Authors: Jade Allen
****
Damian tried hard to
come into work the next day, but he couldn’t get further than his doorstep.
Everything in his apartment reminded him of Becca, even though they’d only been
seeing each other a month: a keychain from the Museum of Modern Art; a finger
trap they’d gotten caught in before the first night he dipped his tongue
between her legs; a t-shirt she’d danced around in after finding out she had
one more vacation day she could take this month. That day, they’d stayed in his
bed and eaten pizza while watching movies and kissing the breath from each
other’s lungs. Her hair left a scent on his pillow each night, no matter how
long she laid her head on the case, and he breathed her in while he had slept.
By the third day, he
was dodging calls as well as concerned emails, shutting down all queries with a
single, artful word. Some of the customers wanted monetary restitution—would he
make a statement?
No.
The shareholders
wanted to be reassured that nothing out of sorts was going on at IQID. Would he
send an email?
No.
A new employee has
been hired, can he sign off on the forms?
No.
Was he okay?
No.
The ache after the
initial pain was somehow worse than the sting itself. Damian couldn’t believe
how hollow he felt, like a straw had just been pulled from his back. Even after
the end of the first week, he couldn’t feel anything stronger than mild
annoyance; then, one day, he broke a mug Becca had given him. Instead of being
upset, he’d gotten angry, and he’d stayed angry since—though sometimes the
bubbling rage cooled to a gently meandering acidic river. He poured his energy
into pure loathing: of the mailman, of the birds outside, of bicycle bells;
even a delivered lemon tart wasn’t exempt from the irrational hatred that kept
him up at night. The only place his hatred never ended up was around the
thought of Becca.
He never considered
why because he never directly thought about Becca. Damian forced himself to
think of other things, and it worked splendidly—until it didn’t anymore, and he
was lost in a pit of despair again. One night he made the mistake of wandering
around the city and ended up that dive bar where he first met Becca. Against
his better judgement, he even went in.
Everything was exactly
the same. It gave him more than comfort, and Damian signaled for a Fat Tire as
he settled into the same stool. The room was just as empty as before, which
wasn’t surprising, because it was a Wednesday morning. The bartender eyed him
as he handed over his credit card, and he felt the stubble on his jaw as she
plucked it from his fingers. He felt a flash of hatred for her, but it was
half-hearted.
Hate Becca,
he told himself.
Why don’t you hate Becca?
The answer was simple:
love. Damian had never been so in love with someone in his life, and part of
him was happy to stay head-over-heels for her as long as he’d let himself. The
other part of him was tired of being walked on, though, and it was hard and
unyielding inside him. But what had that part gotten him since he’d developed
it? Nothing, he realized. In fact, it had lost him more than anything else.
He’d just had a chance at an incredible love, and it had withered away because
he didn’t want to forgive. Damian gulped his beer, tears burning the backs of
his eyes as he realized he may never have another chance.
“Bad beer?”
Damian nearly choked.
Becca was standing beside him, holding a glass of Fat Tire out to him with her
brown eyes held wide and careful. He started to rise and leave, but the hope in
her eyes was too fresh to kill.
I’ll hear her out,
he decided.
Though
nothing can fix this.
Becca sat on the stool
and stared at her hands for a moment. Damian felt another flash of hatred, but
this time for himself—he wanted to kiss her already, and she hadn’t even begun
speaking.
When she did, it
didn’t get better. She raised her eyes to his, and a ripple of need passed
through him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t say it enough. I’m so sorry. But I
have to tell you—I never lied about anything else.”
Damian snorted.
“Right.”
Becca winced. “I
deserve that, but I’m telling you the truth,” she said urgently. “And I think
I’ve figured out how to show you.”
She pulled something
from her purse and set it on the bar, sliding it over for him to examine under
the dim light. Damian saw that it was a laminated identification badge for her
newspaper. His thoughts descended into a confused chaos, but his heart pounded
in acknowledgement of what this must mean.
“I quit,” Becca said.
“And before you say anything…I didn’t quit
for
you. I hated my job
anyway, you know that. I would have quit if a better job offer came up.”
Damian smiled. “But?”
Becca smiled back.
“But…I did quit because of you. Because you reminded me that I can be
passionate about things, and love things with all of my being. You taught me
that I’m still alive, so I should be living…and that starts with love.” She
placed one hand on his, and the warmth made him ecstatic. “You made me rediscover
what it felt like. Even if you don’t forgive me…thank you. I can go chase my
dreams now. I feel like my heart was clogged, and you snaked the drain.” Becca
blushed as she finished speaking and dropped her eyes. “Anyway, that’s all I
wanted to say. You don’t have to talk to me anymore.”
