“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “So, you’ve never said. Just what is it that you do? You know, for a living?”
I stared down at the floor and thought of the best way to explain my situation. After a short pause, I glanced in her direction. My eyes were swollen, I had a throbbing headache, and I was still a little dazed from the beating, but it was pretty easy to see that she was an extremely beautiful woman.
She looked different than she did when I met her. On that night, in her filthy sweats and half-drunk with her hair in a ponytail, there was no doubt she was an attractive woman. Tonight, however, she was even more so. With her hair down over her shoulders and her concerned brown eyes studying me, it was difficult not to stare at her. After a short time of enjoying her beauty, I once again shifted my eyes to the floor.
“Resolutions manager,” I said flatly.
“That didn’t sound very sincere. And what does that mean anyway?” she asked.
“I resolve things,” I said as I glanced toward her.
“Be more specific,” she said.
“Debt collector?” I said as I shrugged my shoulders. It came out with a hint of uncertainty, sounding more like a question than an answer.
She chuckled and turned her head in my direction. “What, you’re not sure?”
I glanced upward. “I’m sure. It’s just not something I have to describe very often.”
“Look, I’ve read enough books that I know club business isn’t up for discussion, so don’t worry about explaining anything if you don’t want to,” she said.
“What books?” I asked, almost bursting into laughter while I spoke.
“Lots of books. MC Romance books,” she responded.
I coughed a laugh and reached my aching ribs. “What the fuck is an MC Romance book?”
“It’s a love story about a member or members of a motorcycle club. Most of them are a series of books, each one about a different member of the MC. You know, one will be the president, the next the sergeant-at-arms, maybe a prospect, or the enforcer, or whatever. It’s a subgenre of books. They’re pretty popular,” she said.
“I’ll be fucking damned,” I said.
“You hungry?” she asked.
“Kind of,” I responded.
In actuality, I was starving, but I didn’t want to impose any more than I already had.
“Eggs, bacon and hash browns sound good?” she asked.
I did my best to smile and nodded my head.
“Be right back,” she said.
She stood from the edge of the bed and studied me with smiling eyes for a moment before turning away. There was no doubt in my mind that whoever ended up securing Sienna as a wife or girlfriend would have someone very special.
I just knew that person would never be me.
SIENNA
July 3rd, 2014
I sat outside the coffee shop sipping my coffee and reading as droves of people needing a caffeine fix came and went. A couple in their mid-twenties got out of an SUV and walked toward the entrance, pushing each other playfully as they made their way across the parking lot.
I watched until I was almost disgusted by their groping, giggling, and grabbing, and finally turned away. I took a drink of my coffee and propped my legs on the chair opposite of where I was seated, and tilted my Kindle away from the sun.
The coffee shop was one of my few escapes, and provided entertainment in the form of people watching, really good coffee, and a peaceful place to read. I had read many books from start to finish at the same location over the years, and my memories of the place were quite fond.
Once while parking my car, I got into an argument with another person attempting to park beside me at the same time, and was rescued by a patron of the establishment. The gesture of kindness led to sharing a cup of coffee, which prompted a date, and the date included sex.
He swore at the time he was single, lonely, and on the tail end of recovering from a case of heartbreak, but it all ended up being a lie. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are not your friend when you cheat on your wife, and a girl who is unemployed has nothing but time on her hands to figure such things out.
Since the incident with the married man, I had chosen to sit on the other side of the coffee shop, feeling as if the side I was sitting on that particular day was now tainted.
My house had been reminding me of Vince, and I hoped a trip to the coffee shop and a good book would clear my mind and allow me to make it through a day without me obsessing over thoughts of him and the possibilities of us becoming an us. It seemed, however, that everything I did or saw, including reading my dark erotic novel, reminded me of Vince.
In the process of reading my new book, no relief was provided, but I did have a few pretty vivid fantasies etched in my mind, all of which included Vince and me in a basement with handcuffs, a blowtorch, a Tanto blade (whatever that was) and a box of Frosted Flakes.
I had no reason or right to be obsessing over Vince, and in my lifetime had never done so over any man. Men, generally speaking, obsessed over me, making ridding myself of them entirely an almost impossible task. I was beginning to feel a strange guilt, and almost as if I was becoming exactly what it was I detested, a stalker.
Two chapters later, and I was writhing in my seat. In my mind, Vince was the Hero and I the heroine. The problem, for me, was that the author had done a remarkable job of painting the sex scenes in a vivid manner, and had left me to suffer.
Frustrated, horny, and for some odd reason wanting a bowl of cereal, I decided to call it a morning and go for a drive. I needed to clear my mind of Vince and try to become normal again.
As I picked up my coffee and turned off my Kindle, three motorcycles pulled in the lot and parked on the sidewalk by the entrance. I did my best to act uninterested, but as I walked toward my car, I checked over my shoulder.
One, a massive man almost seven feet tall, stood beside another slightly shorter, but rather muscular man. The second man, with a huge beard, much more full and long than Vince’s laughed as he walked, and the third man, considerably more handsome and with a darker skin tone than the other two, talked as they walked toward the entrance.
