by A. J. Downey
He kept right on staring, knowing that it’d eventually get under my skin, until finally, exasperated, I growled out, “What?”
“She likes you. Don’t ask me why; I mean, you’re an ugly fucker, but she started asking all kinds of questions. I think she’s the one, Nothing my man.”
“One what?” I growled and finished off my double. Fuck me, but I wanted to drink tonight.
“Come on, man. You should hit it. I mean look at her,” I shrugged him off of me as he tried to wrench me around on my bar stool to look in her direction. Except I didn’t want to look at her. I felt guilty as fuck that I’d almost let Corrine’s memory slip from my mind the last few hours.
“Seriously, bro?”
“Seriously, leave it the fuck alone tonight, Radar. I’m not into it.”
Radar shook his head, “Man, you can’t keep doing this to yourself.”
“I can, and I will. It’s what I deserve.” I slid off my stool by way of emphasis and made for the door. Fuck it. I’d walk home. I was in no shape to drive and Marlin would need the Subie to take his woman home, out of the rain. I’d given him my spare key to it when it was apparent Faith was a permanent fixture. She couldn’t ride all the time, not in the wet, and I couldn’t paint houses in the rain.
I pushed my way out the front door and into the downpour, tipping my head back to let the warm wet wash some of my guilt away. Not like it mattered, though. There was always plenty more where it came from.
“Don’t let him get to you.”
I whirled and looked at Hope; she was tucked back into the alcove next to the front door out of the water streaming from The Plank’s eaves. I’d walked right by her. She raised her glass and took a sip, raising an eyebrow at me over the rim. She’d quit smoking long before she’d ever hit Ft. Royal, but sometimes we’d catch her slipping out and standing where the smokers could be found. A ‘fresh air’ break, she called it, but really, I think it was because she would get overwhelmed in close quarters; she was just too much of a badass to admit it.
“I don’t,” I said.
She smirked, “Liar.”
“Whatever you say, Hope.” I started up the street, turning from her look of surprise. I’d never spoken to her like that, and I guess it was a mark of how far under my skin Radar had gotten.
Or was it really Radar at all? The little voice in the back of my head asked me. I told it to shut the fuck up and kept pounding pavement. About twenty minutes into my walk, and about ten minutes from home I cursed myself out hard.
Radar damn sure wasn’t the reason I’d noped right the fuck out of there. It was all Charity. It was all that fucking look in her eyes in the marina parking lot. I’d seen her hesitate, seen the dismay on her face, and when she’d looked up at me, it’d nailed my ass to the asphalt. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was. Truthfully, I didn’t know if it had a name, but it was damn sure a look I remembered. One that Corrine and I had both shared once upon a time… back in the beginning.
I was past soaked to the skin by the time I reached my door and let myself in to my lonely house far too big for just one. It’d been perfect for my little family of three, back before I’d let everything be taken away from us. I went straight to the kitchen and cracked the seal on the bottle of Canadian whiskey on the counter.
I wasn’t numb enough for this. I wasn’t numb enough for tonight, and the storm, and everything that came along with the lightning and the rain. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see and hit the switch on the stereo on the kitchen counter filling my house with Stoker’s band’s angry fucking music. Something between hard rock and death metal blared from the speakers and I sank into it, grateful. I knelt down by my bike in the middle of my kitchen floor and wiped stray water off my face before picking up a socket wrench.
She needed maintenance, and I may not be able to fix my broken, but I could at least keep her in fine running order. At least until I needed sleep. I wanted sleep, but tired as I was, if I fell into bed before full exhaustion set in, I would have to relive it. I needed a sleep away from nightmares tonight; so I worked on my bike instead. I may be nothing, but at least with my bike and my club I had something.
Chapter 5
Charity
I laughed and dodged into the house off the front step, Faith, Hope, Marlin, and finally Cutter, dodging in right after me. The rain was coming down in sheets out there and I’d been grateful that Nothing had seen to it to put the top on my Jeep. We all stood dripping on the hardwood, just inside the entry way for a moment looking at each other, waiting awkwardly for someone to suggest a ‘what’s next.’ Cutter saved the day.
“You should probably get settled in, Trouble,” he said to me and I grinned.
“Thank you,” I said simply, kind of at a loss to say anything else. I mean, I was this weird mix of shy without being shy. I didn’t really know how to be around these two men that meant so much to my sisters, but the rest of the lot of them, I felt like I could just be myself.
“Come on, Blossom, c’mon, Bubbles… you boys are on your own for a minute,” Hope declared. She linked her arms with mine and Faith’s and led us to the stairwell to the left as you came through the door. We followed her upstairs and she took us to, what was presumably, my room.
“Oh!” My diploma was the first thing to see when you came through the door. Right smack in the middle of the white expanse of wall over the bed which was covered in a light comforter, a beautiful gradient sand to aqua fading into a deep blue at the bottom that reminded me of the beach dropping off into the waters out at the shore. The sheets a light, cool blue to match.
“Wow,” Hope commented and her mouth turned down impressed. That was my first clue something was amiss. My second was the boxes that were stacked against one wall; there weren’t enough. I could tell just by looking at what was there.
