by Kati Wilde
Sunday
Anna: Any idea when you’re coming home?
Stone: Not yet.
Anna: Why?
Stone: Club business.
Anna: Yeah, yeah. You’re okay, though?
Stone: Everything’s all right, pipsqueak. Just taking longer than it should.
Anna: You got a second to call me?
Stone: It’s a bad time to talk.
Anna: Boo. Okay. Try to call mom tomorrow, at least.
Stone: I’ll try.
Tuesday
Anna: Are you still up?
Stone: Yes.
Anna: Did you knock up Tiffany?
Stone: Tiffany?
Anna: Yeah. TIFFANY.
Stone: As far as I know…no.
Anna: She came into the Wolf Den today, crying and saying you’re the daddy, and asking where are you? You never return her calls.
Stone: She hasn’t called me.
Anna: Maybe you’re just not answering. Considering that you don’t even answer your SISTER’S calls.
Stone: Talking isn’t as easy as texting right now.
Anna: Well, maybe you should text your baby mama.
Stone: Tiffany who?
Anna: OMG. You don’t even remember her? She said it was true love.
Stone: I guess not.
Anna: She said you had a magical night during Halloween. She was dressed as a pink unicorn with fairy wings.
Stone: Gunner and I went on a run over to the coast on Halloween.
Anna: So did you hook up with a fluffy pink unicorn beneath a full moon atop a sparkling sand dune? She said the waves crashed and sang a lullaby as you cried out your love.
Stone: …are you just fucking with me?
Anna: Maybe. You should really come home. You’ve got a magical unicorn baby waiting to suckle at your manly teat.
Stone: If I wasn’t laughing so hard, I’d say you just permanently shriveled the testicles of every man in a ten-mile radius.
Anna: And you’re seriously having an off day. I expected you to be ready with pictures of a unicorn baby snuggled against your chest. Just in case I ever said you were going to have one.
Stone: I’ll be prepared next time. A unicorn baby with rainbow tail.
Anna: And a glittery mane. BTW, I’m changing your name to Unicorn Daddy in my phone.
Unicorn Daddy: It’s unfortunate any dirty jokes about horns would be too inappropriate to send you.
Anna: Why?
Unicorn Daddy: Because you’re my sister.
Anna: That never stopped you before. So I guess things aren’t going so well, are they?
Unicorn Daddy: Not as well as I’d like.
Anna: Put Gunner in charge. He knows how to get shit done.
Unicorn Daddy: Gunner’s a useless fucking asshole.
Anna: Yikes. Trouble in biker paradise?
Unicorn Daddy: Just frustrated. Not getting the info I need.
Anna: Beat someone up.
Unicorn Daddy: I tried that.
Anna: Okay, well. Hang in there. The sun will come out tomorrow and all that crap. And speaking of the sun about to come up, I’m heading to bed.
Unicorn Daddy: I wish I was, too.
Unicorn Daddy: Heading to my bed, I mean. And sleeping. That won’t happen for a few hours, though.
Unicorn Daddy: Goodnight, pipsqueak.
Anna: Get some sleep, dork.
Thursday
Anna: Red’s funeral is set for Saturday :-(
Unicorn Daddy: I know. The boss told me yesterday.
Anna: You’ll be coming back at least for the weekend, right?
Unicorn Daddy: Maybe.
Anna: Maybe? It’s Red.
Unicorn Daddy: I know. But if I leave and something pops up while I’m gone, the whole thing might be fucked.
Anna: Boo. Look at my disappointed face.
Anna:
Unicorn Daddy: You look tired.
Anna: Gee, thanks.
Unicorn Daddy: Damn autocorrect. I really typed, “You look beautiful.”
Anna: Who the hell are you? What are you doing with my brother’s phone?
Unicorn Daddy: What did you use to write ANNA WAS HERE? Because it looks like elephant jizz.
Anna: There you are. Phew. And it’s whipped cream.
Unicorn Daddy: Does the boss know you’re squirting whipped cream all over his bar?
