by Hazel Parker
I almost hoped that he would give me the middle finger before he left, but alas, he seemed to find the self-control necessary to storm off. Good. I didn’t need another sight of that suit-wearing, stick-up-his-ass fucker.
I stormed back into the building to find Uncle waking up. He removed the two girls from on top of him and sat up, pulling his jeans up. Thank God—I’d seen enough of Uncle’s cock the night before.
“What the fuck was that all about?” he said. “I heard you yapping at someone—”
“You know who it was, Uncle.”
Uncle sighed. He did know.
“Shit. I knew this was inevitable to some degree. Kyle’s got his eyes on me and has looked for any excuse to throw my ass in jail.”
“Seriously?”
“He’s an administrator, not a prosecutor or a cop, so he can’t literally throw me in jail, but he’s got enough connections that he can point something out and get me in a shitload of trouble. Contrary to what it may seem like, Fitz and I have our asses covered with this club and business in so many ways that the attorney general couldn’t find a way to prosecute us. But that doesn’t mean we can do whatever the hell we want.”
Well, fuck.
“This shop opens at ten. It’s… twenty minutes after eight right now. So we’re good on that. We can wake up these assholes when the time is right. But we have got to be on our guard.”
“Which means?”
Uncle rubbed his temples, obviously hungover and annoyed at the situation.
“We gotta make sure our repair business is an actual repair business. We gotta actually treat cars, keep books, you know, the usual. I can do that in five minutes after my day job. You all just need to keep raw files.”
“Easy enough.”
“That, yes. The administrative stuff is easy. But you’ll have to make sure that you, Biggie, Niner, and anyone else you get into this fucking club do their fucking jobs. No fucking girls during work hours. No smuggling, at least nothing overt, during operating hours. Goes without saying that especially for the first month or so, Kyle’s going to be on our ass. He’ll still be on our ass after, but with a little less weight.”
That all seemed fair. So long as we did things by the book—at least when we had to—we’d be fine. I had a feeling, though, Kyle wasn’t going to stop at “operating hours.”
“Let’s get these assholes up and clear out this place,” Uncle said. “I kept the old staff on payroll and added you on. So whoever is supposed to work today is going to work like normal. If someone comes in that wasn’t here last night, we’ll test them. But after a week, I don’t want anyone here who isn’t also in on joining the Savage Saints. Can’t afford to have any leaks.”
“Got it.”
In what may have been one of my more annoying assignments, I went around to all of the naked people and tried to rouse them out of their alcohol stupors. Most of them woke up wondering where they were; a few looked down at the person they were with and muttered some variant of “nice” or “oh shit”; and a few just didn’t wake up. We threw blankets on the ones who didn’t wake up immediately, which thankfully were limited to only about six people total.
The whole ordeal reminded me that I was not going to wait until two weeks to contact Christine again; fuck that. I’d made a mistake once on the basis of believing some weird work ethos that turned out not to be true, and it wasn’t something I was going to fuck up again.
Just before ten, when we’d moved the remaining two people into the office for the sake of image, I called Christine.
She didn’t answer.
Well, I guess it’s only fair that you get put in this spot. You pushed her away, now she—
So, of course, she called right back.
Must be saying something that my mind was racing that crazy. Just one kiss and she’s affecting me like so, huh? Maybe it’s a repeat of the behavior that landed me with Sarah.
She’s no Sarah, though. She’s better.
“Hi,” I said.
“Not hungover, huh?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Christine chuckled. Thank heavens, because if she had actually laughed loudly into the phone, that might have been just a bit much for this morning.
“Well, I’m glad I don’t have to wait two weeks now for you to call me back.”
“Yeah, not doing that again. But hey, let’s meet up tonight, huh? I have to go quickly, but I wanted to confirm if you wanted to get together.”
“Oh, gosh, well, I suppose I could make plans for the sexy bald man talking to me right now.”
We’re getting good Christine right now. This, I dig.
“Just no alcohol.”
And that’s how you avoid bad Christine. Don’t put her in the spots where she can fuck up like that.
“Duh,” I said. “We’ll go to a museum or something. I’ll think of something.”
“In the area?”
“Yeah, why?”
The answer registered with me before she said it.
“Was kind of hoping I got the chance to ride on your bike again. If that’s OK.”
Uh, yeah. I think that’s OK. I think we can make that work.
“Just not into Manhattan. Driving a bike in there is like getting a rocket and being told you’re not allowed to ignite it.”
“I was thinking the same. We can go somewhere east.”
Somewhere east. Meaning she has no place in mind. Meaning I can take her wherever I want.
“I’ll think of something. Let’s say seven tonight?”
“Perfect.”
“Great. I need to go, but I’ll see you then.”
I had to hang up much more quickly than that, in fact, because I could hear Kyle knocking on the door already.
“Uncle!”
“We’re set.”
With that, I opened the door. We had Uncle, me, and two other mechanics scheduled to work this morning.
“Good morning, Kyle,” I said in a fake happy voice. “How can we help you?”