I frowned and went to the closet and slid open the door on its track. “Well that’s both sweet and a little bit creepy,” I commented under my breath.
“What?” Faith asked curiously.
I stepped aside and showed her, “They put my clothes away for me.”
“Nothing put your clothes away for you. I don’t see Trike thinking about the details,” Hope flopped down on the queen sized bed on her stomach and looked at me, “You must have made an impression.”
“I didn’t think so,” I said drawing my mouth down on either side and sliding the doors back shut. I shrugged, “Thank you for the bedding, all my stuff was twin from the dorm bed.”
“Wasn’t me,” Faith said with a shrug. I looked at Hope.
“Wasn’t me either, if I had to place even money, I’d say Nothing again.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Later, I want to hear about you. Tell me about school. Who’d you hook up with? Anyone good?”
I rolled my eyes, “A couple, they just weren’t for me. Nursing programs, sad to say, don’t have a lot of guys in them. Mine was no exception. Had a girl on girl hookup for a minute, but she was definitely the exception and not the rule. I don’t know, there was just something about her specifically…” I looked to Faith and winced, I didn’t know if I should ask or not if this was bothering her. Sometimes just by asking it could set a person off.
It was one of those being double teamed by a rock and a hard place moments, but my sister quickly let me off the hook by smiling and saying softly, “I’m fine.”
We stayed up late, and it was like a million other times we’d done it when Faith and I had been just teenagers, when we went a long time without seeing Hope, because of her schedule and because of deployment. Finally, I kicked my sisters out of the room and they went down to where their men, presumably, waited for them downstairs.
I sighed, suddenly exhausted, and slid open the closet door again. I pulled one of my oversized tees off a hanger and changed into it. I went through one or two of the boxes and bit my lip between my teeth when I didn’t find them right away. I turned and opened up the nights
tand’s drawer, remembering what Hope had said about the details, and there they were… minus their glass, a note perched on top.
Bottom of the box dropped out. Will get you some new frames or at least some new glass tomorrow. Forgot them when I was at the store. Sorry.
N.
“Huh,” I muttered to myself. Well that was interesting.
I pulled back the blankets and sheets on the queen sized bed and they held the stiffness of new fabric. They certainly weren’t the bedding from my old dorm twin bed and I frowned. I looked around and found the room’s little wastebasket. A bag from a big box store was crumpled in the bottom of a wadded up bag.
“I owe Nothing seventy-three dollars and eighty-six cents,” I mused aloud. Why call yourself Nothing when you had a perfectly good name like ‘Shepard/Dominic,’ by the looks of the receipt? I instinctually knew it was Nothing’s real name, but I didn’t know why he would do all of this for a stranger. He was a strange guy; that was for sure. I’d caught him more than once, watching as I’d danced with some of the other members of his club. I’d secretly wished he would cut in or come up and ask me, but he hadn’t, and I was vaguely bothered by the fact that maybe it was because I wasn’t pretty enough, or that maybe I looked too much like Faith, after all she’d been through.
I switched out the light and got into bed, listening for a long time, to the rain pounding against the eaves of the house. I couldn’t help but think about him, and the odd little extras he’d done for me. He’d just met me, why would he go to all the trouble? It was a question that kept turning over and over in my mind.
After such a long and exhausting drive, followed by the flurry of social activity, I couldn’t fight off sleep for too long to ruminate over it, so I slept. My dreams of a hard body and the most sorrowful set of grey eyes I’d ever seen.
***
The next morning I was jolted awake by both my sisters jumping onto me squealing like a couple of teenagers. I sat up, laughing with them and asked, “What’s all the excitement about?”
“Oh my god! We have so much to show you!” Faith cried and it was as animated as I had seen or heard her to be since she’d been brought back to us.
“Okay! Where are we starting?”
“Well, I figured we could start with a good workout,” Hope said dryly and the look on Faith’s face sent us both into hysterical fits of laughter.
“Oh my god, you should see your face!” Hope cried, wiping tears.
“Not funny!” Faith yelled and ripped my pillow out from behind me, hitting Hope square in the face with it.
“Oh, shit! It’s on!” Hope cried and no joke, it was a full on pillow fight between the three of us.
“Fucking Christ, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven. Seriously, pinch me, Cap.”
The three of us turned to the bedroom doorway, where Cutter, Marlin, and Cutter’s self-described best friend Pyro all stood, watching us. Cutter took a drink out of his coffee mug, eyes fixed on Hope in such a way you could almost see the distortion from the heat between them shimmer in the air.
“I want a guy to look at me like that,” I said flatly.
“Mm, mm, mm, if I were single I would totally volunteer,” Pyro said and I raised an eyebrow.
“Trouble in paradise?” I asked and he frowned.
“What? No!”
Cutter laughed, “Can’t bullshit a bullshitter my man.”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Pyro said, on the defensive.
“It means, dumbass, that if you were happy with your girl, you wouldn’t be making comments like that about my sister.” Hope lobbed a pillow at Pyro and he caught it.
“Just a rough patch is all,” he said unhappily, and Marlin snorted. He was looking at Faith like she were his own personal angel and it warmed me down to my toes to see it. I wanted a man to look at me like that, too.
