by Hazel Parker
We ended with the serenity prayer as we ended every meeting, and just as I suspected, Ethan tried to get away. I was hoping he’d want a slice of cake from the refreshment table – I did. He was quick to find the exit and almost made it to his bike before I called his name. Cake could wait.
“Ethan!”
He hesitated, which means he heard me, but he continued walking. I followed him and said the one thing that I knew would get his attention. “You forgot to say thanks.”
He stopped and turned his head. “For what?”
I shrugged, “For fixing your bike. My advice obviously worked.”
“It wasn’t your advice. I already knew that about my bike.”
“Okay. Whatever you say,” I said, barely keeping myself from snickering. Boys and their toys. “Want to get some coffee with me?” It was a random question and dumb; there was plenty of coffee back in the church. I could see him hesitating, but I needed him to say yes. I couldn’t let him get away again. “It’s not a date. It’s just coffee.”
“Okay,” he said mounting his bike. “Where to?”
Flagstaff was my territory. I knew there was a Starbucks around the block.
“There’s a Starbucks not too far from here.”
“I really shouldn’t,” he said, scratching his beard.
“So?” I said, cocking my eyebrow. “You always do what you’re supposed to do?”
He laughed loudly, bending over his bike. “You’re so right. All right, I’ll follow you.”
I turned to walk to my car but was stopped by his voice.
“Wait.”
“Yes?”
“Let me get your number,” he said extending his phone.
“Why?” I asked, typing my digits into the device.
“Just in case I get lost,” he said the lame excuse with a grin. I played along as my phone rang in my bag.
“That’s me. Don’t forget to save it under Ethan, not God,” he said, his eyes lighting with laughter as I walked to my car, blushing.
Conscious that he was watching, I swayed my hips with more attitude than usual. The ride was no more than a minute or so and I found myself watching him in my rear mirror. He looked so sexy and confident on his big bike. His hands rested high on the handlebars as he rode confidently, like the bike was an extension of himself. When we parked, I found us a table in a quiet corner while Ethan ordered our drinks.
“A caramel macchiato for the lady and black coffee for me.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem,” he said, sliding in the seat in front of me and taking a tentative sip of his drink. “So.”
“So. This isn’t awkward,” I said, laughing.
He chuckled. “Right. Meeting the girl you hadn’t planned to see ever again at your Narcotics Anonymous meeting isn’t weird at all. Nope.”
I knew what our night of fun was. Of course he hadn’t planned to see me again, but hearing him say it caused my chest to hurt more than I thought it would.
“Well, is seeing me again so bad?”
He must have heard the slight edge in my tone. His blue eyes scanned my face before lighting up with his smile. “Not at all.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“So, Molly,” he said, stretching his long body in the chair. His legs spread under the table and rubbed against mine. “I know what you look like without any clothes on,” he said, watching my chest as if he could see through my blouse, “what you like in bed and how you like your coffee, but not much more than that.”
I could feel my cheeks heat with blush. “Well, what else do you want to know?”
“What are you addicted to?”
“Painkillers. You?”
“Meth.”
I could see the unasked question in his eye. Every addict wondered how. What life moment sent us derailing from normal and permanently on the path of addict? For some, the exact moment was blurred; some addictions happened over time, but not for me. I knew the exact moment my life changed.
I was sixteen – young and dumb and so naïve to believe everything people told me. I believed my father had my best interests at heart. I believed he cared about family – that he’d put my safety over the club. I believed him when he’d said we were going to do a quick run. It should have been a quick infiltration of The Crows hideout and reclaiming of our guns, but it had turned into a trip to the hospital and drugs.
*****
“Be quiet,” Paulie said, shushing my giggling. He kissed me quickly, so my dad wouldn’t see us before, pulling off on his bike.
I was wild and reckless and riding high off the adrenaline rush. We’d waited until The Crows were at their bar, drinking, and we snuck into their hideout. It was more like dilapidated barn just waiting for the next big sandstorm to knock it over. I could imagine bikes lined up in neat rows outside, but right then, there was nothing – no one. Just us. There were five of us in total. Dad, Paulie, Ian, Classy, and I. We only had one job: send a message. We were going to take back the weapons they stole and leave a message that you could not cross the Skulls.
Ian and Classy were in a truck. Empty crates were in the back, waiting to be filled with guns. Casper and Paulie moved like a machine, predicting each other’s moves as they hauled over one hundred machine guns to the truck out front. Classy and I stood at random points as lookouts and Ian, our then enforcer, stood between us with a shotgun. It seemed all too easy – so easy that I took it as a joke. I laughed and pushed Classy around. We weren’t paying attention, and it could have been a lot worse than it was.
“Molly! Where are you?”
I could hear the panic in Paulie’s voice.
“Come on,” I said, pulling Classy by the hand and we ran to the front.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him, trying to see past the impenetrable mask he wore when he was trying to impress my father.
“Get on your bike.”
“Are we done?” I said, not moving.
“Yes. Now. We need to go.”
He wasn’t telling me something.