Kyle looked at me, sneered, and looked over my shoulder.
“So good of you to watch over your business, Uncle Reggie,” he said with such dripping sarcasm, I was surprised he didn’t just drown in it. “I would hate to think that you were here for any reason other than making sure your newest purchase is running seamlessly.”
“And now why would I do that, Kyle?” Uncle said, perhaps the only person who was as willing to engage in politic-speak. “I am a businessman. I seek out investment opportunities whenever I can.”
“And what are the folks at the firm going to think when they find out about your investment?”
Uncle shrugged.
“You probably haven’t noticed since you’ve been so focused on wrecking people’s lives instead of helping their small businesses, but blue-collar work is on the rise. It’s a good time to get into this field. People can question the means all they want, but they can never question the bottom line.”
“They can question how you get to the bottom line.”
“Really? Wall Street does?”
Even I got that joke and laughed along with Uncle and the other two mechanics. Kyle looked like he wanted to punch all of us, and I hoped he did. Not just because it would be a scandal if a politician tried to punch someone, but because the notion that Kyle could hurt any of the four of us was just downright hysterical. I’d feel more pain if a bee tried to sting me.
“You can do whatever you want, Kyle. I would hate to think that you’re wasting your Saturday trying to hunt us down when we are a legitimate business.”
Kyle looked at the room studiously, somewhat ignoring Uncle, perhaps swearing that it smelled and looked different than his brief glances over my shoulder. But the worst that he saw were a couple of hungover mechanics, and there was no reason to believe that such a state came because of anything other than them going out.
“Tread carefully, Stones,” Kyle said before storming off again.
“Fucking
prick,” Uncle said. “Your daddy was a good man, Marcel, but giving DNA to that little piece of shit is something I have trouble forgiving him for.”
“You and me both,” I said.
I looked down at my phone as it buzzed. Sarah?
“Just a reminder, Lilly’s yours tomorrow,” her message said. “I have to be out of the house by eight-thirty. Don’t keep me waiting.”
I immediately wrote back a thumbs-up emoji. I had survived the worst of the morning—an awful big “worst” too.
Now I just had to get through one measly work shift and then I’d get the best of everything nearly back to back. A night with Christine, and a morning with Lilly.
It was hard to think of a better weekend than that.
Chapter 12: Christine
I had woken up on such a high, I couldn’t imagine how the day would be a bad one.
And then, right after my phone call with Marcel, I started to think about what else had happened besides getting to kiss him.
While the kiss was amazing, it had only happened because I had gone to a party in which alcohol wasn’t just available, it was practically mandated for consumption. Marcel’s uncle had hit on me in perhaps the most stereotypically creepy uncle manner possible. If not for Marcel interrupting, there was a decent chance that I would have broken my two-and-a-half month streak, now going strong at seventy-six days.
Was last night going to be the norm for Marcel and the club? Or was it just a one-off occasion to mark the grand opening? If it was the latter, then fine; I’d just have to deal with such events once every couple of months and I’d be fine.
If it was the norm, though? If every Friday and every Saturday, I had to be prepared to test my sobriety? No one in the history of mankind had the self-control to withstand that much temptation. Even Jesus would have craved some wine by that point.
Maybe I was just making a big brouhaha out of nothing. It wasn’t like there was a rule that stated if Marcel and I started to become more serious, I was obligated to spend more time with him at the club on weekend nights. But there was definitely something to be said for the concern that if I did get serious with him, I would feel an obligation to join him for such nights regardless of whether or not he imposed it on me.
In any case, the whirlwind of emotions that consumed me in the morning eventually subsided around noon. It was probably just a matter of exhausting myself, but regardless, I was happy to feel a little more normal by the early afternoon. A light jog also helped matters; it was hard to think about things when it was mile two and I was starting to get out of breath.
We’d agreed on seven for that night, and this time, I decided I wanted my outfit to be a little more seductive than before. I threw on a red tank top that dipped down to my cleavage. I made sure that my jeans had some holes in them, the torn look suggesting someone who would be down for that kind of activity. I wore a little more perfume than last night.
I wasn’t sure how this night would end, but the kiss had spiked my interest in Marcel on a physical level. What had once before felt like a mere intellectual exercise in what sex with him would feel like now felt like a primal, physical urge that I didn’t have before. I’d always found him attractive, but I hadn’t been able to kick it up to the level of true desire until this most recent kiss.
I walked down the stairs of my apartment. Right on cue, Marcel pulled up. He had on the same jacket as two weeks before, but now, he had attached something to the back—it looked like someone had whipped up a logo for him. Someone had drawn up the symbol of the saint with red blood on it, set against the background of Brooklyn. It was both intimidating and extremely intriguing.
“New look, huh?” I said.
“Yeah, just had someone put something together real quick so we could build upon it later,” he said. “Not sure that this is the final design but figured we could run with it from the start. Just wanted to distinguish it a bit, you know? And piss off my brother.”
“Your brother?”
