Dirty Biker (An MC Motorcycle Romance) (The Maxwell Family)

by Alycia Taylor

  My dad had loved her too. He gave her to me on my eighteenth birthday. It’s funny, because of all the things my dad has done for me in my life, that was the day I realized exactly how much he loved me. I put my book bag in her leather saddle bag and straddled her. It was silly, but since it was only in my head I tried not to be too embarrassed about it. As I put on my helmet and Suzie roared to life, I was hoping that Molly would see me driving into the lot at school. Something about riding Suzie made me feel really sexy.

  I made it to school in less than five minutes. Molly was nowhere around as I backed Suzie into her space, but unfortunately for me, Tammy was. I tried not to look in her direction as I got my books out of the saddle bag. She was just climbing out of her red mustang, and I didn’t think she saw me. I rarely ever get that lucky though, and I hadn’t today.

  “Brock! Wait up, I’ll walk with you.”

  I stopped, going against what every fiber in my body wanted me to do, which was run. I wished sometimes that when I was growing up, my parents hadn’t taught me to be so polite. No good ever came of it. It left me walking across campus with my own stalker. When I have kids someday, I’ll keep this in mind. She was breathless when she caught up, which was good because for a full two minutes she couldn’t partake of the incessant babble that was her usual norm. My bliss was shattered when the oxygen returned to her lungs.

  “So how have you been, Brock? I saw your concert yesterday…you were amazing! Who was that girl you were with last evening? Were you holding her hand? Is she your girlfriend?” I’m not kidding. Just like that with nary a breath in between.

  “She’s just a friend,” I told her…strangely wishing I could say otherwise. “And thanks, about the concert.”

  “You’re welcome. I loved it. You are such a good singer. I can feel your words when you sing. I’m glad you don’t have a girlfriend,” she said. “I’m still holding out hope for us.” What the heck was I supposed to say to that? Instead of answering her I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at it.

  “Damn, Tammy. I’m late for my English class. I have to run.” I didn’t give her the opportunity to object, I just jogged off in the other direction.

  The rest of the week passed slowly. I went to my classes and wrote some music and played a few video games with Jake, but time just seemed to be standing still. I didn’t run into Molly, not even once. I often enjoyed the fact that the University Campus was like a little city in itself, but not this week. I wanted it to be small enough that I didn’t just know she was there, but that I actually ran into her. This doesn’t sound like me, not even to myself. I’m starting to believe that there really is that one person out there that you are just waiting for your entire life, and maybe I’ve found her. Jeez, I’m ridiculous, I’ve seen her once. I was sitting in class, my Romanticism in Music class, and having these thoughts. I know, it’s probably more about the professor playing a remix of the themes to almost every romantic movie ever made than it is that I’ve really fallen for this girl, but I really want to see her again and explore it.

  I realized as I was leaving class that I had hardly heard anything that was said. I really didn’t like most of my classes. I just wanted to play my music, but my dad really wanted me to go to college, and I like my dad…so here I am. At least he wasn’t picky about what I chose to major in. That’s the coolest thing about my dad. He has told me since I was about twelve that life was too short to put on a suit and tie that you hated, and go into an office building you despised, and spend all day working with people who you felt sorry for because they are all as miserable as you. The fact that my father went against the norm and chose a career that most people furrowed their brows about when I told them speaks volumes.

  My dad is a hair designer. Don’t call him a stylist or a barber, that’ll just tick him off. He went to school for four years to learn how to “design” hair. He works with models and actors and actresses and the fact that he makes good money wasn’t the best part. The best part was that he was happy, and he didn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thought about that. He just always had this amazing outlook and enthusiasm for life.

  I only remember twice in our lives when my dad was truly unhappy. When I was six, my mom decided she wanted a divorce. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would not want to live with my dad. There was a lot a six-year-old didn’t understand about the world and relationships though. To this day, I don’t know what came between them. She and I went to live with her mom, but every time I went to visit him, Dad just looked so sad. One day I asked him, “Are you sad because Mom’s not here?” He ruffled my hair and said, “A little bit, but I’m sadder because you’re not here.” We didn’t live far from him, so on the days when he wasn’t at work I would walk to his house after school and visit him. That seemed to make him less sad. I had tried more than once to tell my mom that I wanted to live with him, but I didn’t want to make her sad either. I don’t think parents really realize what they’re doing to a kid when they get a divorce. I knew it wasn’t my fault, or about me, but I still always felt like it was my job somehow to make sure everyone was happy.

  When I was eight, my mom got remarried. To this day, I don’t know where she met this guy. She rarely left the house. She used her computer a lot though, so maybe it was an online thing? I asked her once and she had changed the subject. Anyway, she said she had finally met her soulmate, but he lived in London. London, as in London, England. Okay, I’m sure she met him online but again, what do I know about grown-up relationships? What I knew then, was that London was really far away…from my dad.

  I did something that I had stopped doing at the age of three then; I had a fit. I kicked and screamed and bawled my head off. I said terrible things to my mother that I knew would make her feel bad, but I was eight and I didn’t want to leave my Dad. Ultimately, I got my way. Mom still got married and moved to London, but I got to stay with my dad. I also got to spend a lot of vacations and summers in London which was cool, until I got sick.