Damian watched her
study the glass of beer before her, brown eyes anxiously tracking the bubbles
as they zipped around the glass. A part of him wanted to leave—just turn around
and walk out of Becca’s life, never to see her again. It wouldn’t be hard to
avoid her with the amount of money he had—but it would be hard on his heart. It
was clenching even as he watched her frown, just knowing she was unhappy;
Damian desperately wanted to kiss away her tension and sadness until she
laughed like the first night he met her. Could he forgive her after her
betrayal? Could he love unguarded again?
Damian made several
decisions at once. He drank the rest of his beer and set down a tip for the
bartender before he turned to Becca. She gazed at him hopefully, the warmth in
her honey brown eyes heating him to his core.
“I’m sorry,” he said
softly. “There’s only one way I’ll forgive you.”
Becca’s hopeful smile
faltered.
“If we’re going to be
together, we need to work as a team—and this team likes kayaking. I have a
little house in Maine that’s right on a river; I know you’re afraid of deep
water because of your little mermaid stint, but I need you to at least try for
me.”
The smile that spread
across Becca’s face was infectious. He was grinning as she leapt into his arms,
and Damian stood and spun her around as her arching laughter filled the
darkened bar. The patrons shot them dirty looks as they celebrated, but neither
Damian nor Becca noticed—they were far too comfortable in their steely bubble
of new love. One of the yellowed lamps above them fizzled and blew out, but
their lips touched as the bulb darkened; Damian’s heart pounded in his chest,
heavy with joy in the realization that Becca’s love brought him the key to
feeling like a real person again. He was never letting her go.
THE END
Mona Myers was not like most girls. At the age of
eight, she had ridden on the back of a motorcycle with her father for the first
time, and though she never got her own bike or claimed to be a ‘biker,’ she
grew up finding that the people who inhabited the world in which her father
lived and breathed were the best kind of people to surround herself with. At
the age of twenty-seven, she was tall, lean and muscular with a pixie cut dyed
black with blonde highlights in her slightly-too-long bangs. She had two
tattoos, one on each arm, and if a day went by that she wasn’t wearing black it
was a sign that something was up.
On the day in question, she was wearing a pair of
dark jeans and a green t-shirt that her father had given her when she was in
high school. It clung to her chest and sat on her weirdly, too tight for her
fully-grown and matured frame, but today she had to wear it. Today was the day
she would bury her father.
Benny Myers was more than a founding member of the
Running Hill Motorcycle Club – one of the biggest, most well-respected racing
motorcycle clubs in not just Detroit but all of the US. Along with being Mona’s
dad, he quickly became everyone’s father figure and best friend from the moment
they entered his group. Benny built the riders many years before Mona was born,
and carried the group until it grew to its forty-person size, structured as
innocently as a ladies’ yacht club but functioning much more like a family of
misfits, knitted close by loss and hardship. Because of this, Mona wasn’t the
only person who took Benny’s death badly, and it comforted her to know that she
would be surrounded by her motorcycle club family as they shared in her grief
and sorrow at the loss of such a great guy.
Mona worked at a bar that was a popular haunt of
the Running Hill Riders for many obvious reasons. She was the owner and
bartender; the drinks were half-price for members of the club; the music there
was always loud and
good
. No one ever had to punch the jukebox or pay a
waiter to change the song. The aptly named Hog’s Grogs was the riders’ meeting
spot, place to unwind, and more or less a second home to all of them.
On the morning of her father’s funeral, she stood
behind the bar, doing her best to keep it together while she waited for her
friends in the club to arrive.
The first familiar face to show up was Ryan Kirby.
He was a sight for tear-filled eyes. Biting her lip, Mona gave him a smile and
a friendly nod. She hadn’t seen Ryan in years. He’d been badly injured in a
race about a year ago and had been on the mend ever since. She’d sent flowers
and cards to him while he healed. Now that her father was gone, Mona was
thinking of making Ryan the new leader of the Running Hill Riders. If it had
anything to do with the giant crush she had on him, she was never going to
admit that out loud.
Ryan Kirby was tall and devilishly handsome, with
black hair, green-blue eyes and a sharp chin that he liked to keep covered in a
close-cut beard. He had dimples when he smiled, so he did his best to never
smile when he was in a race, lest people not take him seriously as a
competitor. He was thirty-two years old and had been a part of the club for
twelve years. Mona had adored him for just about all of those years. He smirked
when he came into the Hog’s Grogs and saw her there. “Hey there, gorgeous.”
Before she could go towards him or say anything,
they were interrupted by the arrival of several of the others – including,
quite possibly, the worst member of the motorcycle club.
“Ryan? Ryan Kirby?”
Ryan had appeared to be all set to hug Mona and
console her, but he froze as a man spoke from somewhere behind him.
