Scenic Route

by D. D. Prince

  I didn’t wanna be a burden on Deacon and Ella and they didn’t have a spare room. Jenna’s place probably had a little bit of booze in it, but the clubhouse had a fully stocked bar and I needed a drink. Or ten. And I didn’t wanna be by myself. And I didn’t want to explain to anyone what I’d just gone through. Going anywhere would mean I had to talk about it.

  “The clubhouse,” I said. He looked surprised, but gave me a nod.

  “The clubhouse has booze. I need a drink,” I added context. “Or ten.”

  There was also the fact that Spencer probably wouldn’t make me talk about it. Mom would. My friends would.

  His posture loosened, and he swung around the parking lot and we headed toward the Valentine block.

  6

  I followed him up the stairs and inside to the clubhouse’s front room, which was crawling with bikers. Deke was sitting on a couch smoking a cigarette, looking to be in lounge-mode, his feet up on the coffee table. Pudge was playing pool. Scott, Jesse, and three other guys I didn’t know were in conversation at the bar. Deacon was coming in from the kitchen direction, sliding his cell phone into his pocket.

  There were no women here.

  Spencer grabbed my hand, saying, “Hey,” to the group at large. They all halted conversation and many sets of eyes were aimed at me.

  I must’ve been a sight with the tears on my face, my face probably looking like Penny’s had when she’d burst into my room at the salon.

  “Need us?” Deke asked in his deep, rough voice, straightening up.

  “Nope,” Spence replied. “I got this.”

  I sniffled and gave Deke an apologetic look and a wave via a wiggle of my fingers. He gave me a nod, his eyes warm yet concerned.

  God, me and my drama. These guys must be getting sick of it by now.

  We moved past Deacon who was standing in the doorway that fed into the kitchen. My eyes met his briefly, and he had the same expression as his father. Deacon moved aside to give us room and when we were in Spencer’s room, he threw his jacket off and rolled up the sleeves of his washed-out blue Henley.

  “What’s the poison?” he asked.

  “Fentanyl?” I asked, eyes moving from his corded forearms to his concerned eyes.

  He shook his head. “No. I mean, what’re you drinking?”

  “Oh.” Such a dummy. “Um, jack and ginger?”

  Yeah, it was a jack and ginger night.

  He nodded and left the room.

  I sat on the upholstered blue wingback chair, which was now mysteriously clear of the huge pile of clothing that had been on it. I looked around. The whole room had been cleaned, actually. It was spotless and smelled like citrus furniture polish. The bed was even made.

  Five or ten minutes passed and then a text alert chimed on my phone. I rifled through my bag for it and found it.

  Ella: I just heard from Deacon. Need me?

  Me: It’s ok. I’m fine.

  Ella: Deacon said you just got to the clubhouse and are crying. Want me to come there?

  Me: It’s okay. Thx.

  Ella: What happened?

  Me: Joe is in the hosp. Attempted suicide. His sister showed up at the salon and flipped on me. Says it’s my fault.

  Ella: I’ll come. This is NOT your fault. I’ll head over now.

  Me: Don’t worry about it. Pls don’t txt Jenna. I’ll tell her tomorrow. She has enough on her plate. And I don’t wanna talk about it tonight. Thx anyway.

  Ella: Ok. XO. You need me, just call.

  Me: <3 xo

  He was back, expression grim.

  “Gotta go fix my face,” I said.

  He opened the door and I headed down the empty hall to the restroom.

  Yep… my face was pretty rough-looking. Pen bestowed a long and thin scratch that worked its way from my jaw up to the outside corner of my eye. My eyes were puffy and red from all the crying and burning a little where salty tears had irritated the scratch. I splashed water on my face and wiped what was left of the smudgy makeup off with damp paper towel, then once my face was clean, I found a stash of fluffy towels in a cabinet and used one to dry my face. I should’ve brought my bag in here to re-apply some make-up. Oh well, it didn’t matter how I looked. I wasn’t here to impress anyone.

  Why was I here? Avoiding solitude? Being around someone who wouldn’t need me to explain what’d happened today? Or…

  I shook off the overthinking and headed back into his room. He’d left the door open an inch.