All three wore vests adorned with the patch of their MC.
Selected Sinners.
Here we go again…
VINCE
July 4th, 2014
Sunday nights were reserved for dinner at my mother’s home, and as much as I tried over the years to change it, I wasn’t able to do so. Disputing my mother’s practices, procedures, or rituals was something rather simple to do, but having her agree with me was another story. Although this particular day wasn’t a Sunday, it was a holiday, and one that my mother perceived as worthy of a family meal.
And arguing with her wasn’t an option.
“Eat your fried chicken, Stephen,” my mother said.
“I’m eating it as fast as I can, Mother,” I responded.
“You’re picking. I don’t like it when you pick. Pick, pick, pick. It’s all you’ve done since you got here. Did you eat with those boys before you came?” she asked.
“No. I told you, I came straight from home. The food’s good, I just…”
She reached below the table and handed Bradley another chicken bone. “You just what? Stephen Vincent Ames, you need to forget about that woman. She’s gone, and she’s not coming back. You deserve better, and it’s been what? Two years?”
“Don’t feed him chicken bones. It’ll kill him. And it’s been a year,” I said.
Bradley, an English bulldog, was my mother’s best friend. She talked to him as if he understood every word she said, and fed him whatever he would eat. According to my mother, Bradley was my younger brother, and she even held birthday parties for him, making him wear a hat and eat birthday cake every year.
“He’s a walking garbage disposal, he’ll be fine. And don’t think changing the subject will make me forget what we were talking about. She didn’t even want kids, Stephen, it was only a matter
of time. And I haven’t seen her for two years, so it’s hard for me to remember exactly when you were divorced, but she left you long before you were divorced, I can tell you that, ” she said.
I inhaled a shallow breath and cleared my throat. “I’m not thinking about her.”
I scooped up a forkful of some strange corn, bean, and vegetable salad she had prepared and carefully lifted the substance to my mouth. Fried chicken on the Fourth of July was one of her rituals, and it generally included several side dishes, many of which she now obtained off of Pinterest. Some of the new recipes were great and some were nothing short of awful. I did my best to swallow the unidentifiable spicy mixture, but it was proving to be rather difficult. As I rolled it around in my mouth and reached for my glass of water, she raised her eyebrows and sighed.
“You don’t like the corn salsa?” she asked.
“It’s salsa?” I asked as I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth in an effort to rid myself of the taste.
“Yes, what did you think it was?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. Hell, you’ve got a gallon of it there in that bowl, I thought it was a salad or something.”
“Salsa, Stephen. It’s corn salsa. I got if off of Pinterest. Suzette likes it, and so does Randy,” she said.
“Well, take it over to Suzette and Randy’s house,” I said.
She reached over the table and smacked the back of my knuckles with her butter knife.
“God damn it,” I howled as I pulled my hand away. “Fuck.”
I raised my hand and stared at the back of it, fully expecting to see blood. A three inch long red welt began to rise before my eyes.
“You hear that, Bradley? We’re two dollars richer,” she said as she pointed toward the top of the refrigerator with her chicken leg.
I knew better than to argue. I stood, pulled out my wallet, and walked to the refrigerator. After digging through my wallet and finding two one dollar bills, I pulled the jar from the top of the refrigerator and dropped the money inside.
“You smell like smoke. Have you been smoking?” she asked.
“No, I quit,” I said, telling the truth for the most part.
“I think you were telling quite a fib to Bradley and me earlier when we were cooking the chicken. I want you to know that, Stephen. You’re my little boy and I can see right through you. It’s what mothers do,” she said.
I continued to eat, acting as if I didn’t hear her.
She paused and pointed her half-eaten chicken leg at me. “You’ve been riding since you were six years old. You and I both know you didn’t wreck your father’s motorcycle. I want to know who beat you up. What happened?”
“I dumped it in some sand,” I said.
“Stephen Vincent. Both your eyes are stitched up, and you look like hell. What happened?” she asked.
I pointed at the jar with my fork.
She shook her head. “Hell isn’t a curse word, it’s a place. And it’s a place you’re going to end up living if you keep telling your mother fibs.”
“I dumped the bike, Mother,” I sighed.
“It doesn’t have a scratch on it,” she said, shaking her head from side to side as she spoke.
I cocked my head and stared in disbelief. “It’s covered in scratches, how would you know?”
She raised her index finger in the air and glared at me. “I rode on that bike for years. I know where every scratch is. Fine, Stephen, just fine.”
“I met a girl,” I said flatly as I picked through the pile of chicken.
“Pardon me? I would have sworn you said you met a girl,” she said.
“I did,” I said as I continued to pick through the chicken. “Did you buy a breastless chicken?”
“Here, take mine,” she said as she handed me her chicken breast. “Now, about this girl. Is she the reason you got beat up?”
“No, I met her one night when I ran out of gas. She gave me a ride to the gas station. She was really nice. It’s nothing, I was just making conversation,” I said as I bit into the chicken.
