“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Sha sat on the edge of her bed. “How would having a woman in this home hurt me?”
I sat down on the bed beside her and rested my forearms on my knees. “I always figured if I introduced you to a woman, and you liked her enough to let her into your heart, that if she up and left one day.” I shook my head at the thought of it and then looked up. “I knew it would hurt you.”
“It’d hurt you, too. Right?”
I nodded. “I suppose so, why?”
“You wouldn’t bring some random girl home that you didn’t like. If you brought her here and introduced me to her, it’d mean you liked her a lot, right?”
“Yeah.”
“If you brought her here based on your best judgement, and then things went to crap, it wouldn’t be because you did anything wrong. It’d just mean she wasn’t able to see what an awesome guy you are. So, we’d both be hurt, but you more than me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you’d see me hurt, and that would hurt you. And then you’d hurt from what she did to you.” She looked at me and shrugged. “Double whammy.”
“The double whammy.” I chuckled, and then gazed down at the floor and nodded my head. One thing I always admired about Eddie as her intellect, and she was reminding me why.
“I’m not letting anyone into my heart until I’m sure about them,” she said. “So, I really don’t have to worry about being hurt like you do.”
I sat and stared at the floor, trying to find the words to continue.
After a few seconds, she broke the silence. “Are you okay?”
I realized I was still nodding my head. I stopped, and then looked up “I’m good.”
“Something’s on your mind.”
There was only one way to get through it, and that was to do it. I inhaled a breath, let half of it out, and began.
“Did you like Sandy?”
“Yeah. A lot. She’s cool, and she’s pretty as eff.”
“Pretty as eff?”
She looked embarrassed. “Pretty as F, U, C, K.”
“Oh.” I gazed down at the floor and nodded. “Yeah, she’s awfully pretty, that’s for sure.”
“Why?” she asked.
I let out a long sigh.
She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “If you like her enough to make her the first girl you’ve ever introduced to me, I’d like her just because you liked her that much. If she’s that important to you, she’s important to me, too.”
I nodded, and then looked at her. “Thanks, Ed.”
“But I like her anyway. She’s cool.”
“Cool?”
“Yeah. Uhhm. Did you see that dress, mister?” she asked excitedly. “And she drives a Bug. Did P-Nut know that?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Does he know her?”
I didn’t want to tell her how, and hoped she didn’t ask. “Yeah.”
“How’d you meet?”
“We met at the Crab Shack on Harbor Drive. Cholo and Lex introduced me to her. She works with Lex.”
“Have you been seeing her for a while?”
I started the nodding again. “Yeah.”
“Well, I like her. A lot.”
The last thing in the world I wanted to do was hurt her, but I was beginning to look at the direction of the conversation we were having as playful and inaccurate. I needed to say what it was I came to, but doing it wasn’t as easy as I had hoped.
I sat up, looked right at her, and sighed. “I want her to move in with us. What would you think about that?”
Her eyes went wide, but not drastically. She seemed far more excited than anything. Seeing her excitement was reassuring.
“Really?”
I couldn’t recall the last time I had cried. If I had to guess, I would say it was the day Ed was born, and although it may have qualified as crying, it was more like a leaky eye. Tears simply ran down my face when I saw her.
But. For whatever reason, I was on the cusp of breaking down in tears. With swollen eyes, I looked at her and nodded.
“Yeah.”
She scooted in a circle until she was facing me, and then pulled her legs onto the bed and sat beside me cross-legged. “Uhhm. Like permanently? Like you and her would be together? I mean, you’d be officially together?”
My mouth had gone dry, and responding verbally wasn’t an option. As I fought back the tears, I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth and nodded.
She rested her hand on my thigh and smiled. “I think I’d like that.”
I couldn’t continue beating around the bush. I needed to simply tell Eddie the truth. Anything short of that was a lie.
I was many things, but a lair wasn’t one of them.
I’d raised Eddie the way I was raised. There were two things on earth: right, and wrong. Two colors, black and white. My world had zero shades of gray. Things were either on the left side of the line or on the right.
In my world, there was nothing that needed pondered. I realized not everyone would agree with my perceptions, but everything fell into one or the other of those two categories.
My beliefs, or so I hoped, were shared by Eddie. If that were the case, she’d be able to understand the position I was in.
I looked right at her, and then wiped my eyes with the heel of my palms.
Her face washed with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Gimme a second.” I held up my index finger, drew a choppy breath, and then continued. “Sandy and I…we uhhm. We met, and we went out. We liked each other, a lot. We uhhm. We went on a few dates, and we had…we had sex. And, she uhhm…”
My voice was shaky, and each word seemed to be getting stuck in the back of my dry throat. While I struggled to continue, she swallowed heavily, and then met my gaze.
“Is she pregnant?”
I bit into my lower lip and nodded my head lightly. “Yeah. She is.”
Her eyes dropped. I had no idea what she was thinking, but I knew hurting her would simply kill me. As much as I realized I had to do the right thing by Sandy, I further knew I couldn’t do anything to sacrifice my relationship with Eddie.
