by J. C. Allen
Jesus, Jaxson. Get it together a little bit, huh? Do you want to be a middle schooler all day?
We puledl in the back garage. Zeke’s bike was already there. Matthew and I walked in together with our cuts on, though he had changed his shirt since it was spattered with oil. Already, we smelled what Mom was cooking in the kitchen, and let’s just say it was a hell of a lot better than the mechanic’s shop and the scent of old men at our bar.
We’d lived in the same house since we were children. It was modest, though we each had our own rooms and a pool in the backyard. The back door led right into the living room, then a single hallway down to the kitchen, and that is where we found Mom. Upstairs was all one row down the rooms, though I hadn’t been in that bedroom in years for more than a few hours at a time.
Adult life just made me want my own place, and the death of my father had had a profound effect on pushing me away.
“Hello boys, nice of you to finally show up,” Mom said with a grin.
I glanced at the clock, realizing it was after seven. Matthew and I must have really lost track of time. I greeted Zeke, who looked boyish as ever in his jeans and hoodie, though he has always looked that way.
Or I just think he does since he is the youngest.
“I made steaks.” Mom shouted over the kitchen fan, confirming my greatest hopes.
She had changed into her usual jeans and sweater she wore around the house and had tied her long hair up. As she smiled at us, her eyes crinkled.
“Thanks, Mom,” Matthew said, gently moving her to the side. “I can finish up. You’ve been on your feet all day.”
Simon, finally, trickled in a few minutes later. Naturally, he looked like he didn’t want to be at the house… until he saw Mom. He bore the most striking resemblance to our father, which in some ways made it more painful that he had distanced himself from the club. Though he still loved all of us, it was a different question if he liked any of us. Outside of Mom, at least.
We eventually made our way to the table, and as was pretty standard, we fell silent as we devoured our food. The focus was not on anything but the steak and potatoes on our plate, and we didn’t say a word until someone had finished.
Turned out it was Zeke.
“Thanks, Mom, this is great.”
“You’re welcome,” Mom said with a smile. “How are the projects going, everyone? Simon?”
Only because it was Mom did Simon not give a smartass answer.
“Pretty good. We’ve had a few new ones come in.”
He swallowed, straining to be polite in our presence.
“How is the club?” he said, almost like he had to force himself to or he didn’t really want to know.
Sometimes, I really wondered how he could have been related to us.
“Good. We have a bar night tomorrow. You should come, bring the guys.”
Zeke had spoken, mostly because he was the closest. Had Matthew or I spoken, Simon wouldn’t have cussed us out in front of Mom, but he sure would have given every other indicator that he was pissed at us.
But the mention of the bar night had done something else. It had taken me back to the mystery girl.
I had to see her again.
If nothing else, morbid curiosity was getting the better of me.
2
Isabelle
“It will be a few hours before it’s ready.”
The nice, but very sweaty, mechanic was all but nice about telling me that. I nodded slowly, looking around at the empty garage. Not sure why it would take a few hours, I nodded again anyway and thanked him.
I just wanted to get back on the road; this place wasn’t exactly my scene.
“Thanks. I’ll just wait at…”
I looked around and noticed there weren’t any chairs as I hoped there would be. Really, as I had expected there would be—it felt slightly unprofessional to have such a place like this, but then again, what could you expect from an auto repair shop in a small town like this?
“You don’t want to wait in here. There’s a bar across the street at the club.”
He practically waved me off so that I would leave. At this point, I didn’t really care if he was rude; I just cared that he fixed my car as he had said he would. With no reason to argue, I left for the bar.
I stepped outside, and the light spring air of Minnesota hit me hard. And I don’t mean in a good way.
Truth be told, I hated small towns. I could see the border from here where I stood, with small shops spread across it. In a town like this, it wasn’t like moving to a new city where new friendship circles could be made; in a town like this, all of the friendship circles would have been made already.
Soon, everyone would know about me, the new person in town. I would rather have lived close to the big city, but this was much cheaper, and the drive to campus wasn’t that far.
OK, mostly, it was just because I desperately needed a place, but that didn’t sound as good as being frugal and economical with my driving.
Unless my car broke down as it had. Quite a start, if I may say so.
It had felt lucky at first to be seconds from the car mechanic. He was excited at first that I went to him instead of the place across the street. I walked up along the drive and passed dozens of bikes. I saw a logo printed on every other door and path on the way to the entrance, something with skulls and a cross that kind of looks like a cult. I chalked it up to just boys being boys—I doubted that an actual cult would be so obvious, even in a town this small.
In any case, as I walked into the bar, I felt dressed perfectly for the bar in jeans and plain gray tee shirt. I walked to the sound of alternative rock playing over speakers so softly I barely heard it, the television static from the games on them, and two guys playing pool towards the back. I wasn’t usually a timid person, but given that I was alone and in a bar that did not look anything like my kind of scene, I walked cautiously until I reached a seat at the very end.
