by Jamie Magee
I could see the shadows of ink peeking out from under his tank. I imagined his back and chest were marked with paths and lessons he didn’t want to forget. The numbers and marks 13: and 9: were tattooed on the side of both his wrists, leaving me to question what gang had marked him. I studied the shape of his eyes, how they were demanding and fierce even when they were closed. They were moving rapidly under his lids, causing the careful draw of his brow.
Hours went by and it was still hard to openly stare at him, study him. I couldn’t figure out why. I wasn’t a nervous person. The woman who raised me always told me it was foolish to be so when angels walked with me, when they’d never present me with more than I could handle, or they could save me from. But this boy made me edgy. Not in a fearful way. I don’t even know how to explain the way it felt, the sensation was too new. It was almost like a crush, but more so because a crush was an idea, this boy was a brutal reality.
Every time he moved I’d tense and edge back, but his grip would become even more possessive as he pulled me against him; every once in a while his fingertips would reach for my cheek as if to check if they were drenched in tears or not. His hand carefully sliding down my side always followed those touches, a move I was sure was silently judging how relaxed or tense I was. Not surprisingly, it was those touches that brought the tension of anticipation back into my body.
A person can only lie still for so long until sleep finally comes. No matter how much I fought it, dreams stole me away. When my eyes fluttered open again, the lights were on, and he was standing over me, loosely holding my shirt in his hand.
At first, the nightmare my life had turned into was lost in the fog of sleep, so I jarred back on the sheets and gave myself a once over wondering why he was standing over me with my clothes. The straps of my bra had slipped from my shoulders, causing the edge of my dark nipples to peek out. Realizing how exposed I was rushed a wave of heat across my flesh. A blameless reaction that had somehow caused his taut physique to stiffen.
A grunt that was close enough to a moan came from the center of his chest seconds before he tossed my shirt at me. When I focused on the space around me, I seriously questioned how long I’d slept. He’d shaved and changed clothes. There were tools lying around his bike. As I dressed and tried to pull myself back together, he picked up each of the tools and locked them back in his tool chest.
I’d found a reasonable sense of calm in the silence we were sharing, right up until I watched him arm himself. One gun in each boot, another went into his waistband. Switchblades went in each of his pockets. He was point blank lethal.
When he found my rapt attention on him, he made no move to calm any of my more than obvious fears. I’d stood and was wringing my hands together as I tried to find the will to ask one freaking question.
He ticked his head to the back corner. For the first time, I noticed the door there. Hoping it was his way of telling me to get the hell out I moved double time to it. My hopes crashed into a pit of dejection when I realized it was nothing more than a makeshift bathroom. There was a toilet and a sink. A showerhead in a stall with no curtain was in the back corner.
Not knowing how much time he was giving me I rushed to relieve myself, then splashed water on my face. One glance into the tiny mirror above the sink told me my hours of crying had wreaked havoc on my eyes. They were red and swollen. The sky blue color had darkened the way they always did when I’d exhausted myself. I was embarrassed and hated he had seen me at my worst, which was a first—I never really cared what boys thought of me in the past. Wanting a quick fix, I dug through his doc bag that was by the sink. I brushed my hair and teeth, then held a cold paper towel to my face hoping the coolness would chase the evidence of my tear soaked eyes away.
I’d found some personal space and was in no hurry to leave it. Once I was cleaned up, I paced. I prayed. I thought hard and long about my odds of surviving any of this. Shamefully, the seductive pull I felt for Slayton was overshadowing all of my doomsday thoughts. I was furious that of all boys, all the pretty faces that had crossed my path, it was this one, the deadly one, that had ignited a dormant passion inside of me. A sensation that flipped my already fucked up world upside down.
I didn’t dare leave my safety zone until I heard the doors to the unit slide open. Even then I was slow to open the door. I wasn’t sure if we were being invaded, if he was leaving and locking me in, or if by some miracle all of this drama was meeting a very anticlimactic end.
He was the one who had opened both doors, and now he was on his bike walking it out of the unit. With my mouth agape, I stared as he dismounted then ticked his head for me to come to him. Walking to him was easier said than done, beyond my unsure steps I had to navigate through the now dark and quiet unit. He’d shut everything down.
Once I reached his side, he secured the unit, and as he did so, I cast my gaze in every direction trying to gauge the time of day along with any immediate danger. I didn’t see anyone but us. All I could hear was a train rambling by. But then again, my father, a million times over, had told me that I was oblivious to the danger I walked through daily.
The sun was starting to set which meant it was well into the evening. By now, my father would’ve surely picked up on the fact I hadn’t showed. I’d left my phone at home by accident, a mistake I didn’t realize I’d made until long after I was in Slayton’s world. Dread for the fight I’d have one way or another with my father stirred my gut.
Slayton handed me a helmet like we were nothing more than an ordinary couple heading out for the night.
“Wh-where are we going?” I inwardly cursed myself when it dawned on me that I’d yet to speak to this boy without a stutter much less without a tremble in my tone.
