by J. C. Allen
“I was really worried, Derek,” she whispered. “I didn’t know where you were. What was I supposed to think?
“I’m so sorry, Eve,” I said, moving to sit beside her. “I didn’t want to worry you this much.”
She put her hand on my knee, gave a gentle squeeze, and let out a long sigh.
“You can be such an idiot,” she whispered.
“I know,” I agreed, wrapping my arms around her and holding her against me. “Anything I can do to make it up?”
She looked up at me and gave a nice smirk.
“Order pizza?” she asked. “I’m starving.”
“Yeah, that Medieval Times food was good, but definitely not very filling, huh?” I said, smiling, relieved to have released some of the tension.
She nodded, burrowing her face against my chest. I held her tight, taking out my phone as I did and made a quick order for food. The entire time I held her against me, needing her as much as she needed me then. I kissed her forehead, wondering just what else I could do to help her, even though everything I thought of seemed inconsequential, ineffective, or unnecessary.
“Is there anything else I can do?” I offered.
Eve hummed for a bit as she thought, and then she smiled as she looked at me.
“Not sure you’ll like it, but there’s someone I haven’t seen in a while,” she said. “Can we… can we invite Tara over for dinner?”
“Right now?” I asked, tilting my head.
“Yeah, right now,” she nodded. “She isn’t working and I want to see her.”
Well, I just wanted it to be us tonight.
But then again, strength in numbers, right? And you already had your date night with Eve. It’ll make her happier and it’ll give her a sense of being outside of us.
“Alright, why don’t you call her?” I said, smiling warmly. “Let her read me the riot act in person, right?”
“The riot act you deserve, you mean?” she said with a smirk. “And in that case, if we’re going to club up on you, why don’t you invite Roost too? They both can team up on you.”
“You manipulative little… ,” I said, grinning.
“Witch?” she offered, seeming to find something funnier than I understood.
“Huh?”
“Never mind, you wouldn’t get it,” she said, standing up.
“Hey! Not if you don’t let me!” I called back as she began to head to the other room.
“Give Roost a call!”
“Alright, fine!” I pouted, grabbing my phone and making the call.
I was kind of looking forward to this in a strange way, even though I knew I was about to get my ass kicked. It wasn’t so much that—no, it definitely wasn’t that—as it was that we’d have the four of us together for what felt like… actually, it might have been one of the first times. Eve or I always had a habit of being out, Tara was off doing her prostitution thing, and Roost was doing shop stuff. It would be nice to have an evening with just the four of us, not worried about work.
“Ya need me to tell ya how to use yer dick?” Roost said when he answered, sounding like he was in the process of trying to sleep.
“Please, like I need help with that,” I shot back. “We’re having pizza here. Eve’s inviting Tara. She wants you to come too.”
“Aww, ain’t that sweet,” Roost said without a hint of sarcasm. “Hell, I was ‘bout to snore off, but ya won my heart.”
“With company?”
“With pizza, ya fool,” Roost said with a laugh. “Plus, I get a chance to yell at yer sorry ass. See ya in a few!”
“You—”
But he had hung up before I could talk back.
I went to the couch and laid out, trying to decompress from everything that I had just experienced. It would take Roost and Tara probably fifteen, maybe twenty minutes depending on Tara’s need to get prepped, before they got over here. That left at least fifteen minutes of brooding.
I had to expect that there was going to be carnage and violence like this. The Falcons had no ethics, which meant to them, there was no distinction between a clean and a gruesome kill—no, that wasn’t right. They preferred the gruesome over the clean.
I couldn’t allow that to effect me. I almost…
I almost had to become insensitive, in the literal sense, to the violence and bloodshed about to take place.
Could I do that, though, and maintain a healthy relationship with Eve? With Roost? With the rest of my crew? Would they sense that I was becoming like a Black Falcon in order to fight the Black Falcons?
Was this why my Dad never wanted us to stoop so low as to be like them—because if we did, even if we beat them, we’d just replace them?
