“Yeah,” he said with one of his deep laughs, “You were putting ‘em away last night.”
“Yep, I paid for that shit this morning though. I felt like a truck drove over my head and I had to endure mom telling me to not drink so much today since I got so tipsy last night.”
My dad laughed again and said, “Yeah, I’ve gotten that lecture a few times, that one and a whole shit pot full of others. I got some pretty strong coffee brewing in there if you want a cup.”
“That sounds great,” I said, honestly.
He followed me in and after I poured my cup of literal sludge we sat down at his regular table. He lit a smoke, which he loved to do out front when the place wasn’t open yet. It was his fuck you to California’s, “no smoking in public places” law. He had to have one of those for every law he didn’t like…which is most of them.
“Any luck on the job front?” he asked me.
I snorted. I didn’t really mean to but, he knew better than anyone that the odds of me getting any job, even the ones that involved me saying a lot of, “Would you like fries with that?” were slim.
“No, no luck,” was all I told him.
“I can give you a job here, above board after you finish your parole, but in the meantime your P.O. ain’t gonna be okay with you working her on the payroll.”
“I know,” I told him, “I already got the lecture from her.”
“Your parole officer’s a woman?” he said with a chuckle.
“Yeah, I didn’t pick her.” I was automatically on the defensive. Taking jabs at my manhood was one of his favorite past times.
He laughed harder and said, “Yeah, I know you didn’t pick her. They reserve the chick P.O.’s for the light weights though, you know that, right?”
“I don’t think the fact that the Department of Corrections thinks I’m a lightweight should be an insult.” At least if you’re not the son of the mc’s president.
“No, of course not,” he said, actually trying to stifle his laugh. A guy like him really should have had a tough big ass kid who liked to fight more than he did read. Instead, he ended up with me. Prison helped in the big department, but I had still rather read than fight. He did go get himself an old lady that said things like tipsy though so maybe he wasn’t as tough as he thought he was.
“Hey dad, I was wondering about something?”
“What’s that?”
“Do you keep your old security tapes? I know they each only hold about a month or less right?”
“Yeah, something like that. I think I got all the old ones in that big closet in the back office. It’s stuffed full of them. Cookie changes them out and puts the old ones in the closet. Why would you want them?”
“It’s probably just because I have way too much time on my hands but when I was pulling out of the garage at home this morning I was looking at that Bud mirror with the Clydesdale and—”
“And the chick in the pink thong bikini?”
I smirked and chuckled. “Yeah, that one. Anyways, for some reason I remembered that trip you and I took to that bike show in Dinuba and that was where we bought that one. On the way out of town, we stopped here to pick-up some cash. It was only two days later when that money came up missing. I don’t have anything else to do and I guess I’m just getting desperate for an activity. I thought if you didn’t mind I would go through the tapes and pick out the ones around that time and watch them, just to see what I notice about who came in and out of the office those couple of days.”
“That’s actually a pretty good idea,” he said, looking impressed that I had thought of it. “Yeah, have at it. I don’t care. I’d like to know who took that money. I still get royally pissed every time I think about it, ain’t nothing lower than a thief. Thanks for doing that, I can’t believe one of the boys hadn’t thought of it already.”
Right, in his world a drug dealer was fine and a thief…not so much. Damn my conscience though. His thanks made me feel guilty for lying to him. I didn’t really give a shit who stole his money. I doubted that a penny of it had been legally earned. What I really wanted to see was who came and gone from my dad’s office leading up to me being busted. I didn’t know if it would help me figure everything out or not, but it couldn’t hurt. I wished I could be as cold as he was sometimes though. He didn’t seem to be feeling too guilty about what he did to me at all.
A few of the club guys started pouring in and when my dad got busy with them I went to search for the tapes. Feeling guilty or not, I wanted to see those tapes. I was happy with the fact that the bar had a decent system with audio as well as visual. I was a little shocked that he kept them lying around in a closet though. If the place ever got raided and the tapes were confiscated, that could spell trouble for the club.
I went down the hall towards the back office and on my way I passed the bedroom. I had somehow forgotten about that. It had a bathroom attached and my mom had put a nice big bed in when she had done her decorating. That was weird when I considered what most of the guys in the club, my dad included, used it for.
The older I got, the weird things that my family did surprised me less. I decided that I was going to ask if I could sleep there for a while. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate my mother letting me stay at home, but I was starting to feel stifled there, like I was back in high school.
When I made it to the back office I opened the closet and almost shut it right away and said forget it. It was a mess. The tapes were at least marked with the date, which would help but it looked like when they pulled them out they just tossed them into any old box and there was no rhyme or reason to it. The office tapes were mixed up with the bar tapes too. It was a good thing I had no life because it was going to take forever to get through them.
I sat down on the floor and started sorting through them, setting the ones aside that were anywhere from two months before to six months after I got busted. I was going to have to put in a full day, maybe two, to find them all. I went through two full boxes and I was actually able to find five or six tapes that were labeled during that time period that would give me a good start. I started putting them in my backpack and I heard a noise behind me. My stomach tightened, I thought it was my dad checking in on me. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to explain why the tapes I took would have absolutely nothing to do with the burglary.