He scuffed his boots across the ground as he moved closer to me. At first, I only stared at his chest, at the cross he had dangling there between his hard pecs, but then I forced myself to meet his steely gaze. His head was angled and tilted down at me. In one slow sensual swoop, he leaned down and claimed my lips. I couldn’t help the strong draw of breath I took in, at the same time I had to question why he’d done the same—why he was acting like a forbidden delicacy had just grazed his lips. Like I was affecting him just as deeply as he was me.
His arm reached around me and pulled me gently, but possessively to him, the way old lovers would hold each other. I felt the heat of his palm slide down my ass and give it a smooth, playful squeeze. He leaned away from our kiss taking my bottom lip with him. When I felt the helmet crash down over my head once more, my eyes were still closed, spellbound by him.
I was astride the bike, molding my body to his before I figured out he never answered my question—that he’d yet to speak to me. At the same time, I noticed the short asshole from the night before leaning against the edge of the units we were driving by, smoking, glaring Slayton and me down. A danger I never sensed or saw.
Slayton had saved me again with a heart-stopping kiss. And I’d be damned if I knew why or exactly how dangerous my life was just then.
FOUR
This time, he didn’t have to tell me to hold on, I would’ve been a fool not to. He had to have been going nearly a hundred miles per hour, and half the time he wasn’t even using a legit road. At first, we raced along the tracks, then through warehouse after warehouse parking lot—sometimes through them. Then he moved on to racing down every back alley my father told me to never go near.
From the outside looking in, this side of the city seemed like a ghost town, a shell of what once was. Like the buildings were just waiting for a developer to find the patience and cash to come in and kick out the squatters then tear it all down, to make it new again. But even I could sense the stares landing on me, the ones coming from the dark shadows of everything we passed. To say the least, I was abundantly grateful for the helmet and tinted visor I was sporting. I had hoped that no one would give me a second thought once I figured out how to unwind myself from this drama.
Most of our ride, I was sure we w
ould be pulled over or shot at any second. But the law we did see pretended not to see us, much like the ordinary, everyday working people did. The thugs and every other shady ass in the city noticed us, though. Some glared, others did the classic guy nod. A few even plastered a sick grin across their face.
The women were the worst, or should I say the hoes. Not one of them had a pleasant expression on their face. They made the whore I found Slayton with seem as innocent as a summer’s rain. I knew if he stopped the bike, I was a dead girl. Which only made him even more of a contradiction. Why would he lay some silent claim on me in front of his people, then display me like a fresh kill to the rest of this dark underworld that I was being introduced to?
After our tour of the dark side, he pulled up outside a corner deli. He didn’t ask me to get off. Instead, he sat up then halfway looked back at me like I was slow or some shit. I dismounted, hating the feeling in my legs as they wobbled searching for balance. I stumbled like the inexperienced rider I was, but no one watching would have assumed I had. His arms opened and he pulled me against him making it seem as if I meant to fall onto him, embrace him. He even leaned his head down, whispering a kiss across my shoulder as he pulled the helmet off with one hand as the other kept my balance. I should’ve expected it, and I shouldn’t have felt the same virgin-like zing of desire swarm through my body, but it still happened when his lips brushed across mine, and I felt his breath feather down my neck as he pulled me against him before he stood.
My stare questioned him as I gained my balance once more, silently asking who we were putting on a show for. When no quick answer came, when he stared into my eyes like they were the deepest mystery he’d every crossed, I found my nerve and spoke.
“What are we doing?” I asked, inwardly patting myself on the back for the fact I’d managed to ditch both the tremble and stutter in my voice.
He didn’t say a word. Instead, he linked his fingers through mine then led me into the deli. Inside, every head turned, and I swear all conversation halted for precious seconds until everyone decided to act like they had not been gawking at both of us.
Helmet, please!
Slayton’s slow stride, with our fingers still entwined, led us to the deli bar. He nodded to the lady behind the counter then held up two fingers.
When she moved away, and the bustle of the deli picked back up, I went to ask one of the millions of questions I had on the tip of my tongue, but he moved his head to the side, a halfway ‘no,’ but he may as well have shouted it. Long seconds later, I tried to glance around and see the threat that apparently I was ignorant of, the one he was zoned in on.
Or at least I assumed he was. For the most part, he was watching the TV behind the bar, a re-run of a seventies sitcom. Once, and only once, I saw what might have been called a grin twitch on his lips, and it came when the older woman put my plate before me, and then his in front of him. She patted his hand in a motherly way, filled our water glasses, then went back to tending to the others.
I stared down at my soup and sandwich lost in myself. I didn’t want to eat right then. I wanted to go home. No, I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to go back a year in my life, find myself in my grandmother’s kitchen. I wanted to see her smile as I told her about all the stupid bullshit I’d been up to. Guy problems. Girl problems. Childish complaints. I wanted to go back to a world where the monsters lived in my imagination, and there wasn’t a single danger that was permitted to cross my path.
When my eyes came back into focus, seconds before I shed another tear for the grandmother—mother—I’d lost, I found a spoonful of steaming soup just before my lips.
Was he feeding me? Seriously?
