“Well, I’d say what’s wrong with him, but it’s kind of obvious.” Larry shrugs.
“What’s wrong with him?” I know what I think, but I’m curious about how Larry sees it.
“Everything but his upper left second bicuspid and his lower right lateral incisor.”
“Babe.” Ma play slaps him. “Story has thought the sun rises and sets on that man since what? Ninth grade? He can’t be all bad.”
Larry nods, very serious. I bet he thinks we’re both nuts, but he never acts better than Ma and me. Another reason why I love him.
He pats my hand. “I guess what I mean is that he’s obviously wrong for our little Ray. She should always be smiling and sunny. Like her Mama.” Ma melts into him, but he keeps his eyes level on mine. “I’m serious.”
I know. And then bam, crash. The weight of it all slams down on me again. I’m going to see Danielle on Wednesday. Nickel too, maybe. I’m gonna have to get mostly naked and dance. They might be all over each other, and I’m going to have to dance to it. Oh, Lord. My stomach heaves.
“Bathroom that way!” Ma shouts, but I suck down a few deep breaths and the nausea goes away.
“This is the worst. I can’t go back to The White Van.”
Ma cuts a loaded look at Larry.
“Why is that, baby?” She nods toward the counter by the fridge, and Larry goes to get whatever she’s after.
“Because…”
I can’t say it. I’ll sound too weak.
Because I don’t want to look at Danielle’s bare ass knowing Nickel’s been all up in it.
Because it’s one thing when Nickel’s there, tryin’ to hide the fact he’s watchin’ me and failing. It’s another thing when he’s decided he’s got to make me hurt so I’ll go away.
Because I can’t dance with a broken heart.
Yeah. I sound stupid. It’s not like he was my boyfriend. He never led me on. Well, not with his words. His eyes though…
But what? I’m gonna be heartbroken ‘cause of a man who stares at me? And that’s enough to be my bliss? I hardly ever win in life, but when I see a shot at better, at happy, since when do I sit around and wait?
I’m silent, lost for words, when Larry slides a colorful brochure across the counter and takes his seat again next to Ma. They both grin at me like hyenas. I glance down.
Four very fit young people in polo shirts and backpacks are laughing by a fountain.
“Luckahannock County Community College?”
Ma and Larry bob their heads in unison, smiling almost as wide as the cover models on the brochure.
“They have a two-year program in dental hygiene,” Larry says. “When you finish, you could work in my practice. Starting salary is forty thousand. If you wanted to move to a city like Pyle, you could make more.”
“Think about it.” Ma’s eyes go wide. “You’d only have to work one job. Health insurance. You wouldn’t have to work nights.”
I’m shaking my head already. “Ma. You know I hardly graduated.”
“That was then. This is now.”
“What’s different?”
I’m at a loss. I know Ma wants more for me now that she’s doin’ so good, but community college? Does she not remember how I had to retake English 10, like, three times?
Ma’s eyes narrow, and her voice drops. This is as serious as she gets.
“One. We’ve got the inside track.” She hitches a thumb at Larry.
“Two. You were always just fine at the practical stuff. And three. You’ve got to stop dreaming so small.”
Ouch. That feels harsh, given the night I had.
Ma sees me cringe and sighs. “I blame myself for raisin’ you in that small-ass trailer in this small-ass town. You should have been dreaming about dancing in the ballet. Getting famous on the internet. Fallin’ in love with some prince.”
I hear what she doesn’t say. She thinks I should want better than strippin’ for truckers and holdin’ out for a biker with anger management issues. I do have dreams, though. A real one. I want to dance, and maybe it’s not high class, but I am dancing.
It’s like this test Mr. Anscomb talked about back in high school. They put a marshmallow in front of a kid, and they tell him if you don’t eat it, when I come back, I’ll give you two. The good kids wait, and the bad kids eat it. That’s bullshit, though. The smart kids grab that marshmallow. ‘Cause in this world? You ain’t promised anything else, and you better take what sweet you can.
Today, though, dancin’ at The White Van and crushin’ on Nickel Kobald don’t taste so sweet. But dental hygiene?
