by Sara Crest
I was still a little afraid of falling off so I held onto Sven tight, pointing to where he should go as the setting sun warmed our backs and the wind ran through my hair. If I didn’t know any better I’d say I was flying.
4
(Emma)
When we reached my place I couldn’t stop laughing. My hair was a mess and my heart was beating faster than it ever had before but I felt so alive.
Sven walked me to the door, smiling at how happy I was. Just the joy from that ride seemed to wipe away the negative thoughts and feelings from what Sam had tried to do to me.
I knew I had to thank him somehow, even if it was with just a gesture. Maybe invite him in for coffee? God what mom would do to me if she found out I invited someone like Sven into her home.
No, no she’d be fine, Sven is just a regular guy who happens to have gang tattoos and a motorcycle. Who knows, with how faded that tattoo was he might have been a part of it long ago, we’ve all made mistakes in our past right? Besides I can’t just not thank him for saving me back at the bar. Hell he deserves much more than a cup of coffee but that’s all that I really had in the house.
“Would you like to come inside? I can make you some coffee if you’d like” I asked with a smile. God I felt dirty just saying it, it felt like I really said “hey thanks for saving me wanna go in my room and have some fun and then never talk ever again never ever never?” I hope he didn’t take it that way
But would that really be all that bad? I mean I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. The way he looked with his muscular body and his piercing blue eyes and stubble that I just wanted to run my hands over. His chiseled jaw, his wavy hair. Only a man as good looking as him could turn me on so soon after what just happened at the bar. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down, this would just be for coffee and nothing more, maybe if I found some food or cake in the fridge I’d give him some if he wanted.
God I just made him sound like a homeless man.
“I have to admit” I continued “I live with my mom and half sister but they won’t be back for a while. We could talk for a bit and maybe I could try and make something for you, it’s the least I could do for putting your neck out for me and giving me a ride home.”
He smiled “Sure I could come in for a-”
Just then his phone rang and the smile on his face disappeared into frustration. He answered the phone in an annoyed tone, tapping his foot waiting for the conversation to end. He seemed like he was dancing around his words because I was around as if he didn’t want me to know something.
He hung up the phone and sighed. “I’m gonna have to take a rain check on that coffee, something just came up.”
He took my notebook from out of my hand, somehow I trusted him enough to not read anything inside. He flipped through to the first empty page he could find and then wrote down his number before handing it back to me with a sly smile.
“Wish I could stay, but this is really important.”
“I understand” I said. “I’ll call you sometime.”
He nodded and headed back to his bike, I could tell just from his body language that he was tense and frustrated.
“I wonder where he’s going” I said to myself as started up his bike and sped off down the empty road, disappearing over the hills that surrounded our house.
He really wasn’t helping me out with this whole “he’s not actually a biker he just looks like one” thing I had going on in my head. What phone call would be so important that he absolutely had to go so soon? That he couldn’t even stay a few minutes for coffee.
“Ughhhhh” I blurted out opening my door and heading inside.
Yet another night of me being all alone. We lived in a colonial era house so being alone here at night definitely creeped me out sometimes, all the creaks and groans of the house seemed to amplify when you were alone. I liked to imagine that was the house laughing at me for attempting to have a life, I spent so much time in here that it probably knew me better than anyone.
“Is that sad?” I said to myself.
“Yeah, yeah that’s probably a little sad.”
5
(Sven)
Fucking hell I was a few steps away from walking through that door, I would have had her. I could just picture it now, as soon as I walk in I push her up against the wall and kiss her. I’d run my hand up that tight little body of hers and pull her against me. God it pisses me off just thinking about the chance I just missed, I fucking needed that.
She was gorgeous. I’ve seen some pretty girls before but never someone that caught my eye the same way Emma did.
Those soft and round lips, that delicate young face, those hips and ass, not to mention perky tits that just wouldn’t quit on you. I could tell from the way she talked that she wasn’t a ditz, in a town like this she was a damn diamond in the rough. I knew I had to have her, I knew I’d make her mine. But I couldn’t scare her away, a girl like that finds out what kind of guy I am and they run for the hills.
God it took all my self control not to just take her right there, to just ignore the call from Saul and bring her in and kiss her, feeling her melt in my arms the same way so many other girls have done before.
I adjusted my jeans as the wind hit my face, it was hard to not feel something down there when thinking about her. I would be back for her, and it would all be worth it when I got to unwrap her like a present, throw those clothes on the floor and feel her all night.
I pulled up back to the bar to see Saul waiting for me, boy he looked pissed I took so long.
“You were supposed to meet me here” Saul said as I turned my bike off. “What I leave you alone in a bar for half an hour and you go off and get your dick sucked or something.”
“I was busy, I’m here now ain’t I.”
“So what’s the dude’s name” he said jokingly.
“HER name is Emma, and I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot more of her soon. Thanks to your little call I didn’t exactly get what I wanted.”
