Phoenix

by Trent Jordan

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Hah!” Phoenix said. “Can’t say I’ve ever gotten that reaction before.”

  “Well, no, it’s just...”

  “Didn’t expect it to look like this?”

  I nodded.

  “When you bartend, you know things are going to get messy, but then that means everywhere else, you seek cleanliness. Given that, and, well, my chaotic life otherwise, I’m something of a neat freak. Guess someone smarter than me would say it’s my way of trying to maintain control or something.”

  “Makes sense,” Phoenix said as he headed to the fridge and pulled out... two Blue Moons.

  “Well, you’re predictable at least,” I said with a smirk.

  Phoenix chuckled.

  “Sure could use a little more of that in my life,” he said as he put his arm around me and led me to the couch.

  He’d said that with some humor and lightness in his voice, but it was the kind of joke in which it was painfully obvious to see there was a cry for help. Someone better than me might have empathized and asked what was wrong. Unfortunately, for me, instead of seeing it as a chance to make him feel better or to get closer, it felt like a knife to the gut.

  Whatever he thought this was, it sure seemed like it was heading to a path of instability. It wasn’t going to be pretty when he found out I was not long for this part of the country. What, was he really going to change my mind and convince me to stay in Southern California?

  Yes?

  Why not?

  No, he wasn’t. Probably not. Most likely not. In most cases...

  For now, though, we both sat on the couch as he fiddled with the remote. He rested his calloused, tough hand on my knee, trying to turn on Netflix. In the silence that ensued, I looked around the room, taking in the décor.

  There were many, many, many photos of him and his father. I think I saw more photos of his father around than I had seen of his actual father at Brewskis. The photos spanned the gamut from when his father was young, holding him as just a baby, to what looked like a photo taken just days before he died.

  “Is it tough, looking at all of this?”

  The words came out before I had the chance to think about them.

  “All of what?” Phoenix said cautiously.

  “The pictures of your father.”

  He sighed. He looked so… aged.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Phoenix

  Many, many things.

  Starting with the fact that my father is not the idol that he would seem to be, given all of the photos of him in this household.

  Up to the point where Jess had commented on the photos of my father, everything had gone beautifully. I adored having her around, I felt like the date was progressing well, and I was so glad I was wearing jeans, because I was so horny for her that any other type of clothing would have earned me an indecent citation.

  But my father...

  Honestly, the only reason the photos remained was just because I hadn’t gotten around to taking them down. I...

  OK, that was not “honestly.” To say it was the whole truth was lying to myself as much as Jess.

  “I honestly have no idea what to think of my father these days.”

  “What do you mean?” Jess said. “I thought you adored him?”

  “I do,” I said. “Well, on some levels, at least. On a fatherly level, he went above and beyond the call of duty.”

  Images in my mind flashed of him coming to my school as much as he could, of sharing my first beer with me when I got denied by my middle school crush, or riding my first bike at fifteen... those were the good times. Perhaps strange times to someone who didn’t understand the biker lifestyle, but times that nevertheless made me love my father.

  Those were the ones that were at the forefront of my consciousness, the images that I clung to when I heard or thought of the word “father”.

  But right behind those...

  “As a club member...”

  I couldn’t finish the words right now. No matter how matter of fact they had sounded when I spoke with Father Marcellus, no matter how hard and certain the evidence was against my father, it was like the minute I tried to address it with anyone else, it all just went up in a puff of smoke. The idea that my father could just... could just be a fucking rat, and for it to be something I’d just address in casual conversation with a date...

  “Never mind,” I said. “Not worth talking about.”

  “No, Phoenix,” she said, grabbing my arm.

  She didn’t say anything else. But her words were just enough to get me to calm down.

  Eventually, I would have to talk about him and his decisions with other people. Eventually, if there was the possibility—however slim, however disgusting—of the two Reaper clubs uniting, I’d have to face up to the fact. Perhaps this was the safest space to do it for the first time, in my home, sober, with a woman I cared about. There was no chance of me losing my temper, getting antagonized, or having to hear more bullshit from Butch or Lane.

  All of which was to say it would still suck, but it was something I had to fucking man up and face.

  “My father was a rat.”

  How firmly you said it.

  How certainly you said it.

  No “probably.” No “might have been.” No “some say.” Just... he was.

  And because of how certain I had said it, I knew I had finally accepted it in the depths of my soul. Maybe I could have argued that being in the presence of Father Marcellus had made me more agreeable or some other nonsense, but no more. The only person I was making peace and the truth with was myself; Jess just happened to be in the room, as much a target for the words I had spoken as the Netflix logo on my television.

  “Seriously?”

  I heard Jess, but at this point, it was more like she was an echo of the dying part of me that refused to see my father for who he was.

  Both. He was both. He both loved you and betrayed your former club.

  “Yes,” I said, still staring straight ahead, like I was talking to myself in the mirror. “I saw the evidence. I spoke with Father Marcellus. I cannot hide from it or deny it any longer.”