“Bradley’s starving, give him your bones,” she said as she waved her hand toward my plate.
“He shouldn’t eat chicken bones, and he weighs fifty pounds anyway. And thirty of it’s fat,” I said.
“Take it back, he’s not fat,” she said.
“You can’t take things back after you say ‘em, and he is too,” I said.
“You sure can. You say ‘I take it back.’ Now, who’s this girl? Does she want kids?” she asked.
“How the hell would I know? I told you, she gave me a ride to the gas station,” I responded.
One thing my mother always detested about Natalie was that she was outspoken regarding her lack of interest in having children, and my mother dreamed of the day she would have grandchildren. It was a subject Natalie and I discussed often and never quite agreed on.
“Is she pretty?” she asked.
I nodded my head. “Beautiful. Dark hair, like yours.”
“Does she have tattoos?” she asked.
“None that I could see,” I said.
My mother accepted the fact I had tattoos, but believed everyone else with tattoos was an obvious criminal or had spent time in prison. Women with tattoos, as far as she was concerned, were trouble.
“So are you seeing her?” she asked.
I dropped my chicken breast onto my plate. “Gas. She took me to get gas. That’s it.”
“Did you get her phone number?” she asked.
I rested my forearms on the table, glared at her, and raised both eyebrows.
“You need to get a phone, Stephen. This is ridiculous,” she said. “Everyone has a phone.”
“I had a phone and now I don’t. No worries, I know where she lives,” I said. “I could always stop by.”
“Don’t be a stalker, Stephen. It’s not nice,” she said as she reached for her glass of tea. “I saw on Bluebloods the other night what happens to stalkers.”
“Jesus…” I sighed as I reached for my chicken.
“Take her some flowers, tell her thank you, and ask her to go to dinner. That’s what a proper man would do. In the same situation, it’s what your father would have done, and you know it,” she said.
As I ate my chicken, I considered her advice. She was right. So far, I’d troubled Sienna twice with my problems, and had never really taken time to thank her properly for everything she had done for me.
“I’ll take her some flowers,” I said with a nod of my head.
“And dinner. Take her to dinner, Stephen,” my mother said as she lowered another chicken bone below the table.
Bradley took the chicken bone from her hand, waddled toward the refrigerator, and flopped down on the floor beside his bowl of food. As he gnawed on the bone and grew another few ounces fatter, and one step closer to choking to death, I shifted my eyes toward my mother.
“Fine,” I said. “And dinner.”
“You’re a good boy, Stephen. Now eat the rest of your salsa,” she said as she pointed her butter knife at my plate.
I had no intention of eating the remaining salsa, but I did think taking Sienna flowers and going to dinner was a good idea. My mother might have been difficult to bullshit, and impossible to win an argument with, but she always gave good advice. Her only concerns were, and had always been, what she believed to be in my best interest.
As I sat and ate the remaining portion of my Fourth of July meal and mentally prepared for the fireworks display we were certain to discharge in the driveway later, I knew one thing for sure.
I would always be her little boy.
SIENNA
July 9th, 2014
I had three books to review, was out of wine, and was about half as drunk as I needed to be. One of the books was an absolute disaster, written by someone who was so full of herself she wouldn’t even take my constructive criticism as advice. In my opinion, if an author of a book didn’t know the difference between two, to
, too, four, fore, for, or their, they’re and there, they had no business publishing a book without the assistance of a professional editor.
And if the author was so pretentious she believed a book reviewer couldn’t have an effect on her ability to sell said book, she was dead wrong. My offer in the form of a private message to help her with a few things was met with a response that was beyond rude and completely uncalled for. I glared at her message decided a response wasn’t necessary, only an appropriate review.
Sienna,
I appreciate your opinion, but remember, I am THE AUTHOR. Putting my thoughs on paper is my job, and yours is to review what I gave wrotten. If you don’t like my choice of wrods, maybe you should write your own book and have me review it.
Thanks anyway.
Not.
Diamond
She couldn’t even write me an email without making mistakes. The sad thing was that the book had a reasonably interesting storyline, but the problems with syntax, grammar, and her weird prose prevented me from enjoying it, and from completing it. The opinions on not finishing a book and providing a review were all over the place, but I was of the opinion if I did my best to read a book, and because it was a disaster was incapable of finishing it, my follower should know my opinion.
I stared at the screen and tried to decide the best thing to do. After a moment, I began to type.
My Sister, My Lover, by Diamond Phelps was interesting enough for me to attempt to read it, but I was incapable of finishing it due to the constant errors and problems with her shifting from past tense to present tense and from first to third person - sometimes in the middle of sentences.
“I walked to the edge of the pier, wondering what he was going to do about our baby. Strangely, I wasn’t even sure it was his. He walks up beside me and held my hand, shows me he loves me without speaking, and pats me on the back softly. I snap out of my subconscious state and turned around, and he lifts my chin and says “it’ll be just fine” with his green eyes.
Money Shot: Selected Sinners MC Romance Page 4
