by Stacey Keith
April’s fingers tightened around the mug of coffee. There was a nervous feeling in her belly that she’d had before around Ryan. Why was he so hung up on her virginity?
“Is that any of your business?” she asked stiffly. “I don’t go around asking you who you plan to sleep with.”
“It was supposed to be you.” Ryan’s eyes bored angrily into hers. “I’m crazy about you, April. Have been for some time now. I thought we had a real shot at this.”
“Would you still be crazy about me if I weren’t a virgin?”
For a second, April thought he was going to explode at her. Ryan’s face was flushed and a vein pulsed at each temple. But she didn’t want to be valued for something as stupid as her “purity.” She wanted to be loved for everything she was and everything she would be.
Ryan stood up and threw a few bills on the table. “I thought you were special. Different from most of the girls I meet. Nice talk, April.”
“Oh, so you’re mad now?” she said. “I told you the truth and now I’m the bad guy?”
“No, the bad guys are the assholes who get what us nice guys never do,” Ryan said. “They just line ‘em up and knock ‘em down. And I guess you’re next, so hey, good luck with that.”
April’s mouth fell open. She watched Ryan stride across the coffee shop, through the lobby and then out the automatic doors to the parking lot. Everyone in the restaurant saw how abruptly he left. Now they were giving her the stink-eye for having caused it.
Ryan had been a good friend, even if she wasn’t in love with him. April pinched her lips together to keep them from trembling. A feeling of terrible grief washed over her. She was losing everything—her career, her self-respect and her friends.
She was falling apart.
Chapter 10
“Where’s Long Jon?” Matthew said, setting his books on the workbench. “I didn’t see him this morning. You know, before you yelled at me to get up and go to school.”
Brandon settled a pair of safety goggles over his nose, fired up a propane torch, and then applied it to the manifold area of the Harley Softail he was fixing. There was a vacuum leak in the carburetor, which was causing the bike to stall. “How the fuck should I know where Long Jon is?”
“He said you were a real asshole. What did you do this time?”
Goddamn Long Jon, running his mouth. That worm of guilt that had been gnawing at Brandon since yesterday took another chomp.
He removed the goggles just so he could glare at Matthew. “What makes you so sure I did anything?”
“Because it’s always you,” Matthew replied matter-of-factly. “If someone’s pissed off, it’s because of some dick move you made. And who were those girls I saw here yesterday? Are they the reason Long Jon’s pissed at you?”
No way am I talking about this. Brandon inspected the Harley’s needle jet, saw that the owner had installed it upside down, and then reached for a pair of pliers. “Don’t you have homework?”
Matthew unzipped his backpack and took out his notebook and a pen. “I like Long Jon. He tells cool stories. But sometimes I think he’s lonely. And one of those girls yesterday asked me how old I was.”
Brandon gripped the jet nozzle with the pliers and started cranking it out. Hell, yeah, Long Jon was lonely. Maybe it was what happened to every biker after years of truck-stop grub and honky-tonk women. But knowing his friend could have used some help in the girl department sure hadn’t stopped Brandon from taking the fruit when it was offered. Nope. He went right in there and gorged himself. Because he could.
All he wanted was to ride away and forget everything he’d ever done wrong, which was pretty much everything. Any biker would tell you the only good view of a shitstorm was the one you saw in your rearview mirror. Sometimes it took a whole tankful of gas before you could think straight again, and he didn’t even have time to ride to the corner store right now because of work.
He’d not only managed to run off Long Jon, but April, too. Hell, he’d even stuck a burr under Roxanne’s saddle, her and that other girl whose name he couldn’t remember. After he’d come back from fucking things up with April, he’d shouted at them to get the hell out of the house.
As though Matthew could read Brandon’s thoughts, he said, “You really do treat women like shit, you know. You gotta admit Long Jon’s right about that. Remember that one girl down in Vidalia? How her dad was the sheriff and he tried to shoot you because the girl said you’d lied to her, only it turned out the reason you lied to her was because you wanted to nail her sister?”