The place seemed older, but not like it was out of date—more like a retro, almost historical kind of location. The wall on my left had dart boards, pool tables under it, and the speakers in the back. The rest of the bar had small circular tables situated in the center, decorated with same that logo sealed on the top of the tables. I wondered what it meant, but not enough to want to ask. Some questions, I figured, didn’t need answering, especially when I feared they might provoke the wrong kinds of reaction.
The bartender initially had his back turned to me, counting money at the register. I cleared my throat, but it didn’t reach. It wasn’t until I pulled the chair back to sit and the sound screeched against the floor that he took notice.
The place definitely wasn’t my scene, but as long as I kept control of myself and left as soon as my car was ready, I figured all was well.
“Hey, sorry I didn’t see you there,” he said with a grin.
The grin wasn’t disconcerting in a vacuum, and even here, it didn’t seem that bad. I was just a little on edge because of how the previous ten minutes had gone.
“No problem,” I said, doing my best to smile politely. “Can I just get a vodka-cran please?”
“Sure, Titos okay?”
I nodded once. He smiled kindly and made the drink.
I had to take back any preconceived notions of what I had of the place. Even though he was a huge, muscular man, he didn’t seem like a scary guy. He seemed like a man there to do a job and do it well.
The two guys who looked like brothers on the other end of the bar, though…
The one who was facing me kept staring at me. While he was admittedly a little bit handsome, he wasn’t handsome enough to justify the staring he was doing to me—and it wasn’t sexy staring, and even if it was, the middle of the afternoon wasn’t exactly a time I was looking to be flirted with.
“Here you go,” the bartender said, setting a coaster down and then the drink.
The glass was massive, especially just for a standard vodka-cran. Maybe it was his way of welc
oming me to the town, or maybe it was his way of flirting—at least I had seen him make it and not slip anything in. Besides, if the guy had said it was going to be a few hours, what was the harm in making me a drink so large?
Just don’t let anyone else try anything.
Bored out of my mind, given that I didn’t care at all about what was on the television, I read old notes for class for graduate school. I desperately wanted to do well to keep my stipend and get out of grad school as soon as possible, and if that meant looking like a dweeb studying at a bar like this, so be it. I got about halfway through my notes when I decided to go check on my car. The guy may have said “hours” but if nothing else, it would give me a chance to move around and stretch.
Something, however, kept me grounded in place.
Using the corner of my eyes to glance over, I noticed that the same man at the corner of the bar is staring at me. And, I have to admit…
It was kind of nice.
Maybe it was the Tito’s speaking or maybe it was just the fact that I could say I’d gotten my studying done, so I didn’t have to worry about anything else, but the handsome look on him, the dark hair, the deep-set eyes… it was hard not to say anything but nice things about his appearance.
Still, I reminded myself as I stood that I wasn’t here to engage in middle-school staring contests, but to get my car fixed, get back on the road, and get on with my day. I walked past the man, not so much as looking at him directly as I headed outside.
Only to realize that more than an hour had actually passed.
When I saw that bill, I felt my savings cry out. It would be fine in the long run with my next paycheck and stipend from the university. But that mechanic became meaner as the day went on, gave me no seat, and told me to go to a creepy bar.
Suffice to say, I was not planning on making a return visit anytime soon.
I made the short drive back to my apartment—a nice, old style building with weird looking carpets and a weird smell that I ignored because the rent was so cheap. I’d even gotten a roommate, Riley, to help deflect the costs; it almost felt like I might pull off the impossible and save money during graduate school.
I walked in to find her on the couch with a reality television show playing and the scent of pizza in the air. It was a very typical student apartment in that regard.
“Hey, saved you a slice!” she said when she heard me walk in.
I moved in toward the scent. An awning with a look-through square was right in the entrance where the purple-gray couch sat in front of the television. We had gotten all our furniture online from Walmart thanks to graduate-school budgets. She was ahead of me in that she was a local from the town; in fact, this was her place that I just moved into. But she was really nice about it, insisted that it was our place now, and even made me a friend.
I grabbed a plate of two slices and a beer to meet her on the couch. I could tell she just got back from the lab because she was dressed in her very lazy pink pants and oversized shirt. She had had a few different jobs before settling as a restaurant manager to help cover the costs of graduate school—how she pulled it off was beyond me.
Some people were just superheroes, I supposed.
“No problem. I couldn’t finesse any free food from the restaurant tonight,” she said with a giggle. “Anything fun happen today?”
“My car broke down on the way back,” I said. “I’d just come from a meeting with my adviser for playwriting. That was a fun meeting.”
Just like deciding to go to graduate school for theatre studies is fun. Just like being…
Nah, it’s good. I can complain, or I can make the most of it. I’ll make the most of it.
“I told you that thing is a piece of junk,” she said.