“Just don’t let her distract you from what we’re here for. Last thing I need is Walsh getting his fucking undies in a twist because he thinks we aren’t busting our asses up here.”
I wanted to say that Walsh could go fuck himself. He was the leader of our club, the former chapter leader gave the title to him and to this day I still don’t know why. Walsh would be nothing without men like me around him, the bastard thought he was such hot shit that he didn’t seem to realize that. Walsh never liked me, I wasn’t sure if it was because I was third generation and he was first, if it was because of some kind of jealousy of my father, or if he just didn’t like me as a person but he always treated me like shit. When my father died serving the brotherhood Walsh offered no condolences, even though at the time I was just a kid, as far as I was concerned Walsh’s desires meant fuck all to me.
I shook those thoughts out of my head, trying to get myself back on track.
“You need to learn to get yourself a good distraction once in awhile Saul, especially one that looks as good as that girl. Jesus christ what I would do to get my hands on that.”
“Women just take up time and energy, you know that as well as I do.”
“This girl can take up as much of my time as she wants, as long as she does it in the right way” I said with a grin. “You’ll see, she’s gonna be worth it. She has the brain to go along with that body I can tell.”
“I’ll see you fall flat on your face when you find out she’s like every other broad that wants a quick ride with a dangerous guy before pussying out when she finds a handgun in your sock drawer and blood on your knuckles.” he replied. “If you think she’s got a good head on your shoulders then maybe she’ll have half a mind to call the cops on you, then it’s all of our asses that’ll go to jail for the shit we’ve done. We’ve got a good thing going here, don’t let us or the Freedom Riders down.”
“Whatever. Did Barron find the guys or what?”
“Ohhhh he found them, you better believe
he found them. Why else would I blow your phone up like that to get your ass over here. Now come on, we gotta head out.”
Barron was the third guy in our trio, and the three of us were always stuck doing this kind job. I may not have grown accustomed to putting a bullet in a man, maybe I never will, but finding our target and knowing what I was doing for the MC gave me a rush like you wouldn’t believe.
The three of us were part of the Freedom Riders Motorcycle Club based down in, you guessed it, Boston.
We had been coming to this little town because believe it or not this whole area helped supply the greater Boston area with methamphetamine. Real fucking good crystal, or so I’ve heard, I’ve personally never tried the stuff. There were so many forests and mountains in this area that you could build up a lab in the middle of nowhere and nobody would find out. Less paranoid meth cooks means a better product.
The Freedom Riders had a monopoly on the stuff and these guys stopped meeting their production quotas a while ago. When we asked for our money back we were met with a big “fuck you” so now we gotta clear these bastards out and bring in our own people. All they had to do was give us our money back, they never make it easy.
We did this kind of stuff to make sure the club kept its power, we rarely recruited. To be a Freedom Rider you had to be related to one, my dad was a Rider, and his dad before him. I took a lot of pride in that.
If Barron found the guys we were looking for then maybe I’d be able to leave this town early. If that’s the case then it would be a shame, I would probably only be able to get a quick fuck out of Emma before heading back down to Boston. Yeah that’s what I wanted but I was also hoping for something a little more regular. Can’t get that if I’m leaving town so soon.
Maybe I could take her to Boston and show her the life, to have a girl like Emma draped around me while walking down old town Boston? I’d make every man in the city jealous.
Nah, the second she sees what I really do for this club she’ll run away just like all the other broads. Sauly is probably right…
6
(Sven)
“About time you two showed up” Barron said stepping off of his bike.
“Loverboy Swede here was just putting his moves on a townie girl, don’t put the blame on me.”
“I think she might be a little better than a townie Sauly boy” I replied turning my bike off.
“Yeah well I didn’t talk to her so I wouldn’t actually know.”
“Will you both get your heads together, we got a job to do” Barron said walking over to us.
We were out in the middle of nowhere, there were forests completely surrounding us and the only way out was the road we just rode in on. If we hadn’t already found two other labs in the forests around here I would have thought that this was a dead end, Barron knows what he’s doing though.
“There’s a house deep in those woods, that’s why this place was such a bitch to find. They only have a few lights on so you can’t see it from all the way out here but I know the chemical smell of a lab anywhere. I don’t know how many guys are in there but I do know that I’ve been scoping this place for two days and not one person has stepped out.”
Barron was a big guy, bigger than me even, so it always amazed me how he was able to sneak around without ever getting his head blown off by the meth cooks who were always high on their own supply. He even tuned his ride to be just a bit quieter, a chopper ain’t exactly the best thing to use when you’re trying to sneak up on someone but he made it work.
He kept his hair buzzed unlike Saul and I who preferred to just keep it on the shorter side. Barron used to have long hair down to his shoulders but he cut it off when he got into a fight with another Freedom Rider member and the guy was able to grab a full handful of his hair and use it against him. Barron said he’d never let someone get the better of him like that again.