Shit. I should have looked for those too so I would have at least had them in my hand if he was suspicious. I wasn’t good at this criminal stuff. Trying not to look guilty, I turned around. It wasn’t my dad, it was Olivia.
CHAPTER TWO
OLIVIA
I was on my way back to use the bathroom before I started cleaning up out front. I told Gail that I would come in early and make sure all signs of the party were cleaned up before Bull opened for the day. I heard a noise in the back office. No one ever really went in there so I was curious.
I was surprised when I walked up to the door just in time to see Dax shoving a bunch of security tapes in his backpack. When he turned around to look at me, he looked guilty as hell. He looked relieved once he realized it was me. I wondered if Bull knew he was back there. Why did I really care? I didn’t even like Bull.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” he said. I could have asked him the same.
“I told your mom I’d come in early to finish cleaning up. I got a little…sidetracked last night and didn’t finish. I came back to use the bathroom and heard you back here.”
“You might want to be more careful around here walking in on people. Never know what you’ll see,” he laughed nervously.
He was right. I had seen Bull and the other guys disappear back there with any number of nubile groupies in the past. I shuddered to think what that visual might do to my psyche. I realized that he had done an excellent job of getting me off track. I was still curious about what I did walk in on and I wanted to ask him but he was looking at me with that look again, like I was the one who had done something wrong. It was the way he had been looking at me
since he got home.
I finally blurted out, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He hesitated and I thought he wasn’t going to answer me at all. When he finally spoke it was dripping with sarcasm.
“I was just curious why you were back here. You had to know I’d be around. It’s Sunday and I have no life. My girlfriend dumped me and now she’s with my best friend. I tried to show her how I still felt about her after all of that last night…with a kiss. She just ran out on me. It was embarrassing.”
I ignored the reference to the kiss, but about the rest of it, he was right. I figured he would be there that morning. I didn’t want to say it that way though. It sounded too much like I was only there to see him. I was there to clean. I was fighting the joy building up in me from seeing him again.
“I was worried about you after I ran out. You were pretty drunk. I’m surprised that you even remember it.”
“It took me a minute,” he said with a grin again.
“I’m sorry if I over-reacted. You reminded me a little bit of my dad after he got out of jail. He kind of went off the deep end and I never knew if he was using the meth and cocaine he was convicted of selling or if he just lost it in his head from being locked up.”
He gave me that look again. It was the one that said I was the guilty party.
At last he said, “I’m not your father¸ Olivia. Your father was guilty, he admitted it. I’m not a drug dealer, trafficker, or even a user. I told you then and I’m telling you now that I was not trafficking drugs. I was set up. I was the fall guy. If they got stopped because of who they are and what they do then it was likely they needed someone to take the fall. Unfortunately they picked me without giving me a vote.”
He had told me this before. When he was first arrested he used to call me from county jail every day and beg me to believe he was innocent. I really did try. I took his calls for the first month or so and I talked to Terrance about it. He told me he really didn’t know. He hadn’t thought Dax was carrying drugs and he didn’t even have a clue who he would be carrying for if he was running them.
I had my own ideas.
I was spending a lot of time around the club because of Terrance and I even tried talking to Bull. It was obvious that I wasn’t going to get any help from him though. He was secretive about things. If he did know something, he wouldn’t have told me. But, in all of that time I never heard even one of them say anything about Dax being innocent either…not one word. Even his mother kept her feelings about it to herself. If he was innocent, wouldn’t they be jumping up and down, protesting his arrest?
“Okay,” I finally said. “Assuming that I believed that, I have to ask what you’re doing digging around in the closet, stealing security tapes.”
“I wasn’t stealing anything and just because I’m a parolee doesn’t mean I’m also a thief. My dad knows I’m back here. You can ask him if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you,” I told him. “What do you need security tapes for?”
“I’m trying to prove I’m innocent,” he said. His face suddenly looked like he hadn’t meant to admit it out loud. He used to trust me with his life, but now, not so much. I guess I couldn’t blame him.
“Why did Bull okay it though? That’s odd if his club is the one that set you up, don’t you think?”
“He knows I’m back here. I told him I was looking for tapes around the time a burglary took place here four years ago. What I’m really taking are the ones just before and just after my arrest. I’m going to bring them back though, I’m not stealing them.”
“You think you’ll find something on these tapes that will prove you’re innocent?”
“I don’t know, but I hope so. I found some e-mails Olivia, from Terrance to my dad. They were from the day before I got busted and say something about being all set or ready to go. They’re really suspicious because it’s like the information in the emails is purposely vague.”
“So you think Terrance had something to do with you being set up? That doesn’t make any sense, he’s your….he was your best friend. Why would he agree to do that?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out. Ask yourself this, Olivia. Why would my best friend think it was okay to date my girlfriend while I’m locked up, ex, or not? Why would my best friend not visit me at least once in almost three years? Just think about it, Liv, really think about it.”
