by Naomi West
Feeling marginally better, I leaned further into Rocky and placed my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry,” he grumbled. “Tell me that you're okay.”
“I’m okay,” I insisted.
“Good. Now tell me again when you mean it.”
I laughed once before falling silent again.
“I hope you know what you're doing,” I said.
“I know what you're thinking, but I’m not being stupid,” he said. “Cameron already gave me an earful bout being reckless and acting too soon. I'm biding my time for now.”
“Okay.” I couldn’t argue with that and I doubted that I could stop him, no matter how hard I tried.
We fell silent once more and I couldn’t help but appreciate how content I felt in his company. It wasn’t just a nostalgic feeling, a remnant of our youth. It went deeper than that.
I was coming to find that I liked the older Rocky just as much as the younger one, and that scared the hell out of me.
“Did you ever end up finding another job?” he asked.
“No, unfortunately. It’s been a lot harder than I expected.”
“You know … the offer is still open if you want it.”
I was shocked. “Are you serious?”
“Everyone deserves a shot. Let me know if you want it.”
I hesitated for a moment, running through my options. Could I really afford to refuse his help again?
“Okay. I’ll really think about it and this time I promise I’ll call.”
He let out a lighthearted chuckle and I felt my chest constrict a bit. I could spend hours listening to that laugh. In fact, I could spend hours with Rocky. And that was a dangerous thought.
“I better head off,” he said, getting up.
I walked him to the door and waved him off, thanking him for coming around and trusting me enough to tell me the truth. Closing the door behind me, I leant my back against it, smiling like a maniac even though he’d left.
Maybe things were starting to look up after all. The only thing left was talking to my mother about it, and I was not looking forward to that at all.
Chapter Six
Rocky
I was surprised when Daria showed up at the shop the very next day, bright and early. She was smiling widely, as wide as the last time she was here. In a way, seeing her so happy reminded me of her panic attack the day before.
I’d never been so helpless in my life, just trying to calm her down from her invisible demons. It made me wonder just exactly had happened to make her have an attack like that. I knew I’d need to ask her about it sooner or later but I didn’t know if I could bring myself to do it. Awful scenarios were swimming around in my head and it took a lot of effort to dispel them.
“Daria,” I greeted.
“Hey,” she smiled. “I’m here to accept your offer, if it’s still on the table?”
I grinned widely at her. Of course it was still on the table. I’d lied yesterday when I said that I needed to start looking for someone else. In a town like Springville where you knew everyone, it wasn’t hard to accept that nobody wanted the job. There was literally no other option.
Still, that didn’t mean that I wasn’t pleased Daria was the only one going for it.
“Great, come with me,” I said.
I was more than happy to be having her around, and it didn’t hurt that she was easy on the eyes too.
She followed me through the shop and into the office out back. The garage was one big rectangle with plenty of room for me to work, but the office was mainly an afterthought. Built as a small room coming off one of the walls.
It was a little cramped with only enough room for a desk and a filing cabinet. I led her inside and reached for a gigantic stack of papers that I’d left on the floor. I couldn’t really remember how long they’d been accumulating for, but let’s just say that I hate filing.
A solid thud sounded out as I dropped the mountain of papers onto the desk, not because it was necessary but because it entertained me to no end. I turned back to look at Daria and the expression on her face was a mixture of shock and disbelief. Exactly as I’d predicted.
The job really wouldn’t be that hard, I just needed some basic filing and sorting done, something I’d do myself if I had more time. The real hassle was that all the files now had to go digital, and so I had to log all the documents into the system. This was where Daria came in. It wasn’t Rocky science, but it was something that I was definitely glad I didn’t have to do.
“So, does that make sense?” I asked, after I was finished explaining everything.
“I’ll get right on it, boss!” She chirped.
Shaking my head in amusement, I left her to it and returned to the bike I was working on.
Luckily for me, I had an excellent view of the office from my bike, and so an excellent view of Daria bending over to file things, or biting her lip in concentration.
Man, I could get used to this.
###
It was just after lunch when Michael came in. I’d known Michael for about five years, a son of one of the guys in the club. He was one of my best friends, surprisingly trying to dissuade me from joining the club a few months back. I never understood why, considering he was in the club himself.
“Michael. How’s the bike?” I asked pointedly, noting its absence and realizing that he wasn’t here for business.
In the corner of my vision, I could see Daria perk up at his entrance.
