By the time we’d merged onto the interstate, I was enjoying the ride in spite of myself. I’d almost forgotten how it felt, the wind shearing through my hair, the engine rumbling between my thighs, scrubland for miles around. I was looking forward to being in control of my own bike, of course, but this was a good appetizer.
We arrived at the storage unit to find, thank you Jesus, that my Harley was just as I left it, except for the layer of dust it’d accumulated over three years of disuse. Once I’d wiped it clean with a dry rag I found close at hand, it looked good as new.
It purred like a kitten as we rolled out of the parking lot and out onto the winding local streets.
I turned to Adam, who was riding side-by-side with me, in the same lane, and shouted, “Guess it’s time to go home to the old man—and meet his new wife.”
“Not quite yet. We’ve got a little welcome-home shindig set up at Wallace’s. It’d be awful rude of you not to show up.”
“Shit, I dunno Adam, I was supposed to go home and have dinner with the family.” The word “family” still felt weird coming out of my mouth. Used to be Dad was my only family; now two people I didn’t know had been thrown into the mix.
“I wasn’t asking.”
“Well, shit.” I said. He took that as acquiescence, and accelerated to pass me, ensuring that, if I had a change of heart, I wouldn’t be able to communicate it to him.
The ride was five hours, but it felt like barely 15 minutes had passed when we pulled into the lot at Wallace’s. Outside, Rory, a friend of mine who didn’t bike, was engrossed in his old Mustang, fiddling with something under the hood.
“Give me just a few, Adam. I’m gonna make sure Rory doesn’t destroy that beater for good.”
“Ok,” Adam said, “I’ll be inside.” He knew better than trying to dissuade me from working on a car. It was the only kind of honest labor I was cut out for, and I loved doing it.
I clapped Rory on the back and he damn near jumped out of his skin. “Hey there, Rory. I see you’re still pretending to be a mechanic. Why don’t you step back and let someone who knows what he’s doing take a look-see.”
“You’re out, huh? I lost track of time. Good to see you, man.”
“Ditto. I’m serious, though: hand me the wrench and back away slowly.” I was surprised the Mustang had even survived my three years behind bars. Rory was the kind of amateur grease monkey who could turn the simplest problem into an all-out disaster with the flick of a wrist. To anyone else, he’d swear up and down he knew what he was doing, but I’d cleaned up his messes far too often for him to keep up the pretense.
He stepped back, hands raised in deference. Within 25 minutes, I’d diagnosed the problem, offered a temporary fix and figured out what spare parts Rory needed to make sure it didn’t happen again.
“Thanks, man. You haven’t lost your edge.”
“Damn straight I haven’t.” I wiped my blackened hands on my jeans and turned to find Carly running towards me with her arms spread.
“Ahhh! You’re back!” she screamed.
“Uh, you might want to hold off on that hug if you don’t want to get engine grease on your clothes.”
She hugged me anyway. “Do I look like I give a fuck?” When we separated, she kept her hands on my shoulders. “I missed you, man!”
“I missed you too, Carly. How’s life?”
“Oh, you know, up and down. The hair salon closed, so I’ve been helping out at the garage. Which, by the way, they’re accepting applications…”
“I just might check into it. Thanks for the tip. And sorry to hear about the salon.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. Cutting bougie bitches’ hair was getting old, anyway. Come on, let me buy you a drink.”
“Well, all right, if you insist.”
“I do!” She took my arm and damn near dragged me into Wallace’s.
I’d meant to get in and get out, or at least borrow a phone to call my Dad before I got too far into my cups. But everyone seemed to want to buy me a drink, and who was I to deny them the pleasure? By the time I had my head on straight enough to ride my bike home, it was past 11:00. Adam and Carly decided to ride back with me, just for the hell of it.
Dad’s new wife’s house looked really nice; sure was a lot roomier than his old bachelor pad. Adam and Carly and I kept shooting the breeze for a few minutes at the end of the driveway. Adam was telling me how Randy, one of the other mechanics at the garage, had gotten his first cousin pregnant and skipped town in shame. In our not-quite-sober-state, we all found this hilarious.