“How’s dental hygiene dreamin’ big, Ma?” I glance at Larry. “No offense.”
“Maybe it’s not big, per se.” Ma sniffs. Is she tearing up? Oh, no. If she cries, I’m gonna start again. “But it’s my dream for you. An easier life than I’ve had.”
“I love dancing.”
“You’d still have your Swinging Seniors class.”
I teach adults one night a week at Shady Gap Rec. The rec people know where I work so they don’t ask me to teach the kid’s classes, but I have fun with the seniors.
“I’m not really interested in teeth.” I mean, I’m grateful I have all mine, but beyond that, it’s not really something I’ve thought much about.
“Truth be told, neither am I.” Larry lifts a shoulder. “I dropped out of med school during my fourth year, and getting a dental degree was the easiest way to make use of my credits.”
“You went to med school?” This night is blowing my mind.
“Dentistry is honest work, and you help people. It’s a good job.” Larry dodges my question.
“I don’t see how I’d pay for school, go to classes, and work two jobs.” I’m considering it—it’s a new idea, but it’s not crazy. Maybe it’s time for a new dream. A new direction. I don’t know how it’d be possible, though. I have bills.
“We’d pay for school.” Ma and Larry say it at the same time.
I open my mouth to argue. I’ve never asked anyone to pay my way, and I’m not starting now. Ma doesn’t let me get a word out though.
“Yes, we will, and you’ll take it. We’ll also front you some cash so you can drop one of your jobs.”
I shake my head.
“Yes, you will. You’ll work for Larry when you finish, and that’s gonna pay him back in the long run. You’d be replacing Amy when she retires, and she makes a hell of a lot more than forty thousand.”
They’ve really talked about this.
“Come on, Ray. Say you’ll think about it.” Larry grins, and I can’t help but smile back.
I guess I will. It’s not like I want to think about what’s on my mind at present. I can think about going back to school. It sounds ridiculous. Still, dental hygienist is a good job. And Larry seems pretty confident that I can pull it off.
While I mull it over, Larry excuses himself to bed. Ma and I take the party to the overstuffed couch in the den. We crank up WFIV, Top 40 from the Past 40, and we kick off our shoes. We’re drinkin’ from the bottle now.
“I’m so sorry, baby.” Ma grabs my feet and cradles them to her belly. She used to do that when I was little. “I know you really liked him.”
“He likes me, too.”
I’ve never told anyone this part before. Fay-Lee and Crista and Jo-Beth, all the girls at the clubhouse and at work, they think I’ve got some unrequited crush. I let them think it, ‘cause what am I gonna say? He looks at me hungry? He nags me to quit my job?
“He thinks he’s not good enough for me.”
Ma gives me a boozy half-smile. “I know, baby.”
“Yeah?” My mouth twists. She’s humoring me.
“Of course. He told me as much.”
“What?”
Ma raises her palms. “Now don’t blow a gasket.”
“Tell me!” I dig my heels into her stomach and she shrieks.
“Okay, okay. It was when you turned eighteen, and you started coming to parties at the club
house. He cornered me. Told me to leave you home. Said no man around there was good enough for you, and I needed to start being a real mother, and if any man touched you, he’d kill ’em, and it’d be on me.”
Ho-ly. Shit.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I throw a pillow at her head, and she drunkenly bops it aside.
“’Cause I knew this is how it would all end, and I didn’t want to encourage you.”
A cold settles in my chest. When Ma says it like that, the whole thing sounds doomed.
“What did you say? To him?”
Ma snorts. “Said if I left you home, I wouldn’t know what worthless piece of shit men were creepin’ up on you, and besides, I now had it on good authority that you’d be safe and sound at the Steel Bones clubhouse, seein’ as how if any man touched you, he’d kill ’em.”
“What did he say?”
“Put his fist through the kitchen door and went to pick a fight with Creech.”
That sounds about right.
“Why’s he like that, Ma?”
It’s getting hard to keep my eyes open. I set the tequila bottle down on the floor so it doesn’t spill if I pass out.