Brandon winced. He tried to play it off like the drain screw was tight, but the truth was he hated thinking about the things he’d done. And what he hated most was knowing that he’d not only hurt April, he’d blown any chance he might have had with her.
At some point along this long dark road, she’d become an obsession. And no matter how hard he tried to fight it, April won.
“Hey,” Matthew said from the workbench. “Remember that time you were seeing the girl with the—”
“Matt, if you don’t shut up, I’m going to throat-sock you. Now do your fucking homework and don’t say another word.”
Brandon didn’t have to look up to know that Matthew was sulking. Damn kid. Now Brandon felt guilty about yelling at him. He gave an exasperated sigh. “Look, I don’t need you asking questions, and I sure as hell don’t need you sitting over there acting all high and mighty about shit that ain’t none of your business.”
Matthew snatched his backpack, his book and his pen and then marched toward the house. Fine, Brandon thought. Maybe there were some other people he could piss off, too. He’d already gone five for five. Why not a bunch more?
“Don’t even think about riding until your homework’s done!” he yelled after Matthew. “I’ll be checking!”
Brandon reattached the needle jet and started on the clogged idle mixture circuit. The guy who owned this bike had made a mess of his carburetor, kind of like how Brandon had made a mess of his life. He took grim satisfaction in that.
At the sound of footsteps coming up the driveway, Brandon sat up and stripped off his goggles. It was Long Jon returning from a beer run. Easy to tell it was beer because a couple of six-packs stuck out of the top of a brown paper grocery bag.
“Here.” Long Jon set a cold one down on the driveway for Brandon, took the aluminum lawn chair and then parked the bag next to himself. “So, you gonna tell me what’s going on?”
Brandon knew it was a peace offering and felt ashamed all over again. “Tell you what?”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
Brandon tossed the pliers and popped open the beer. “Matt already gave me an earful. Told me what a dick I was to pretty much everyone.”
“And I’m not disagreeing with him,” Long Jon said. “You are a dick to pretty much everyone. I just wanna know why.”
Brandon took a sip and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The sun beat down on the driveway. It lathered his skin with sweat and soaked into his bones. The smell of wood smoke drifted over from Farmer Bill’s place, where he was clearing brush.
“Do you think people are capable of changing?” Brandon asked him. “Like, if I didn’t want to be a dick anymore, do you think I’d have a shot?”
Long Jon leaned back, rubbed his head and chuckled. “Okay, I did not see that comin’. This wouldn’t have anything to do with that little gal I saw you talking with out in the shed yesterday, would it? After you spent the entire night putting the blocks to Roxanne and her friend?”
Brandon leaned his forearms over his knees and felt the heaviness of remorse all over again. “Guess you think April’s pretty much out of my league, eh?”
“Did you hear me say that? But to be fair, you’d have to grow up in a quick-ass hurry if you wanted a woman like her.”
“Well, that’s not happening.” Brandon knoc
ked back about half the beer and let it cool his insides. “After she saw what I did, April made it real clear how she felt about me.”
“Fuck it. That’s just women. She might change her mind. Besides, it wouldn’t’ve bothered her if she didn’t care.” Long Jon rested his head on the back of the chair and closed his eyes.
Brandon thought about what Matt had said. About being lonely. Long Jon had had a woman once. She had long red hair, called herself a gypsy-Wiccan and wore all these amulets and necklaces with weird symbols on them. Long Jon was crazy about her. Then after five years of warming the back of Long Jon’s bike, she dumped him for a club rider named Duke Pellegrino and Long Jon went on a six-month drinking binge.
“Look,” Brandon said. “I was a real fucking asshole the other night, and I’m sorry.”
Long Jon cracked an eye at him. “Well, at least I know why now. You’re not the worst asshole in the world. But you could do a whole lot better.”