Unfortunately, Michael noticed, too.
“What do we have here?” He said, eyeing Daria up and down. She blushed and looked away and I could feel my blood boil.
“Michael, this is Daria. Daria, Michael,” I bit out shortly.
“Hey, gorgeous,” Michael drawled out, extending a hand to her.
Daria approached him and placed a delicate hand in his. I rolled my eyes when Michael lifted her hand up and kissed the top of her fingers.
“Alright, that’s enough. Michael, this is a workplace, what do you want?”
“Interesting choice of words there, Rocky. You could say that I want a lot of things, starting with the beauty standing beside us.”
I let out a quiet growl and he raised his hands up in placation.
“Whoa, down boy. Just wanted to drop by, see how you're doing. You’ve been cooped up in here for months.”
“Much appreciated,” I muttered, turning away. “Nice of you to stop by, you know where the door is.”
“Rocky!” Daria chastised.
“Yeah, Rocky!” Michael repeated.
“Fine, we’ll go out tonight. Okay?”
“Perfect,” Michael grinned. He turned and waltzed right back out the door, but was only gone for a second before his head appeared again.
“Do you want to come too, gorgeous?” he asked Daria.
“No thanks, I have to be somewhere. Next time?”
“I’ll hold you to that.” And with one last wink he disappeared again.
Daria was about to return to her office when I called her name.
“What’re you doing tonight?”
“Well … nothing really. I just need to talk with my mom.”
I deflated a little on the inside. “Is she not happy about you working here?”
She winced a little and didn’t meet my gaze.
“She knows she can’t stop me. I just want to make sure she’s still okay.”
I nodded absently and we both turned back to our corners of the shop.
Strangely enough, I felt like I was a kid again. I remembered a time when parents used to tell their kids not to hang out with biker scum like me. It hurt at the time, still did. Back then, I had Daria as my biggest champion. And now … thinking about her mother and her opinion of me made me wonder just how much she’d changed.
Corinne Barrett used to be part of Satan’s Wings, and was really close to my dad. I could still remember being six years old and asking her if she was my mom because of how much ti
me she spent around my dad.
I still remembered her voice, clear as day, “Rocky, sweetie. No, I ain’t your momma, but you can sure as hell be my son.”
It struck me then that Corinne didn’t just leave Springville behind when she upped and moved with Daria. She left my dad behind, the club behind, family behind. All to protect her daughter.
Maybe I was being selfish.
I looked over to the office to see Daria bent over the computer, her eyes flicking up at that exact moment and her lips stretching into a reassuring smile. Yeah, I was being selfish. But I couldn’t find it in me to care.
###
It was about closing time on our first day working together and if I’d had any doubt earlier, I didn’t anymore.
Daria was perfect. Not loud when I needed to concentrate, but not deadly silent either. She got everything done and didn’t even need to ask me any questions apart from at the beginning. This was going to work out fine.
She was shuffling around, grabbing her handbag and preparing to leave when something occurred to me.
“Daria?” I asked her.
“Yeah, Rocky?”
“You never told me what yesterday was about. You know, when I was in the hotel room?”
“Oh,” she said, looking down and refusing to meet my eyes. I had no idea why she seemed embarrassed. Something had obviously happened to her and she was still feeling the after effects. That wasn’t her fault.
“Mom and I didn’t have the best time after we moved away.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, hoping she’d elaborate. I’d already gathered that she’d gone through something, but I had no idea what.
“Well … Mom remarried after we moved. A guy named Tim. He was … nice. At first. Then things got a little out of hand. He wasn’t happy that we were always around. It was Mom he hit the most, I didn’t usually get the brunt of it.”
The way she spoke, as if it wasn’t a big deal, set me on edge. All I wanted to do was find the bastard and beat him to death. Maybe then he’d learn that it wasn’t right to hit a woman.
“Mom and I stayed with him for a while after. I think she just kept hoping that he’d go back to how he was before. It was years before she realized that he wouldn’t. One day, Mom just snapped. Told me to pack some bags and said that we were moving.”
“So, that’s when you came back?” I asked.
“Yeah. But I think Mom just wanted a reminder of better times, you know?”
Unable to help myself, I strode forward and pulled her into my arms.
“You’re safe now. Especially with me. You know that, right?”
She nodded into my chest and released a heavy sigh, one that I knew she had to have been holding for a while. I had no idea when she burst into my shop a week ago that we would end up like this. I didn’t know what it was but all I wanted to do was protect her.