My phone rang a few seconds later, mercifully pulling me out of my nightmarish self-doubts.
“Derek, it’s Clarence. It’s your lucky hour. Pizza’s here.”
After I had collected the pizza, I gave it some thought to waiting for Roost and Tara before deciding that wasn’t worth the wait. I pulled open the box, smelling the fresh cheese and pepperoni waffling into my nostrils. Eve came running out, closing the box on me.
“Be polite,” she said, in an almost sweet, motherly way.
“Yeah, because Roost would wait for me,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Then be polite for Tara.”
“You mean the one that probably wants to hit me in the nuts for not being Superman for you?”
“Then be polite for me,” she said, moving away from the pizza, an evil yet effective move that prevented me from touching that pizza.
“Ya ain’t waitin’ long, boy,” Roost said from behind the elevator doors that opened as he began to speak. “Ahh, perfecto. Came right when the main dish arrives!”
“Yeah, we gettin’ first dibs on this after your little stunts, pretty boy,” Tara said, coming right behind him.
“Aww, what the fuck,” I said, even as I acquiesced and let them go by.
Roost started to say something about how it was generous of me to treat him before he laid two slices on top of each other and began devouring his pizza. Tara did the same, albeit with only one slice.
Over the next ten minutes, as we munched through pizza, Roost and Tara took turns mocking me and calling me a fool. While there was an element of seriousness in it, by the time a minute had passed, it had become more of a roast—it was hard to take critiques seriously when everyone had to stop every ten seconds to take a bite of the pizza before it went cold.
Finally, Tara said, “Now, if y’all will excuse me, homegirl and I are gonna catch up on the couch,” leaving Roost and I as the two girls moved to the side. I didn’t mean to show some disappointment to see Eve so far away, but Roost picked up on it and gave a loud chuckle.
“Aw, don’t sulk so much, Derek,” Roost said, patting me on the back. “She’ll come back. She ain’t movin’ to Canada.”
“Goddamn, Roost,” I said, rubbing my back. “How many times do I have to say that hurts?”
“Well, ya fuckin’ deserve it this time,” he said, shrugging. “But seriously though. Now that those two be over there… whatcha been thinkin’? ‘Bout tonight?”
Guess the roast is over.
“I’m thinking we need to figure out what the other two messages are going to be… and, in case it wasn’t clear, I’m thinking I shouldn’t go to those on my own. I know we had multiple scouts, but we should’ve had multiple scouts for a single group.”
“Good thinkin’, finally,” Roost agreed. “We can talk to the guys tomorrow and work things out. See who is free to join ya.”
If he’s assigning others…
“You aren’t going to?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I feel these are only leadin’ to somethin’,” Roost said, patting his large stomach. “I gotta reserve all the energy I can fer those things.”
Oh, well then.
“Really?” I rolled my eyes. “Wouldn’t want to lose any of that weight putting in some effort now, would we? Goddamn Ro
ost becoming a fat old cock!”
“Fuckin’ a,” he said, laughing at that joke. “Fat and proud, mothafucka. ‘Sides, tons of gays into the bears!”
“Bears?” I asked and then shook my head. “Never mind, I don’t wanna know.”
“Big, bearded, and gay,” Roost answered anyway.
“That’s a thing?” I asked, blinking.
“Yeh, Derek, that’s a thing,” he said, smirking. “I’mma teach ya feeble mind a whole lot more befo—”
“What are we talking about?” Tara said, interrupting the conversation from her vantage point on the couch.
“I was just teachin’ this boy about gay verbiage,” Roost said, patting me on the back again and throwing me into a coughing fit. “Bears, specifically.”
“What? Ya don’t know what a bear is?” Tara said, laughing. “Big, hairy, and gay, right?”
“Close enough,” Roost shrugged.
Eve smiled, her eyes twinkling in amusement at everyone’s taunting at me. I knew I deserved it and I couldn’t help but smile back at her. I couldn’t deny that it was nice to be with everyone like this.