At one point, Adam spit a nasty brown glob of something on the driveway.
“Adam! You’re chewing tobacco? Where’d you pick that up?” I asked.
“Aw, you know, around.”
“Well, you should stop, young man. It’s a nasty habit.” I was kidding around, but I really did find it uncouth.
“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Carly said without removing the Marb Red from between her lips.
I gave Adam the hairy eyeball. “Well, whatever you do, show a little respect and don’t spit on these nice people’s driveway. ‘Less you want me to spit on you.” I hawked and spit in his direction, almost hitting his left boot.
“OK, God! I won’t spit in the driveway.”
We said our goodbyes, and I went straight in without knocking, like Dad told me to last time we talked. Earlier in the day, I was a little anxious about seeing my old man again, not to mention meeting the new wife and stepsister. After seeing the old crew and getting a few drinks in me, though, there was nothing that could put a damper on my good mood. Or so I thought.
A lamp was on in the living room. A girl was seated on the couch, reading a book. Must be Leah, I thought. I took advantage of the fact that she was ignoring me (or at least pretending to) to take a look at her. She was 19 or 20, thereabouts. She had shoulder-length auburn hair and cute features. She still had a little make-up on, though she was dressed for bed, in pink pajama pants and a white T-shirt that accentuated her slim frame and pleasingly outlined her pert breasts.
A little voice spoke up in my head: What the hell, Ash? You’re not supposed to be thinking about her breasts. She’s your fucking stepsister. Not that I could really help it. Get out after three years in prison, where there aren’t any women except stern, frumpy ones in guard uniforms, and it’ll be a while before you can encounter a pretty girl without eyeing her like a starving dog would a choice cut of meat. The fact that she’s suddenly supposed to be your sister doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.
I decided to push those Neanderthal thoughts into the back of my mind and properly introduce myself. I announced my arrival by plopping down on the couch next to her.
“Hey, stepsis,” I ventured.
“The name’s Leah,” she said, without even looking my way. Ouch.
“And mine’s Asher. Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, enchanté.” Goddamn, she was freezing me out. For some reason, she’d decided to hate me without even meeting me. I knew I’d have to get used to judgment as a felon fresh out of prison. Still, it stung—especially coming from a girl whose company I’d be keeping for the foreseeable future. Who I was supposed to call my sister.
In a sober moment, I would have excused myself and walked away. In my slightly intoxicated state, though, her stuck-up attitude seemed like an invitation for needling—an invitation I enthusiastically accepted.
“What’cha reading?” I asked. She wordlessly turned the cover toward me so I could read the title. “’Waiting for God-ott, huh? Never heard of it—what’s it about?”
“God-oh,” she corrected me. “It’s French. It’s a play about these two tramps who are waiting around for this guy called Godot to meet them. They have a bunch of pointless conversations with each other. Then a rich man and his servant show up, and they have more pointless conversations. Then they’re alone again, and Godot still hasn’t arrived. The curtain falls, the end.”
Well
la-di-da, wasn’t she smart. I didn’t want to let her know she’d succeeded in her goal of making me feel like an idiot, so I continued doing my best to irritate her. “That’s all? And they never meet him? Sounds pretty goddamn boring.”
She looked away from the book for long enough to shoot me a theatrical eye-roll. “Yeah, it’s totally boring. You wouldn’t like it.” She went back to reading, and I thought she was finished with the conversation for good. Then she added, “Would you mind getting your feet off that chest? It was my great-grandmother’s.”
“Sure thing.” I actually hadn’t realized I was resting my feet on it. Or at least I didn’t think anything of it. In prison everything’s shitty and, short of beating up the sink and toilet when you get mad, you can do pretty much anything with impunity. So you get into the habit of treating stuff like shit, without even thinking about it. But even if she was right to tell me off, her snotty tone pissed me off.
“Asher? Is that you?” It was my old man, calling me from a few rooms away.
“Indeed! Coming.” I got up from the couch. “Fuck you, too,” I muttered as I walked away. Never said I was mature.