  “You cleaned your room,” I remarked, closing the door behind me while trying to make idle conversation.

  He put a drink in my hand and sat on the edge of the bed with a beer in his hand. I saw a bottle of Jack Daniels, a bottle of ginger ale, and a small ice bucket on the top of his dresser.

  His eyes were on me.

  “Play hookie from work?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood.

  “Today, no; worked from eleven thirty until I came to bring your keys to you,” he said, staring at his beer bottle instead of me.

  “Oh? Your room is clean.”

  “One of the girls cleaned it. Don’t usually let anyone, but I allowed it this week.”

  “Girls?” I asked, feeling a funny twinge in my shoulders, radiating to my chest.

  “Coupla the bunnies that hang around --- they clean the place top to bottom every Monday morning.” He shrugged and started peeling the label on his beer bottle.

  And then he looked up at me, assessing, and I caught myself with a scowl on my face. I shouldn’t be in his room drinking with him. I shouldn’t be here at all. I most certainly shouldn’t be scowling.

  His eyes sparkled with mischief and my mouth went tight.

  Shake it off, Pippa. He’s not yours.

  He knew, he saw that jealousy in me. He was mind-reading right now, which probably wasn’t difficult with my accidental scowl.

  I took a sip of my drink.

  “No one changed the sheets, though,” he whispered.

  “Hm?” I asked.

  “Told her not to touch the bedding. Didn’t want the smell of you off my sheets.”

  The glass of jack and ginger slipped out of my hand and landed all over the floor. I jumped.

  “Shit. Sorry.”

  He reached for the back of the bedroom door for a big bath towel that was hanging on a hook and threw it on the floor on top of the puddle and the broken glass.

  “S-sorry. Shit.” I muttered, face going red.

  “Not a big deal,” he said, but his eyes kept moving to me while he gathered up the mess in the big burgundy towel, scooping up all the glass and winding the towel up into a bundle.

  I sat on the chair beside the bed as he stepped out with it. Before the door closed, Bronto walked by. His eyes bounced from Spencer to me, and then his face went redder than his hair.

  God, Bronto… give it up.

  Spencer shut the door.

  I squeezed my eyes shut tight and sank back into the chair, pulling my legs up cross-legged and rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands.

  What was I doing here?

  He was back, fresh glass and two bottles of beer dangling from between his fingers, at the dresser mixing me a drink, putting the beers into the ice bucket.

  He handed me my drink and I took a big sip.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” I muttered.

  “You eaten dinner yet?” he asked.

  “No. But, I should really just ---”

  “I’ll send a prospect out for food. Burger? Pizza?”

  “Um…”

  He looked expectantly at me.

  “Pizza, I guess,” I said softly. I should’ve been saying “Call me a cab.” Or “Please take me to my car.” But, I didn’t.

  “Anything you don’t like on it?”

  “Onions.”

  He gave me a dazzling smile. Oh God… a dimple in his left cheek. Spencer often smirked, but he was outright smiling, and my heart tripped over itself. Why was that so funny?

  “What’
s funny?”

  He shook his head, unable to hide the smile.

  A beautiful, beautiful smile. Ella was not exaggerating when she started calling the Valentine brothers the Beautiful Bikers of South Dakota.

  “Seriously, what?”

  “Heard you talk about onions on a pizza once, one night at the bar with your girls.”

  I played dumb, but was thinking oh shit. I knew what he was about to say.

  “Heard you say you’d have onions on your pizza when you weren’t seeing your guy since you didn’t wanna taste like onions. That night, you and him were in a fight so you were sayin’ fuck it, white and red onions on that pizza, onions on everything from now on.”

  I took another sip of my drink and felt my face go red.

  I had no intention of kissing Spencer tonight.

  Did I?

  He was smiling still.

  “Put onions on it. I don’t care.”

  “No onions,” he said and winked and then went to step out of the room.

  “Double onions!” I shouted, hearing him laugh on the other side of his door.

  Oh my God. Women figured men didn’t pay all that much attention, particularly if they were chatting with their girls in a drunken huddle after the bar. If it was true, Spencer Valentine was the exception to that rule.