  That was the second thing that made my dad really sad. It was also when the true character of my parents came shining through. My dad called my mom, who left her husband, her job, and her new kid to come be at my side. My dad took a sabbatical from work and he literally never left me. I had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and the initial report by the surgeons and oncologists was that they could take it out. Once they got in there though, they found that it had wound its way around my brainstem. They put in a shunt to drain the fluid that was building up and causing me headaches, and they closed me up. Then the real fun started with five rounds of chemo and thirty radiation treatments. My mom had to go back home. I understood…kind of. She had a five-year-old kid, my little brother, and she had a job…I guess at the time I resented her a little because of it, but I’m totally over it now…mostly.

  I was out of it most of the time during my chemo sessions. I would wake up and eat; they had me on steroids and man was I hungry. I didn’t like to open my eyes because the light hurt them. I always knew dad was there though…I could hear the football games on TV. My dad loves football.

  I wanted to tell him to turn it off. I had just made the high school team before I got sick. In my mind, I was going to play freshman football and I was going to date the head cheerleader, and then…before I became a famous rock star, I was going to play some college ball. The thing in my head had caused all of that to come to a screeching halt in one fell swoop, and hearing the game every time I woke up made me want to scream. It made Dad happy though, something he hadn’t been again since I’d gotten diagnosed, so I didn’t tell him.

  That explains my aversion to football though, and why the only reason I am going to this game tomorrow night is in hopes of seeing Molly.

  Chapter Three

  Molly

  “I’m taking off now Cassie, okay?” Cassie was a barista at the university coffee shop. The same where I was now working too, and where she was training me. I had only just started a few days before. Today ha
d been my third day of training, and I was allowed to touch the blessed espresso machine. I didn’t do too badly. I mixed up a mocha with a caramel macchiato once, and I completely forgot to steam the milk for one drink, and I made the next one so hot that the professor I made it for burned his tongue. Hopefully he won’t decide to sue.

  “Okay Molly. I’ll see you tomorrow. You did great today.”

  “Thanks!”

  Cassie is a great teacher. She’s patient and she has a knack for explaining things so even a coffee idiot can understand. She was a lousy liar though. We both knew I hadn’t done great. But, tomorrow I intend to do better. As I walked out the door and headed in the direction of the dorms, I decided that the reason I hadn’t gotten those drinks exactly right was because I was thinking about the football game. Not so much in a good way. It was more along the lines of, “I can’t believe I agreed to go to this stupid football game.” I mean I…really…can’t…believe it! I hate football, I always have. My grandma and I never watched football, so when I got to high school and decided to go to the games because, well, that’s what you did in high school, I realized that I had no clue what they were doing out there. Also, football is usually played during the coldest months of the year, and outside to boot…it just makes no sense to me. I hate being cold, and I couldn’t figure out why people would sit through something as miserable as a blizzard to watch a silly game.

  Now baseball…there’s a sport that makes sense. It’s played outdoors as well, but during the spring and summer when normal people want to be outdoors. It’s also a hell of a lot easier to understand. One could even go so far as to say that it’s self-explanatory. But football sucks, and although I won’t admit it to Megan or Jake, I only agreed to go because I actually want to see Brock again. It’s crazy, I know. I don’t want a boyfriend; I categorically do not. But there’s just something about this guy. Maybe I just want to get to know him better to find out what it is he’s always amused about? Or hey, maybe I just want to see him. I’m human, right? He’s hot, so there you have it.

  I got back to my dorm, and Megan had left a note. It said, “Gone to pick up Jake and Brock.” I pulled things out of my closet, trying to decide what to wear and glad that Megan wasn’t here to see me. If she saw me going through my clothes acting like I was getting ready for the senior prom, she would take that to mean she was right and I really did like this guy. She would never believe that it was more curiosity than anything. I just don’t know that much about guys my age. We could call it research.

  It wasn’t that I was a dork in high school or anything when I was supposed to be practicing for the real world. Actually…before I got sick, I was pretty popular. Things just got weird after that. The summer before my junior year, about the time Grandma thought I was old enough to date, I was diagnosed with a tumor on one of my kidneys. They went in to take the tumor, but found out that it had damaged the kidney too badly to save it, and they’d had to take the entire kidney out. I was a little freaked out by that at first, but the doctors assured me that it was fine, and anyone could live on only one kidney.

  After they took it out, they did a few rounds of chemo just in case. I lost my hair and everyone at school knew I had been sick. Grandma bought me a wig and I would wear it every morning to make her feel better, but before I got to school I would take it off and put a scarf over my head. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she had bought me a wig in bold nineteen-eighties style. Everybody still tried really hard to be nice; I guess I have to give them credit for that. It was weird though, an awkward kind of nice. People who had never spoken to me before would give me that piercing look and say, “How are you, Molly? Really?” Again, they were just being nice, but it annoyed me.

