“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, almost choking on the words.
“Explain to me what kind of God would do that to a little boy? Take everyone he’s ever loved, and leave him alone?” He rocked the chair onto the rear legs and folded his arms over his chest. “A heartless one?”
He was remarkably calm. I, on the other hand, was an emotional wreck. Hearing of his losses made me want to leap over the table and take him in my arms. Instead, I summoned my inner strength and suppressed my emotion.
“I can’t make you believe in God,” I said. “So, I’m not going to try. I’ll just hope that someday something will happen that might give you reason to believe.”
He cocked an eyebrow of disbelief. “What might that be? What would be so significant that I’d forget about all the death?”
“I don’t know. I do know how hard it will be for you to get through what you’re going through alone. Are your friends in the motorcycle club a good support system?”
“Brothers,” he said. “They’re brothers, not friends.”
“Your brothers. Do they provide support?”
He looked away. “They don’t know.”
My heart sank. He was going through cancer treatments alone. I couldn’t imagine how helpless he was feeling. In my mind, there was a reason for everything. At that instant, I believed at least one of the reasons Porter was in my life was to receive my unconditional support.
“I’m here for you throughout this entire ordeal,” I said. “I mean it. We’ll get through this together.”
“I’m pretty good at grieving alone,” he said. “I’m experienced at it.”
If we didn’t change the subject, I was going to start crying. “What about the other two questions?” I asked.
He cocked his head to the side. “What were they?”
“What living person do you admire the most, and have you ever been in love?”
He lowered his gaze to beneath the table and stared for a moment. “Right now,” he said, looking up as he spoke. “I think I admire you the most. And, no. I’ve never been in love.”
I was flattered, confused, and, once again, filled with more emotion than I could handle. I mentally stammered to make sense of what he’d said.
“Me?” I coughed. “I don’t deserve that kind of admiration.”
“Beyond sitting in a meeting, hunting a rattlesnake, and eating together today, you don’t know me. But, you offered to help me through this. You earned my admiration with that offer.”
“Thank you.” I smiled. “I’ll try not to disappoint you.”
His eyebrows raised slightly. “I’ll try not to let you.”
His lack of faith in God – and in mankind – was painfully obvious. I wanted to ask a question but feared the answer would do nothing but strengthen my belief that he had no faith in anything the world had to offer him. Eventually, my curiosity got the best of me.
“Why haven’t you ever found love?” I asked.
“I’ve never looked for it. In fact, I’ve done a pretty good job of avoiding it. I figured if I ever allowed myself to fall in love, she’d just be taken from me. We don’t get to choose our family, but we can choose who we let in our lives. If I don’t let anyone in, I don’t have to worry about getting hurt.” Wearing a long face, he gestured toward the pie, half of which was now gone. “Don’t worry about finishing that. You did better than I could have. We should probably look at riding back.”
Our perfect day had been transformed into one that was filled with sorrow. Despite the clear sky, a cloud of sadness hovered over me. I wanted to fix him but feared I couldn’t. Disappointed and depressed, I accepted defeat.
“Okay,” I murmured, reaching for one last piece of pie as I stood. “I’ll eat this on the way to the motorcycle.”
He reached for the pie and pulled a piece from the tin. “I’ll have one, too.”
He rose from his seat and tossed the pie tin in the trash. For Porter, it was just another day. For me, it was a day that would always be earmarked with sadness. Shoulders slumped, I shuffled around the edge of the table and to his side.
I wanted to touch him. To hold him. To explain that although I had no idea why he had been exposed to so much loss, I believed that everything happened for a reason. At that moment, however, I couldn’t fathom any reason that would call for him to lose so much.
We turned toward the street. Porter took a bite of pie. After swallowing it, he looked at me. His face was plastered with surprise. “This is good fucking pie.”
I was too busy wallowing in my sadness to carry on a meaningful conversation. My gaze dropped to the sidewalk. “It’s okay.”
He pushed against my shoulder, forcing me to turn and face him. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sad.” I bit off half the piece of pie in one bite. “Sad affuck.”
“Why?” he asked. “It’s been a good day.”
I swallowed the mouthful of pie. “Not for me,” I said without looking up. “I don’t like it that you’re so uncomfortable with life that you won’t let people in it.”
The index finger of his free hand came into view. He raised it to my chin, lifting it until our eyes met. Instead of continuing the conversation, which was what I expected, he leaned closer. In my sad state of being, I thought for an instant that he was going to kiss me.
And then. He did.
His tongue parted my lips. The sweet taste of syrup, pecans, and buttery pie crust tickled my taste buds. I closed my eyes. Starting at my feet, a tingling sensation ran through me, working its way up my body until I was completely encompassed by a sensation of euphoria.
I followed his every lead, kissing him in return. With a half-eaten piece of pie held loosely in my left hand, I pressed my right palm against the taut muscles of his upper back. Our chests collided. My heart faltered.
Sparks flew.