Anna: It wouldn’t be the first time. But Saxon’s out at the ranch with Jenny.
Unicorn Daddy: How is she?
Anna: Feeling about as shitty as you’d expect.
Unicorn Daddy: And you?
Anna: You’re really asking how I am?
Unicorn Daddy: Yes.
Anna: Well, I’m also about as shitty as you’d expect. On the upside, though… No, there’s no upside. Unless you count the upside of Burnout’s ass, which is currently hanging out of his pants. I’m not sure who he’s banging but he’s got her bent over the pool table.
Unicorn Daddy: Look away. Trust me. I’ve seen that nightmare before. Still have PTSD thanks to it.
Anna: No kidding. His ass is so hairy you could French braid his butt crack.
Unicorn Daddy: You could. But a ponytail would be more symmetrical when observed from the side.
Anna: He’s got so much hair, I’m pretty sure the ponytail would be longer than what he’s got in front.
Unicorn Daddy: Maybe a bun? Or is that redundant, given the placement?
Anna: It could be the new man bun. And those suggestions had to come from Gunner, because you’d never think about whether something is symmetrical or redundant.
Unicorn Daddy: Guilty.
Anna: Well, tell him Hi. And also tell him thanks a lot, since now I’m picturing a swirly ass-bun and giggling harder than is appropriate, considering A) Burnout is humping someone in front of me and B) Everyone else is drunk and grieving. So I’m putting my phone away and getting back to work.
Unicorn Daddy: I’d better get back to work, too.
Anna: Yep. Be careful down there, and I love you, and all that crap.
Unicorn Daddy: All that crap right back to you.
5
Anna
If the Guinness Book of World Records had an entry for “witnessed the most badass bikers sobbing,” my name would be written there. It’s a job hazard for every bartender. Some guys, I only have to pour them a couple of drinks and it doesn’t matter if they’re weekend warriors or hardened criminals. The tears just start flowing.
But if Guinness ever tries to immortalize me with a world record, I won’t include the tears I’m seeing on a few of the Hellfire Riders’ cheeks as Red Erickson is laid to rest on the hillside behind his house. There’s no drunken blubbering from these guys now. Just deep, quiet grief.
If I hadn’t already cried myself dry, my tears would be joining theirs.
On my left, Jenny Erickson stares blindly at the coffin, her face white and her eyes red. She’s all cried out, too. Now she stands rigidly, her arms wrapped around her middle, and I know she’s not hearing any of the words being spoken over her dad. I know the only thing holding her up is sheer willpower and the strong support of Saxon Gray, the Hellfire Riders’ prez.
I also know she’ll make it through. She always does. Because she’s as stubborn as Red was and it’s one of the reasons we became friends so many years ago—she just didn’t give up.
Jenny often calls me the stubborn one. I’m not. Not really. I just never know when to quit. Lately I’ve realized that’s something I need to learn.
My reason is standing on the opposite side of Red’s coffin. Zach Cooper—my brother’s friend. For years, they fought together as Marines, and my brother called him ‘Zed.’ Now they ride together as members of the Hellfire Riders MC, and he goes by ‘Gunner’ instead.
I would call Gunner my friend, too…but it’s not that simple.
I wish it were simple. Maybe seeing him would hurt less—and despite every
promise I make to myself, I can’t stop looking.
When I met him ten years ago, I thought he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Although time has hardened each of his features, and although he looks like he hasn’t slept or eaten much the past few days…he still is.
I’m not the only one who thinks so. Even here, where the atmosphere is heavy with grief, some of the women are stealing glances at him. I can’t blame them. The first couple of times I laid eyes on Zach Cooper, I couldn’t stop staring. He just didn’t seem real. People just aren’t that beautiful outside of movies or magazines—and everyone knows that’s makeup and lighting, not real life. Yet there he was. So I kept looking, until looking wasn’t enough. Until I needed to get deeper.
But he never let me in, and I never got much deeper than his skin.