“Ah, sorry, shouldn’t have mentioned him. Let’s not get into him.”
I shrugged as Marcel grabbed me by the side, pulled me in, and kissed me as passionately and tenderly as he had the night before. Marcel’s kiss had a way of melting away all the problems on the outside—the fear of having a drink, the annoyance with his family members, my concerns for his own issues…
Yeah, it was pretty damn good.
“Are you ready for another bike ride? Are you going to scream?”
“Only in excitement,” I said.
I had to admit, there was a slight temptation to make an off-color joke or to say something flirtatious. It might have gotten me in trouble, but it would have been the right kind of trouble anyway. I had worn this outfit for a reason, after all.
“Let’s go to Long Island,” he said. “We can just ride. At any point, if it gets to be too much, then you just say so.”
I won’t say so. I just nodded, knowing that for what Marcel was providing me, not many other people were bound to do that. I couldn’t yet say that I had fallen in love with the motorcycle, but a path forward in which I fell in love with being on the bike with Marcel was certainly foreseeable.
When I hopped on the bike, Marcel wasted little time revving up the engine. He didn’t spend any time warning me about what to expect. Instead, as soon as both my arms were wrapped around him and the engine was on, he accelerated the bike away from the apartment and began the drive.
Even though I had already done this once and knew what to expect, there was still an element of sheer shock. That was probably bound to happen anytime I got on the bike, if for no other reason than I had no control over the motorcycle. My life, literally, was in Marcel’s hands; the feeling of giving your life up to someone else was always going to feel a little shocking, especially when there was no barrier between you and the world like a car would have provided.
But the advantage of going to Long Island instead of just Queens was that this time, we got to hit a more consistent speed. Though I had screamed in excitement at the force of acceleration before, once we hit that cruising speed and I settled down, it felt like a level of freedom I had never had before. It was just us and the road.
There were no customers to serve. There were no clients to please. There were no spreadsheets or models to make, no dishes to prepare, no worries about alcohol having to be avoided. There was just the wind, the vibration between my legs, and the man in front of me. The bike had a way of narrowing my focus down to the sensations around me; it had a way of making me present like nothing else could.
It was hard to get distracted on the bike, even as a passenger. I had to make sure my weight didn’t shift in a direction away from Marcel. I had to keep my arms wrapped around him. But I didn’t mind—in fact, I welcomed it. I welcomed the chance to have my arms around Marcel.
Gradually, putting my life in his hands went from terrifying to thrilling. It also had the nice side effect of making me that much more attracted to him.
And, I might add, a hell of a lot hornier. It didn’t hurt at all that the vibrations between my legs were, well, arousing me.
I couldn’t claim that it was building me toward orgasm, as some women had claimed. Granted, that was partially because I just didn’t come easily, but I think those claims might have been overblown. Either way, it still felt really fucking good; the good feelings just weren’t limited to the physical sense.
When we finally did get to our destination—a beach on Long Island that I didn’t recognize, though it wasn’t like I was a Long Island expert—Marcel helped me off, held me, and kissed me again.
“Better?”
“Oh, you could say that,” I said with a smile so wide it almost hurt. “It’s going to be hard to top that for a great start to the evening.”
I could almost see the words on his lips, the ones that wanted to say, “just wait until you see the end of the evening.” I could see them because I wanted to say them too. But we both knew the truth—it was m
ore fun just to wait until we got to the moment to start explicitly saying them.
Marcel grabbed my hand, sending goosebumps up my arms, and led me to the beach. We just stood by the ocean’s edge at first, letting the cool water almost brush against our feet but just missing. The sun was setting to the west, creating a distinct golden glow across the horizon. There was only one other group on the beach, and they were probably a couple hundred feet away.
“I’m sorry for what you had to go through last night,” Marcel said. “I didn’t realize alcohol was such a problem for you. I—”
“No, it’s fine.”
I mean, it wasn’t fine, but it was fine for Marcel for what he knew at the time. I couldn’t be mad at him for that. I’d learned long ago from some of the more senior members in AA that it wasn’t the job of other people to babysit us; we had to somehow both give up our sense of control to a higher power and assume responsibility for our mistakes. It was difficult enough to understand myself; expecting it of someone I’d hung out with twice and had seen a couple of times at my restaurant was quite challenging.
“If I can ask,” Marcel said, and I knew where this was going—to a rather uncomfortable conversation topic. “What exactly is it with you and alcohol? Did something happen before that makes it so you don’t drink anymore?”
I folded my arms and snorted. That affirmed his suspicion—now it was just a question of if I went into the level of detail that Marcel probably wanted.
“It’s a tough topic for me,” I said. “Yes, it has cost me in the past. The very recent past, actually.”
My last relationship, my last job, my career, my sanity. You know, the usual.
“I’m getting the needed help right now to take care of it. Maybe…”
I almost said, “maybe someday, I can drink moderately,” but that was just further proof I still needed help. A member of AA could never drink again; moderation, at least for alcoholics, was a lie. It wasn’t anything that I could handle, that was for sure.
