers in my ear, “Play the game. You’ll make a lot more cash.”
“I’m Finnish. Finnish with this conversation by telling me what you’d like to drink, player.”
“Oh, shit,” the guy next to him, who matches him in size with blond hair, laughs.
Reda chuckles. “And so it begins.”
As it gets closer to nine p.m., when Trucker is slated to arrive, the bar becomes packed. Females with short dresses and bad attitudes arrive in droves. It’s so busy that even Lou comes out of his office to help behind the bar.
It’s a bit overwhelming compared to what I have been used to since I began in late May, to say the least. I have been studying all kinds of drink mixes, different shot mixtures, and names of drinks so I would be prepared for crowds like this, ones they told me to expect.
“Need a round of shots over there, Keeka,” Lou yells over the music.
I nod and grab a tray, lining up the shot glasses as he pours them. Then I duck under the bar and grab the tray before snaking my way through the crowd, praying I don’t drop the damn thing.