by Paula Cox
“Yo! Bear!” one of the younger guys, a newer recruit, calls towards me. “What the hell are you doing back here? I thought you were working the afternoon shift?”
“I got pulled,” I shoot back. I don’t owe this kid any details. I’m more surprised that he’s even talking to me considering the rest of the group are avoiding eye contact with me like I’m some kind of catchable disease.
“Damn, that sucks,” he shouts over his friends. “You wanna go grab a beer with us? We’re supposed to be in training, but they canceled that tonight.” One of the boys next to him elbows him in the side, but he insists by offering to buy me a round. I’m not gonna refuse that, especially if my cash is going to be lower tonight.
Him and two of the other newbies head off with me to a bar in the neutral territory. The Roaring Eagle is as dinky as you can get, but it’s a biker bar where most of the new club recruits go when they’re not allowed in the real club owned bars. I’d much rather be sitting barside at the Wild One Tavern, but this will do. The drinks are cheap. The women, women who don’t belong to any club, are out in full force, and I don’t have to talk to anyone about what happened between Sunny and me.
For the Roaring Eagle being what it is, it sure is crowded tonight. The music is blaring some kind of oldies rock station through the open windows while the foggies smoke their hand-rolled cigarettes on the wooden porch. A few heads turn in my directions, but no one of consequence is here. I grab a bar stool near the corner where I can watch the door, and force myself to listen to the kid that dragged me in here ask a million questions about club policies and traditions.
“When we get tested, what do we need to know? Tommy Tee told us that we need the routes memorized. Is that right? Like all the routes or just the main stuff? And do you know what happens if we get failed? Do we get a second chance, or is that it? No one is answering that for us, and we’d really like a straight ans—”
“Shut up, kid.” I put a hand on his chest as I stand to my feet. Just out the corner of my eye, I spot her. Sunny’s hard to miss with that long, blonde hair tucked up in a high bun on her head. She glides across the room to a few of her friends who place their arms around her in a hug. Something about her looks worse for wear from when I left her this morning. She’s been crying. The smeared makeup she wasn’t able to wash off all the way tells me that. And her black painted fingernails tap anxiously into the wooden bar top as she talks to some guy I don’t recognize. She looks just about as interested in him as she would a math lecture.
The guy orders something from the bartender, smiling at her the whole time. He points over towards the jukebox and hands her a few quarters. Real slick, kid. Every guy’s tried that one before. But this motherfucker ain’t like anyone. I watch as he quickly grabs a little mint tin out of his pocket and drops a quick-dissolving tablet into the drink he ordered for Sunny. He stirs it up with the cocktail straw and hands it back to her with a sadistic little grin.
I can’t move fast enough to stop her from drinking it. But I am able to land a swift punch in the face before either of them can realize that I’m there.
“What the fuck!” she screams at me as the man falls to the ground at her feet. “Bear! What the hell are you doing?”
I grab the drink out of her hand, tossing it to the ground. The glass shatters on the ground near the man’s head. With a kick to his ribcage with my steel toed boots, I explain, “This asshole just drugged you, Sunny! I watched it myself. Check his pockets!”
Sunny eyes her friend who kneels down beside the stranger and rummages through the unconscious man’s jacket pockets. She finds the tin and holds it to her.
“It’s just a mint, Bear,” Sunny says, exhausted.
“Fuck that shit. Open it up. It’s a damn roofie, girl.” I take it out of her hand and show her the white tablet with the crisscrossed line running through it. The words have been carved out. I pass it over to the bartender, and he nods in agreement.
“Holy shit,” Sunny’s friend says. “What do we do?”
“You’re getting the hell out of here,” I say as I grab Sunny’s arm.
“What? No.” Sunny looks back and forth from her crew and me, clearly reluctant to take off like this. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Bear.”
“Like hell you’re not.”
“Call Killer or Cobra,” Sunny orders one of the girls standing near her. “He’s gonna want to know what Ricco’s done.”
“He’s not gonna be happy,” the friend says.
“Come on, Sunny. Let him handle it. You need to get out of here.” I pull on her.
“I don’t care!” she shouts, frustrated at both her friends and me. “I’m not going anywhere until I talk to Killer.”
I force her aside, pushing her to the opposite corner of the bar where she’s out of reach of her friends. With nowhere for her to run, she is forced to look straight up at me with those sparkling blue eyes of hers. I place a finger on her face as I scold her, “Listen here, I’m not in the mood to start a war between your club and mine, but you have to be fucking joking if you think you’re safe here.”
“Why not? I’ve got protection.”
“Those girls you’re with aren’t protection. They didn’t see that guy of yours drop a roofie in your drink. You really think they’re gonna protect you when your boss comes around?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“Dammit! Are you really that blind, Sunny? Someone’s after you and me both. My club’s trying to push me out, and yours is trying to reclaim you—get you to fall back in line with the rest of the dumbass girls they own.”