Sometimes that’s deep enough, though. Small changes on the surface often betray what’s going on below. Ten years after our first meeting on the side of a highway, his cold is colder. His edges are sharper.
His hot is hotter.
His glossy black hair is slick with rain, his head solemnly bowed—but he’s tall, so despite his downturned head, his face isn’t hidden. Every breathtaking feature is laid bare before me. A few days’ growth of beard shadows his sculpted jaw, his decadent mouth firmed against grief. Thick lashes fan across wide, angular cheekbones. Beneath winged eyebrows, his pale blue eyes are downcast, his focus turned inward. Not praying. He doesn’t have faith in anything but his fellow Riders. Not crying. The only moisture wetting the stark planes of his cheeks is from the rain.
The downpour softens to a cold drizzle as the Riders’ old timers carefully lower Red into the ground. Red’s granite headstone is already here. He ordered it months ago, after he learned about the cancer. An older, matching headstone stands beside it—that one was for his wife. Over the years, Jenny and I have been out here on the hillside countless times, laying down flowers and weeding her mother’s grave. Now she’ll have two graves to take care of. I don’t intend to change the part where I’m helping her do it.
I slide my arm through hers. She glances at me, and judging by the glistening in her eyes, she’s not really cried out yet.
Judging by the painful lump clogging my throat, I guess neither am I.
Maybe that’s why Guinness doesn’t have a world record for number of tears shed. There’s no limit when you love someone. When you lose someone. There’s always more pain to feel. Even when you know the end is coming.
Red knew it was coming. So did Jenny. We all knew. So when Red called me up on Sunday morning, telling me Jenny might need me with her that day, I was crying before I made it out to my car. Because I knew what he wasn’t saying—he didn’t intend to come back.
Red held on for as long as he could before he took that final ride. Not a single Rider questions what he did. Though it gutted Jenny, neither does she. By the time he found out about the cancer, there was nothing to do. He couldn’t have it removed. Chemo wouldn’t stop it. So these last couple of months, the cancer killed him slow until it started killing him fast. By the end, he could barely breathe. He could barely ride. Pretty soon he wouldn’t have been able to get on his motorcycle at all. So he went out before that happened—and went out on his own terms.
I’ve been doing the same thing for more than a decade. Trying to go out on my own terms, cramming as much living into my life as I can. But in the past few months, I’ve realized I’m really just waiting for death to sneak up on me again and take what it didn’t take when I was a kid. I’ve been waiting for death to get down to business instead of just playing with me, like it did ten years ago, when I found a lump on my breast.
It has to stop. No more waiting for death to catch up to me. I’m not good at quitting anything. But I need to quit living as if I’m about to start dying.
And I need to let go of what’s killing me.
So these tears aren’t going to dry up yet. There’s always more hurt to come. Today I’m crying for Red, and for Jenny—and because of the pain in my chest that threatens to explode every time I look at Gunner.
I should just quit looking. But I can’t.
And all those other women are stealing glances, too, but when Gunner looks up, it’s directly at me—as if he felt my gaze on him. My breath stops in my chest. If his face is beautiful, then his eyes are something beyond that. Something indescribable.
Crystalline blue, those eyes should appear cold. Glacial. But they’re warm, instead. Intense, burning with concern—as if he’s silently asking whether I’m all right.
I’m not. I don’t know when I will be again. I’ll try to get there, though. To ‘all right.’
But I’ll settle for not hurting so damn much. This pain started out small. Just an ache. But it’s been growing for ten years.
And I can’t bear the agony anymore.
So I know what I have to do. When something is killing you—if you can, you have to cut it out. No matter how much it hurts. No matter how big the scar. You have to be brave, cut it out, and try to survive without it.
It’s just a heart.
6
Anna
An hour after the funeral, I’m in Jenny’s kitchen A) working through a pile of dirty dishes and B) desperately trying to think of something I don’t like about Gunner, so I can make myself stop thinking about him.
That’s the problem, though. I’ve tried to stop wanting him before. Of course I have. It just doesn’t work.