I wanted the kiss to last forever. We continued our embrace for an amount of time I couldn’t accurately describe. When our lips parted, it seemed that we’d been kissing for a lifetime. I drifted back to earth. A kiss had never transformed me into mindless ball of emotion, but that one did.
Elated, I looked at him admiringly.
My mouth opened slightly, but my mind was incapable of sending a signal to my tongue. While I tried to remember how to turn thoughts into discernable dialogue, he broke the beautiful silence.
“I just let you in. All I ask is this.” He swept my hair over my ear with a gentle finger. “Don’t hurt me.”
Gracious that he trusted me enough to allow me to cradle his damaged heart in my hands, I swallowed heavily, hoping to speak without revealing the mindless state he’d left me in.
“I won’t hurt you,” I breathed. “I promise.”
As we walked to the motorcycle, with him so close I could taste the sweetness of his pecan pie laced breath, I hoped like hell I was right.
10
Ghost
I’d walked into the kitchen hoping to find a piece of pizza in the refrigerator. While I rummaged through the leftovers, my mother sat down at the kitchen table.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Pizza.”
“I threw it out,” she said.
I spun around. “Why?”
“Because it was from Monday night.” She gestured to the chair across from her. “You don’t need to get sick.”
I noticed a plate of cookies on the table that weren’t there when I left for school. My mother often baked, and cookies were her specialty. I meandered to the table, lowered my backpack to the floor, and sat across from her.
“They’re oatmeal and raisin,” she said.
I searched my mind for what I might have done to warrant an after school sit down discussion. I’d been difficult to deal with since my grandmother’s passing, but not so much that a face-to-face with my mother was necessary.
I looked her over, hoping to find a hint on her face as to what the conversation was going to be about. Short of her long
dark hair and natural beauty, I found nothing.
She was a tall woman, standing five feet and ten inches without shoes. Lean and as muscular as most farm workers, she seemed much younger than her age of thirty-seven years. Her youthful appearance and hourglass figure earned her MILF – Mom I’d Like to Fuck – status from most of the kids at school.
They said it in my absence. I needed to kick off my boots to count the amount of kids who got their asses whipped for saying they wanted to fuck my mother. Nonetheless, I’d often overhear a conversation where someone wanted to fuck Ghost’s mother. It never ended well for the person making the claim.
She reached for a cookie. “I just baked them.”
It didn’t take much coercing to get me to eat an oatmeal cookie. As my mother was aware, they were my favorite. Somewhat hesitant, I reached for the plate, still wondering what I did wrong.
I bent the cookie until it broke in two, and then met her hard-to-read gaze. “What did I do?”
She pinched a thumbprint-sized bite from the cookie and paused. “Nothing. I just wanted to have a talk with you.”
It was never that simple. My mother rarely stuck her nose in my business. When she did, there was always a reason for it.
“About what?” I asked.
“You’re sixteen,” she began. “We probably should have had this talk long ago.”
The sex talk.
She was going to have the sex talk with me over a plate of oatmeal cookies. I couldn’t tell her that Amy Betterman had given me a hand job in her dad’s truck, or that Shelly Pickert had sucked my dick at the end of sophomore year, just before summer break. I damned sure wasn’t going to let her find out that I’d shared half a bottle of Goose’s dad’s whisky with Patty Wilson, and that she let me fuck her in her back yard while we were half drunk.
The hand job sparked interest in having girls do what I’d already spent twelve months trying to perfect. I learned that it was much more satisfying to watch a girl stroke my dick than do it myself.
Shelly’s blowjob opened the door for me to try and stick my dick in every willing mouth in Great Falls, Montana. That love for blowjobs got my dick into Patty’s very willing – and capable – mouth.
I found her insistence to swallow my spunk grotesque at first but was fascinated by it later. That fascination lured me to return day after day, while her mother was at work. Her willingness to suck my dick on any given day made her the perfect candidate for experimental sex.
The whiskey was more to boost my courage than to lower Patty’s resistance. She was willing from the start. When the deed was done, I left Patty in the wet summer grass with her panties around one ankle and an empty bottle of whisky at her side. Filled with guilt, I couldn’t run home fast enough to escape the cloud of shame that seemed to loom over me.
Her foul-smelling pussy left me wondering if sex was worth it. I spent a half hour in the shower trying to scrub the rotten residue off my dick, only to find out later that she had some sort of an infection.
Sitting across from my mother, I seriously doubted I’d ever have sex again. Blowjobs, on the other hand, were as commonplace as going to the movie theater, and I went to the movies quite often.
I situated my backpack but didn’t look up. “Is this about sex?”
“Should it be?” she asked.
Not wanting to make eye contact with her, I fidgeted with the bag. “No.”
“There’s nothing down there that needs your attention, Porter. Look at me when I’m talking to you,” she said.
I looked up. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re sixteen,” she said. “We need to have this talk.”
“I know about sex, ma.” As if it would save me from continuing, I poked both halves of the cookie into my mouth.
“Have you had sex?” she asked.
I chewed the mouthful of cookie, wondering if I should tell her about Patty. I wanted my first sexual encounter to be memorable. Something I’d talk about with my four half-brothers while we smoked cigarettes and drank warm beers. Instead, it was something I’d chosen to forget. It had only been seven months. It seemed like a lifetime had passed.
If I couldn’t recall the details surrounding that night, I wondered if I could convince myself it didn’t happen. A drunken dream. A sexual tale conjured up by a half-drunk teenage boy with a hard on and a mind filled with sexual desire. But the memories wouldn’t go away. The underwear and jeans I threw away stood as a reminder each time I searched for a pair of jeans to wear to school.
Lying to my mother wasn’t something that I’d ever done, and Patty Wilson’s stinky pussy wasn’t going to get me to start. I drew a long breath, reached for another cookie, and braced myself for her reaction.
“Yes,” I murmured.
“Porter Quentin Reeves,” she screeched. “You’re sixteen!”
I slumped into my chair. “I’m sorry.”
It was true. I was sorry. Not for the hand jobs or the blow jobs, but for the sex. I wished I could take it back, primarily because of the putrid stench that caused me to throw away my clothes.
She forced a sigh. “So am I. I shouldn’t have yelled.” She reached for another cookie. “Who was she? Will you tell me?”
I didn’t want to. I doubted she’d be happy with my choice. Patty’s mother was a barfly, and was talked about more than religion, politics, or the weather in our town. She wasn’t married, and never had been. If the stories about her were true, she paid her rent with money she made from having sex with the ranch hands that flocked to town seeking seasonal work.
I looked away. “Patty Wilson.”
“Dear God,” my mother gasped. “We need to get you to the doctor.”
My heart shot into my throat. “Why?”
She pushed herself away from the table. “If she’s like her mother, she’s liable to have a plethora of diseases. Did you wear a condom? Please tell me you wore a condom.”
I didn’t. I wondered if the foul odor was a hint of the many diseases she carried. “I uhhm.” I offered an apologetic shrug. “I forgot.”
Her eyes widened to the point I feared they’d fall from the sockets and roll across the table. “You forgot?” she bellowed. “Forgot? Porter, you don’t forget the condom. That’s like forgetting to get dressed before you step out into a blizzard.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her face distorted into a look that could only be described as disgust. “We’ll get you to the doctor on Monday.”
I reached for another cookie only because I didn’t know what else to do. “Am I going to be okay?”
The look on her face faded, but not completely. She looked like she did the night she tried oysters for the first – and last – time. It was as if she could taste what I’d spent two weeks smelling.
She swallowed hard, and then forced a cracked smile. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
With a cookie in my left hand, I reached for my backpack with my right. I wanted to go to the upstairs shower and scrub my dick until I knew it was clean of everything Patty Wilson left on it.
“Is that all?” I asked.
“No,” she said in a stern voice. “That’s not all,”
I broke the cookie in two and waited for the wrath of my mother to come down upon me. Instead of attacking, she pinched a small piece of cookie between her fingers and gingerly placed it in her mouth.
After swallowing it, she sighed. “There will be girls that you’ll want to have sex with for the sake of satisfying your urges,” she explained. “It’s sad, but that’s what boys do.”
“Then, one day, you’ll meet someone you fall in love with. When you find that woman, you’ll know who she is. She’ll be different than the rest.” She broke off another piece of cookie but didn’t eat it. “Until you find her, you’ll have meaningless sex. You need to be truthful – before you have sex – about what your intentions are. It’s the right thing to do. The women are either a one-night-stand, or they’re not. Do you know what a one-night-stand
is, Porter?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I responded. “I do.”
“Don’t you dare leave a woman wondering which category she falls into. Ever. If she knows upfront what your intentions are, it’ll save you – and her – a lot of emotional problems down the road.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Saying nothing leaves a woman to believe she’s special. In her mind, the two of you are sharing something sacred. She’ll believe, unless you tell her otherwise, that she’s in a relationship with you. If you tell her upfront that you’re only wanting sex, it gives her an opportunity to decide if she wants to simply satisfy her urges. You owe it to every woman to let her know where she stands. Before you have sex.”
I nodded but didn’t respond.
“One more thing,” she said. “Don’t you dare tell a woman she’s special just to get in her pants. If I find out you’ve done such a thing, I’ll hit you in the head with your grandmother’s cast iron skillet.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Porter?”
“Yes?”
She held my gaze. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Now, and forever,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I promise.”
She studied the piece of cookie she held. “There’s nothing that’ll break a woman’s heart quicker than believing she’s special, only to find out later that she’s been used for sex.”
“I promised, ma. It won’t happen.”
I assumed she was speaking of my father but didn’t ask. He was a subject we didn’t discuss. I’d always suspected he was one of the ranch hands that came and went, and that she never really knew him. I now wondered if he had misled her into believing she was special, only to leave her with every indication that she was nothing more than a one-night-stand.
GHOST (Devil's Disciples MC Book 3) Page 7