I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. The man I knew Terrance to be wouldn’t do that. I looked at his eyes and I remembered when he wanted me to believe that he was the man I thought he was and I refused. I let myself believe what everyone else said instead. What I if I was wrong then and what if he’s wrong now and I make the same mistake with Terrance? Is my judgment really that bad?
I hated to think so, but the problem was sometimes I got the feeling that maybe Terrance was the man he thought I wanted him to be only when I was watching. I was upset when Dax first got arrested. I was repulsed by the thought that someone else I loved was going to be involved with selling drugs.
When my father was arrested I found out so much about him that I never wanted to know. My life was hell and all I could think about when it happened to Dax was that he and I talked about getting married and having kids. I would never want to bring a child into the world that would be forced to feel the way that I felt when I found out what my father really was. Dax of all people knew how devastated I had been over my father.
But Terrance had known Dax his entire life. They told each other everything from what Dax told me. I guess I always assumed that Terrance didn’t question Dax’s arrest because he knew Dax was guilty and he couldn’t bring himself to tell me. But even if he did know he was guilty, as his best friend he should have at least tried to do something to make the situation better or easier for him. Instead, he suddenly wanted to make it all easier on me. Terrance and I hadn’t even really seen that much of each other before Dax was arrested. Afterwards however, he seemed to be showing up everywhere, constantly on hand to comfort me.
He never encouraged me to give Dax a chance, to take his calls, or to go talk to him. A best friend should have done those things. What if Dax was telling the truth and the whole time I let him sit in jail, in prison no less and I didn’t so much as write him a letter? He sat there all alone, thinking that no one cared enough to believe in him. My stomach felt sick and I suddenly felt like I had made a terrible mistake. I needed to do something to rectify it if I could.
I went back over to the closet and opened it. Sitting down on the floor, I pulled out one of the dusty boxes filled with tapes and started going through them, looking at the dates.
“What are you doing?” Dax asked me, confused.
“I’m helping you. I’m doing what I should have done three years ago, I’m listening…I’m not saying that I have changed my mind and completely agree you didn’t do it, but I’m at least willing to explore the possibility that I was wrong. If there’s something in here that can convince me and everyone else you’re innocent, I want to find it too.”
“Thanks,” he said, looking at me with his beautiful eyes and once again reminding me how in love we used to be.
“You’re welcome,” I told him.
I hoped that we would find it, even though it would make me feel like the biggest fool of all. I felt like I was going to throw up.
CHAPTER THREE
DAX
I was trying to concentrate on looking through the tapes, but it was hard with Olivia sitting on the floor next to me. She suddenly wanted to believe in me and I was torn by being elated and being angry that she still didn’t believe me. I was more elated than angry.
If my arrest hadn’t come so soon after everything she had been through with her father that would have made a big difference. She had been lied to and disappointed over being lied to constantly by someone that she loved and trusted. I understood her fear that it was happening all over again.
I tried not to stare at her, but she was so d
amn sexy. I used to draw sketches of her when I was in prison and hang them on my cell wall. It helped me not feel so lonely. Even then I couldn’t really be mad at her. Nothing she ever did was mean-spirited. She was confused and hurt and rightfully so.
My anger needed to be focused elsewhere, at the people who did this to us in the first place. I looked at her shuffling through dusty old tapes and actually hoping to find something to help me and I had an overwhelming desire to reach out and touch her soft hair as she tossed it back over her shoulder. I pictured myself kissing her… I thought about the last time I did and how she ran away. That thought put a damper on it. Forcing myself to put it out of my head I finally decided that a mundane conversation was the best route.
“So what happened to school?” I asked her. “You were doing so well.”
She stopped what she was doing and looked at me like she wasn’t sure what to say. She shrugged. Maybe conversation was a mistake. She was looking at me and no matter how hard I tried I still got lost in her big brown eyes. Her lips looked so kissable I actually started to lean in a bit. Thank goodness she started talking.
“I was so messed up after you got arrested,” she finally said, “I tried to keep going, but that whole next semester I didn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time. I was angry at first. I kept asking myself how I could have been so stupid, how I could spend all that time with you and not know you were running drugs.”
“You didn’t know because I wasn’t,” I told her.
“Do you want me to explain it or do you want to rehash all that again?”
She was right, we had rehashed it enough.
“I’m sorry,” I said, properly put in my place.
“I’m not comparing you to my dad or saying that you’re him, okay? It just reminded me so much of how my mother denied knowing he was cooking meth. The police officer even asked her the night he arrested him, “How could you not know?” I mean, he wasn’t doing it in our kitchen, but the little house he used was on our property and the air always smelled funny. Plus, we weren’t allowed to go out there at all. I used to wonder after he was arrested if she did know, but wanted herself to look like the victim. Then it happened to me and I realized, or at least I thought that it was entirely possible to be duped by the man you loved. I was angry and hurt and that part made me feel like such a fool.
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