by Hazel Parker
What could he possibly ask at this point that would bother me? There were no secrets—at least no secrets that I was willing to acknowledge. There was one very blatant fact about Stewart and me, but I refused even to pretend it existed.
“Did you ever have feelings for Richard?”
I was grateful for an easy question.
“No,” I said. “And it’s not like ‘oh, I had them, but I got rid of them.’ It’s more like ‘I just have never liked him like that.’ And it’s strange—a boy and a girl, eighteen and seventeen, hanging out, facing the world, you’d think that we’d want to try to fight it together as a couple. But it never happened. Maybe I knew on some level that if we dated and it fell apart, I’d lose my only friend. Or, maybe, we just were like siblings who were incapable of falling in love.”
The more I talked, the more I realized it wasn’t an easy question. It was easy from a yes-no perspective but trying to explain it was proving much more difficult than I would have expected.
“One more question,” Joseph said. “Why are you here with me, then? I know it’s not because of my terrible jokes.”
“No, it most certainly is not,” I said with a snort, the most I could muster resembling a laugh. “It has more to do with the fact that I’m at a point in my life where I truly know it’s now or never. If I don’t find someone now, I’m not going to have kids. If I don’t get married soon, I will probably never get married. Richard is getting hitched. So is Barber. Maybe love’s a little contagious; I don’t know. That sounds fucking stupid, but maybe it’s true.
“And in any case, as for you specifically… I knew beneath your humor, there’s something more to you. You are a genuinely great guy, Joseph, even if you sometimes say stupid things at the wrong time. But that’s what makes you you.”
Joseph smiled and again wrapped his hand in mine.
“Well, it took great courage for you to say what you did,” he said. “Most people would bury their past like that and just focus on the present. It’s a good thing for you to open up as you did.”
And then he sighed.
“However, I have my own darkness you need to know about. I may not be the great man that you think I am. You just made some youthful mistakes.”
He buried his head, took a deep breath, and stared back at me with serious eyes.
“I’ve killed innocent people.”
Chapter 11: Pork
It was time to come clean about something that I hadn’t talked about with anyone. Not in the club, not family, not with anyone who wasn’t involved in my SEAL career.
But first.
“I suppose, before I get to that, I should also tell you about my upbringing. This will probably make you like me less, but hey, the truth is the truth,” I said.
Tanya sipped on her vodka-water, finishing it and asking for another one. I was pretty sure that was her third glass since I’d arrived, but for the intensity of our conversation right now, we both needed more than a few drinks. The only reason I hadn’t had more was because I was listening so closely to her tell her story.
“I grew up in a very normal family. A happy upbringing. Both my parents were around, still are, as far as I’m aware.”
Tanya glanced at me, confused, but I would get to that.
“I had a younger brother as well. I wasn’t exactly spoiled; it’s not like my parents are billionaires and I ran away from that. But I had a happy, healthy upbringing in New Mexico. Albuquerque, to be specific.”
“I’ll be quirky,” Tanya said, making a joke that, coming from her, suddenly made a lot more sense to me.
“Exactly,” I said. “I wasn’t a great student, but I was in great shape, had a large social circle, and had decent options ahead of me. I didn’t have a ton of interest in being a student, so I decided to join the Navy. The Navy was great, but I wanted something harder. I didn’t just want to be a seaman. I wanted to be a SEAL. And so, as soon as I could, I opted into BUD/S, their program that qualifies you to be a Navy SEAL. Everyone struggles through it; it’s designed to break you. I struggled with it. But I finished, became a SEAL, and found myself in Iraq a few months later.”
Thinking back on the memory, it was something I tried to linger on for a few extra moments. It was one of the last moments of my life where everything was lined up, nothing truly bad had happened, and my future seemed wide open. I feared I couldn’t relate to Mama because the turmoil of my life had only begun when I was in my early twenties, not from my earliest years in life, but I wasn’t too upset about it.
