Crush

by J. C. Emery

  The interaction with Daniel last week made me think twice about the way I’ve been going about things. Daniel is a man. He doesn’t have any trace of boy left in him like Jeremy still does, and that kind of scares me. My eyes survey the hot pink and black decor of my room. I loved the way it looked once, but now I feel stifled by it. It’s so childish.

  My cellphone chimes, alerting me to an incoming text message. When I carefully maneuver the phone into my hands with my still-drying nails, I find the message is from Jeremy.

  U WITH ASSHOLE?

  My brows pull together in confusion. What the hell does he mean by asking me that? I swear, he’s so hot and cold I never know what to expect with him. This inconsistent behavior is one reason I’ve been inclined to keep texting Daniel despite my feelings for Jeremy. When he sent me a random text message after our first meeting, I was put off by it. He didn’t do much to apologize but rather explained himself. For some reason, I’m still having doubts that the things he said are true.

  I LIKE YOU, Daniel sent a few days ago.

  Then yesterday, I WAS JUST MESSING W/THE PROSPECT.

  WE GOT A CONNECTION, he followed it up with.

  To be fair, I haven’t exactly been radio silent on my end of things. I think I’m half in like with Daniel, but mostly just in like with the idea of him. He hasn’t said much about Jeremy, but the few times he has, it hasn’t been very kind. Jeremy on the other hand has been totally MIA. While Daniel isn’t the perfect biker by any means, he’s at least present.

  DAD NOT HOME, I respond back to Jeremy and banish my thoughts of Daniel.

  WRONG ASSHOLE, he says. I knew that, but I’m not about to get involved in this ridiculous pissing match they have going on. It’s not about me—it can’t be—because neither of them have actually asked me out.

  U IGNORING ME?

  Apparently I’m taking too long to respond. I huff before my cheeks turn a reddish pink. Even when he’s being a jerk, I like him. I really need to talk to Holly about all this. The only problem with that is she’s attached to Dad’s hip, and he’s the absolute last person I want advice from. His answer is pretty much always, “He touches you, you kill him,” regardless of who the “him” is.

  NO, I type back. I give it a few minutes to see if he’s going to respond or try to continue the conversation. Once my nails are dry, I know I’ve waited long enough, and I decide to give up. He’s so infuriating. My phone tells me his stupid ass read my text, but he chose not to respond to it.

  Daniel responds to my texts.

  HEY, I type out in a message and hit send. Daniel should respond any minute. He always does. The moment I set my phone down, it chimes.

  HEY BEAUTIFUL, the text reads. A light blush covers my cheeks. For whatever reason, he’s not just trying with me—he’s trying hard. Holly’s opinion matters to me, even if her judgment is questionable—she is dating my dad after all—and I can’t wait to talk to her about Daniel and Jeremy and this whole being mixed-up thing.

  WHAT R U DOING? I text and wait for him to respond. The little bubble pops up immediately, telling me that he’s typing a response.

  JERKING OFF TO YOUR TEXTS, Daniel says. I freeze with my phone in my hands and stop breathing. I stay like that for a while until my phone chimes again with a follow-up text. SORRY. TOO HONEST?

  My eyes bug out. I toss my phone to the side and do an epic face palm into my pillow, all the while being wholly incapable of breathing. He did not. He so did not just text me that.

  A few minutes pass before I work up the courage to look at my phone again. The messages he’s sent still take my breath away. I just don’t know what to do with this. High school boys don’t send me texts like this. Jeremy certainly doesn’t send me texts like this. Hell, I’ve never even been to third base, let alone being the recipient of dirty text messages!

  This is too much, but I don’t know how to say that without sounding like a baby.

  SORRY. I’M A JERK, he says in another text.

  CAN WE NOT USE THE WORD JERK, PLS? I ask.

  DON’T WANT ME TO SAY I’M A JERK-OFF? he responds.

  I peek at the message and decide I just can’t take any more. This entire conversation is making me feel like a child, which I don’t like. My heart is beating way fast, and even though my toes are curling, I’m not convinced that this is a good thing. With that, I shove my phone back under my pillow and head downstairs.

