by Sky Winters
The only phone number listed on the page was for the club as a whole. It looked to be a membership information number. Summer plugged it into her cell phone and pressed ‘call.’
After fifteen minutes of listening to a garbled Eagles song that served as hold music, someone finally came on the line. “Celestial Sentinels,” a gruff, older male voice said.
“Hi,” Summer said, suddenly feeling nervous and doubting that this would even work. “I was wondering if you’d be able to help me. I know a member of your motorcycle club and I need to get into contact with him. Do you know how I could reach Eric Daniels?”
The man suddenly became more friendly-sounding. “Oh, Eric? He’s just started in some new band, last I heard. The Pink Hearts.” He rattled off an email address and Summer quickly wrote it down.
She wrote an email, hoping that this would be the right course of action.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Hello, this is strange but I’m hoping you can help me out. I’m trying to get in touch with Eric Daniels. I was told he’s in your band. This is Summer.
She couldn’t believe she had let him get away. Especially now that she was pregnant. And now it might be too late to get him back.
There was no response to her email.
The next day, she went to work. It was another concert night. It was also the last time she’d have to see the Easter decorations that she’d slowly but surely gotten sick of. A music venue slash bookstore was no place for the cheesy decorations that looked more like something a person would see in Hallmark.
This time, she had to start out as a waitress, working the floor as the open mic night bands set up. Joy. She was just giving a table their welcome and specials spiel when she looked up and saw the name on the drum kit.
The Pink Hearts.
Her jaw dropped nearly to the floor. A shiver went through her.
“Miss?” one of her diners asked, looking at her like she’d perhaps gone psycho.
She shook her head, trying her best to remain calm. “And, finally, my favorite, the lamb burger. I’ll give you guys a few moments to look over your menus. Can I start you off with any drinks?”
When she brought her table back their drinks, she took her time, hoping that by lingering she’d be able to see this open mic band take the stage. How long had Eric been in a band? Had he quickly cobbled it together in the weeks that followed their breakup?
Suddenly, the name made sense. The red shirt she had worn, with the small, pink heart on the chest.
Summer brought a hand up to her chest, over her heart. Her cold and jaded feelings about the restaurant, Valentine’s Day and everything melted away from her. She could forgive him for his law-breaking. She had forgiven him.
He came onto the stage, carrying a sparkly red guitar. He messed with the mic and Summer caught his eye. The left corner of his mouth rose up a little and he smirked at her. “Hey,” he said into the microphone. His voice reverberated through the mostly empty restaurant.
Not caring anymore about her table or appearances, Summer carefully climbed up onto the front of the stage and stood in front of him for a moment. They looked at each other. His sandy hair had grown shaggier, but otherwise he appeared pretty much the same. She didn’t imagine that she struck him as looking different either. She brought a hand to her lower belly for a moment, then leaned into him and wrapped her arms around him in a hug.
Eric readily hugged her back. A whiff of pine-like cologne filled her nostrils. He felt strong and sturdy against her, as he had all the times she’d ridden his bike and clung to him for safety. Even now, she was clinging to him for safety. But there was something else, too.
“I’m sorry,” she said into his neck. “I’m so sorry. I’m so stupid. You… I’ve missed you.”
He pulled away enough to look into her eyes. He was still smiling.
Getting up onto her tiptoes, she kissed away his smile.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispered into his ear.
His big, brown eyes got even bigger. “But I thought you couldn’t…”
Summer shrugged, smiling at him. “Apparently, there is no never.”
Grinning a large grin that matched his large eyes, he hugged her gently. “That’s incredible,” he said. “You’re incredible. Baby…” He suddenly looked over and noticed that the crowd down below was still waiting. “I’ve got to sing now, baby, but stay right here. The first one’s for you.”
Leaning forward towards the microphone, Eric spoke in a sexy growl she instantly wanted to hear more of. “It’s a privilege to sing for you here tonight on this stage. This is the place where I met Summer. And this is a song that I learned and wanted to play for Summer. And now… Here she is and here it is.”
She walked away so she was still on stage, but more to the side so she could watch him play and be near him. She was mystified. He’d mentioned wanting to be a roadie and now, here he was, a fledgling rock star before her eyes.
Love is the opening door
Love is what we came here for
No-one can offer you more
You know what I mean
Have your eyes really seen?
He played a four-song set, joined on the stage for his last song by two other guys: a bassist and a drummer. They were close to his age and Summer wondered if he had met them in his club. The small band played sweet covers of classic rock love songs.
When their set was done, he came off stage to meet her again and greeted her with a kiss.
“Do you live in New York now?” she asked him, her voice thick with emotion. She had a feeling that if she didn’t speak up now, she might lose him forever and never get another chance. New York City was not so far away from Philly, but she didn’t want him to be far away at all. It had been confusing and messy for her at first, but she knew now that she and Eric belonged with each other. There had been way too many signs along the way for her to be wrong in that.
“I don’t really live anywhere,” Eric replied, giving her a sweet and sexy smile. “I live in a van mostly.”