Brandon got to his feet and chucked his empty into the trash. He repositioned his goggles and picked up the propane torch. His mood was a little lighter now after apologizing. This was why he and Long Jon were friends. No bullshit. No long talks. No touchy-feely crap. All you had to do was man up and everything was cool again.
“We still need a few more parts for your bike that I don’t have,” Brandon told him, taking a lighter out of his pocket and igniting the torch with it. “An accelerator pump, a new gas cap vent, and some other shit. I went to my parts guy but he’s out.”
“What about that other dude?” Long Jon said. “You remember. I told you about him the other day. Doak something-or-the-other.”
Doak Roby.
Brandon bit down on a smile.
* * * *
“Oh, Joanna, she’s beautiful,” April said, gazing rapturously at the scrunched red face of the baby in her arms. All babies were beautiful. No wonder her sister Maggie had gone through hell trying to have one. The tiny hands, each finger so perfect. The gummy, toothless yawns. The fresh talcum-y baby smell.
Her heart gave a sappy protective lurch.
“I’m naming her Juniper,” Joanna said from the hospital bed. “Wes doesn’t know yet. He thinks we’re naming her Marybeth after his mother. But I had to work my ass off to have this baby and if Wes doesn’t like the name, he can bite me.”
Mrs. Bridges, who was busy stacking used Styrofoam cups, said, “A lot of folks use juniper for purification ceremonies, but I use it to flavor gin.”
Holding little Juniper made April feel less afraid somehow. Life went on—even when yours was spiraling out of control. And Joanna had sailed through her labor. Now she sat up in bed with a tired, happy smile. The room was crowded with flowers, balloons and cookie deliveries. A bag of Tootsie Rolls lay open on the table beside her. Wes had gone home to check on the boys.
“It’ll be strange not going into work for the next six weeks,” Joanna said, giving April a thoughtful look. “But I don’t want you to feel as though you can’t come to me with things if you run into trouble.”
Six weeks? April’s heart sank. That seemed like an awfully long time to go without Joanna’s wisdom and support. Yet as she gazed down at little Juniper swaddled in a pink hospital blanket, her heart melted all over again. “I don’t want to always come to you with my stupid problems, Joanna. We’ve got to take the training wheels off at some point, right?”
“Oh, honey, your problems aren’t stupid. They come with the job—right along with the death threats, the long hours and the paperwork.”
And the clients you want so bad, you can’t stop dreaming about them.
The baby started fussing, which seemed like a cue for April to leave the safety of Joanna’s room and go out there and face the things that terrified her. She handed the baby back to Joanna, who put it to her breast with the naturalness of an experienced mother. April couldn’t help but wonder what life would be like if she had a husband and five kids. It was the kind of future Ryan might have offered her. Not now, of course. He’d probably never talk to her again.
April said goodbye to Joanna and Mrs. Bridges and then headed out to the parking lot. The entire day had come and gone while she was in the hospital waiting for little Juniper to arrive, so it was strange to see that night had fallen and the streetlights were on. But the minute she got inside her car, all the thoughts and feelings she’d managed to avoid came rushing back, especially the gut punch of seeing Roxanne standing in Brandon’s doorway.
April lowered the car windows and let the night air wash over her. If only it had the power to blow away this terrible aloneness she felt, her almost crippling fear of the unknown. Her sisters hadn’t abandoned her, but they were busy with their own lives. Joanna literally had her hands full. Jacey…well, Jacey never doubted herself. Not like April did. She had no one to turn to, no one to ask: please tell me what to do.
All she wanted was to skip over this ache of uncertainty and confusion and get to the place that lay beyond it. The one where she didn’t feel dumb and clueless anymore, where people came to her for answers. She yearned to be wise, centered, knowing. To have the confidence of someone like Roxanne—or even those girls her own age who strutted around the River Walk in San Antonio. If she could just stop being afraid and get down to the business of living, maybe she wouldn’t feel like such a freak anymore.
But you needed experience to feel those things. Experience and the courage to stop taking notes about life and actually start living it.