  I let out a long sigh, like I was breathing out the last remnants of me that wanted to deny it all. I would never truly get rid of this denial. There was far too much emotion attached to who he was and what he meant to me.

  But the time had come for me to stop being Red Raven’s son in more ways than just by changing my name. Becoming Phoenix wouldn’t do any good if I remained in the nest my father had built. I had to become my own man.

  I turned to Jess.

  “It’s an odd thing for me to process,” I said, now actually talking to her. “There is no denying that he was a wonderful father to me, and I will always appreciate that part of him. But there is also no denying that he betrayed the Black Reapers, and I will always wonder why.”

  I shook my head.

  “In the MC life, we can forgive a lot of stupid shit. We’ve had club members sleep with each other’s girlfriends or even wives; we’ve had arguments that turned bloody over stupid shit like who was supposed to get alcohol. We’ve gotten arrested for a ton of shit, although we do our best to keep Springsville... or, Ashton, at this point, safe. But one thing we never, ever, ever fucking do is become a rat. We never, ever sell ourselves out to another club or to the authorities. It’s not a joke to say having a gun drawn on you during a fight or being called a slur is less of a problem than being a rat.”

  Even those words didn’t feel like they did a good enough job of saying how much my father had hurt the club. Even if he hadn’t succeeded in killing Lane, he’d killed much of the club’s confidence and spirit.

  “I know I have to become my own man. These photos... it’s like if I let go of them, I’m somehow letting go of him. I know that’s ridiculous. I need to break out of his shadow. But... fucking shit. That’s a fucking huge shadow to get out of.”

  I turned away and stared
back at the blank screen with all its suggestions for movies. We weren’t going to get to any of those. I wasn’t even sure we were going to have sex anymore. I wasn’t mad about it. I just...

  I wasn’t anything.

  I was spent.

  At least I had Jess curled up on my arm, cuddling me. That felt nice. But it wasn’t going to change my father’s forever-tarnished legacy.

  “Did I ever tell you that I ran away from home at fourteen?”

  What?

  No, no she had not. I turned to her. We held hands as she continued talking.

  “My mother died when I was young,” she said. “Your father started off great and ended poorly, but my father started off horribly. He drank so damn much. So much. So…”

  Her voice was not yet cracking, but I had no idea how she’d maintain her composure. Not with what I was hearing.

  Not with how I knew issues of fathers could make a person feel.

  “He would come home from work and yell at me before he passed out. Hit me a couple of times. Never abused me sexually, but that didn’t mean life wasn’t hell. I couldn’t focus in school. We were poor, so I got made fun of for that. Life was about as miserable for a preteen and early teenager as you could get. I always told myself that I’d run away, but what was I supposed to do, get a job at twelve?”

  She laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh of humor.

  “Well, eventually, one night, at fourteen, it hit a breaking point. I locked myself in my room. My father demanded I come out. I refused. And he broke down the door. He put all his weight into it and slammed against it. He literally broke it off its moorings.”

  Jess paused. Her eyes were on me, but it looked like she was looking at something in her past—as if she could see her father breaking down the door at this very instant. It was surreal and more than a little bit unsettling.

  I could do the very same with the moment that I had seen my father murdered.

  And to now see it with the knowledge that Butch may have been justified…

  “He didn’t do anything after,” Jess said, bringing me back to her. “In fact, he passed out on the floor, but that was the moment I knew I had no safety in that house of any kind. So... I ran away. I just... sort of lived life as a vagabond for the next several years.”

  “Jesus...”

  “I hopped around and took jobs wherever I could. I was homeless for a while. I would lie about my age and just take jobs wherever I could.”

  There were a lot of uncomfortable questions that I wanted to ask but I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea—I didn’t think Jess would really want to say, for example, if she had ever given up anything for rent or a job. It wasn’t my place to know, anyway. And if it was, would I really want to know?

  “I take it you haven’t spoken to your father since?”

  To my surprise, though, she smiled. It was a beautiful smile, too, not a sad or weary one.

  “Actually, that seemed to be the wakeup call that he needed,” she said. “I didn’t speak to him for five years, though he would reach out to me frequently in that time frame. He kept saying that he’d gotten sober. He kept saying he was making his life better. But even then, he... he didn’t then invite me back.”

  That was the one line, of all the things she had said, that got her choked up. I squeezed her hand, but it did little to stem the tide. She let out a long sigh to push back her tears, but her watering eyes failed her.

  “But when I spoke to him... well, it’s not quite there yet,” she said with a short laugh, raising her right hand to clear up her eyes. “He still has a hard time confronting what happened before. Every time I try to be vulnerable, he just makes a joke. He’s sober, so that’s good. But... well, all of this is to say I think you and I have a lot in common.”

  “So it would seem,” I said.

  She had a point. I didn’t fully agree with it, but maybe the point wasn’t that her dad and my dad were exactly alike. Maybe the point was that we both had our struggles with our fathers.