“You live with me,” she said. “Please come home, Eric. I don’t care if you rob the national treasury.”
He laughed. “I don’t rob places anymore. I gave that up after that one time. Now I mostly just rob people by making them pay to hear my bad playing.”
She leaned in and pressed her forehead against his. “Come home and be with me… and our baby, eventually,” she pleaded. “I overreacted because I was scared.”
Eric shook his head slightly. “You overreacted because you didn’t want to be hurt again,” he said. “I don’t blame you for that. I don’t want to hurt you…”
“You won’t,” she said, kissing him and keeping her face close to his. “You won’t if you stay,” she whispered.
He gazed into her eyes. He clearly worried about her feelings. “You want me to stay with you again?”
Summer nodded. “It’s where you belong.”
He kissed her lips, gently gliding his tongue along hers. Unless she was mistaken, she felt a rush in her tummy as though their miracle baby was responding to the kiss, too.
“Come on then,” he whispered. Taking her hand, and with his guitar slung over his back, Eric led Summer outside to his waiting motorcycle.
After he got the helmets out, she surprised him by climbing onto the large bike all by herself. She looked at him, biting her lip expectantly, and patted the seat in front of her.
“Let’s go home.”
THE END
Rebound with the Biker
“We need to talk,” Zach told Allie over their dinner.
Uh oh. That particular phrase usually did not begin a good conversation. Allie Reynolds and Zach had been dating for two years. They were out to celebrate their anniversary. After barely surviving her teen years, Allie felt as though she’d finally found the one. But now, she guessed, he disagreed.
“This past year has been great,” he wen
t on.
If it was so great, why are you dumping me?!
“But honestly, my heart’s just not in it anymore. I can’t be your knight in shining armor. I can’t go on feeling as though, if I should do anything wrong in any way, you might relapse.”
Allie shook her head quickly. “Oh, no. Zach, it’s not like that. I don’t need saving. I didn’t even know you felt like I did.”
He frowned a little at her. “Allie, when we met, you were a mess. If you weren’t high, you were drunk. If you weren’t drunk, you seemed pretty depressed… I know, underneath all of that, you were just scared. But I can’t be your rock for you any longer. You rely on me too much and it’s… stifling.”
Slowly moving her eyes down to focus on the checkered table top, she could feel the tears rushing in.
“Do you understand?” he asked her. His voice was so gentle and caring. She couldn’t believe he was doing this to her, on their anniversary of all days!
“I don’t,” she replied.
Zach patted her hand. “Well, you will,” he said. He stood up from the table, abandoning his plate full of the remnants of burger and fries. Abandoning her. “In time, you will. Let me go pay the check. I’ll see you around, Allie.”
That statement was such a lie. “No you won’t,” she said under her breath. He was going out of her life. He was leaving her. After she had come so far and they’d been so happy, he was leaving her.
Allie pushed her plate of food away from herself and left the diner. She hadn’t cleaned her plate as well as he had, but it didn’t matter. Like hell was she going to just sit there alone, with all of those judging eyes of the other diners now on her. She threw her coat over her shoulders and went out into the chilly late February air.
Underneath her long but slightly thin coat, she was wearing a little black dress, her short brown hair in a bob with bangs swept across her brow in a slanting style. In her blue eyes, she wore contacts and they were now stinging as they mingled with her tears.
They had arrived by Zach’s car. Now, without him, she would have to walk home.
What an asshole.
Thankfully, the restaurant was not too far from her Portland apartment. It was not exactly a city meant for walking, but there were crosswalks and walk signs. She’d be all right walking home, provided the drivers were paying attention and there were no scary homeless guys to jump out of the shadows at her.
When she was a user, she’d spent a lot of time out and about. It was how she found dealers and how she made friends, strolling the streets and chatting with fellow patrons of nightclubs and bars. Now that she was out of that realm, Allie wanted to stay out. In fact, she was starting to think that a change of scenery wouldn’t be so bad.
When she finally trudged through the doorway into her apartment, she collapsed onto her black couch-bed, letting her heavy metal front door slam shut on its own. Now that she was alone, safe at home, she sobbed into her pillow. “That asshole!” she yelled, punching at the back cushion of her couch. She’d left the bed unfurled. The last time she’d been on it, that morning, she and Zach had made love. She was so fucking happy.
Now she wanted to burn the couch-bed and anything else he’d touched in the place. They hadn’t lived together. She was glad of that now, because there wasn’t going to be any kerfuffle with the landlord. But everything just hurt now. He may not have lived there with her, but he had been there so often that he may as well have.
She even missed the random piles of clothes that he would leave everywhere.
Allie didn’t want to let herself be sad and mopey about Zach. She didn’t want to give him the honor of making her feel like shit. She decided she was going to take action and move on right then and there.
It had been many years since she’d last done it, but she got out her phone and logged onto a dating app. She was going to find someone to hook up with. A rebound would be good for her. She could take her mind off of things. She could be with someone again, someone who made her feel good and someone who wouldn’t expect her to be there afterwards. Sex without the commitment of years.