As she seemed to be digesting everything, emotion washed over me, leaving me feeling vulnerable and weak.
“There’s only one thing you can do.” She looked up. “The right thing.”
Everything was still tangled up in my throat, but I opened my arms and managed to rid myself of three words.
“I love you.”
She hugged me. “I love you, too.”
Sitting on the edge of her bed, we held each other. I cried a little bit, but they weren’t tears of sadness. In realizing the level of maturity and understanding in the seventeen-year-old girl I had raised since birth, I filled with so much pride it seemed to force the tears from my eyes.
We sat there in each other’s arms for a long while, and then she broke our embrace. When she realized I was crying, she reached up and wiped the tears from my cheeks with her thumbs.
“Be careful what you wish for,” she said. “Remember that?”
Embarrassed, I wiped my eyes with my index fingers. “What about it?”
“You’ve always told me that,” she said. “And guess what?”
“What?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve always wanted a sister.”
Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Eight
Sandy
I’d always performed in an altered state of being. When I got on stage, I never did so as Sandy, I was always Texxxas. And, when I went home, Texxxas remained in the dressing room, where she belonged.
It left Sandy immune to everything that happened in the club, and allowed her to live a life unaffected by the men who lusted over Texxxas.
The process had worked well for me.
Until now.
It seemed that lately Texxxas was spending all her time on stage thinking about Smokey. My two worlds were somehow colliding, and I didn’t like the
result.
“Fuck yeah,” someone screamed. “Look at her big fucking titties. I’d like to stick my cock between ‘em and…”
“Skinny little bitch needs fucked,” another hollered.
“Show us your tits!”
“Yeah, show us your tits!”
I turned slowly, gyrating my hips to the beat of the music, wishing all along that I hadn’t given any notice. I regretted not walking in and simply quitting. For the first time since I started dancing, I felt guilty for doing so. It wasn’t because I perceived the profession as wrong, because I didn’t.
But I could no longer separate the real me from the make believe me, and the girl who was on stage was slowly falling for a man who asked her to stop performing.
And I hadn’t.
As I turned toward the front of the stage, I heard shouting from the entrance of the club. It grew louder and louder, and then I saw Craig rush in the direction of the commotion. I tried to focus on the music, lose touch with whatever might be happening, and simply make it to the end of the song without becoming an emotional mess.
“Show us your pussy,” someone hissed.
“Fuck yeah! Take that fucking bikini off!”
One of the men who was shouting got up and began to climb on the edge of the elevated platform where I was dancing. I glanced at where Craig normally stood, only to realize he hadn’t returned.
The overeager patron pulled himself onto the side of the dance floor, rose to his feet, and began writhing to the music as he shuffled toward me.
“You’re a sexy little bitch,” he said, his tongue thick from the alcohol he’d consumed. “Come here. I’ll help you get that top off.”
Still dressed in my bikini, I folded my arms over my chest in protest of his offer. “Get off the stage!” I said through my teeth.
“Hey motherfucker,” a familiar voice shouted. “Get the fuck away from her!”
I looked up.
Oh shit.
Smokey and another man were mere feet from the front of the platform and coming in my direction as fast as they could maneuver around the tables.
The music stopped.
Short of the commotion in front of me, the club fell silent.
“What the fuck?” someone shouted.
A group of men stood from their table and turned toward Smokey and his friend.
“What the fuck, dude?” one of them said. “She was getting’ ready to show us her puss.”
While his friend continued toward the stage, Smokey spun to face the three men and began a very one-sided fight.
In my time at the club, I’d seen many fights, several of which involved bikers, but I’d never seen three guys get their asses kicked that quickly. In three or four punches, and what appeared to be one headbutt, the three men were on the floor at Smokey’s feet.
I glanced to my left.
Smokey’s friend, who I now recognized as a club regular named P-Nut, had climbed onto the platform. Upon seeing him, the man who was approaching me pulled a knife from his pocket and flicked it open with a click!
Oh shit.
“He’s got a knife!” I shouted.
P-Nut glanced at the knife, and then looked at the man and grinned. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Why are you smiling?
“Better bring more than that if you wanna fuck with the Nut,” he said, laughing as he spoke.
The knife-wielding man took a quick step toward him.
P-Nut extended his arms and curled his fingertips toward his palms as if inviting the man to come closer. “C’mon, motherfucker. Come cut the Nut.”
With my mouth agape, I stared in disbelief.
What’s wrong with you?
He’s got a knife.
The man lunged forward and swung the knife wildly toward P-Nut’s chest.
P-Nut blocked the swing, gripped the man’s wrist, and then extended his arm straight. While the man’s eyes widened, P-Nut thrust his open hand against the man’s elbow, breaking his arm with a loud crack!
The man screamed in pain and the knife fell to the floor.
A few quick fists to the man’s midsection followed, and then he fell to the floor in a pile. Clutching an arm that now dangled at an awful angle, the man began to blubber.
“You broke…my fucking…you broke my arm!”
P-Nut shrugged and reached for the knife laying at his feet. “Shoulda listened, dumbass.”