“I dunno. Why are you so much like me? Some of it’s got to be in the blood. Some of it’s how I raised you. That ain’t the question that comes to mind when I think about Nickel Kobald, though.”
“What is?”
“I wonder why ain’t he like the other Kobalds.”
There’s a long silence while I think about this. My thoughts are coming real slow from being tired and heartsick and most the way to drunk.
“Is he different though?” Maybe he’s not in jail now, but he’s done some time through the years.
“I don’t know, Story-girl. Don’t think any other Kobald would have gone out, bought a new kitchen door, and hung it that same night.”
Oh my goodness. I remember that. It was my first clubhouse party. I was giddy. Fay-Lee was pissed at Dizzy for something, and we were dancing together, buzzed as hell, and I’d noticed Nickel with a tool box, hangin’ a door. Thought it was weird as shit.
“You think he’ll ever—” I don’t know the word I want. I grasp around, but my tipsy brain won’t cough it up.
“Change?” Ma supplies. A corner of her lip rises in a sad smile. “No, baby. I don’t.”
“W-why not?” A last, sad sob escapes from deep in my chest.
“He’d have to believe a person can change. And I don’t think he does.”
Those words follow me down into a restless sleep. They haunt me the next day, and the day after that. They should be hopeless words, but they’re not. I’m just not a hopeless kind of girl.
Nickel Kobald needs to believe a person can change. And as they say, seeing is believing.
On Monday, I get Larry to drive me up to Luckahannock County Community College to register for classes. We buy a whole bunch of books, and later, Larry gets on the internet and gets me audio versions of all of them. On Tuesday, I give my two weeks’ notice at General Goods.
That was not the job Ma was hopin’ I’d quit, but she’s always let me make my own choices.
Nickel Kobald likes watchin’ me. Well, I’m gonna make him watch me change. I’m gonna be a fuckin’ dental hygienist if it kills me.
Maybe he’s made me give up on us, but I sure as shit ain’t givin’ up on him…or myself.
I’m just not that kind of girl.
CHAPTER 8
NICKEL
Story’s ignorin’ me. Which is good.
It’s two weeks later, the first time we’ve been on the same shift since that night with Danielle, and she’s actin’ like she can see through me. She hasn’t been around the clubhouse, and even her girls have been icin’ me out. Fay-Lee and Crista gave me the cold shoulder at the poker run last weekend. Radio silence. It’s all good. But it’s makin’ me jumpy.
She’s on break now, and instead of givin’ me those big eyes or tryin’ to slide up next to me like usual, she’s back in Cue’s office with a book and headphones. A book.
I ain’t never seen her with a book before. It looks like she’s studying which don’t make no sense. There’s no way she’s tryin’ to get a degree or somethin’. She was in Hobs’ classes in high school and that brother is missing a piece of his frontal lobe.
Story is smart, though. Not book smart, and not street smart necessarily, but―ain’t there a kind of smart where you don’t let shit get you down? If there isn’t, there should be.
She sure as shit ain’t lettin’ me get her down. She hasn’t said shit to Danielle, and when she was dancin’, she didn’t look at me once. Which is good. It’s what I want.
My right eye twitches.
After Story left that night at the clubhouse, I went twelve rounds with Johnny Walker and picked a fight with Scrap out back. Scrap was all too happy to take the action since he’s on the outs with Crista since his release from upstate. Heavy tells me the odds were ten to one against me since I wasn’t blocking at all. Next day, he cut me in on his take. Apparently, I headbutted Scrap at the end by accident and knocked him out cold onto a picnic table.
Heavy’s been sending me out with Forty, following up leads on the Rebel Raiders who trashed the Patonquin site, but nothin’ has panned out. The time on my bike is good. I can blank while I fly down the highway, but then there’s every other waking moment when I get to remember Story crumble, piece by piece, over and over like a highlight reel of my greatest fuck up.
And I did fuck up. I wasn’t wrong, per se. But what I did…it wasn’t right. I woke up the next morning, hung over with a pit in my stomach that felt like I took a steel toe boot to the gut. I expected it to go away, but it hasn’t.