I have to cut my heart out…but first I have to find some way to sharpen the knife. Because just getting over him?
Been there. Tried that. Have the T-shirt that says, Anna failed spectacularly.
Okay, and also C) I’m hiding a little, because I keep crying over Red, and I really don’t like showing my hurt to anyone outside my family.
But I can’t pretend losing Red doesn’t leave a big, gaping hole in my chest—and my mom keeps touching my shoulder or my back every time she passes through the kitchen. I’m not sure if she’s comforting me or herself. I just know I had to tell her “No more hugs,” because every time she wrapped her arms around me I teared up again.
As a therapist-turned-high school counselor, my mom’s a big fan of crying. It’s cathartic, cleansing. But she’s just as much a fan of respecting personal and emotional space.
Her emotional space is usually thick. She lets a few of us in—my dad, my brother, me—but considering how often she slips quietly into other people’s heads and hearts, she doesn’t let many of them slip close in return.
Today that space seems thinner, her emotions showing more easily. I don’t think it’s just the ache of losing Red or hurting for Jenny. This is more like the quiet fragility that sometimes came over her when my brother was deployed overseas, during those long days between hearing about a marine’s death on the news and hearing from Stone himself.
But my brother’s fine. I’ll admit the past week had me a little worried—he’s only been texting at weird times and he sounds odd. Not just stressed and frustrated but barely like himself. Gunner’s back, though, and the way they’re joined at the hip, that means Stone will be around here somewhere, too. I wasn’t sure they’d make it to the funeral at all but they must have flown in at the last minute.
So my mom has no reason to worry about Stone. Not that being the Riders’ enforcer isn’t dangerous, because it is. I don’t think my mom knows all of what goes down in the club, though.
It’s better if she doesn’t know. And even if she guesses, it’s better if she isn’t aware of all the details.
I shouldn’t be aware of all the details, either. But that’s another side effect of working at a biker bar. Some of the Riders talk when they’re drunk. But even when they aren’t drunk, some speak in louder voices than they should, simply to be heard over the music—and sometimes they talk about problems my brother has taken care of.
But Mom knows Stone can handle himself. And a threat that could stop someone like my brother? I can’t even ima
gine. It’d have to be something huge. Terrifying.
There’s nothing like that threatening him.
So I think my mom’s current fragility stems from worry about me, instead. Maybe thinking of how I could have been the one they buried today. I’m high-risk for new cancers, after all. And ever since I heard that Red was sick, I’ve thought about it more and more.
My mom might be thinking of it, too. But I won’t ask if she is. It’s possible that I’m wrong and she’s simply grieving Red. Our families were close. Jenny is almost like another daughter.
Bringing up my old sickness would only make her worry more, anyway. There’s something she taught me a long time ago: Whenever someone assumes to know what you are thinking about, that person usually reveals what is occupying her own mind. So I’m not going to mention the leukemia now and make her think that I’m obsessing over how long I have to live.
Because I’m not. I’m quitting all that, too.
I’ll continue doing all the healthy crap that I’ve been doing for years. But I won’t keep expecting death to jump out of the shadows. Instead I’m going to assume that I’ll get the typical eighty years—and start living like it, too. And if I get sick again…well, I’ll deal with it then.
The kitchen door swings open and my mom comes in carrying another empty platter from the buffet set up in the dining room. A burst of conversation follows her through before the door muffles the noise again.
“Megan’s rounding up some of the other ladies,” she announces. “They’ll take care of the remaining cleanup.”
The kitchen counters are empty. All I have left to clean is the platter she’s holding. “It’s pretty much taken care of.”
“You’re only saying that because you haven’t seen what’s left.”
I can imagine. Almost all of the Hellfire Riders are here, along with their wives and old ladies, but Red wasn’t just part of a motorcycle club. He co-owned a construction company and had enough employees to fill another house. Then there are neighbors and friends, like my mom and dad. He was well-liked in Pine Valley, and in addition to paying their last respects, many visitors are bringing food to share.