“Right, fine, adventure awaits! How am I dressing for this?” I asked.
“Comfy,” Hope said, “We’re headed out on the water. If you got sunscreen, bring it.”
“Okay, then.” I sucked in a deep breath and let it out.
As good as promised, we spent the day on the water with Cutter and Pyro. Marlin had gone off to his fishing boat with Faith, while Hope and I diverted to the Reclaimer which was Cutter and Pyro’s state of the art maritime salvage boat.
“Doesn’t look like much, but she’s one of the fastest and surest out here,” Cutter had remarked.
Hope let me in on just how much money the guys had put up to not only get Faith out of trouble, but her as well. Apparently lawyers in New Orleans, like anywhere else, don’t come cheap. As much as everyone wanted to take time off and just hang with me and get to know me, the club’s coffers were running on the dry side and work needed to be done to fill them.
“So, what are we doing?” I asked.
“Got a call to tow in a partially submerged yacht. Should be worth a cool eight grand, but we need to move it,” Pyro had said.
“You girls just sit tight and catch up,” Cutter had chimed in, and so we did.
“So, what do you think so far?” my sister asked me.
“I can see why you like them,” I said.
“Anyone stand out to you?” she asked.
“I listened to what you told me, Buttercup. No need to fish so you can reiterate it, and to answer your question, yes. One of them has my curiosity.”
“Which one?”
“Which one is Dominic Shepard?” I asked.
Cutter turned his head, “We don’t go by civilian names, Darlin’, why would you ask that?”
“Because whoever he is, I owe him some money. He bought the sheets and blankets on the bed. Mine were for a twin not a queen.”
“Ah, well you can consider it a gift from the club. It all comes out in the wash anyways.”
“Seriously,” I said and he looked back at me over his shoulder from where he was coiling line. “It was Nothing, wasn’t it?”
Cutter gave me a crooked grin and shot back, “I will neither confirm nor deny.”
“I think you just did.” I didn’t know why it was so important to me to have confirmation, but it was. I think that was as good as I was going to get, though which was just going to have to be good enough.
“Well,” Cutter said, drawing out the word. “Ain’t you just a bunch of trouble wrapped up in pretty packaging?” he asked.
“I will neither confirm nor deny the possibility,” I said with a wink. He laughed outright.
Hope knocked her knee into mine, “Be careful when it comes to Nothing, Char.”
“Why, what’s up?” I asked.
“Nothing’s wife died and he still has a lot of feelings about it,” she told me.
I frowned, “Radar said something about it last night, and I think it’s awful, the poor guy.”
“It was, when it happened, over three years ago,” Pyro said catching on to the conversation.
“What happened?”
“Accident,” was all he said before moving off. The engines rumbled to life and Cutter steered us out towards the open water.
“How do you know about it?” I asked.
Hope shrugged, “We were at this strip joint in New Orleans, hot on Faith’s trail. Nothing and I had to pretend to be a couple. We had to make out to make it look good. He was a wreck, kept going on about what his wife would think. I told him I was sure she’d understand and he told me she was dead. I didn’t pry, it was none of my business.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
I mulled it over while the conversation meandered over several other topics. It was a long, fun day. Full of interesting new things enough to keep my rapt attention. Pyro was hilarious, and it was fun to watch him and Cutter move so efficiently and quickly, performing their respective duties with such practiced precision.
“What ‘cha thinkin’ baby sister?” Hope asked me at one point.
“I was just hoping that when I start work as a nurse, for re
al, that I can provide care for my patients so quickly and effortlessly precise. It’d be awesome, you know?”
“Sweetie, you’re going to be a great nurse. As badass as everything else you’ve ever taken on, but you gotta remember… you’re going to be treating people. It’s different than towing a boat or fixing a car. Don’t let the technical shit get in the way of what you’re really good at.”
I looked at Hope curiously, “And what do you think I’m really good at?”
“Being human. Relating to people on their level no matter what that level is.” She sighed, “I fucked up a lot of things with Faith. I just hope I didn’t fuck you up, too.”
I felt my shoulders drop as my sister’s eyes welled up with tears and the guilt came pouring out her eyes. Was it true that she and Faith had always had a fundamental difference in opinion and lifestyle choices? Yes. Did that mean Hope came down harder on Faith than she did me? Also yes. What it didn’t mean was that she ‘fucked up,’ as she so eloquently put it.
We talked, and I’d like to think that by the end of that talk she felt better, but Hope was the best out of the three of us when it came to hiding behind her walls. If she didn’t want you to know how she was feeling, you didn’t know. It was a bitch of a disconnect between her and Faith and yes, even me, when it came to the whole abuse thing with our dad. I felt a certain amount of guilt over that now. Never in a million years did Faith or I want to believe that he’d done what Hope had said. It wasn’t until my final year in college, and my rotations through the ER, that the blinders had really been peeled back.
There was a lot of soul searching and honest talk between me and my sister, and it was needed. The day ended up going long in some respects and I think that when both me and Hope disembarked back at the marina, we both felt equal parts better and emotionally wrung out. At least I know I felt wrung out.
