We pull in the spot that Mex suggests and as we get out of the car, he’s jogging towards us. He stops about ten feet from the car and nods his head towards the entrance. I assume he wants us to follow because right after the nod, he starts to walk to the door. We follow him, not knowing what we’re walking into.
As we get closer to the door, I can hear the music. Once the outer door opens, the music is a lot louder and I can actually make out the song. Rob Zombie for sure, I think to myself. Feeling a little more in my comfort zone than I was last night at the bar with the hip-hop music, I think this night might not suck. Our bags are checked, not checked like the coat room girl offers to put them behind the counter as we dine, but checked like…’you packing heat in here?’ and our phones are confiscated at the door.
“What’s going on? Why did he take my phone?” I ask Mex.
“You’re a civilian and you can’t have phones in the clubhouse. You can have them back when you leave. You can take your bag in with you since you don’t have any weapons or any ties to other clubs,” Mex explains likes it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Wow, they actually were looking for guns. I had been half joking with my inner thoughts.
The second set of doors open and I’m hit in the face with loud speakers, scantily clad women and men sitting around in vests, joking and laughing. Moving into the bar, I notice Skylar sitting at the bar with a woman who is all but crawled up in his lap. I swallow the lump in my throat and try to banish the feelings of what I can only assume is jealousy, coursing through my veins.
Looking back at Kylee, she already knows
“I’ll go get your drink, don’t worry. Cotton Candy and Sprite?” she asks.
“Nope, I’m going hard tonight. Jack and Coke please,” I respond. Her eyes get big but then she brushes it off. She has to know that Skylar and I were not on good terms because I have never been anything less than happy to see him. Truth be told, I always loved hanging out with Skylar. He was always a blast. He didn’t mind when I would call him late at night with stupid questions about schoolwork or ask him to go places with me when I knew Danny wouldn’t. He was a good man.
And as much as it pains me to admit, he still is a good man; I just don’t get to see it.
“Maybe the wrong man died that night” plays in my head. How could I have said that to him? What kind of monster am I?
Kylee returns with my drink and we find an open table near the DJ booth. There isn’t anyone on the dance floor though, which I find weird. A stripper pole and stage are right across from our table and there is nobody on there either. It’s barely nine so maybe it would liven up soon, I hope. As I start to sip on my drink, Skylar comes over to our table.
“Hey Kylee. Mira. Glad you guys could make it out tonight. I know it’s a little dead in here but it’ll get packed in a couple hours. I invited you down early so we could catch up,” he says, scooting in the booth beside me.
Just being within arm’s reach of him sets my skin aflame. He places his hand down on the seat between our legs and his finger brush against my exposed thigh. Slamming my drink in one large gulp, I get the attention of both Skylar and Kylee. I ask him to move to let me out to get another drink, but Kylee quickly offers up her services.
“I got it,” she chirps, “You guys catch up while I’m gone.”
Fuck.
I wish that Skylar would change spots in the booth and move to the other side, but instead, he moves closer to me, leaning in so our foreheads almost touch and gives me a warm smile.
“I think it’s high time we talk, don’t you Mira?”
“Wh- What do we need to talk about?” I think I ask aloud. When he chuckles, I know he heard me.
“Not here, sweets. I’m glad you decided to come tonight. When Kylee said she was going to bring you, I was a little nervous. I haven’t seen you in so long and didn’t know if you would even speak to me after the way I acted. But I’m glad you came.”
That’s right. There was something I was pissed off about. Heather. That whore he fucked the night we were together. No fucking respect for me, I think to myself.
“Ya know Sky, I just want to be friends again. I got my taste and it wasn’t anything special, so if you don’t mind, please ask your DJ to play something a little more upbeat so I can dance,” I say, rolling my eyes.
Kylee comes walking back to the table and Skylar straightens himself in the seat, takes one look at me and leaves to talk to the DJ. Perfect timing. Looking at Kylee, she has two drinks in her hand and a shot nestled between her tits.