I hurt her. She never did nothin’ to me except try to get close, and I ain’t even functional enough to just talk to her about why it can’t happen. So instead I rub her face in Danielle? Yeah, blood shows. It’s exactly the type of asshole thing Ike or Keith would get off on doing.
I should say sorry. Duck back to Cue’s office. Real quick. Keep it short and sweet. I didn’t need to talk to her with disrespect. She had that part right.
I definitely gotta move, do somethin’. My body’s primed with adrenaline, and all I’m doin’ tonight is walking the floor, watchin’ a handful of retired steelworkers nurse twenty-five cent drafts. I wander closer, keeping quiet so she don’t notice.
Her head’s bent over the book, headphones so big they dwarf her head. Two long waves of white gold hair frame her face, the rest pulled up in a bun, and she’s biting her lower lip. My dick rises to attention. Her lips are so full, and they’re the palest pink, almost exactly the color of the inside of a seashell. She truly is made perfect.
Every so often, she drums on the desk with her pencil eraser. Then she grunts, aggravated, and huffs so the hair hangin’ in her face flutters. She moves her finger back to the top of the page. I don’t think the studying is goin’ so well.
I should speak up. Tell her I’m sorry. Find out what book she’s reading.
She’ll tell me to fuck off.
She’ll probably be mad if I interrupt her.
Nah. No, she won’t. Story’s never mad. She’s the reverse of me. It’s like God sat down and thought, “What’s the exact opposite of this piece of shit?” And voilȧ. Story Jenkins.
I should leave her alone. It’s the smart thing to do. My body’s stupid, though.
My feet drag the rest of me the few feet to Cue’s office, drop me in his doorway. This close, I can see all the way behind the desk. She’s wearin’ a short, silky white robe over her costume. She’s slipped off her heels, and she’s sitting all tucked up like a little kid.
She startles when she finally notices me, and a quick flash of hurt expands her pupils, the black eating up the blue. My fists tighten. This was a terrible idea.
She slowly tugs the headphones off, bein’ careful with her hair. She taps the pause button on her phone. I wait for her to say somethin’.
She d
on’t.
“I—” I swallow, but my throat’s totally dry. What was I going to say? Shit. I didn’t think that far.
She blinks up at me. She makes her face hard to hide the hurt, but I can see her knuckles whiten where she grips the headphones.
“I—” I look wildly around the office, but there’s only pinups plastered on the walls. No cue cards.
Story slowly unfolds her legs and slides her tiny bare feet back into her white heels. She’s not helpin’ me here, and she sure don’t have to, but damn. I wish she’d pick now to be her soft, sweet, pushy self.
“Look. I’m sorry about the other night,” I manage. My voice sounds weird. Too low.
She stares down, into her lap, and chews on her cheek.
“I mean, I’m not sorry about what I did. But what I said…” The clock ticks in the silence. She gives me nothing. “Fuck, Story.”
She glances up, and her eyes are swirling with betrayal and confusion and disappointment, and I realize that comin’ back here was the worst mistake of my life because her eyes are gonna kill me.
“Okay, Nickel.”
She slides a piece of paper into her book and gently shuts it.
Dental Hygiene: Theory and Practice.
What the fuck?
“What are you readin’?”
She shrugs, slips the book into an enormous bag resting on the floor, and stands.
“I got to get past you, Nickel. My break’s almost over.”
I’m blocking the door, and I should step back, let her put her purse back in her locker. I’m an asshole if I don’t.
“Forgot your headphones.” I wave at Cue’s desk. She scoops them up, winds the cords, and tucks them into her purse.
“Thanks.” She folds her arms right under her chest.
She’s standing by Cue’s chair. I’m still blocking the door. There’s maybe two feet between us, and she’s tryin’ to look everywhere but at me, but all I can do is take her in.
Two weeks is forever. Sometime during the past couple of years, I’ve grown accustomed to her. We don’t talk. I ain’t much of a talker, even with my brothers. But her bein’ nearby, her dancin’ for me while I stand in the shadows? It makes me steady. I feel all right ‘cause she’s all right, and I never feel all right.
Nickel's Story: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance Page 7