  I looked at my phone. It was after 8:00.

  My heart sank, thinking about my day, heck, this year so far.

  How was I supposed to feel about Joe trying to kill himself after last night? And why was I here with Spencer when I was telling myself for the past few weeks that I needed to keep my distance and avoid temptation.

  Covered in tatts, smelling like cinnamon, tobacco, leather, and trouble. Trouble? Guaranteed. He was the epitome of temptation. Six feet, two inches of muscled temptation. Temptation and complications.

  My drink was done. I moved the short distance to the dresser to help myself to another one. A double.

  There was a knock. Jenna opened the door and threw herself into my arms.

  I started shaking again, at her reaction, but I held the tears at bay.

  “Oh my God. OH MY GOD! Are you okay?” Her hand was covering her mouth, her blue eyes were huge and on me.

  I blew out a breath and took a big gulp of my drink and then I declared, “You g-gotta get me outta here.”

  She tilted her head.

  “He’s everywhere.”

  “Who? Joe?”

  “Spence! Spencer is… ugh. He’s… he’s…” I shook my head. How to explain how I felt about him being everywhere? My shadow. “He’s everywhere and we keep winding up skin-to-skin.”

  Her eyebrows shot up.

  “Not like that, but it’s like… inevitable if I don’t get outta here.”

  “Do you want it?”

  “No. Fuck no! I can’t. But, he’s smooth, Jenna. He’s like… Ugh. Trouble, Jenna. He’s like… Capital T Trouble.”

  She seemed to get it, despite my inability to articulate myself either to her or to me, because my logic was like scrambled eggs.

  “Let’s go sit out there. I got the JD, you grab the ginger ale and the ice. We’ll have a drink and be polite, then we’ll get you home.”

  “Good plan.”

  I followed her out, down the hall, through the kitchen where Jenna fetched another glass and grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and then we were out into the lounge area. Jesse and another Dom I didn’t know were playing a game of pool. Deke and the other bikers had gone. Deacon wasn’t here any longer, but Rider and Spence were in conversation and it looked intense.

  Jenna passed Rider a beer. He kissed her and twisted it open and looked at me. “You okay?” Rider asked.

  I nodded.

  Spencer looked over his shoulder at me and his jaw muscles flexed as he gave me a once over.

  Jenna and I sat on the big slouchy sofa and she mixed herself a drink on the coffee table in front of us.

  I pulled my knees up to my chest and put my chin on my knee.

  “How ‘bout some tunes?” Jenna asked. Jesse moved over to the stereo that was on a shelf behind the bar and turned the dial.

  Patience, by Guns and Roses.

  I leaned back and closed my eyes and felt the music. I saw, in my head, me and Joe, riding our bicycles, racing one another. Water skiing. Laughing as we cooked food together, feeding one another raw vegetables as we prepped a stir fry or fajitas. And then I remembered that first time his fist came at me when we’d had some stupid nothing-spat when he was drunk.

  My heart twinged. And then all his trying, all his convincing, and me finally, finally relenting. But I’d been wrong. I never should’ve allowed it. And when he stopped going to meetings, making excuses about them?

  That was when I should’ve walked.

  I took another sip of my drink and stopped the thoughts in their tracks, before they could go to that night a month ago, that night when he’d lost it so bad. I didn’t need to relive those memories, or the signs on the wall I’d been ignoring the past few months as he grew more and more distant.

  And now, trying to kill himself? To punish me, maybe? To end his unending pain? Assuage his guilt for what he did to me? What? WHAT?

  I had no answers and actually, answers didn’t matter, because it was over. Done. I had to put it aside.

  I had to think of me for a change. Me. I’d sacrificed everything for him lately. The last few months, staying away from parties so he wouldn’t be tempted. Dealing with him being moody, broody, quiet, in his head, snapping at me regularly, making me afraid to even talk because he’d either just make grunting noises instead of participating in conversations or sometimes he wouldn’t even reply to me, but I was sure he’d actually heard me. Silence had become the constant, the background noise in our apartment in the past few months. Silence and distance.