I’d had my chance to be normal and had blown it with some poor decisions.
“I was on top of the world,” I said wistfully. “I was on top of my world, at least. I was accomplishing what I set out to accomplish, I was rising in the ranks, and I was doing what I’d wanted to do since roughly sophomore year of high school. And then a battle took place in Baghdad.”
I bit my lip. It was my fault. It was my fault.
“Have you heard of a concept called the fog of war?”
Tanya nodded, though it seemed like she was nodding more to appease me than because she actually knew. I decided to explain anyway, if for no other reason than that it would delay revisiting the ugliness of it.
“During battle, despite all your training, despite all the preparation you put into it, things can and will go crazy,” I explain. “You’ll lose track of where you are. You’ll lose track of your senses. Your situational awareness will plummet. And you’ll get trigger happy or trigger averse. I got trigger happy.”
I snorted harshly. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have let myself get carried away the way I did?
“Confusion rang across the battlefield,” I said. “I fired at where I thought the enemy was. In a sense, it was. I was firing upon Iraqis. But… we’d trained some Iraqi soldiers to help us police the area and bring it back to a democracy. It was a work in progress, and depending on who you ask, it was either the best decision we made or a complete mockery of our resources and time. On this day, though, it wasn’t the enemy I was firing upon. It was those soldiers. It was blue on blue.”
Just saying those words… those ugly three words. “Blue on blue”…
Nothing could be worse. Nothing.
“The only good thing—the only goddamn good thing—about all of that was that no Americans died under my watch, but that was because we had better training and a fuck load more good luck. If anything else had gone wrong, I could have killed my fucking friends. I was in big fucking trouble, and I knew it.”
I put my head in my hands, needing a moment. I wasn’t going to tear up; I wasn’t going to start bawling; I wasn’t going to do anything that made me look weak or soft. But the moment was just too painful to revisit without going a little slow.
“I got called into my commanding officer’s post and was asked to explain myself. If I had to do it all over again, I would have taken the blame. I knew what I’d done. It wasn’t like I went crazy and only learned after the fact what happened. I knew as soon as I came out of the fog that I’d killed those Iraqi soldiers. But…”
I sighed. This was the moment where my life began to unravel to the point of turning into a real-life Joker, teamed up with the rest of the Savage Saints. I was savage, but I was no saint.
“I avoided blame as much as I could,” I said. “I blamed it on the conditions. I blamed it on poor prep. I blamed it on everything but the actual cause of this sad event: me. The CO gave me every opportunity to take the blame for myself. He’d ask pointed questions about who was responsible for this, but I still didn’t take the bait.”
“Why do you think that was?” Tanya asked.
Strangely enough, I’d never really asked that question. Shit had unraveled so fast that I’d just never really bothered to ask myself.
“Best guess I have? I got scared. I’d never been in a spot where I had not just failed but failed horribly and drastically. I got terrified about what could happen if I admitted the truth. I could g
et dishonorably discharged. I could get court-martialed. Who knew? The terrible thing is, I know now that if I’d taken responsibility, I might have gotten punished, but I wouldn’t have gotten punished to the degree I had.”
“Which was?”
I bit my lip. It was two of the most painful words I’d ever uttered out loud.
“Dishonorably discharged,” I said. “Oh, and they also told me to grow up when I was discharged. I suppose that was their parting advice to me instead of just being tried under court-martial. Christ.”
How fucking stupid I was.
“The thing about being dishonorably discharged is that you’re suddenly toxic to the rest of the country,” I said. “The military, obviously, would not take me back. You get dishonorable discharge, you’re done. Kaput. Finished. No coming back. Would-be employers see that you had that and they wonder what happened. They don’t ask questions, but that’s because they don’t give you the chance to explain yourself. They just never call you in the first place.”
I laughed bitterly. At least now, that was so far removed that I didn’t think about it much or how it impacted me.