Brandon had said he wanted her but didn’t think he could have her. Was it true? Or was he lying to her like he’d probably lied to a million women? Her brain told her one thing while her body told her another. But it was her body that was on fire right now. She’d just gotten damn good at running away from it like she ran from everything else.
Yet as she drove along the dimly lit road to Cuervo, visions of Brandon slid in front of her eyes. All those smooth muscles and long dark hair. The rasp of stubble that she wanted so badly to touch. The way he looked at her, that slow hot perusal, how it wound around and around to the most secret part of her and sank its teeth in. No one had ever looked at her like that. Most men wouldn’t dare. But then Brandon wasn’t most men. And maybe that, even more than his dangerous sexiness, alpha confidence and good looks, was what drew women to him.
Women like Roxanne, April thought glumly.
Women like me.
It felt as though the dark night were pressing in on her, making her unbearably restless. She tuned the radio to Maggie’s favorite station, one that played country classics. As the long white center stripes leaped out to meet her headlights, she thought how a man like Brandon would spread a blistering erotic fire everywhere he touched. He wouldn’t just make love to a woman. He would consume her.
When April’s phone rang, she almost jumped out of her seat. She glanced at it and swiped the screen. “Mom?”
“Oh, good, you’re there.” April heard the television being muted, followed by her father’s groan of protest. “I was worried that you were still waiting at the foot of Joanna’s hospital bed with a catcher’s mitt.”
Priscilla had strong opinions about the size of Joanna’s growing family. Any more than three kids was irresponsible, according to her scandalized assessment. “So, listen,” she said. “This fella came by tonight. He bought some ugly metal thing from your father. Handsome—sweet Jesus, he was handsome. And he said he knew you.”
Calm down, April told her foolish heart. “Did he have a name?”
“Your dad says it was McDonald or something. But believe me, if you knew him, you would remember. Tall. Long hair. Talked to your dad for a long time about motocross. He said his brother was looking for a sponsorship.”
April forced her attention back to the road. She had so many conflicting emotions, she’d almost swerved onto the shoulder. “I think you were talking to Brandon McBride,” she said, h
oping the tiny quaver in her voice didn’t give her away.
“So what’s he do for a living?” her mother asked, about as subtle as a gun. “He was in the garage with your dad for a good long while. Said some nice things about you.”
Sure, perfectly nice, except if she happened to sleep with him. Then it would be Who’s April?
“Wait a minute,” April said. “Weren’t you Team Ryan just a few days ago?”
“Ryan’s a nice boy,” her mother replied. “I just don’t know if he’s the right boy for you.”
April’s mouth fell open. She almost laughed. “Well, that’s good, because I don’t think Ryan’s talking to me right now.”
In the background, April heard her father say, “I can’t hear the TV, Priss.”
“What about this Brandon?” Priscilla asked. “Is he single?”
Now April was really confused. Brandon could never fit her mother’s idea of suitable boyfriend material. If he was scrounging around for spare parts in Dad’s garage, he clearly wasn’t rich. He had long hair, so he clearly wasn’t corporate. If only her mom knew the truth about his record.
“Mom, he’s my client,” April said. “I can’t date him. It’s against the rules.”
“Oh, that’s a shame. I know he’s a little rough around the edges, but I sense a good heart underneath it. Reminded me a little of your father when he was younger. And April, bless you, but you need somebody who’s going to mess up your hair.”
“Mom!” April exclaimed. “Have you been drinking?”
Her father complained again about the TV. “Gotta go, sweetie,” Priscilla said. “Your dad’s getting grumpy because he can’t hear the football thing. Let’s talk later, okay?”
“Okay.” April powered off the phone. She felt a little dizzy. Since when did Brandon ever talk to people? What game was he playing? If it had been Ryan who’d hunted down her father, she would have felt stalked and invaded, like he was trying to charm her folks in an effort to win her over. So why wasn’t she sensing that now?