“Kylee, you’re not drinking, remember?” I say, frustrated that she can’t ever listen to me.
“I’m not, these are for you. After that last drink, I knew you’d need a constant flow and this is the next best thing to a whiskey IV,” she jokes.
Taking the shot out of her cleavage, she hands it to me and I throw it back like a champ. Tequila, shit. Oh well, we’re on a roll, no stopping now. I take one of the drinks, still Jack and Coke and down that as well. I slam the glass back on the table, wipe the extra booze from my chin and go for the final drink. Kylee stops me.
“Slow down honey. This isn’t a marathon,” Kylee says, looking worried. I’ve never been a huge drinker but when I do get drunk, I’m either a blast in a glass or a cunt. I’m aiming for cunt tonight.
“Ky, I got this. You’re sober. You make sure I make it home in one piece. You feed me toast in the morning,” I say smiling and take the glass forcefully from her hands, “that’s all you need to worry about.”
“This one’s on you babe,” Kylee says, getting up from the table as less angry music comes on. While I drink the rest of the liquid from the glass, Kylee stands in front of me gently rocking her hips to the beat. I know she wants to dance too.
Dancing is what I want and dancing is what I’ll do.
I get up from the table and it seems like all the booze hits me at once. I feel lightheaded and wobbly, grabbing the edge of the table for support. Once I get my bearings, I kick off my wedge sandals and head to the dance floor. Yes I took off my shoes. I will not break my neck while trying to dance.
Listening to “Fall Out Boy” sing about going down swinging, I think the song fits my mood just right. If I’m going to get locked into Skylar’s mess again, I’m not going down without a fight. I hop around the dance floor with Kylee, acting dumb and being free from all feeling. The whiskey is doing its job, thank God. Not only is my heart currently numb, so is my face.
One song bleeds into the next. Still dancing around, not so much bouncing anymore, I’m having a difficult time keeping my balance. I realize what song is playing. I totally love this song. I used to dance around to it all the time. “Nine Days” singing about a story of a girl.
Not even needing to see him, I feel Skylar come up behind me, and in perfect time with the song, he whispers in my ear, “and I absolutely love her.”
I turn around to face him and he puts his hand on the back of my hip and slides his finger underneath the fabric of my tight tank top. The touch of him, skin to skin, is too much. I’m mad at him. He hurt me. He broke my heart.
“What the hell are you doing Skylar?”
“I told you I wanted to talk Mira. Do you want to go somewhere a little less noisy and talk? It’s quiet upstairs,” he tells me, pointing towards the stairwell.
I agree to go with him. I thought the whiskey and I were going to be good friends tonight, but much like my body and hormones, I am betrayed.
Stabbed in the back by whiskey.
We walk up the dark stairwell that opens into a small kitchen area with booths similar to the ones on the first floor. I look around; it’s basically empty except for a young kid behind the bar. He’s wearing a vest, but it doesn’t have anything on the back. I walk over to the kid and ask him for a shot of Jack and he obliges.
“You might want to slow down Mira. I don’t want you throwing up all over the clubhouse,” Skylar says to me as he tries to grab the shot fr
om my hand before I toss it back.
“Sky, I’ve made it the last year of my life without you making my decisions or weighing in your opinion. I got this. Please back the hell off,” I say as I toss the shot back.
When the liquid finally hits my stomach I realize that maybe I should have listened to Skylar. It hits me like a ton of bricks. I feel a little acid rise from my stomach, but I quickly recover and ask for a glass of coke to ease the burning in my belly.
“Mira, I’m worried about you. You sat here and in a matter of an hour, drank enough to give a grown man a hella buzz. You have to be drunk out of your mind.”
“Drunk? Yes, Skylar. Drunk out of my mind? No. I haven’t been drunk out of my mind in quite some time,” I respond, slurring my words a little and over annunciating the syllables.
In the six years Skylar has known me, I don’t think he’s ever seen me drunk out of my mind. I think I can count on one hand the times I have been so drunk I thought I was going to die. All but one of those times were when I was in high school, trying to be cool.