Somewhat contrary to my expectations, my reunion with my dad and introduction to my new stepmom wasn’t awkward at all. Dad looked exactly the same as when I left, except for a few new lines around his eyes. Hopefully my being in prison didn’t put them there.
My stepmom, Christine, didn’t know quite what to make of me at first. But her lasagna was heavenly—especially in comparison to that nasty prison food—and, over the next hour or so, I think I made some headway toward winning her over. Unsurprisingly seeing as she was a professor, she was so smart I found it kind of scary. Unlike her daughter, though, she didn’t act like she was better than you because of it.
By the time I was ready to turn in, I’d totally forgotten about the unpleasantness with Leah. And yet, soon after I slipped between the sheets of my new bed for the first time, there she was again, in my mind‘s eye.
“God-oh. It’s French.” The snotty way she’d said that. Like she knew she was better than me and wanted to make damn sure I did, too. She probably looked down at me, thought of me as some kind of worthless thug, just because I was in prison. She could go ahead and think that. I certainly wasn’t about to waste time explaining myself to her.
Maybe it’s for the best that I despise her, I told myself. At least it means I’m not thinking about her tits.
Wait. Fuck.
Chapter 3
Leah
The next day, when I was sitting at the breakfast table, eating my customary bowl of Frosted Flakes and nursing a cup of coffee almost as sugary as the cereal, my mother walked in and dropped a bombshell on me.
“Morning Leah,” she said, and took a sip of (black) coffee from her favorite mug, which was yellow and had ‘#1 Dad’ stenciled on the outside in Comic Sans. “Hey, I just started some heavy reading on girls’ initiation ceremonies among the Bemba people of Zambia. I’m afraid if I take a break now, I’ll totally lose the thread. Would you mind asking Asher to give you a ride to school this morning?”
My face fell. “Why can’t I drive?”
“Leah. You know why. Clint and I both need our cars during the day.”
“Ughhh.” Try as I might, I couldn’t think of any way to weasel my way out of this.
She cocked her head sympathetically. “OK, what’s wrong? I didn’t expect you to fall in love with him right off the bat, but this seems a little out-of-proportion.”
“I don’t know. I just—” I checked my six and continued in a lowered voice, “I just don’t like him. He’s rude. He’s sketchy. He smells like whiskey and cigarettes.”
“Well, I can assure you he doesn’t smell right now. He was in the shower just a few minutes ago.”
“He put his feet on Great-Grandma’s antique chest.”
“Well, we’ll have to ask him to stop doing that.”
“Don’t worry, I did.”
“Nicely, I hope.”
“Of course,” I lied.
Mom sighed. She set her mug down on the counter and looked me straight in the eye, earnestly furrowing her brow. “Leah, believe me, I know that it’s tough for you to deal with two new people in the house. You don’t have to like Asher. If you have any legitimate concerns about him, I want to know. In the meantime, I’m not going to force you to go with him this morning, but it would be a really, really big help.”
“Hmm… I’ll do it for $20,” I said, and grinned mischievously. My tone implied I was kidding around, but we both knew I was serious. It was a game Mom and I sometimes played.
She smiled in spite of herself. “Jesus, Leah. You drive a hard bargain.” She grabbed her wallet out of her purse, which was sitting on the counter right next to her coffee cup, and pulled out a $20 bill. She extended it to me, then snatched it away when I went to grab it. “This is a one-time deal, OK? Next time I need a favor, no money will be changing hands. Got it?”
“Capisco,” I said, not entirely ingenuously. I knew I’d find a way to con another $20 out of her in a couple days. That was part of the game. Satisfied, she extended her arm again, and this time let me take the twenty.
“Well, if you’re going to make it school on time, you’ll need to leave soon. Finish up those Frosted Flakes and go ask him.”
She’d bought my obedience, at least for the moment. I ate the last few spoonfuls of cereal, drank the sugary milk (a childhood habit I’d never quite grown out of) and set the empty bowl on the counter along with my half-full coffee cup. Mom rolled her eyes at my failure to rinse my dishes, but I was already on my way down the hall to—ugh—ask Asher for a ride.