He turned toward the voice numbly, clearly holding
out hope that he was wrong about the speaker even as his eyes rested upon Lance
Olsen — as angular, pale and freckled as ever, but slightly more broad than
he’d been the last time they met. Mona’s mind flashed back to the last time the
two young men had met up, and she had to suppress a smile; they’d been racing
down the city’s smallest hill, and Lance’s bike had stalled unexpectedly,
sending him tumbling onto the pavement, his pride more bruised than his knees.
“Hey, Lance,” Ryan said, trying to keep his voice
light. “How are you?”
Lance grinned, flashing a silver cap on one of his
front teeth that glinted under the glowing yellow lights of the bar. “Much
better now, especially since I changed up my ride.”
He nodded his red head toward a cherry colored
Harley leaning against a glowing street lamp outside.
Mona scoffed at him. “You’ve finally upgraded to
the big boy bikes, then?”
Lance’s smug look faded. He was known for being
fond of smaller, Japanese models of racing bikes when he joined the club about
three years ago. Benny had been reluctant to invite him in; Lance was a cocky
jerk. Mona couldn’t deny that. If it had been up to her at the time, she would
have denied him entry. But now that Benny was gone, she couldn’t make such a
rash change without angering more than just Lance. Her father trusted her to do
right by the club. She was its owner now, by rights, but she was no biker. She
didn’t know how to go about choosing racers for the team.
Lance looked from Mona to Ryan and the grin
returned. “You up for a practice run later today? Ten bucks towards the club
says I can beat you.”
“We’re a charity racing club, not the kind that
just races along residential neighborhoods,” Mona argued.
He pointed a long index finger at her without
looking her in the face again. “You stay out of this, bar wench. The men are
talking.”
Ryan kicked aside a chair. “I’ll never be afraid
of racing you, Lance. Ever.”
Lance’s smile widened, and he lowered himself into
a chair at a table by the front door, his muddy brown eyes glinting with
malice. “Sure, Ryan. Just come get me when you’re done fluffing up your
feathers.”
Ryan bunched his hand into a fist, seconds away
from breaking Lance’s freckled nose—
“That’s enough, boys!” Mona shouted, hitting her
rag against the bar’s countertop. That alone wasn’t threatening but she had
banned people from her bar before and was not above banning members of the club
if they got too violent in her establishment. “Ryan, don’t forget that you
have
been arrested for fighting once in your life, peaceful and cool-headed
though you may seem.”
Guiltily regarding the fine, wooden floor of Mona
Myers’s bar, Ryan nodded and sat down at the bar. She did her best to contain
herself that he’d chosen to sit close to her, though it wasn’t so surprising.
Compared to Lance, anyone would want to sit by the level-headed daughter of
their late leader.
Lance was the newest and youngest member of their
gaggle of misfits. He was twenty-nine years old, but one wouldn’t know it to
look at him or observing him in conversation. Because he was a rather green
racer, he took losses hard and far too personally, and the loss of the group’s
de facto leader was one he apparently hadn’t learned to deal with.
Ryan was baffled; his temporary departure from the
riding club had gone very smoothly for the most part, but he hadn’t anticipated
the flak he eventually caught from some of the younger, lower-ranking members.
Most of them settled for making him the butt of ‘friendly’ ribbing that
targeted his masculinity or even his dashing good looks, and that he could
handle; he was less able to deal with the aggressive, strangely leading
questioning that Lance preferred.
Now that Ryan was back in the motorcycle seat,
Mona hoped that he would get everything back in order with the club. Several of
the members had been absent lately and many of their charity races had gone
with only one or two members racing. Benny’s ideal motorcycle club involved
racers who knew their bikes and knew how to win. Their winnings earned money
for military hospitals and families who had lost loved ones in combat. Sure, a
lot of motorcycle riding was fun and games, but it was a sport that Benny took
seriously. It wasn’t about being cocky or being the best to him; it was about
following the rules and being the fastest.
Their races were performed largely as exhibitions
at things like air shows and festivals. They were performed on race tracks.
Benny did not condone street racing of any kind, which was why Lance’s
roughhousing on the road was a problem for Mona. She was not good at being an
authority figure. That was one of the many reasons that she was glad to have
Ryan back around.
Now that the two boys had settled down and more
and more of the other members of the Running Hill Riders were present, they
could get started with their memorial service.
“Dad loved you all,” Mona said as she stood on the
bar, looking as many of them in the eye as possible as her eyes scanned the
large room full of leather-clad men. “He loved racing, too, and nothing would
please him more than to know that we are going to continue on in his mission
statement. We are going to participate in as many fundraisers and biking
performances as we can possibly fit into a schedule. And we are going to do it…
FOR BENNY!”
“FOR BENNY!” everyone else chanted in unison.
Everyone drank beer and celebrated the life of
Benjamin Myers that morning. Mona and her workers did her father proud in the
wining and dining department long into the night. Everyone seemed to take
notice and appreciate all of her efforts and hard work getting the whole gang
back together for this event.
No one noticed half as much as Ryan.