Skylar and I sit down at one of the booths and I lean into the cool red plastic covering the seats. The chill feels so good on my overheated body. I really have no idea if I’m so hot because Skylar is close or from the whiskey pumping through me. I’ll just think it’s the booze to make myself feel better.
“What have you been up to Mira? You look less like yourself and more like someone you’re pretending to be,” Skylar says with his eyes piercing into mine.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I ask. Ah, the cunt is coming out in me after all.
“No need to get defensive Mira, just want to know what you have been up to in the last year.”
“Well Skylar, or should I call you Axe? I wouldn’t want your friends to know your real name since Max didn’t know who the hell Skylar was,” I say.
“Mex. His name is Mex. We don’t really use government names in here. It just makes things easier.” Skylar says, chuckling.
“So did Heather scream out Skylar or Axe?”
“I never slept with Heather. I wanted to get a rise out of you. I swear it Mira.” Skylar says honesty in his eyes.
“Oh right. You never slept with Heather and I never miscarried our baby.”
FUCK.
For the last ten and a half months I have carried this secret. Nobody knew. Not my mom, not Kylee and certainly not Skylar. I never wanted anyone to know. I wanted to take this to my grave.
Skylar looks like he’s trying to process the bomb I just dropped in his lap. His eyes are roaming; he’s clenching his fists and gritting his teeth. I see anger flash in his eyes before he takes his closed fists and pounds them on the table, making me jump out of my seat, sobering me up real quick.
“What the fuck did you just say Mira?”
Okay. Breathe Mira. You opened this can of worms. Fuck.
“Don’t worry about it Skylar. It’s the past. You wanted to talk, so talk.”
Skylar jumps out of his seat and I sit back in mine. I may feel sober, but my body still has too much whiskey in it. Skylar paces back and forth across the front of the bar. I think the kid asked Skylar a question and Skylar flipped out.
“Get your shit, get the fuck downstairs. Lock the door on your way out. Let nobody up here. Understood?” Skylar yells at the kid.
I think the kid is scared shitless. He has such a blank expression on his face. He grabs his keys from behind the bar and moves to the stairwell, taking one last look at me almost saying, ‘you might want to come with me if you don’t want to get thrown out the window’ and then keeps moving. I hear every step he takes running down the stairs and then the door at the base of the stairwell slamming shut.
“The kid didn’t do anything wrong Skylar, calm down and we can talk about this.” I say softly, trying to calm him.
He looks at me and continues to pace. What the hell? I can’t deal with this shit much longer. I stand back up and put my hand on his shoulder trying to turn him. He shrugs his shoulder sending my hand to fall to my side.
“Skylar?”
Skylar walks to the far wall and punches it so hard his hand goes straight through the drywall. I’m so scared. I’ve never seen him this mad. There were a few times I had seen him upset, but never like this. He punches the wall a few more times and I start to cry as I sit back in the booth. I scoot all the way back to the wall, lean against it, and pull my knees to my chest, ducking my head on my knees to hide my tears and give me some protection if his anger turns to me. My dark hair makes somewhat of a curtain, blocking my side vision.
I hear him walk to me, so I lift my head a little to just to confirm that he’s standing directly in front of the bench I’m sitting on. His fists are opened and relaxed at his side. At least if I am going to get hit, it’ll be open handed. I gain a little more courage and lift my head to meet his eyes.
To my surprise, he has tears falling from his eyes, his entire face saturated with wetness. I immediately look to his hands that are bleeding and look back up at him. I drove him to cause physical pain to himself. I start crying even harder as I reach for his hands. I know it sounds stupid, but I have the urge to kiss away his pain, starting with his bloody knuckles.
As I reach for his hands, he pulls them away and takes a step back. I look back up to his face to see the tears have now stopped and he’s become emotionless.
“Sky, talk to me. I’m so sorry. Where is a first aid kit? I need to clean your hands.”
“Do you think I give a fuck about my hands Mira? Really? I could give a fuck,” he says, slamming his fist into yet another wall. “These hands don’t fucking mean shit.”