Tara, the girl who staunchly and loudly stood up for everything she loved and defended, someone who sometimes put on a front of distrusting me but ultimately gave me her full support.
Roost, the man who was both my brother and a stepfather of sorts.
And Eve, the girl of my dreams, the one who had rescued me from my waking nightmare and reminded me what it felt like to be human again.
It felt…
It felt like we were a family.
It felt like we were the family that I hadn’t had in years.
Nothing could replace my real family, obviously, and they were never coming back, no matter how often visions or dreams—which, I realized, I hadn’t had in some time—had come to me.
But damn if these three didn’t do a damn good job of reproducing many of the same feelings.
I smiled, leaning back on the couch as I watched the others talk, wondering what my father would’ve thought of Eve. I knew my parents had loved Anne, although I remembered a few times when my father had asked if I thought she was really the one. My father had loved and accepted Anne, but had worried about the differences in our lifestyles.
Glancing over at Eve, I thought that he would’ve adored Eve. I’m sure he would have said something about coming from the Black Falcons, but at the end of the day, he would have recognized her character. He would have valued her.
I frowned, wishing that they could’ve met Eve, wishing they were still here.
“Derek? You okay over there?” Eve asked.
I shook my head, not realizing I had withdrawn again into my own little world.
“I’m okay,” I said, shaking my head. “Just thinking about my parents, that’s all.”
“What about ‘em?” Roost asked.
Now it’s like a family discussion.
Don’t you go getting too emotional here, now.
“Just wondering what they’d think of all this,” I said.
“I think they’d approve of what you were doing,” Roost said, leaning back on the couch. “They’d fuckin’ adore Eve. Don’t either of ya two ever doubt that.”
“R-really?” Eve asked, flushing in embarrassment.
“Oh, easily,” Roost nodded, seeming completely at ease with his statement. “Don’t get me wrong, they loved Anne. But even then, they could see the differences in lifestyle between Derek and her. And Annie definitely could handle her own. Just… it’s a dangerous life we live. And having a normal life ain’t exactly easy.”
“Well, they certainly would’ve loved me then,” Eve laughed. “Future college grad gone whore.”
Dad wouldn’t have cared. He would’ve cared about who you are, Eve. Logistics are logistics. Character is everything.
“Hey,” I said, shaking my head. “My father had nothing against prostitutes. In fact, it was quite the opposite. He’s the reason I respect them so much.”
“An’ besides, what’s wrong with bein’ a whore?” Tara said, raising an eyebrow.
Oh yeah, can’t forget the loudmouth here.
“Nothing, really,” Eve said, shaking her head. “Just wasn’t my first choice.”
“Amen,” Tara said. “Ya ain’t good at it, either.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eve challenged.
Oh, damn, I thought with a smile, enjoying the playful banter—and keeping a close eye to make sure it didn’t get too bad.
“Ya were too interested in lovey-dovey shit,” Tara teased, bumping her on the couch.
“What do you mean?”
“Johns don’t want something that feels like Valentines Day girl! They just want their cock stroked, sucked, and pushed in!”
Roost and Eve laughed and launched into some discussion about if Johns and gays wanted anything different. The whole scene, if not necessarily in the content, reflected what my family was like—silly banter, laughter, and food.
“I miss my family,” I said to myself.
I felt a flush of embarrassment when I saw Roost turn to me, but his soft smile lessened the embarrassment.
“I miss ‘em too,” Roost said, patting me gently on the shoulder—softly, for once. “But look at us, huh? Kinda fucked, but all of us are family now, right?”
“A whore, a gay redneck, a college grad, and the leader of a biker club,” Tara said, laughing. “Sounds like my kinda sitcom.”
“Mine too,” Eve laughed.
“And mine.”
Then we were all laughing.
I smiled, enjoying just how peaceful things felt then. I could almost forget how bad things were as we sat together, enjoying both the company and food. This certainly wasn’t a typical family dinner, but in its own way, it was my kind of family dinner.