I knocked three times on the guest room door, and when my knocks received no response I knocked three more times.
“Yeah? Come in,” a voice finally answered. I opened the door and found myself face to face with my arch-nemesis—who was wearing nothing but a towel. Apparently, he had yet to dress from his shower.
The clothes I’d seen him in the night before didn’t do him justice, I had to admit. The guy was ripped. Not like bodybuilder ripped, but sculpted. Glistening, well-defined pecs, six-pack abs and square shoulders. His arms were as impeccably toned as the rest of his upper body.
It wasn’t all that impressive, though. What else was there to do in prison but hang out and lift weights? He certainly hadn’t spent that time boning up on his modernist writers, as our conversation about Beckett had demonstrated.
This all passed through my mind in a split-second, mind you. I certainly wasn’t about to give Asher the satisfaction of knowing that I’d been paying attention to his body. I shifted my gaze to his face, which was framed by strands of sandy-blonde hair still wet from the shower.
“Um, sorry to bother you Asher but I was wondering if you could give me a lift to school.” I said the words in monotone but they tumbled out of my mouth faster than I expected, so I sounded bored and nervous at the same time. Fortunately, Asher didn’t seem to notice anything strange.
“Sure thing, stepsis,” he said, with a cocksure grin. “Just let me get dressed and we’ll hit the road.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
Well, that went smoother than I expected. Besides insisting on calling me “stepsis” instead of, you know, by my name, Asher hadn’t done anything gratuitously annoying. I was almost grateful.
But not grateful enough not to announce, once we’d climbed into Clint’s baby-blue Mazda, “I’m only going with you because Mom asked me nicely—and gave me $20. This isn’t me trying to be friendly or anything.”
He gave me a look. He didn’t seem so much offended as surprised at how bratty I was being. To be fair, I was a little surprised, too. I thought I‘d just wanted to be left alone, but clearly there was a part of me that wanted to get under Asher’s skin as much as he wanted to get under mine.
“Smart girl,” he said. “But I’m one step ahead of you. My dad paid me $50 to tolerate your presence long en
ough to drop you off at school.”
My wit failed me. All I could think to say was, “Really?”
He flashed that same old cockeyed grin at me. “Nope. But he told me you might ask for a ride. Methinks he and your mom have been plotting to get us on speaking terms.” He paused for a moment before continuing in a more serious tone, “I think they really want us to get along.”
“Not surprised. It would make life a hell of a lot easier for them if we started acting like part of a big, happy family.”
“Uh-huh. Listen: I didn’t ask to—“ Asher never got to the end of that sentence. He was distracted by something outside the driver’s side window: a dark-haired man on a Harley. He was wearing a patched-up denim vest kind of like the one Asher’s tobacco-chewing companion had been Thursday night. We stopped at a red light and the sketchy-looking biker stared into the driver’s side window. No, not stared—leered. At first, he was looking at Asher, but then, unmistakably, he shifted his gaze to me.
I heard an engine rev on my right side, and spun to find another biker in an identical vest smiling at me through the nearer window. This one had slicked-back blonde hair and a face that looked to have been sculpted over years of hard living. There were jagged scars around his right eye, which was cloudy and vacant. He was close—so close I could see his missing teeth as he smiled at me, and almost smell his rotten breath.
“Friends of yours?” I asked sardonically, terrified but putting on a tough face.
“No,” he said. His knuckles were white. He looked one way, then the other, eyes darting like he was a scared rabbit or something. After those few moments’ calculation, he hit the gas, took an illegal left without signaling and sped down a side street.
He slowed down when he saw they weren’t following him, but all the same he spent five minutes driving aimlessly and glancing at his rear-view mirror before finally satisfying himself that he’d lost them.
“What was that about?” I asked as we pulled into the parking lot of Hawthorne High. An unmistakable tremor of fear crept into my voice.
A Step from the Edge (Tough, yet Tender Book 2) Page 2