He picked up the knife, put it in his pocket, and then looked at me. “Name’s P-Nut.” He reached for my hand. “C’mon. I’ll help you down.”
Still in shock from what I’d seen, I accepted his offer and then glanced toward where Smokey had been standing. Just a few feet from the edge of the platform, and now in an all-out barroom brawl, Smokey was swinging his fists toward anyone who got near him. Most men were running toward the door, but everyone within arm’s reach was being pummeled.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Craig rushing toward him.
“Hey, you Dwayne Johnson looking motherfucker!” P-Nut shouted from beside me. “Stay away from him!”
Craig looked up, and his eyes immediately shot wide. After coming to a complete stop, his hands slowly raised above his shoulders.
I glanced to my left.
P-Nut held a gun in his hand, and it was pointing right at Craig.
Oh, God.
Please don’t...
“Stay the fuck away from him,” P-Nut said, waving the pistol to the side. “Just step to the side, and everything’s gonna be cool. We’re just takin’ her home, and those fellas was bein’ disrespectful to her.”
Craig stood, frozen in place, with his hands raised to shoulder height.
The man on the platform floor continued to cry out in pain, and there were no less than six men on the floor below us doing the same. After walking me to the edge of the platform, P-Nut shouted at Smokey.
“Smoke!” he yelled. “Time to roll.”
Smokey, holding a rather limp man up by his shirt, pounded him once more in the face with his right hand. After dropping him to the floor, he turned toward me.
“You’re done working here.” His voice was stern. “It’s over.”
The thought of having him lose trust in me was crushing. I leaned over the edge of the stage. “I gave notice, I was just--”
His eyes narrowed and his forehead creased. “O-ver.”
I swallowed heavily. My guess was that he just took possession of me, and as weird as it seemed, I loved it.
I fell into his arms as if I didn’t have a care in the world. As he caught me, I looked up. “Okay.”
He lowered me to the floor, scanned the club, and upon seeing no threats, pulled off his kutte. He handed it to P-Nut and then took off his wife beater.
“Put this on,” he said.
“Go ahead, Smoke,” P-Nut said. “I got your back.”
Smokey looked at me with angry eyes. “Stay between us,” he demanded.
I pulled his shirt over my head. “Okay.”
With Smokey leading the way, the three of us walked past the overturned tables and toward the door. When we reached the entrance, the two doormen, who were also bouncers, were standing there.
“Step aside fellas,” Smokey said dryly.
“Let ‘em through,” I heard Craig say from behind me.
They stepped to the side of the door.
“Smokey, wait,” I said. “I want you to meet someone.”
He spun around and shot me a hard look. “What?”
“I want you to meet someone,” I said sheepishly.
Obviously still on an adrenaline rush from the fights he’d been in, he glared at me as if I had asked him to jump off the San Francisco Bridge. I tilted my head to the side. “This is Craig. He’s my best friend.”
Craig cleared his throat. “Her gay best friend.”
Smokey gave the two doormen and angry glare, glanced at Craig, and lifted his chin ever so slightly. “Nice to meet you.”
I shrugge
d and then put on an awkward smile. “This is my baby’s daddy.”
“I’m not your baby daddy,” Smokey growled. “I’m your Ol’ Man.”
With my eyes still fixed on Craig, my mouth curled into a prideful grin. “Didn’t take long, did it?”
He gave me the thumbs up.
“Mail my check?”
Craig simply smiled.
“What was that about?” Smokey asked.
“Inside joke,” I said.
That night I walked out the door of the club for the last time, with my Ol’ Man leading the way, and P-Nut watching our backs.
And, it felt right.
Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Nine
Smokey
It seemed odd mentoring a prospect when I normally didn’t allow anyone close to me other than the small group of people I trusted. Trusting Tank was different than mentoring him, but he was slowly making strides toward gaining my trust, nonetheless.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to get in this club, believe me,” he said. “I had that feeling of brotherhood in the Corps, and after they wouldn’t up my tour, I lost it. I miss it, and the only place I think I can get it is in an MC.”
I took a bite of my burger. “Why wouldn’t they up your tour?”
“PTSD. Said I was a threat to my fellow Marines.”
“Damned shame,” I said. “Couple of the patches are vets, and they’ve got PTSD, too. Sucks.”
He shoved a handful of French fries in his mouth and nodded. “I deal with it different than most, I suppose.”
“What do you do to deal with it?”
He grabbed another handful of fries. “Go to the range.”
“I shot him a surprised look. “That’s it?”
“Flying bullets make me happy.”
I couldn’t decide if his response made me nervous or not. “Suppose it depends on which direction they’re going.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “What do you mean?”
“Whether they’re coming at you, or going away from you.”
“Shit,” he said. “I’ll take ‘em either way.”
“I prefer the ones that aren’t flying in my direction.”
“Either way’s exciting.” He nodded toward my pistol. “See you carry a piece. Gives me peace of mind knowing that.”
“Gives me peace of mind, too.” I slapped my hand against my pocket. “Just like the American Express Card. Don’t leave home without it.”
Filthy F*ckers: The Complete Series Box Set Page 69