“So, what should we do now?” Eve asked. “Could call it a night if y’all wanted.”
“I call main spare room!”
“Huh? You mean they are staying?”
“Hey now, ya got us here so late, and ya got what? Three spare rooms?” Roost said. “Ya got the entire floor here, I gotta imagine ya got space for us.”
Despite my appearances, I was never going to kick them out. It was well past 2:30 in the morning at this point, and I never kicked family out. Even if the family was a bit crazier than the usual.
“Alright, fine, you guys can stay,” I said, sighing.
“Good! Let’s get out the liquor! And none of that cheap shit!” Tara said.
“Hey! Wait!” I protested.
“Come on, Derek,” Eve smiled, pouting at me. “Let ‘em have just one drink? It’ll be their knockout medicine.”
I sighed, not being able to say no to Eve. I just also knew all too well that it would not be one drink. Not when Roost was involved, and who knew how much Tara drank?
The answer, twenty minutes later, was “a shitton.”
I glanced over at Roost and Tara, snoring loudly against each other on the other side of the couch. Eve had moved to sit beside me after we had gotten the drinks and I glanced over at her, raising my eyebrow.
“One drink, huh?” I whispered.
“Alright, I had no idea that Roost and Tara were going to get into a drinking match,” she said.
“Fair enough,” I said, laughing and glanced over at them. “They’d be a cute couple.”
“I suppose in their own way, yeah,” she agreed and glanced over at me. “Of course, Roost would have to like girls, and I don’t think Tara would be his type.”
“Not in the slightest,” I said with a laugh as she curled up on my arm. “That just leaves us then. Shall we get to bed?”
“Bed sounds perfect,” she said.
Even with everything that had happened, I slept better than ever. It really did feel like I had a new family.
This was what I had to fight for. This is what I had to be smart for. This is what I had to live for.
6
Eve
; I could already tell that last night had helped Derek a lot.
Though I had told him that I wanted Tara and Matty over to “punish” him, I had actually invited them over to help him relax a little. With how crazy things had been going, he needed some down time between everything else. If it gave him a sense of comfort, a sense of well-being, and a sense of relief to have his closest friends—or at least his most entertaining ones—over, then all the better.
It seemed to have paid off.
I was also glad to see that he was looking at things more logically and carefully. I had been worried he’d go and get himself killed trying to do everything himself, but last night he told Roost he wouldn’t be working alone anymore. And, as an added benefit, having a relaxed Derek made for a more relaxed me.
Who would’ve guessed?
After a lengthy and satisfying stretch from one of the best night sleeps I’d had in some time, I slid out of bed. I was happy to see Derek was still sleeping, and I wanted to make an effort to keep it that way.
I leaned in, offering a light kiss to his forehead—one of the few times I was careful about how I kissed him—and then turned towards the master bathroom. I hurried to finish my morning routine—brushing my teeth and hair, getting made up, and then getting dressed. I had a plan for the day, and I wanted to move as fast as I could to get things started.
Mostly, I just had to keep Derek in his state of sleep. It was a race against his REM cycle.
I headed to the kitchen when I heard the familiar refrain of two of my favorite people getting along by arguing.
“I’m tellin’ ya, scrambled is better!” Matty said, his voice a loud whisper.
“I dunno what your boyfriends are teachin’ you, fag, but sunny side up is the way to do it. Run the yolk out, dip your meat in it—not that type of meat—and enjoy!” Tara retorted, her voice restrained but still much louder.
“Ya would like sunny side up, whore. Everything’s up with ya.”
“And you like ‘em scrambled, just like the asses you eat!”
I had to stifle a giggle as I stood near the entrance, careful not to reveal myself too early. They obviously thought both of us were still asleep and were making an effort not to be too loud, and the effort it took for either of them to operate in any semblance of silence was like watching a giraffe stagger across a tightrope. It was rare, strange, and nothing short of awe-inspiring.