A squeezed my arms a little tighter around her, hoping she’d understand something that I’d never know how to say. I couldn’t ever take away her pain, but maybe I could try and make her feel better, even just a little bit.
Chapter Seven
Daria
I was in the office again, two weeks after I had first started and I loved it. It felt so good to have a job again, to be earning again, to get out of the hotel.
It was pretty busy in the shop most of the time and Rocky had me greeting most people when they came in, setting appointments and doing all the payments. It was a lot easier on him and it gave me more to do, which I was grateful. I had a feeling that the job opening was only for a few weeks until the office was sorted, and that Rocky was just trying to help me get back on my feet.
I met a lot of people in the town this way. A lot of them treated me exactly the same as Michael did in his first visit. I was flattered mostly. My stepfather worked hard to make sure I didn’t have much of a life, so the attention kind of thrilled me.
Rocky was opening up a bit more, too. We talked about our lives before, what we liked and the people in town. Often when it was quiet, I would bring my work out of the office and sit on a stool beside Rocky as he worked on a bike, music playing from the stereo, neither of us talking, just enjoying the company.
It helped that a lot of the time he had his shirt off and I traced his tattoos with my eyes.
“Hey Rocky?” I asked a few days earlier.
“Yeah?” he replied.
“What do your tattoos mean?”
I thought he wasn’t going to answer for a long time, but then he finally did.
He turned so his bare chest was to me and grabbed both my hands in his. Taking my right hand, he placed my fingertips gently on his chest and traced them up and around his spiral tattoo.
“This is a symbol for hope and better futures,” he explained.
He moved to my left hand and placed it on his arm, tracing the design spanning from shoulder to wrist.
“This is a symbol for patience and a calm mind.”
He turned around so his back was to me, loosening his grip on my hands.
I placed my fingertips on his shoulder blades, tracing the lines to the base of his spine.
“And this one?”
‘That one … that one is a symbol for revenge.”
###
Michael entered the shop in the late afternoon, just before we were about to close up for the night.
“Daria, gorgeous, are you coming out tonight?”
“Coming out where?” I asked, confused.
“We’re going to a bar,” Rocky said from behind me, almost making me jump.
“Oh. I don’t know…” I said hesitantly. I wasn’t really sure if they wanted some guy time and I didn’t really want to intrude.
“Come on!” Michael begged. “Last time you said you would.”
“I know but—”
“You should come,” Rocky interrupted, and I felt my heart pound a little harder.
“Sure, why not,” I conceded.
“I knew you’d be sick of hanging out with just this one for the past few weeks,” Michael hitched a thumb over his shoulder to point at Rocky.
I resisted the urge to laugh at Rocky’s scowling face and followed the boys to the bar down the street.
It was pretty full for a Tuesday night and I recognised most of the customers from the shop.
We headed to the bar where Michael ordered shots for us all.
“Uh, just water for me thanks,” I interrupted before Michael could finish.
“And a beer for me,” said Rocky.
Michael glared at us but conceded to a beer as well.
We moved further into the bar to a booth at the back because Michael and Rocky both claimed that it was ‘their’ spot.
I slid in first and Michael went to slide in beside me but was unceremoniously knocked out of the way and shoved to the opposite side of the booth by Rocky.
“There needs to be a table separating any female from him,” Rocky explained. “It’s for your own protection.”
I laughed a little at Michael’s pout but was happy with the arrangement nonetheless.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Michael. He was a great guy, but somehow, I knew that he wasn’t really interested in me at all.
“So, do you remember anyone here?” Rocky asked me.
I looked around, trying to see if I could remember anyone from my childhood. Sure enough, on the other side of the room there was a beast of a man with a completely shaved head and an arrow tattoo on his forehead.
“Is that Mack?” I said excitedly, pointing to the giant.
Rocky nodded with a smile, knowing how amazed I used to be as a little kid. He looked aggressive on the outside but on the inside Mack was the nicest man I knew, a complete marshmallow.
“How do you know Mack?” Michael asked.
“I used to live here when I was younger actually. Mack used to let me ride around on his shoulders and pretend he was my unicorn.”
Michael burst out into laughter. “Mack let you
do that? No way.”
“Mack’s a softie,” I insisted, looking to Rocky for confirmation.
“It’s true,” he agreed.
“Wait, you two knew each other back then?” Michael used his finger to gesture between the two of us.