After flicking her finger through several guys who seemed too sincere or too nice for what she wanted, Allie’s eyes fell on the profile of one Lance Chase. She arched an eyebrow, smirking at his pictures. He had dark hair and brown eyes. There was a sort of James Dean look to him. He wore leather jackets and rode a motorcycle. When she read his bio, she laughed to herself. He was the VP of a motorcycle club: The Tomahawks.
“I highly doubt that your real name is Lance Chase,” she said out loud, as though he could somehow hear.
She swiped right on his profile, deciding that he was the one she needed right now. He was sexy, casual and nearby.
She hoped she’d read it right and that he was in Vancouver, Washington. Allie was not driving all the way to Canada.
Lance was a tall man with a lean, muscular body. He had several tattoos including a tomahawk on his upper left bicep, a roaring panther on his right pec and a large, colorful Joker card on his right calf. Not all of his tats had a real inspiration behind them; some of them he’d just picked out because he thought they looked cool. But those three mattered to him for different reasons.
He had coffee-colored skin, brown eyes and dark, almost black hair. He looked very much like a Native American, and that was because he was the grandson of one. His grandfather was a member of the Nez Perce tribe in Washington. Lance did not know much about it, beyond the fact that it was cool to get to say he was an Indian and have it be true. He wasn’t one of those “2% Cherokee on my mother’s side” posers.
The Tomahawks were his motorcycle club. They were more like his band of brothers. Everyone in his club had some sort of problem with substance abuse. Maybe someone’s parent was a user and treated them like shit because of it. Maybe someone was a former user who had sobered up. Maybe someone was still a user and was trying to be better by allying himself with people who would understand and be able to offer them guidance and comradery.
For Lance’s part, he had been free of drugs for three years. He still drank and smoked on occasion, but he no longer touched cocaine and heroin. That was a good thing, because the drugs nearly killed him.
He and his motorcycle club rode their bikes to raise money and awareness about substance abuse and its victims. Lance was pretty damn proud of what he did. It wasn’t his job or anything but he sure wished it was. His day job was working as a pizza chef in this place called The Blind Onion. It wasn’t much, but it paid the bills and he got free pizza out of the deal.
What he still wanted out of life was a girlfriend. Sure, Lance had been in many short-lived relationships over the years, but he was hoping for something lasting. He wanted to sweep a girl off her feet, take her for a ride on his motorbike and feel real love. That was why he signed up for the ridiculous dating app. That was why, during downtime at meetups with his club, he could be found head down and eyes focused on his phone’s screen, browsing potential dates and hoping that at least some of them would be interested in him.
Once such potential date was this girl named Allie Reynolds. She looked cute in her pictures. She had short, brown hair that curled slightly outwards and bangs that sloped across her face, nearly covering her left eye. Her eyes were big and blue. She seemed to be a fun-loving person. She was smiling in nearly every picture. Lance liked that. He didn’t want to be with another depressing person. He’d spent too long in the game, trying to find someone who would make him happy. He wanted to be with someone like Allie… If she would have him.
He swiped right on her profile and then received a message from the app. She had apparently swiped right on him, too! That meant that they could message each other now. The only problem was that he didn’t know what to say.
Allie was gleeful when her phone alerted her to the fact that the biker dude had liked her back. He had been quick about it, even. She could send him a message, so she thought it out carefully. She didn’t want to come across as desper
ate or slutty… But she didn’t want to just say ‘Hi’ either. That was not a good conversation jumping-off point.
Suddenly, she smirked a little. Why not go ahead and say it?
“Is Lance Chase really your name?”
She hit send before she could talk herself out of it. Now, she just had to wait for him to respond. He was local, so at least they were in the same time zone.
He sent back a message almost instantly.
“Lance Chase DuBois, but don’t spread that around too much. I’ve got a reputation.”
Allie laughed. “What kind of reputation is that?” she asked in her next message. She could tell that a guy who rode motorcycles probably had a bad boy image. That was the sort of thing she was looking for at the moment. Someone who wouldn’t be looking for anything other than one fun night.
“You probably don’t want to know,” he replied.
Grinning, she messaged him back without hesitation. “Let’s see about that. Meet you in Vancouver for drinks? You name the time and place.”
It took a little longer for a response to come that time. Allie decided to use the pause to go into her closet and pick out something attractive to wear. She did not want to meet him in her little, black dress. She took that off and threw it into her hamper, still thinking that anything to do with Zach needed to be cleaned and burned.
She was standing there, naked and going through her wardrobe when her phone’s notification sound went off again.
When she picked her phone back up and read over Lance’s message, she got excited. They would be meeting at a pizza place the following evening, and from there it was “TBD”…
Allie sank back down onto her couch-bed, cradling the phone in the palm of her hand as though it was now some fancy, important piece of her new man friend. The following evening was a Saturday. That made things infinitely easier.
“As long as TBD doesn’t stand for ‘To Be Dead’, I’m in,” she joked back.