  In my senior year, just as my hair had finally grown out enough so I no longer looked like Peter Pan, they found a tumor on my left kidney…as in the only one I had left. So most of that year was spent with more chemo and radiation. The tumor was stubborn, and although it was small and it seemed to grow slowly, it just wasn’t going to go away. That was the reason I decided to go to school here. My doctor had found out that they were having a lot of success in their experimental treatments of my kind of cancer. So here I am…a guinea pig with one missing kidney and one bum kidney. I do my best to live and act normally; that’s why I don’t want anyone here to know except Megan. She’s never treated me any differently. She was just always my friend and things never got uncomfortable.

  But if I were to have a boyfriend, I don’t think this would be something I could keep hidden forever. I mean at some point when I was sick from the medications or refusing to eat ice cream because the dairy doesn’t sit well with me, he was liable to ask questions…wasn’t he?

  I pulled on my red sweater and my favorite pair of jeans. Looking at myself in the mirror I thought, “Good enough.” Then I threw on a knit hat my grandma made me and grabbed my red coat and I was ready to go. I stuffed all the other clothes back into the closet so that when Megan came home, she would never know. And speaking of the devil, she came bounding in just as I tossed in the last pair of jeans and closed the closet door.

  “Hey, Molly. Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready. Where’s Jake?” What I really meant was; where’s Jake’s friend? But it may have been rude to phrase it that way.

  “He’s in the car. He says that Brock was doing something, but he was going to meet us there. I hope he doesn’t flake.”

  “Oh well, if he does it’s no big deal,” I told her. I was trying to sound casual but Megan knew me too well.

  “Sure,” she said with a grin. “That’s why you look so cute, because it’s no big deal.”

  “Shut up,” I told her.

  “Okay,” she said, still grinning. “Let’s go.”

  I followed her out the door, wondering what the hell I was doing. I was also wondering what Brock was doing. Did he change outfits three times before he left too? I laughed at the thought.

  “What’s so funny?” Megan said.

  “Oh nothing,” I told her.

  I got into the back seat of Megan’s Honda Civic and I said hello to Jake. He immediately said, “Brock’s coming. He was finishing something up, but he’ll be there.”

  “Yippee!” I said, sarcastically…I hoped.

  “He likes you, Molly.” Jake said.

  “How nice for him.” That time the tone was acerbic, I was sure of it.

  He turned around in his seat as Molly pulled away from the curb.

  “You know, Brock could have any girl he wanted.” Jake said, suddenly incensed with the need to stick up for his friend. “It’s a compliment that he likes you so much after you only met once.”

  “But of course, I’m thrilled,” I told him with a grin. I knew that I should be nicer to Jake. After all, he was Megan’s knight in shining armor. It was fun to poke at him though. I always made sure not to pierce the armor…

  The football stadium was only a few blocks away, but it was going to be super cold tonight, so Megan had wanted to drive. We were all regretting it now, however, as we made our way around the lot for the third time. Finally she decided to park on the street. We could hear kick-off taking place as we hurried towards the entry gate. There was a sudden roar of a motorcycle, and then Jake stopped walking and waved. I looked in that direction and saw Brock, on a red Harley. Of course he had a Harley. It wasn’t enough that he was gorgeous, he could sing, he could play the guitar and he seemed really nice, he had to have a Harley too. I watched as he swung it into a small space reserved for motorcycles and parked. As he had on stage singing, sitting at the taco stand, walking me home, and watching as I went inside the dorm, he looked amazing. I could feel my heart actually speed up in my chest. I was afraid that it was beating so fast and so hard that if you looked directly at it, my sweater and coat would be moving in and out too. This was ridiculous.

  We stood and waited for him to saunter over in his black leather jacket and dark shades that I personally didn’t care for. I preferr
ed the blue eyes. When he got closer and pulled off the shades, I physically jumped. I suddenly worried that he could hear my thoughts. How messed up would that be?

  He and Jake did their stupid guy bump thing, like maybe they didn’t just see each other before they left the house. Then he looked at Megan and me. I don’t know if it’s my imagination or not, but those blue eyes seemed to linger on mine a little longer than they had on Meg’s.

  “Hey Megan, Molly.”

  Megan and I both said hi, and we all headed for the entrance. The game was well into the first quarter by then and the stadium was packed. Our seats were pretty good ones, but they were in the middle of a row and I think we slightly pissed off a few of the people we had to step over and push past. As we got closer to where we’d be sitting, I felt a hand on the small of my back, helping to guide me. It was Brock’s hand, and my silly brain thought that I could actually feel his body heat searing through my coat and sweater onto my back.

  I dropped down into the seat next to Molly, and Brock took the one on the other side of me. He grinned at me then, and again I had to wonder what was always so amusing to this guy. Maybe when you were gorgeous and young and healthy and musically inclined, you just never had any reason to not be happy.

  I feigned watching the game for a while, because just having him sitting so close with his arm brushing lightly against mine left me afraid to open my mouth, not trusting what might rush out. Sometimes my brain forgot that the opening of my mouth was the key to engage. Finally, leaning close enough that I could feel his breath on my face Brock said, “You look cold.”