“I didn’t have a college degree, so I couldn’t go and make do in the real world. I realized that I had never before failed so badly, and it became a downward spiral. I jumped from job to job. I drank a shitload. Did some drugs, too. Cocaine, heroin, you name it. Not anymore, but back then, oh, shit it was bad. My family tried to help, but I actually pushed them away. Still haven’t spoken to them in over ten years.”
“Seriously?” Tanya asked.
I deserved that sort of judgment. It was horrible what I’d done. But I wasn’t going to change it, not even for Mama.
“I said things to them I would never admit here,” I said. “And I know you’ve admitted a lot, probably everything to me, but I just can’t bring myself to say the things I said to them. I’m sorry.”
Something strange flashed across Tanya’s face—disagreement? Recognition?—but I didn’t press her on it. She’d said so much already; she didn’t need to add something more to it.
“In any case, I kept wanting to believe in the world, but I didn’t know what to do. I was depressed. And then… you’re going to think this is the dumbest fucking thing ever. But then again, maybe it fits in with my childish persona.”
I shook my head. How this was the worst thing to say in a sea of other stories was beyond me, but it was true.
“I saw the Batman movie, “The Dark Knight,” a while ago and just loved the idea of laughing at the madness of the world,” I said. “But unlike the Joker, who wanted to watch it burn, I just wanted to watch it grow. But I was too foul and too moody to do so. So I just started laughing and cracking jokes everywhere I went. A lot of times, it’s not natural. The jokes are forced, poorly told, and awkward. You’re plenty justified in slapping me as much as you do. But it’s helped me find a brotherhood in the Saints and a better place.”
I smiled.
“And, best of all, it’s helped me find you.”
“Oh, stop,” Mama said with a hand wave. “So then, my turn to ask a question. You seemed so willing to throw the Savage Saints away to make this work. Why? What is it about us that you can so easily toss?”
“Oh, it would hurt like hell,” I said immediately. “There is nothing appealing about the idea of having us fall apart and me being on my own again. But I’d just find the dark humor in it, laugh, make jokes, and find something else to do. It’s childish and silly, sure, but the alternative is to face the darkness without a shield, and I am not strong enough nor willing enough to do that.”
Tanya leaned forward, grabbed my hand, and kissed it much as I had before. The gesture wasn’t lost on me.
“I guess we’re just two massive fuckups in a city full of fuckups trying to make the most of life, huh?”
“Better than being a fuck down,” I said, drawing a groan and a laugh from Tanya. “But seriously, why do you think I like you?”
“After my statement?” Tanya said accusingly. “Because I’m a fuckup? Or because I’m the only female biker you’ll ever meet?”
“Touché,” I said as we broke into laughter.
Suddenly, we were both leaning forward, mere inches away from each other. We’d been in this very spot less than a week ago at the top of the Green Valley Ranch parking deck. When I’d tried to kiss her then, we had the Strip as a backdrop and the world at our fingertips.
Now, we were in a bar in Northern Las Vegas, hiding from both our friends and the Degenerate Sinners. The only other people in the bar were the bartender and some boring couple at the far end, watching a baseball game.
“You know—”
“Shh,” Tanya commanded me.
I did as she ordered. She looked me up and down, leaned forward, and gave me just what I wanted.
I’d had to wait a few days, but that kiss finally came. A kiss that I felt I could fall into. A kiss that I could become consumed by.
It was physically erotic, sure, but more than that, it felt like I was falling into her soul. I was kissing the spirit of Tanya as much as her physical lips. I was becoming intimate with her in a way I had never had with anyone else, and in a way that she probably hadn’t ever felt either, at least not without a stable person on the other side. I hadn’t felt this genuinely happy in a while, and there was nothing that needed to be said.
There were no corny jokes, no stupid one-liners, no ridiculous puns that needed to be uttered. I could just let the moment’s beauty and joy stand for itself. I could just kiss her.