  “We could go shopping or something?” I suggest. Holly’s getting better. It’s been a while since the attack happened. Still, she’s not leaving the house for things when she doesn’t have to if it’s not with Dad. It took her a few weeks to leave the house right after it happened. I get it and all. I just worry that she’s going to become a recluse if she keeps this up. Dad isn’t much of a shopper, and I swear he’s reaching his breaking point. Last time she dragged him into a clothing store, he was so bitchy that he scared the crap out of the poor sales clerk when she tried to upsell Holly on shoe inserts and Holly paused to think about it. Not only does Holly need to get better, but Dad needs his life back, and the entire town needs Sterling Grady to not go clothes shopping ever again.

  “Where would we go shopping? There’s nothing here,” she says. We do have stores to shop in, but if I had to guess, I think she just doesn’t want to leave without Dad.

  “We have places to shop.”

  “I mean places that your dad hasn’t almost gotten us banned from,” she says with a bored expression on her face.

  She has a point, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find an excuse to get out of the house. Besides, almost banned and banned aren’t the same thing. She might think I’m nuts, but I’m considering this a stage-four crisis. I just want her to get better, and better means getting back to her sassy self when she starts reminding Dad who’s boss again and doesn’t put up with his shit. His stunt with the beer last week is proof that he’s getting too big for his britches.

  “I don’t know. There’s a bookstore downtown, and we can always go have lunch or something. There’s no reason we just have to sit here and stare at the TV.” Really, at this point I’m so desperate that I’m willing to hang out at a library.

  “Your dad is going to be home soon. I don’t want to get out and leave before he gets home and then have him worrying about where we’re at.”

  “He’s not going to worry! We’ll have Diesel with us. Sheesh.”

  “Meh, I think I’ll pass. But thanks for trying to get me out of the house, kid.”

  I sigh heavily and decide to let it drop. If Holly’s really not ready for another outing, then maybe I shouldn’t be pushing her. After all, I wasn’t the one in that room seeing what happened to Mindy.

  “Hey, Holly. I have a question.” She looks at me curiously because she knows that anytime I start by telling her I have a question, it’s probably not good. I may or may not have earned a reputation over the last few months as being a slight pain in the ass, but I’m Sterling Grady’s daughter—what else can anyone expect from me?

  “Hey, Cheyenne. What’s up?”

  “What do you think of Jeremy?”

  “He’s cute, he’s earning his cut, but I think he’s trouble,” she says.

  This is something I respect about Holly. She never really bullshits me, and she’s never really mean about it either. I’d say that, all in all, Dad found a good one. Not that I don’t like Elle, because actually I had been hoping for a really long time that he and Elle would get together. It just didn’t happen, and there was probably half a second where I was upset about it. Elle’s been coming around here for years, and she’s really awesome and all, but with her job, she’s gone a lot. I used to think there was no way Dad would find anybody better suited for him than her. And then I met Holly. Holly is strong and tough and super sassy. She is basically everything my mother could’ve been if she weren’t so fucking screwed up.

  “Are you saying he’s trouble because he’s prospecting, or are you saying he’s trouble because you thin
k every boy I’m interested in is trouble?”

  “Well, the day you’re interested in a boy who isn’t trouble, you’ll have to let me know.” Holly’s smile nearly overtakes her face. Now I really don’t want to tell her about Daniel. If she thinks Jeremy is trouble, then she’d definitely think the Jerk-Off King is major trouble. Holly’s really funny when she wants to be, even these days, but I doubt her sense of humor will extend that far.

  It usually just takes a little bit more time to pull Holly’s funny side out now. Dad says we just have to be patient with her and hope her demons don’t get the best of her. He doesn’t mention Mom, but I know he must be thinking about her. Mom let her demons get the best of her and look where she is—somewhere up north whoring herself out for her drug of choice. Not that I think Holly would ever go down that path, and I know Dad doesn’t. He would never have brought her home to me if he had even the smallest inkling. Still, in the back of my mind I worry this is something she’s never going to be able to get over. She stronger than I am, though, so maybe I’m not giving her enough credit.