Hesitantly, I blew the steam away then took what he was offering. I was sure it was all part of the show he was wordlessly forcing me to play. It was the temperate look in his eyes that told me maybe we were safe just then, that I could trust him. The gray was soft, the tension in his jaw was lax, and his upper lip was daring to shudder into what I was sure would be a heart-stopping grin.
If he grinned, I was done for. I was sure of it. I was the one flinching a grin as I dropped my gaze and started to work through the meal he’d given me. We sat in silence, watching the TV, eating so slowly you’d swear it was our last meal, until long after dark.
He pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket then nodded for me to stand. I eyed the bathroom in the back. Reading my glance he nudged me that way. Each booth I passed had at least one person look up at me shyly, some with a mixture of jealousy and disdain. Boldly, like I knew what the hell I was freaking doing, I pulled my shoulders back and stared them down as I went about my way.
I was quicker this time in the bathroom, but I still made sure I took the precious moments to calm my thoughts down. This silent game between him and me had gone on long enough. I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea for me to relax in his presence. Doing so was making this ‘crush’ blossoming deep inside of me all the more painful to fathom. Any fool could see this boy and me in no way would or could ever fit together, not for long.
The only thing crazier than falling for this dark, silent, dangerous boy was the fact that I was already mourning his departure from my life. Hoping it wasn’t as sudden and unexpected as his arrival.
When my courage was properly built, I made my way back to the dining room. I knew he wasn’t in there long before my questioning gaze touched on every soul there. His commanding presence, the zing I constantly felt in the air was gone, and I swear the absence of it made the world seem colder, bigger, and just as lonely as it was seconds before I saw Slayton for the first time.
The lady who had served us smiled warmly at me then leaned her head toward the front window. The twist in my gut, the heat in my cheeks, the anticipation bubbling in my veins, would’ve made you think it had been days since I’d seen him.
Hopefully, hiding my reaction to him from the world, I moved as casually as I could toward him. The city had come to life outside. The lights were so bright they were blinding, the cars rushing by, the trains, they all seemed to roar. The people weren’t much quieter, droves of them were moving down each side of the street. Only half of them were looking up at where they were going, who was around. The others were lost in their devices.
Slayton was leaned against the brick wall outside the deli, smoking, completely ignoring the looks that were coming his way. I assumed he was waiting on me so I edged closer to the bike but he just barely shook his head no.
I missed words, the art of conversation, I really did.
It was a miracle I picked up on half his gestures, ones I was sure I’d be blind to if I wasn’t so acutely aware of every inch of him. He didn’t have to say a word, but I knew he wanted me to stand next him. So I did, a moment later he casually pulled me to him, his arm rested across my belly as my back pressed into his chest. Intimate and unnerving at once.
When I saw someone approach his bike, lifting the compartment on the back, I moved, sure that he was about to attack. He didn’t, he let them do it, he even looked away while they did. When Slayton realized I was looking over my shoulder at him, those damn lips of his landed on mine, and I fought the same head-swimming, anticipation building sensations all over again. Even the stench of smoke on his lips could not stifle the glory of his touch.
A slow wink was the only answer I received from my searching stare, and then he resumed his people watching. It was a good half hour before another shady guy came about and did the same as the one before. This time, I acted like I wasn’t paying attention either. And no, I did not look back and score another kiss from him. A girl could only take so many spikes of adrenaline over a short span of time.
Maybe twenty minutes after the last drop he laced his fingers through mine then pulled me to his bike. I put the helmet on and mounted the bike without direction from him. You’d have thought I’d ridden it a million times. Quickly, I lost track of where he was taking me. I hadn’t seen enough of the city to have any kind of bearings, but any
fool would know that we were far from the legit side of the tracks. I knew we were on the side of town I was told never to go, but I wasn’t positive which way was home—never a good thing.
After streets full of hookers, corners littered with men I would not face on my bravest day, we moved down another seedy alley. The bikes and sports cars lining each side made me question if the place was as dangerous as I thought it was. Each one was shined to perfection, and most had the windows down or cracked like they were parked at a Southern church and didn’t have a care in the world.
The alley ran between two of the largest warehouses I’d seen in this area; they were the most put together too, like I wasn’t afraid it was going to crash down on my head at any second.
Once we were dismounted, he opened the hatch on his bike, pulled out a black bag then loaded it with stacks of more cash than I had ever seen in my life. Some of it was neat and clean. Other bundles looked like they had been dragged through the gutters.
Wordlessly, as always, he took out a pair of aviator glasses from the same compartment and put them on me—effectively hiding the most memorable feature I had. Next came a black ski cap that totally did not fit the season, but surely cured my helmet hair.
I almost spit out a snarky remark like, “So, what bank are we robbing?” but he never gave me a chance. He reached for my hand and stared me down for a second. A stare that said to play it cool, and not to leave his side.
My heart picked up a notch or two as we moved down the alley, more so when he rapped on the door with his fist. A second later a guy three times his size let us into the hallway that was glowing red. Music was vibrating the walls, and smoke filled the air. I’m not sure if it was him or me, but one of us tightened the grip of our hands. The soft sway of his thumb against the side of my palm did anything but calm me.