I try to get out of the booth when he sits down, blocking my path of escape and brings his face within inches of mine. He is seething. If cartoons were real, with the smoke coming out of ears and all, this is exactly what would be happening right now.
“We had a child,” he whispers.
Casting my eyes downward, picking at the edges of my shorts I whisper back, “Yes.”
“I know this isn’t your fault Mira. You can’t control a miscarriage, but I had a child. I made a child. I made a child with you. You have no fucking idea how happy and how depressed that makes me, do you? Do you think I cried over my hands? If you do, you’re fucking dense. I had a child. A child you hid from me. You went through something so terrible and I couldn’t be there for you. Why would you do that to me Mira? How could you do that to me? If nothing else, we were friends. I would have given anything to you and you didn’t even have the decency to tell me about something like this? A life that we created together? Tell me Mira, since you didn’t even tell me you were pregnant, what would have happened if you didn’t miscarry?”
I couldn’t meet his eyes. I knew exactly what he was asking me. I knew the answer to that question. It wasn’t the answer he was looking for. By my silence, he figured out my answer. He knew that I wasn’t going to keep that baby. That I was never even going to tell him about it. I had felt bad when considering the alternative to having a baby with a man who didn’t love me or want a life with me, but nothing felt worse than this feeling. The feeling of absolute guilt and depression. I try to look up to see his face when he stands up from the bench and starts to walk towards the stairwell.
“You have hurt me in the worst possible way Mira. This pain that I feel, you will never experience. I wasn’t even worth a phone call.” With that, he storms out of the stairwell, leaving me alone to wallow in my own misery.
He was right. I didn’t even give him a phone call. I don’t deserve his friendship but I will do anything I can to try to make this betrayal up to him. I wasn’t strong enough to do it before, but now, knowing that I hurt him to his core, I know I have to fix this.
Chapter Thirteen
Skylar
I can’t stay here with Mira tonight. As I leave the stairwell, I run straight into Kylee, still dancing. She has developed quite the fan club, guys sitting on the tabletops just staring at her, wat
ching her move. If I didn’t know her better, I’d be worried, but Kylee loves attention. More than that, she loves attention from the opposite sex. I think there were even times she enjoyed attention from the same sex, but that was in college, I laugh to myself.
“Kylee, I’m going to head out. Mira’s upstairs. When she decides to come down, please make sure she gets home alright?” I ask as I give her a hug goodbye.
“What do you mean when she decides to come down? What the hell did you do to her?” Kylee scolds.
“It’s not something I can talk about. If you want to know, ask your girl. I need to get out of here for a while. Hopefully when I get back, she’s not here anymore. Please just make sure she gets home okay, Ky.”
“Skylar McBride, if I find out you hurt her again, I swear, I’ll have your balls,” Kylee says, staring at me with hands on her hips and attitude on her face.
“Trust me Kylee; I’m not the one that did the hurting tonight. That’s all on Mira. I’ll talk to you later, okay? Text me when you get her home, she’s pretty trashed.”
I give Kylee one more hug as I head towards the door of the clubhouse. I’ve just made it to my bike when Mex walks towards me, shaking his head.
“Those girls were something else, huh brother?” Mex asks, stopping a few feet from my bike.
“Something else is an understatement, man. What are you doing? I’m gonna go hit another clubhouse. Want to go?”
“Yeah man, I’m down. Let me run and tell Prowler we’re leaving,” Mex says, turning to walk into the bar.
A few minutes later, we’re on the road. I don’t know which house I want to go to tonight. I just know that I need to get somewhere that’s laid back and chill. Knowing the exact spot I’m thinking of, I take off even faster down the highway. Mex follows behind me, letting me do my thing. Riding is my outlet, it always has been. After Danny’s accident, the joy of the road beneath two wheels was almost stolen from me, but I’m happy that I still have one thing in my life that makes me happier than almost anything else.
A Ride or Die Kind of Love Page 157