“Well it’s what I can afford,” I said in between bites of pizza. “And for the most part, it holds up.”
Hopefully that’s still the case. Really don’t need to go back to the shop.
“I get it. So it’s all good now?”
“Yep.”
I downed some beer, which was too sour for me, but I needed something to relax. The pizza was a start, but too much of it was going to be the death of me.
“I waited at this bar across the street, at least, I think it was a bar. There were bikes everywhere and some weird logo. It was unlike anything I had ever seen.”
Riley stopped chewing and faced me. At first, her face had a serious expression across it, as if I had gone to some secret lair that locals never dared cross.
And then she started laughing hysterically, making me feel like now I had missed some local joke.
“What? What is it?”
I tried to smile but was still confused. She shook her head at me and waved her hand.
“Did you see the name?”
“No, should I have?” I said, thinking of how I just had followed the directions of the one mechanic.
“That’s not a bar. Well, technically it is. But… that’s an MC club.”
Huh?
“A what?”
I tried to think of what that could mean and fell short. I only ever went to college bars and have no idea what that meant. “More Cocktails?” “Mixology Convention?” “Mixers and Chasers?”
It was probably for the better that I didn’t say any of those out loud.
“A motorcycle club.”
Wait, those are real?
“Oh my god, you’re so cute.”
“What, like from the movies?”
She shrugged, as if what I said didn’t mean anything.
“Sure, I guess. It’s kind of like that. I mean, they exaggerate some things, but it’s mostly the same.”
I thought of the image I had of bikers, of the Hells Angels, of everything I saw in the movies…
And it didn’t jive in the least with what I had seen today. I was so confused.
“But…it didn’t seem like they were criminals. There were some guys in there, and no one was hammered or causing trouble.”
“Well they aren’t all criminals, dufus. That’s the point of it not being the same.”
She laughed, and though I loved Riley, she was beginning to make me feel a little self-conscious.
“Oh.”
“They have bar nights sometimes. Women get in free; it’s a little sexist, but whatever. And they’re usually really fun. Admittedly, they haven’t done it in a while though.”
The more Riley spoke, the more questions I had. How did she know of all these? How long had this club been around? How could I have never known that these groups were actually real? It was like I had missed that Jesus had come back a second time or something; it seemed so obvious to Riley, and yet so out of place for what I knew.
“How do you know about it?”
“You just know people. My restaurant also just caters to them sometimes when they have meetings or whatever.”
“Meetings?”
“Yeah. They have an executive board and everything. It’s real shit.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Wow, I really don’t know anything about this. I’m so far out of the loop.
I suppose I’ll encounter them more. Hopefully they’re friendlier than the one asshole mechanic.
And hopefully one of them is that one guy who was looking at me. And hopefully… he’s not also an asshole.
“There’s one tomorrow. I don’t work Saturday night, so I was going to go/ I didn’t know if it would be your thing though. But you should come.”
Maybe. Maybe I should go. As long as it’s safe, and if Riley goes…
“Now that I’m thinking about it, you should definitely go. It’s perfect, since classes start Monday, right?”
I could see now that this wasn’t a question for me. It was just going to be something that happened. My friendship with Riley was about to be tested for her authenticity. I nodded that I had the weekend.
“Good then. It’s settled. We leave at ten.”
Sure hope this works out then.
&nbs
p; I woke up the next morning in a cold sweat. I sat up, pushed my hair back out of my face, and adjusted how my tank top removed itself over night. I caught my breath, or tried to, as I stared into the blank sunlight of my room.
“That was weird.”
It was a faceless dream, a dream that was beyond intense, a dream that I had not had anything like since my last relationship. But despite it being faceless, I still knew exactly who it was about.
The mystery guy from the bar.
How fucking weird.
We were in the same place, except I was spread across the counter of the bar top and he was hovered over me—with his muscles bulging and his dark hair looming over me.
That was all I could remember about what I saw…
But in that dream… I could feel his touch and imagine his scent and warmth. I remembered kissing him, amongst other things, things I was a bit embarrassed to admit even to myself.
But it went black there. It was both the greatest and the most awkward tease ever.
I haven’t had a vivid dream like that in a long time… or if ever.
Not even my last boyfriend could get me that hot and bothered, and I dated him for two years. I didn’t even know this man!
But you sure want to. No one has ever captivated you like that. Everyone gets their once in a lifetime partner who just captures their attention, and if you don’t act on it…
Maybe you won’t forever wonder what if. But you’ll certainly wonder what if for as long as you are here.
I finally dragged myself up and to the bathroom down the hall. I took care of my morning activities, made myself tea and eggs, and sat down, alone, as Riley had gone to work. I turned on the news to fill the air, checked my emails, and texted my mom—my only family left.
My father died when I was young, and I was the only child; my mother never remarried. It was hard on my mom to see me go, but I made it a point to at least never leave the Midwest. I wanted her to know I wasn’t going to leave her.