  Me trying to be there for him so he could just cope and move forward, but him holding me back, keeping his distance, probably resenting me for being the one who expected him to not give in to his addiction. We were stuck in a rut, a rut of him trying to hide what he was doing from me and on some level, I suspected it was worse than just the temptation of booze. Things had changed. But…

  Enough. Enough torture.

  I shook it off and looked around.

  The guy playing pool with Jesse sparked up a joint. It got passed around as I dazedly listened to the song and then Spencer was passing it to me, blowing smoke out of his mouth and his nose.

  I took it and took a puff and passed it back to him as I let the smoke out slowly. I leaned forward and grabbed my drink from the coffee table.

  His hand went to my hair and tucked it behind my ear.

  “You doin’ all right?” he asked.

  “I’m done,” I told him, watching him pass the joint to Jenna who shook her head but looked to Rider and jerked her chin up. Rider leaned over and took it, while giving me a meaningful look. He thought I should be done, too, evidently. Rider took a haul off the joint and then put his hands to Jenna’s face and blew the smoke into Jenna’s mouth. And then they were making out.

  “What’s that mean?” Spencer asked. He got closer; his hand rested on my leg.

  “I can’t let him continue to hurt me. Whether it was him being selfish, trying to punish me with guilt, or him just wanting to escape his own hell, he created that hell. Not me.”

  “This is true,” Jenna said, breaking away from Rider’s mouth to participate.

  I looked at her. “I’m done.”

  She gave me a knowing smile as she nodded. “Good. You need to move on. You’ve been living under the cloud of his addiction for far too long.”

  I downed the rest of what was in my glass.

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with what you did, babes. You had your heart in the right place. Not your fault he didn’t deserve it. You’ve got nothin’ to feel guilty about. Not even a little bit. Clean conscience, Pip. Now, though, he’s proven he’s not worthy. Time to move on.”

 
I gave her a tight smile. “Let’s talk about something else. Done means done.”

  “Gotcha.” Jenna waved her hand.

  Spencer gave my thigh a squeeze. “Another drink?” he asked.

  I gave a firm nod. “Yep. A double please.”

  I Used to Love Her by Guns n’ Roses came on next as three more bikers, one of them Sean “Blow” O’Grady, the club’s vice president, and two women came in with them and joined our little party. Jesse cranked the volume and the guys all sang it, like it was a pub song that they just couldn’t resist. None of us could resist this song. Even Jesse sang, and he was usually stoic, guarded. He was belting it out with a big smile on his face.

  Me and Jenna and the newcomer girls chimed in and we were all laughing by the end of the song.

  Bronto showed up as the song wrapped up, looking miserable as he came in with three large pizzas.

  I felt guilty at the look he gave me, sitting on the couch between Spencer and Jenna.

  Spencer shot him a look as he plopped the pizzas on the table between us and went to hand Spencer an ATM card, but it either fell on the floor or Bronto tossed it there. I wasn’t sure which.

  Spencer glanced at the card and then looked up at Bronto, his eyebrows rising. Spencer evidently thought it was tossed by the look on his face.

  Bronto looked at the card and then at Spencer and scowled.

  Yikes.

  I reached down to the floor and grabbed the card.

  “Whoops,” I put in and handed it to Spencer.

  His eyes moved to me. Bronto smartly took that opportunity to move away.

  Spencer pulled his wallet from his jeans and stuffed the card back inside. His eyes then moved to Bronto’s back as Bronto moved to the bar and poured a shot.

  “You’re not drinkin’, prospect. Still on duty,” Spence called out.

  Bronto put the bottle down hard.

  Spencer’s mouth opened like he was going to say something, but Jesse got in the line of vision between Spencer and Bronto with a roll of paper towel and put it down and spread the pizzas out. Everyone dug in.

  Bronto stayed turned the other way.

  “Not one of them has onions,” Spencer whispered into my ear as he leaned over to grab a slice.

  I got goosebumps, shivered, and refused eye contact, but knew he was smiling, Bronto forgotten. And Jenna also had a big smile, though she couldn’t know what it was about. She was just enjoying watching the two of us, looking like she was watching a sappy rom-com.