“Nobody owns me,” she protests, standing a bit closer to me—so close that I can feel her sweet breath on my neck and chin. She needs to stand on her toes to reach my eye-level.
“No one should,” I answer back. “But don’t be a fucking idiot about this. Get the hell out of here before whatever you drunk knocks you the hell out, and you wind up in someone else’s bed.”
“Not yours?” she asks, blinking rapidly.
“Not mine.”
“Good.” She pulls back. I can’t tell if she’s disappointed in my answer or just being her sarcastic, flirty self. “Goodbye, Bear,” she adds as she ducks under my arm and heads over towards the girls. They huddle together in one of those girls-only formations until someone takes Sunny’s arm and leads her outside to the parking lot.
I stand in the corner, alone, for a long while. The whole bar has its eyes on me as the seconds tick by. But no one moves or dares say a word about the man lying on his back in the middle of the bar or the fact that I’m the one who knocked him out. Finally, the new rider I’m with has the balls to step up to me.
“What are you gonna do, Bear?”
“I’m not gonna do a damn thing,” I say as I sit back down at the bar and order another myself another drink.
If my world is going to end tonight or a war is going to break out because I defended Sunny, I’m sure as hell going to make sure that I’m not sober enough to watch it happen. Bring it on.
Chapter Seven
Sunny
Oh shit.
Oh God.
Oh shit.
What the fuck did I just do?
My hands shake as I look down at the white and purple stick. This is the fifth one I’ve used. I don’t think I have enough tears or pee left to do another. I can’t avoid it—it’s true, there in a strong purple plus sign on the pregnancy test in my hand, and the half-dozen other ones in the sink.
It can’t be true, though. This has to be some kind of sick joke. The girls must have replaced the box or are playing a trick on me. They’ve been complete bitches ever since Ricco got a beat down for attempting to drug me in a bar. Most of them aren’t even talking to me outside the shrug or a grunt here and there. I wouldn’t put it past them to find some fake pregnancy tests and place them in our bathroom knowing that I was more than two months late for my period.
I turn the box over, reading it carefully. T
here has to be somewhere on the box or the shiny metal wrappers that says, “HAHAHA! Screw you! You thought you were pregnant, but you aren’t! All these are fake positives to freak you out, make you throw up a few times, and lead to you hogging the bathroom for three hours while you cry yourself an actual river.”
But there isn’t any evidence whatsoever that this is a prank. The box is one hundred percent legit. The tests look and feel like the real thing too. I’ve taken enough pregnancy tests in my life to know what they should look like or how they should act when you pee on them. I’ve never, ever, seen them pop up with a plus sign before. Not until today.
Okay. So not defective or joke tests. What else could be wrong? I think I’ve heard from another one of the girls about how her sister’s friend’s something-or-other once took a test, got positive after positive, and it ended up being an infection. I mean, that sounds plausible. It could be that. I haven’t been feeling myself lately. My back has been hurting, and my stomach has been upset a few times. I’ve blamed it on food poisoning and Mary’s shitty cooking, but it could be an infection or something.
But none of the other girls are sick or acting strange or barfing up their morning breakfast. I haven’t even seen one of them with a fever in months. If I’m the only one in this apartment with any symptoms, maybe it isn’t an infection. Maybe this is the real deal. These tests with the humongous plus signs are telling me the God-awful truth.
It can’t be. It really can’t be. Ever since the whole Ricco incident at the bar, I’ve been basically excommunicated from the Filthy Bastards. The guys have been assholes. They bring up that public bath whenever I’m around, even though that was months ago now. There are even some pictures floating around of me sitting on the floor in a huge tub covered in soap. Thank goodness I’m not nude.
That being said, my sex life has been… well, nonexistent. I can’t remember the last time a guy has even touched me beyond the regular pinch on the ass or rub against my chest. Outside of explaining to Killer what happened the night at the bar, I haven’t even been alone with a guy since…
Oh shit.
Oh God.
No. No. No! It can’t be. It really cannot be. I pull out my phone and check my calendar for the invite to the fight. I’ve got to scroll back about nine weeks, but there it is. That little dot for an event jumps out at me like claws to suck me back into that night with the Wilderkind guy, Bear, pushing me bareback and all against the scratchy stucco walls of the motel or us, the next morning, holding onto one another for dear life as we moaned and screamed on the dingy carpet.
It’s him. It’s gotta be him. There is no one else it could be. The timing matches up too perfectly to deny. I’m two months late, and it’s been about eight or nine weeks since we slept together and when I last heard from him. If my last period was about a week before that night, it means that there’s only one man this fits in with. It just so happens to be the last man on Earth I would want to be having a baby with.