“What’s wrong?”
He led by example, straddling his bike and revving the engine. “We need to go.”
I was overconfident and cocky. “What did you do?”
He pulled at the strands of his hair, though they were short. “We set a bomb.”
The others had already driven away and I could see them farther up the road, waiting and wondering why the hell we weren’t moving. Mere seconds passed and those wasted seconds and minutes counted. I’d thought back and wondered what I would have done if I’d known then what I knew now.
I hopped on my bike and took off as fast I could. Paulie rode slightly ahead of me. I hadn’t ridden a foot before the ground shook and heat seared across my skin. Behind us, the bomb exploded. The warehouse was barely standing before. The force alone pulled the shithole apart. Shrapnel of old nails, glass, and wood cut through the air as good as any blade. Wood of all sizes rained down on us. The heat enveloped me and I felt my back burn as my bike trembled under me. I screamed as I lost control, and the last thing I remembered was Paulie standing over me.
“Molly. You’re okay. Talk to me. Can you hear me?”
I couldn’t say anything. Nothing came out but screams.
“What hurts?”
“Everything.”
I woke up in a hospital bed, face down and in pain. Everything hurt, and it would keep hurting for the next few weeks. The doctor explained some debris caught me and burned through my shirt onto my back. There was an ugly line of melted skin on my back, as well as second and third degree burns down my spine and across my lower back. I broke my leg from crashing my bike.
I had to wait for doctors to stretch the skin on my inner thigh, deal with removing the injured skin, and cover it with my skin grafts. Every day I endured some sort of cutting, patching, and other methods of Frankensteining me back together, every time feeling slightly worse than carpet burn. I hit the morphine button so often they stopped ad
ministering it to me.
Two weeks in the hospital and almost two months in a cast. Through it all, Casper did not visit. Paulie kept me company and up to date on the club. He assured me my dad didn’t visit so I wouldn’t be incriminated. They told some BS story about how I got burned. But that wasn’t true.
When I finally got home, my father blamed me for the accident. He said I needed to work on my listening skills like I was some fucking five year old and wouldn’t be allowed to ride on the next raid. But the next raid never came. When my cast came off, I realized I couldn’t ride anymore. Just touching my bike triggered a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. There was only pain. Burning pain. I couldn’t ride, and I no longer wanted to.
My father did everything he could – threatened me, bribed me, and offered Paulie an exorbitant prize to get me back on my bike, but nothing could do it. I couldn’t ride. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t stop the pain. The only thing that quelled the burning was the Vicodin. I fought the pain. I fought admitting that I was weak and tried hard to return to who I was, but the flashbacks took their toll. Vicodin kept my head above water. It didn't just dull the pain; I really enjoyed how it made me feel. I could relax and worry less about my family and business. I also got really tired, though. I had to drag myself around some days. After months of depression and no sympathy from my dad, I resigned myself to the truth: I was no longer cut out for the MC life. I wasn’t meant to be one of them. After that, I was hell bent on being normal.
I left – without a note or a goodbye. I filed paperwork and got my GED. Of course, no one came looking for me or cared. When my prescription for Vicodin ran out, I got so sick. Even though it was December, I sweated like it was July. And my whole body was in pain, so much worse than my back pain. I was scared. I started going to many different doctors to get more Vicodin prescriptions. I'd lie and say I was in terrible pain, worse than what I actually felt. I needed more and more pills to feel okay, more than one doctor would ever prescribe to me. Then I'd fill the different prescriptions at different drug stores. Sometimes I'd drive for hours to find a store where they didn't know me.
I looked up scholarships and put myself through college. It took a lot of time, hard work, and extra jobs, but I did it in five years, taking classes at night. Through it all, I made room for my sneaky addiction. I got my doctor to extend his prescription and then stole a prescription for it when he wasn’t looking. I made copies of his prescription paper and reused that. Until the pharmacist noticed and then I drove as far as I needed to find a pharmacist who didn’t know my history and bought more then. During all that, I kept working to get my masters. It was not easy. I felt perpetually alone, but I had my painkillers. I took them routinely, like a daily vitamin, and didn’t think about it any further until even their success dulled. They stopped working, and I knew the dangers of upping the dosage.
On and off, I tried to stop and denied I had a problem until my doctor threatened to turn me in when he found out I was stealing. I knew I didn’t want to go to jail. I wanted to have a career and help people. But I didn’t know how to stop, and so I snuck to one more pharmacy for the drugs. The pharmacist said she wouldn't fill my prescription. The computer records showed I had already bought a lot of Vicodin in a short time at several different stores. I was ashamed I got caught, but I was even more scared of getting sick like I did the last time I ran out of the pills.
She gave me a phone number to a national hotline and made me wait with her as she called the number. If she had only given me the number, I would have thrown it away as soon as I was in the car, but because she called, I felt responsible to follow through. The hotline referred me to a doctor that treated people who were addicted to pain medicine. The doctor put me on a medicine to help me feel less sick and crave the drug less when I stop taking Vicodin. It took some time, but slowly I detoxed. I lost my dependency on the drug. I met Ashlyn in school and finally fulfilled my dream of becoming an actual social worker.