  “And that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?” Jess said. She reached back and grabbed her beer. She held hers out, and we clinked glasses. “To figuring out ourselves and emerging out of the shadow of our fathers.”

  “To our daddy issues.”

  Jess doubled over in laughter. I laughed too, even though I thought my joke was lame.

  Maybe we weren’t so different after all. Maybe Jess was something to be strongly desired. Maybe...

  Maybe she could actually be the first girl that I seriously dated and had something real with.

  Don’t get too far ahead of yourself.

  “So, are we going to watch a movie?”

  Her words might have said that she wanted to watch a movie, but the way her eyes were looking at me, I was pretty sure she wasn’t talking about an actual Netflix movie.

  “Well, if I’m being fully honest, since this seems to be the theme tonight,” I said. “I prefer to skip past the pretenses and get right to the point.”

  Jess leaned forward so much that I could have brushed our noses together. Her perfume consumed me, and her eyes begged me to take her.

  “And that is?” she said coyly.

  Words were no longer needed. Thought was no longer needed. Just hard, rough, deliberate action.

  I grabbed her neck and pulled her in for a kiss that almost immediately became sloppy and erotic. I pressed her into the couch and felt her legs wrap around my hips as our bodies smashed together, our clothes the only thing separating us from the sex that was about to happen.

  And soon, we weren’t just confined to the couch. I picked her up and tried to carry her to the bedroom, but not before our momentum slammed us against the hallway wall. I knocked over some books from one of my coffee tables, and the impact on the wall caused a picture to get off-center, but I couldn’t have given two fucks. The only fuck I had to give was going right to Jess, and I was going to give it good to her.

  “Oh, fuck yes,” I said.

  “Shut up, let’s go.”

  I barely had a chance to react before she pulled me into the bedroom. I caught the briefest of glimpses of her eyes before she pulled me back in for a kiss—and with that look in her eyes, I suddenly knew that I was in for something I was not prepared for. No bunny, no random, no online date could match the fire that I just saw in Jess’ eyes.

  And I couldn’t have been more fucking excited because of it.

  Jess

  Here’s a dirty little secret about me.

  When I said I was a neat freak, that wasn’t actually the full story. It would be more accurate to say I’m a control freak.

  And that most absolutely, positively, certainly extends to the bedroom.

  And luckily for Phoenix, he was about to find out what all that entailed.

  I learned quickly after I left home that people who took control were people who did not get trifled with. At first, my compulsion toward control was almost a survival mechanism; men who might have thought they could tell me what to do or even get violent with me quickly changed their minds when they saw how aggressive I could be. As I got older, though, I found a way to turn that into something enjoyable, something pleasurable.

  I learned how to both please a man and please myself by being the one in charge in bed. Most men just laid back and took it; the smart ones, the ones who knew how to turn on a controller, “fought back” but ultimately let me win. A few were a little too aggressive and stupid to figure out what was going on, but as long as I had some sway in how things went, it got me so aroused as to guarantee an experience I’d want to relive over and over.

  Phoenix was by no means a Ph.D. from an Ivy League university, but he wasn’t an idiot. And I could tell by the way he reacted when I pulled him in that he knew how to handle me.

  When I pulled him in for that kiss in the bedroom, I saw something in his eyes that I just didn’t see on the faces of most bikers.

  Surprise.

  Some of them thought they never projected fe
ar, but they were the naïve and stupid ones. They just didn’t show fear in the “screaming woman from a horror movie” type of way. But even with that blind spot, very rarely did they show genuine surprise at anything.

  Phoenix might have expected that I would be enthused by the prospect of sex. He might have expected me to want him. But he definitely didn’t think that I would overwhelm him like this.

  “Holy shit!” he mumbled as my hands clawed at his back and head. “You’re gonna—”

  “Fuck you?” I growled into his ear. “You’re damn right.”

  Phoenix tried to push me back to force me to the bed, but this was my time to lead the erotic dance. I used his momentum and weight to my advantage, turning him back and shoving him onto the bed. I jumped onto him, causing him to grunt under the pressure. But he was still hard as a boulder, and with the apparent size of one to boot.

  I started giggling and laughing. I took a special delight when there was a major discrepancy between expectations and reality, and the surprise Phoenix showed was among the highest I’d ever seen. Poor biker was so used to getting his way, and now he had no control.

  What an utter shame.

  “God, this is gonna be fucking awesome.”

  I had my hands on his jeans, the fingers on my right hand curled under the denim. If I extended them just a little further in, I could have begun stroking his tip. Oh, it was tempting.

  But part of the fun of being in control was that I didn’t need to go all out, full-speed fucking all the time. I could torture him with a little bit of slow play.

  And I had to say, I didn’t think I’d ever met a man who didn’t like a little slow play. They might have begged me to go faster, but the more they begged, the slower things got.

  “Is that what you think?” I said, making Phoenix started to squirm. And I hadn’t even touched his cock yet! “Don’t you know I can make this experience whatever you want it to be? Or I can utterly ignore you and do things only for myself?”