FUCK! I scroll through my phone’s contacts until I find my OBGYN. After a quick call, they can see me today. Just my luck. At least I’ll get some straight answers. I quickly gather my stuff into my bookbag and head out the door. With no guys willing to give me a lift to town, I’m on my own on the walk. For one, I’m actually thankful for the quiet. I can hear my thoughts, unlike back at the apartment with the girls constantly talking, singing, playing music loudly, screwing… Without anyone bothering me, I’ve got all the time in the world to think about what life would be like with a baby.
If it really is Bear’s, there is going to be hell to pay. Already, Filthy Bastard girls who get knocked up outside being someone’s old lady are almost always thrown on their asses. They’re not wanted. No one wants to take care of them either. And without a court ordered paternity test, the guy who did the deed gets away with it like it’s nothing, like we are disposable. Sometimes Killer or Cobra takes pity on a girl if she can prove that it belongs to a club guy or the guy confesses that it had to be him. In that case, Killer’s pretty fair in having the guy’s pay docked, so the girl gets it. We call it “club child support.” There are a couple of girls that have managed to get that lucky break. The rest of the girls I know are long gone—forgotten faces replaced by new girls like me.
But I can only imagine what would happen to me if someone found out I have a bun in the oven and then put two and two together that the child belonged to him. No doubt I’d have no chance to appeal. I would probably be gone that night without anyone even knowing what had happened to me. No one would question it. No one would come looking for me, because, in their minds, I’m still the girl that spread her legs for a Wilderkind.
The sterile doctor’s office with the pretty pregnant women stroking their tummies isn’t making me feel better about the situation. The girls waiting all look like they have their lives figured out. There are rings on their fingers and designer bags on their shoulders. They are the ones that should be having kids—not wild girls like me whose life revolves around where the party is. Even as I am sitting in the waiting area flipping through last month’s Vogue, my phone is ringing off the hook with messages about a boxing match downtown the girls are all going to. I should be getting ready for it. Not waiting to hear if my life is about to change.
Eventually, the nurse calls my name, unceremoniously hands me a cup to pee in, and leaves me alone in cramped exam room while she runs the same test I did at home. A few minutes later, a white coat doctor, who looks to be about my age, walks in.
“Sunny? Is that right?” She waits for me to swallow the lump in my throat before proceeding. “Well, congratulations are in order! It looks like you’re pregnant.” I glare at her, so she immediately loses the celebratory tone and moves on. “According to the notes the nurse took, it looks like you’re about eight or nine weeks along. It’s a little early for the heartbeat, but we could do a quick ultrasound to check to see if everything’s okay since you’re complaining of some stomach issues. Would you like that?”
I nod. I can’t bear to talk after hearing her confirm that I am in fact pregnant. There’s life growing in me. What am I going to do?
She helps me up to the table while the nurse wheels in a small cart with a monitor the size of my iPad hooked to it. Within a few minutes of searching, the doctor finds a white-ish gray spot floating in the center of a larger circle. Satisfied with herself, she exclaims, “Yes! There it is. That’s your baby.” She draws a few lines, measurements she explains, and makes some calculations. “It looks like the nurses’ estimates were right—about eight or nine weeks. It’s hard to tell until further along, but your dates look pretty exact to me. That would put your due date at about December 15.”
Maybe sensing my complete shock, the nurse gently presses on my shoulder as she says, “I’m going to print some pictures out for you. Would you like a copy for the dad?”
For the dad? For what dad? For the guy who I shouldn’t have slept with but did on a bet and now will have to answer to that night over and over again. For the guy who protected me, made me feel whole and wild and free, and then gave me this pulsating, beating life? For the man that I will never and should never see again?
“No,” I answer quietly and turn back to watching the small bean inside of me flicker slightly with the beat of its growing heart.
***
“Are you coming or not, Sunny? We have to leave in like ten minutes.” Larissa pounds on the door of my room in frustration. I don’t blame her. I haven’t left this room all day—not since I got back from the doctor’s office. I really don’t know what I would say or do if I could make myself leave. Nothing is the same as it was before.
“Sunny? Come on! The whole club is going. If you’re not there, you’re gonna get hell for days!” I don’t know why Larissa cares this much. Maybe it’s because the rest of the club treats her like a freaking princess when I’m not there to abuse and toss around. Maybe it’s because she likes the drama. Either way, I’m not biting. Not tonight.
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Suddenly, I hear some jostling on the other side. Kitka forces her way through, snapping, “Move out of the way. Let me handle this.” She clears her throat before yelling, “Let me the hell in, Sunny, or I’ll use the goddamn skeleton key! You hear me?” There’s a beat of silence before I watch in horror as the doorknob begins to twist and the old lock turns. I grab the tear stained sonogram picture and toss it under my bed before running to open the door for her.
“What the hell are you doing, Kitka! I’m not going to the damn fight!” She pushes past me until she’s fully in the bedroom. Her steely brown eyes give me a once over, but I can’t care less about what I look like right now.