He took a duffle bag from off of the back of his bike and tossed it towards us. The familiar sound of guns hitting and clanking together reminded me just how real our job for the club was.
Freedom Riders always sent groups of three to do stuff like this, they nicknamed us Minutemen because we were supposed to be able to hitch up and roll out at a minute’s notice and do the job that no one else wanted to do or was even qualified for.
Saul opened the duffel bag up and handed me a pistol, reminding me that I still had the pistol that I stole from the guy who attacked Emma. I would have to ditch it somewhere, one of the first rules of being a Minuteman is never using a registered firearm, no matter whose it was you’d get caught one way or another. Cops aren’t as dumb as we make them out to be. We only ever bought guns for a specific job and we almost never held onto them afterwards just in case we got pinched. With the house being so deep in the woods I doubt the cops would be a problem here.
“To think I could have my lips wrapped around that cutie in her bed, feeling up that body of hers and making her moan my name” I said making sure the gun was loaded properly.
“You probably don’t even remember her name loverboy” Saul said chuckling.
“It’s Emma, it’s gonna be stuck in my mind after I whisper it into her ear when I’m on top of her. Oh Emma! Ohhh Emma!” I fake moaned jokingly, giving Saul a chuckle.
Barron grabbed me firmly by the shoulders “hey, I don’t want you thinking about tits and ass right now. I need you to focus, when we’re done this you can run buck wild for all I care but I’m not trying to take a bullet from some meth head in the middle of nowhere because you’re thinking about this townie girl.”
I brushed him off “how many times have we done this before? In and out job, I’m ready.” I wish that was the truth, truth is a man never gets used to doing something like this. You just learn to have a few drinks before the main event to make sure you don’t pussy out. With all that happened at the bar with Emma I only had one drink in me. Not even enough for a buzz.
“Any of you guys got a drink? You know how I am with this shit” I said. Barron took an opened vodka bottle out from one of his motorcycle bags and handed it to me. I quickly downed about three of four shots worth, just enough to get a buzz going. When you’re buzzed you fear death a lot less, not to mention pulling the trigger becomes that much easier. Anyone who’s done this before will tell you that the alertness tradeoff was more than worth it.
Before we got Saul we had this 20 something year old kid who ended up pussying out on us during a raid, I ended up with a bullet in my arm because of him. If he had just had a drink maybe he’d still be in the Freedom Riders, running away is unforgivable.
I was starting to get tired of being a minuteman but as of right now it was the only way for me to stay in the Freedom Riders, and I didn’t want to leave the brotherhood. Especially when my father was a member before me and his father before him.
“Alright boys” Barron said loading up his rifle. “Let’s clean up this mess.”
Saul took out three masks from the duffle bag and handed them to us. Classic goalie masks to hide our faces just in case anyone made a break for it and got out of there, last thing we needed was for these fucks to know our faces.
I looked at mine before putting it on, classic bone white with a blue stripe right down the center. Thing was so old it was probably a collector’s item, I might just hang onto this.
I reached into the bag and pulled out a sledge hammer, always needed one just in case we had to bust a door down. We started walking into the woods as we put our masks on, the sounds of crickets and cicadas masked our footsteps. I gripped my pistol tight in one hand and the sledgehammer in the other, ready for anything that was about to come our way. As we followed Baron the smell of the meth cook got worse and worse, even through the thick scent from the pine trees there was no denying that stench.
“Like cat pee and paint thinner” I said. “Every time it's gotta smell like cat pee and paint thinner, you’d think they’d throw some cinnamon or nutmeg in there just to make that shit smell tolerable.”
We finally came across a house, a two story piece of trash that looked like it could fall over at any moment.
“Alright boys you know how this thing goes, you take the inside and I’ll support you from the outside” Barron said taking position on top of a hill.
“Why does he always get the outside job?” Saul said taking position behind me.
I knocked on the door and a few seconds later we heard some scatter brained moron on the other side.
“Yeah! Who the hell is that?”
“Aim for the door handle” Saul whispered to me.
I nodded back to him and wound up the sledgehammer like a baseball bat. I cocked it to swing it as hard as I could, like I’ve done so many times before, like my dad and grandfather used to do.
“Learn to pay your debts asshole!”
7
(Emma)
Seemed like I would have the house all to my own for the night. I stripped down into just my underwear and a light t-shirt, it was so hot outside that wearing anything more than this even at night felt like too much.
I put my legs up by an open window, rubbing them and letting them breath from the cooler air coming in.
I poured myself a drink from Milly’s secret stash that she kept under the bed.
Well, “secret.” She was really bad at hiding things.
I opened my diary again, it had been so many years since I wrote anything in it. Felt so weird looking back at everything now, I wanted to jump through the pages and go back in time with everything I knew now. I wanted to grab my teenage self firmly by the shoulders and shake her until she made better choices. To think that if I had given it a little bit more effort my life could have been completely different.