  Just as I’m rolling my eyes at her, heavy boots sound against the hardwood floor in the entryway, and I know instinctively what that means. Dad’s home. Everybody else announces themselves, but not Dad.

  As he rounds the corner into the living room, he sees us sitting on the sofa. He gives me a smiling head nod, but soon enough his attention drifts toward Holly. I might’ve missed it if I didn’t know him so well, but I’ve spent the last seventeen years looking into this man’s face. And I know what it means when his eyebrows draw together, just slightly, before he carefully corrects them and resumes that mask of indifference. He’s worried. He has every right to be, though I know he doesn’t want to show it. Holly keeps saying she’s fine and she’s working through it. Even right after it happened, she told Dad she was okay because she did what she had to do. It had something to do with her protecting him, and I have to admit that my soon-to-be stepmom is badass enough to think she has to protect my dad, who is one of the scariest and most intimidating men anybody could ever hope to meet, makes my heart swoon. Her strength is exactly why I have to help Dad and the club figure out what happened with Holly and Mindy. I need Holly to be strong, not just for Dad but for me as well. I’ve never had a mom before, and I like it, so I need her to be okay. She has to be.

  This is just who Holly is. She doesn’t care how many muscles he has or how tough he acts in front of everybody else. She knows him in a different way than I do, but she knows that beneath all the angry rants and grumpy stares he’s actually a lovable guy. But I won’t let him catch me telling anybody that.

  “What are you two up to?” he asks.

  “Nothing, baby,” Holly says. She smiles softly and reaches her arm out toward him. It’s the only invitation he needs. His face covers hers, and he places a big sloppy kiss right on her lips. When Holly starts to giggle, Dad smiles wide. I’m smiling, too, before I decide I’m officially grossed out and turn away. I can still hear the swapping of spit, which is just plain disgusting but at the same time kind of not.

  We had a way things worked around here for a long time. Dad went out and took care of club business whenever he needed to and partied with my uncles whenever he felt like it. He spent enough time at home, and he was always good about making sure that I knew I mattered. But he’s never been much of a homebody, and as far back as I can remember, he’s never been a one-woman man either.

  Not that he couldn’t be. It’s just not who he has been. And Holly has obviously changed that. I love having him around more, and I love even more that he’s happy. But even better than that, I actually like her, and that’s saying a lot. Because as much as my dad thinks that nobody’s good enough for his little girl, his little girl thinks that just about nobody is good enough for her dad.

  “Well, you two kids have fun. I’m gonna go upstairs and do something that’s not watching you guys make out like teenagers.” I stand from the couch and cross the room. At the foot of the stairs, I turn back and realize they haven’t even paid attention to the fact that I’ve gotten up. I’d like to think they heard me, but Dad is still bent over the couch trying to inhale Holly. And that’s when I realize that, despite the thinking I’m mature for my age, I’m still not mature enough to have to watch my dad suck face with my school secretary. Even if I do adore her.

  I trudge up the stairs to my room and close the door behind me, trying to forget that they’ve christened the entire house like a couple of teenagers.

  I’ve been kind of bored lately because, unfortunately Holly has ratted me out to Dad about every time I’ve been absent from class this semester. I agreed to be on my best behavior, and part of that means actually getting my butt to class, but girl code takes precedence over relationship code. Whatever that is anyway. So now I’m grounded. That means staying in the house with the horny twosome, with little else to do. Thankfully my grounding is coming to an end in a few days, and it can’t come soon enough. I’m just grateful there’s an entire floor between my room and Dad’s room. Tracie, the bestest best friend ever, says she can hear her mom and her new boyfriend going at it at least twice a week. And Tracie’s really screwed in the head, so I’m thinking that having an entire floor between my room and my dad’s room is going to save him on some serious therapy bills for me in the future.

  I pull up the legs of my sweatpants, kick off my socks, and throw myself into bed. I grab my cell phone and wonder if anybody called while I was downstairs. As it turns out, my friends have been kind of silent ever since I got put on restriction. But that text—that one from Daniel—is still there.