My addiction made me a better social worker and relatable to anyone who struggled with addiction. Now work was my new addiction, and I felt a rush every time I helped a child leave a toxic home.
*****
“How old were you when you started?” he asked.
“Sixteen. You?”
“Same,” he said, appraising me differently than before. “What a life you’ve lived. You’re not as innocent as you look.”
“I could say the same to you,” I said, draining my cup.
He smiled and emptied his cup. “You know, you’re not what I was expecting.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Good. It makes me want to take you somewhere.”
“Somewhere with a bed?” I asked suggestively.
“Somewhere like that.”
“Well, there’s a motel not too far from here.”
“I’ll follow you,” he said, standing and throwing our cups away.
The ride to the motel went by quickly, and stripping in front of Ethan felt a lot like something I was comfortable doing, and sex with him felt a lot like being somewhere I belonged.
Chapter 7
Ethan
“You know what?” I asked the drowsy form beside me.
“What?”
“I want to take you somewhere.”
“Like on a real date?” she asked, sitting up. Her hair was wild and my eyes slid down to her perky tits without her permission. She smirked instead of covering up in self-consciousness.
“Yeah,” I said, pulling my eyes up to hers. “Like on a real date.”
“Okay,” she said, running her fingers through her hair, trying to calm the mess on her head. “When? Where? Do I need to dress up?”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Let’s see now. It’s a surprise, and no, you can wear what you’re wearing now.”
“Okay,” she said, jumping from the bed. “Give me a second to clean up.”
I shook my head. I told the woman she could go as she was and she still felt the need to “freshen up.”
“We’re leaving in five minutes,” I said, redressing my naked form. There was a place Evan had shown me once. It was a ledge with a great view of the city below. I was going to take her there. I didn’t know why I wanted to go there, but I wanted to share it with her.
“You’re not hungry, are you?”
“I could eat.”
“Then we’ll grab something before we go up.”
She came out with her hair in a bun that I wanted to take down and her makeup reapplied. “You looked fine before you went in there.”
Something about her blushing was satisfying. “Thank you.”
I held out my hand, not questioning all the weird shit I was doing because nothing about this was normal, and led her outside.
“Where are we going?” she said, her voice quivering just a little.
“To my bike.”
Her hand tightened around mine and she came to a full stop. “Oh. Ethan. Um.” We had only spent two nights together, and yet I could see she was not the carefree woman I had spent my time with. Her muscles were bunched together and she suddenly looked like she would be sick. “I can’t.”
“You can’t what, babe?”
“I can’t ride.”
Oh, that. Most women thought riding was scary, but it really wasn’t, if you had a driver who knew what he was doing. “Well, it’s not that hard, babe. I’m the one driving. You just hold on,” I said, turning and walking a step towards the bike. She let go of my hand, rooted to the spot she was in before.
“No. You don’t understand.” She was on the verge of a panic attack. I could see tears pooling in her eyes. “I can’t.”
I turned back and wrapped my arms around her. I could feel her heart racing in her chest and her chest rising and falling quick. “Okay. Okay. Calm down. Just calm down. Let’s talk about this.”
This was not me. I did not calm women. I left women who couldn’t control their emotions, but there I wa
s, standing in a motel parking lot, rubbing the back of this woman and I was actually interested in what was going on. She knew about bikes, so she had to have been around them. How could she also be afraid of them? I felt her breath on my neck and once it slowed a little, I stepped back to see her face. It was red. From trying to quell her emotions or embarrassment, I didn’t know.
“Talk to me, Molly. What’s going on?”
“I can’t get on your motorcycle.”
“Why not?”
She looked so pitiful, chewing her bottom lip like she was afraid of what she might say. “Because I’m afraid.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Crashing,” she whispered.
“Do you think I would crash my bike?”
“No.”
“Do you think I would want to put you in danger?”
“No.”
“Do you think I would want to endanger my own life?”
“No.”
“Then the rational and logical thought would be there’s nothing to fear. Right?”
She nodded.
“But fear isn’t logical,” I said with a sigh. Nothing I said had calmed her stance.
“I’m sorry,” she said in tears.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t apologize.” I kissed her forehead. “You’re all right.” We stood like that for a moment, my mouth resting on her forehead, before I smiled down at her. “Come on.”
She stiffened, rigid and ready to protest.
“Molly, look at me.” Her eyes were glued to my bike like it might attack her. “Look at me, sweetheart.” She looked at me. “I just want us to walk to it. Okay?” she looked uncertain. “We’re just going to stand beside it. That’s it. Do you think you can do that? Just walk beside me and stand next to my bike.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
Slowly, hand in hand, we walked to my bike and stood beside it. I could almost feel the tension her body was displaying. She stood next to it, but angled away and closer to me. With our joined hands, I outstretched her hand toward the bike. I moved slowly enough for her to pull back if she wanted to, until we were both touching the seat.