We finally did pull back, but after what felt like an eternity on her lips. I knew I was being ridiculous and overly romantic, but my life desperately needed that sense of romanticism. Humor helped, but if humor were the only thing that formed the bedrock of romance, it wouldn’t go any further.
“Well,” I finally said. “I feel mighty happy right now.”
Tanya just smiled and pressed her forehead against mine.
“How do you feel?”
“Hmm,” she said, seemingly trying to genuinely search for the right words. “Honestly, like a thousand-pound weight is off my shoulders. I knew I’d never be fully ready or willing, so I just had to push through it. Alcohol helped, but so did your handsome face.”
“Was it worth it?”
I knew the answer already. I wouldn’t have asked the question if I was scared of the answer on the other side.
“For right now, yes.”
It wasn’t quite the unconditional answer that I had hoped for, but it was enough to get me to kiss her again.
And this time, the physical side of it took over a little more.
Our making out turned from soft, sweet, and tender to aggressive, touchy, and erotic. My hand went to the inside of her thighs, and her hands reached to feel my abs. I went for her neck as she grabbed my head as if pushing me toward her chest. I would have gladly done her right there in the bar if she were just any other girl, but Tanya Reed was so much more than that.
“You know,” I said, keeping both hands on her thighs. “Dom is going to be at the party until much, much later. Let’s go to Panorama and continue this someplace quiet.”
“I would delight in that,” Tanya said. “But…”
I paused as she sought whatever words she was looking for.
“I can’t spend the night,” she said. “Or, rather, I don’t want to. That’s going to be too much too fast.”
I didn’t mind. The important thing was that we were moving forward. I wanted us to move forward at a slow and steady pace, rather than blitzing through all the milestones in one night. We were not Barber and Cassie, reuniting in an intensely quick affair. We were our own thing.
“I understand,” I said, squeezing her hand. “We’ll go at whatever pace you want. Do you still want to come over?”
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re withdrawing the invitation,” Tanya said with a snort.
“Hell no, you kidding me?” I said, laughing. “You’re ge
tting on my bike. You’re much too drunk to drive back.”
“Oh, damn, is that so? I think I’ll be OK with that.”
And I knew I’d be OK with it.
Because with Tanya, it wasn’t just sex. I knew that was coming.
It was intimacy.
And for that, I was very nervous.
But I was also very grateful.
Chapter 12: Mama
Yeah, Joseph was right. I was drunk.
I wasn’t sure if he had picked up on that being deliberate, though. I wasn’t hammered or even drunk, but I was definitely on the wrong side of buzzed for driving. It had made me decide between one of two options.
One, either things would go well, and Joseph would drive me someplace quiet. Or, two, things would not go well, and I’d keep drinking, taking an Uber home at some point or just passing the hell out outside of the bar.
Thank goodness for my skin and my dignity that the first outcome had come to pass.
I closed out the tab by throwing a hundred dollar bill at the bartender as Joseph slid his half-finished drink across the bar. He tried to pull some cash out of his wallet, but I told him I’d call an Uber home if he delayed any longer. He got the message, taking my hand in his big paw and leading me to the bike.
I’d ridden a bike thousands, if not tens of thousands, of times in my life. I knew everything from how the engine hummed at every gear, the difference in sensation in a short speed bump and a long speed bump, and how it handled under a moderate drizzle versus heavy rain.
But the emotional sensation of being on the back of Joseph’s bike, of having my arms wrapped around him, of, most of all, trusting him… I’d never felt that before. I’d ridden with Stewart before, but not with that element of trust there. Stewart’s rides were filled with fear.
This ride was filled with exhilaration.
It was a short one, but my God was it a fast one. I thought I liked to speed, but Joseph approached speeds well in excess of a hundred miles per hour. How he had not gotten any speeding tickets or in trouble with the law was beyond me; maybe he had connections that not even Richard had with Mario. In any case, though, it was a good thing, because if we’d gotten pulled over, I would have threatened him with a lowering libido.