  But an idea comes to me. I can call Jeremy. I think on it for just a minute before I decide not to call him. I’m at home and Dad’s here, so I can’t really use the whole “I’m in danger” excuse to get him here or talk to me. Plus, if Dad found out what I’d done, he would kick my ass. And not in the way where his eyebrows wrinkle and he gets all grouchy and tells me that I’m going to see the end of kingdom come if I ever do it again, because that’s a total joke. No, Dad would get the kind of pissed at me where he calls Aunt Ruby and she kicks me in the ass. She’s not the tallest woman I know, but her boot definitely reaches my behind.

  So if I can’t call Jeremy, I can probably send him a text. That’s less intrusive, right? I don’t know if I should. I mean, either he’s going to respond back and talk to me for a little bit because he wants to, because maybe he likes me as much as I like him, or he will respond back because my dad is the club’s sergeant at arms. That may not mean a whole hell of a lot to the other guys I’d be interested in, but it means the world to Jeremy. As a prospect for my dad’s club, Jeremy’s ass, testicles, and every other part of him belong to Forsaken. And Dad never lets him forget it.

  HEY, I text. I shouldn’t be texting him considering he ignored me earlier.

  God, that was stupid. What a lame message. It’s not like I’ve never talked to a boy before. I don’t even know why I’m getting so flustered over trying to send him a text message. I’ve sent guys text messages before. I’m no chicken. I’ve even sent Jeremy text messages before. But this feels different. I’m texting with a purpose. Plus, I am a total feminist. I can take the lead. I can ask guys out. There is nothing wrong with being a strong, independent woman.

  But what if he does think I’m stupid?

  He thinks I’m stupid.

  As time passes, I become convinced he’s going to forever ignore me and think I’m a dumb little girl. Well, maybe I should give up on him and put on my big girl panties and redirect my attention to Daniel.

  After five minutes, I decide he’s out with another girl. Maybe she’s giving him a hickey right now. Because unfortunately I’ve seen him sporting them before, so I know he’s gotten further than I have. And even worse, maybe he’s with a Lost Girl at the clubhouse getting his dick sucked. Because as much as Dad doesn’t want me to know that that stuff happens there, people talk and I’m not a baby. Besides, what ki
nd of stories did he think Ryan was going to share with me when he used to babysit?

  My phone chimes, half frightening me. I grab it and check the screen.

  WHATS UP? the text reads from Jeremy.

  I let out a little squeal before I realize how stupid I sound. How can I ever convince anybody I’m not a baby if I’m squealing like a fourteen-year-old? Because really, that was so three years ago.

  Pull it together, Cheyenne.

  NOT MUCH, I text back.

  This time, I don’t have to wait long for response. WHERE U BEEN?

  What the hell does he mean where have I been? It’s more like where has he been. For three weeks straight Dad has had him on what the guys call “bitch duty” here at the house. But ever since that one night where Dad came home to find us on the porch talking, Jeremy’s been MIA. After a while I became convinced that he just had better things to do or the guys put them on another detail. I’ve only seen him a few times since his detail changed. He’s been flirty, dismissive, and even downright territorial. But has he asked me out?

  No, he hasn’t.

  Pussy.

  Oh man, I’ve spent so much time in this house I’m starting to think like my dad. I need out. Now.

  HERE, I text back in irritation. I’m not going to argue with him or call him on it. There’s no way around not sounding like a pathetic, jealous girlfriend if I ask him where he’s been. But how dare he ask me where I’ve been when I have been right here and he hasn’t shown up. I got used to having him around, and his absence is pissing me off. It’s pissing me off so bad that Daniel is looking better and better every day.

  REASSIGNED.

  Well, that explains it.

  FIGURES, I say.

  HOW SO?

  DAD IS A HELICOPTER.

  WHY? the text reads.

  BOYS. HE’S NUTS.

  U TRYING 2 TELL ME SOMETHING?

  Okay, so maybe getting my flirt on in a text message isn’t that hard after all, but still, my hands are practically shaking. What if he’s just tolerating me because he’s afraid to reject me? Maybe he thinks Dad’s going to break his fingers or whatever the hell he does to scare and intimidate people he doesn’t like. I don’t know the specifics of Dad’s “job” with the club—only that it’s half-illegal and he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty.