Finding Patience

by Eden Rose

  I close my eyes briefly and then open them when a man with familiar blue eyes is looming over my table. He’s leaning so far over the table that I can smell his cologne. It’s almost as if I have seen him before. I just can’t place him.

  His bone structure reminds me of someone that I know. Who is this guy?

  “Patience, why did you release a sex tape? Are you trying to get more sales with your albums? Are you trying to promote your next tour?” The man fires the questions at me.

  Rolling my neck, I answer honestly. “What happened with the recording of my husband and I is a sex crime. Whoever did it, you will be caught and prosecuted. You recorded us without our permission and you distributed it without our knowing. Because of this, you will be found and sent to jail.”

  I’m bluffing about the being sent to jail shit, but a girl can hope.

  The man smirks at me with a lightness in his eyes like he’s soft for me or something. “What makes you think it was someone else? Couldn’t it have been your husband? Maybe someone in The Lucifer’s Lair MC?”

  I shake my head. “Why would someone I just met want to record-”

  Nuh uh. No way would they do something like that! They wouldn’t use my popularity to gain money. Right?

  Now that the idea has been planted in my mind, I try to focus on what else he’s saying.

  “How do you know? Do you know anything about these men?”

  Kate stands up in front of the guy and shakes her head to end the conversation.

  I stand up out of my seat, but I waver. My body moves front to back and no matter what I do, I can’t get steady on my feet.

  Nothing is working.

  Closing my eyes, I place my hand over my pounding headache hoping to soothe it in any way that I can. The last thing that I need is another scandal happening here. It’s bad enough that people are talking about me as if I’m some whore.

  Skin and Andre are right behind me in seconds placing their hands on my back to help steady me. With one look at Kate, both of my body guards convey to her that I’m done for this press conference.

  “Thank you for coming,” I murmur to the crowd and let my body guards lead me.

  I could feel the tension in the room shift dramatically as soon as we are out of hearing shot of the paparazzi. I knew the second they could, each of body guards are going to lay into me about not eating. This is the part that sucks the most about being in this industry. You have to be skinny but not too skinny. You can’t be fat because they automatically think you’re pregnant.

  It’s a never ending cycle.

  Skin and Andre are leading me towards the awaiting Hummer that’s outside for us. I’ve personally thought that limos were too flashy so I have never requested that I have one.

  They all but throw me into the waiting vehicle and slam the door shut after their big bodies have cleared the doorway.

  “How long?” Skin asks me with warning lacing his voice.

  “Yesterday?” I reply.

  Andre’s to the right of me and he has his arm around my shoulders to comfort me. “Are you asking us or telling us? And what did we say about lying?”

  Fuck me.

  Honestly, I don’t know the last time that I ate a whole meal. I have been on the go for the past four years and food hasn’t been in the forefront of my mind. Typically, I will drink a latte a day and then water for the rest of the day.

  “You didn’t eat today,” Skin mutters to me totally undermining my wanting to lie.

  I shake my head.

  “You realize what those bloodsuckers are going to do to you if you actually passed out in there? They would blast it all over the tabloids! Plus, they would probably throw in a pregnancy scandal too. You want that?” Skin demands.

  The driver of the Hummer spins in his seat to look at me with worry etched in his eyes. “You’re eating and I don’t want to hear shit about it,” George declares with authority.

  By the time food is in front of me, I’m feeling too sick to even eat it. The thought of food in my stomach makes me nauseas.

  Their eyes are piercing through me and I lift up a piece of the sandwich to bring it to my mouth.

  The sandwich feels like lead in my mouth. Chewing was a chore because I don’t want to swallow the food. I chew until the small bite pretty much dissolves in my mouth.

  “Good girl,” George praises me with a smile. The older man has always been a sweetie to me. He’s one of those men that take his job seriously to the point where he voluntarily gave up his house to move in to my guest house. Standing at six feet, he could give Skin and Andre a run for their money with his menacing looks.

  Smiling at him, I think of all the ways that I’m going to fire him.

  *

  “Is everyone ready to learn the choregraphy for the concert?” Mr. Bates asks with his left foot out and hip cocked.

  The man spews rainbows but he’s amazing at what he does. Everyone must agree with me because he’s typically booked up a year in advance for any workshops.

  I stretch out my arms, kick out my legs and nod at him ready for the torture. “Let’s do this so I can go home and ice all the muscles you’re about to strain,” I taunt him walking over towards the front of the practice hall.

  Mr. Bates, whose real name is Frances but he would kill you if you called him that, is about thirty years old with enough dance experience to be this impressive. “Now, look, little missy! If you were to practice your routines during the week, you wouldn’t be whining in here! Now, let’s get in line and work it!”

  Dancing in high heels is not an easy feat. I have to balance myself and I also have to look graceful. Since I don’t perform with an audio tape playing through the speakers at my concerts, I make sure that I can sing through each dance move. It’s a lot of practice, but I feel that it makes me a better performer than those that rely on the audio playback.

  “Damn, P! Work that body!” Josh, one of my dancers, shouts at me from behind. He’s got his hands on my hips and we are rocking to the beat of my new song that I just released last week.

  I smile at him, shaking my ass against his groin to make him nervous. Josh is a very attractive man who happens to bat for the other team. He’s got the Adonis belt in his abs, tanned skin, dimples that make you melt, and a laugh so contagious. He’s also an extremely amazing dancer.

  Cassidy, one of my lead female dancers, stands in front of me with her hand out. “Uh, boss. This came for you in the mail,” she stutters as she hands it over to me.

  Nervously, I take it in my hands.

  Like some cliched scene from a horror movie, my hands shake while I hold the envelope in my hand. The envelope is rather thick and it looks like one of the ones people use to send documents through mail.

  There’s no post mark or anything on the envelope meaning someone had to have dropped it off.

  My name is written on the front in blocked letters making it impossible to decipher if it’s a female or a male writer.

  “What’s in the envelope, sweetie?” Sean asks from behind me.

  He’s another one of my dancers that I have had on my team for a little over a year. He’s the youngest on my roster and he’s also the only straight man I have hired. Feels weird to say that, but it’s true.

  Pulling the flap up, I look inside to see thick pieces of paper. The kind of paper one would you to print photos off from.

  Have you ever had one of those moments where you want to know something but then you don’t want to know it all at the same time? You obsess over what it could be when you have the opportunity to find out what it is but you’re freaked out?

  I’m having one of those moments right now.

  Holding the envelope between my sweaty arm and equally sweaty body, I slide the pictures out of it. What I see is something that I never expected to see.

  RABIES

  Finding my parents wasn’t the hard part. The idiots left their accounts wide open for anyone to track them down. However, those fuckers knew ho
w to do one thing.

  Change their address every month. Every month for the last four years, they have legally changed their addresses. There’s no telling if they moved into these places or if they were trying to hide from the cops.

  Who knows with these assholes!

  Pinky and Jen are stretched out on The Bear’s bed in the club with their computers in their laps ready to do the job. I go through every memory I had of my parents trying to think of something that could lead us to them.

  Whipping out my phone, I tap out a text to Patience to see how she’s doing. We didn’t make plans for the night and I have no idea where we go from here.

  ME: hows practice? Miss me yet?

  “Texting the wifey?” Jen asks me somewhere behind her big belly.

  The woman is all belly now and it’s all you can see when you look at her. She’s just a walking, talking beach ball.

  “Yeah,” I grumble when I don’t get a text back soon enough.

  Chantal’s got her feet up against the headboard and her pink hair spread around her head. She and Jen are laying opposite ways but it’s cute to see them like this.

  “You know she’s probably busy, right? Your wife isn’t someone just off the fucking street,” Chantal informs me.

  “Who the fuck asked you?” I blurt before I realize I did it.

  She turns to her side to pierce me with her beautiful eyes. “You did, remember? When you asked for my help you asked me for my opinion. You don’t want my opinion then you don’t need my help. What about that?”

  I roll my eyes. “All right! What the fuck ever. Have you found anything?” I demand impatiently.

  The quicker I get my hands on my parents, the quicker they will be disposed of.

  They have fucked up everything! Telling my wife I died, costing me five years with my child and wife. Filming us having sex? Who the fuck does something like that to their own son?

  Oh, that’s right. My parents.

  “I think I have something!” Jen squeals from around her beach ball. “You have a cabin in the North Woods?” She asks me with pure concern.

  “No. My parents were too fuckin’ cheap for something like that. The minute that they would buy a cabin… yeah, right.”

  Chantal’s peering over Jen’s shoulder and she nods her head at me. “I think we have a winner.”

  The Bear strolls into the room with a purpose and a smile on his face. “Did I hear we have a winner? You know how much I love this shit! Explosives, bombs, pipe bombs, dynomite… The list is endless!” He bellows with a demented smile on his face.

  Placing my head in my hands, I realize that we only have one way to draw out my parents and that’s to piss them off. “I’m thinkin’ pipe bombs, prez. You got any in stock?”

  “Step into my office!”

  Leaving the girls behind, I follow The Bear into the shed that he keeps the arsenal at. It’s locked up tighter than Fort Knox but we also don’t want people stealing our shit. This shit was expensive!

  Especially because we had to travel to Mexico to smuggle it across the border.

  “You sure you don’t wanna pay the money, bro? No harm in that,” he advises me.

  Nodding my head enthusiastically, I give him the assurance that he needs.

  I love watching the door to the shed open. Probably better than Christmas. Way better than Christmas, who am I kidding?

  Rows and rows of guns of all makes and models, ammo scattered around the guns for easy stocking up, and that’s exactly what we did. There’s a large black duffle bag at each our feet that we’re loading and we’re stuffing it full.

  “Let’s roll out,” I call to The Bear and lift my bag up to holster it around my shoulder.

  Images that I can’t get out of my head, are driving me to do one of the worst sins in the world and that’s killing my parents. They couldn’t expect to fuck me over and not get what’s coming to them.

  They would be dumb as shit!

  “Flip, Bic, Slice and Trip!” The Bear calls out into the main room of the clubhouse as we walk through it.

  As always, the fuckers are passing back and forth a blunt with a bunch of pot broke down in front of them. There’s blunt sticks already gutted, bongs out with water already filled up and ready to go along with joint papers, too. Man, these guys went all out.

  Rolling my eyes, I realize how much I have truly changed since I found Patience and become a father. You better believe I would be stopping and hitting that bong a couple times before hunting down the two people that have singlehandedly tried to ruin my life. Fuck it, might as well get high is what I used to think. Now all I can think about is Alexa’s face if she saw me do it. Would she be proud to have some landscaper biker who also sells and smokes pot as a dad?

  Probably not.

  Adjusting the back on my shoulder I nod my head towards the door in a silent invitation for them to join. “We’ve got some, uh, business to attend to. You fuckers wanna come play?” I taunt with a wicked smile.

  Bic shakes his head, putting the bong down before looking at me. “Are you sure this is what you wanna do, brother? Once it’s done, it’s done and there’s no comin’ back from this. You get me?”

  “Yeah. I wanna do this. They fucked with me and my family. Sold a sex tape to the bloodsuckers! You think I’m gonna let them live after that?” I bellow.

  Forever the reasonable one, Bic’s quick to deescalate me from flipping the fuck out. He is such a grandfather type. “I don’t knock what you wanna do. I just wanted to make sure you knew what this means.”

  Nodding my head, I don’t add anything more to his argument. Why? Because I don’t see the point in arguing with him over something that I’m going to do.

  “You guys ready? We got enough for you lazy bastards,” The Bear chuckles and shakes his bag.

  We walk past our bikes to the blacked out van that we use for recon missions. Hey, just because I retired from the Army doesn’t mean I don’t still think like a damn soldier. That vocabulary won’t ever leave my mind.

  “It doesn’t feel right without Mack Truck,” Flip mumbles to himself as he slides behind the wheel of the van.

  The van is a typical utility one with nothing remarkable about it. We got it because some mother fuckers owed us money and couldn’t pay their shit. You don’t borrow money and not pay it back. That’s not how the business works.

  I climb into the back bucket seat next to Slice and Trip. Looking to the left sliding van door, I see The Bear smoking a blunt. He’s got it pinched between his thumb and index finger as he chiefs the blunt.

  “Sharing is caring, mother fucker,” Bic yells out of his seat in the front.

  The Bear takes the blunt out of his mouth and stubs out the hot box. He’s just about to the van when he looks at Bic with an irritated look. “Who says you get front seat?” He growls.

  Since Bic isn’t one to back down, he shakes his head and then looks straight. The old man has balls of steel!

  “You can sit in the back and cuddle with your butt buddies,” Bic retorts without even looking at him.

  Bringing out the blunt again, he lights it and takes a puff. He holds it out for Bic with the smoke still in his mouth. You get a way better high when you keep the smoke in your mouth and throat. It intensifies the high.

  When Bic takes the half-gone blunt, he raises it in the air. “To Mack Truck. Wherever you are, I hope you find peace!” He sucks in a puff, handing the blunt over to Flip.

  He does the same thing with the blunt but says something different. I know that Flip and Mack Truck had a complicated relationship with Britney and all of that shit. I’m pretty positive that they’ve fucked her together but I’m not going to be the one to ask.

  “To Mack Truck. I miss you, brother. Shit’s not the same without you. Hope you’re lookin’ down on us today. Or up, you crazy bastard!”

  The blunt is then passed to Slice who does the same thing. “To Mack Truck. Wish you were here, man. We miss you.”

  The
n to Trip who didn’t really know him that well. “Mack Truck, thanks for being awesome and the best big brother I could ever have in the club.”

  Well, that contradicted what I originally thought. I never saw the two of them together for too long.

  Rolling my eyes, I take it and hold it in the air. “Mack, miss you, bro. Keep an eye out on us.” Sucking in my puff, I hand it over to Slice.

  Slice has changed dramatically since Jen came into his life. Especially, after she finally got her shit together and admitted to herself and to him that she loved him. The Slice before Jen was a man whore who fucked anything with legs. This Slice is more sentimental and all that shit.

  He holds it in the air. “What can I say, Mack. You know how much you meant to us. See you soon, brother.”

  Now that the blunt has made it through the circle, it’s back with The Bear. He stuffs out the hot box again but this time throws it on the ground. It’s pretty much done, anyways.

  He climbs into the back of the van to sit next to me and we’re now sitting three deep. I’m in the middle but I have enough room to spread out my legs.

  The boys need to breathe.

  Sliding my phone out of my breast pocket of my cut, I unlock it. I type out a quick message to Patience letting her know what’s going on.

  ME: hey, baby. I’m gonna be out for a while. Let you know when I’m coming home

  Her reply is almost automatic which surprises me because I know she’s busy doing whatever it is that she does.

  PATIENCE: all right. Be safe.

  ME: you doing okay?

  PATIENCE: long day

  ME: see you when I get home

  PATIENCE: kk

  *

  PATIENCE

  In my hands are the photos of Brett fucking dozens of women in various places. There’s some where he’s banging them in a bar, a car, a shop, a store… There’s no fucking limits.

  My Brett! Fucking other women! My husband looking pleasured by blow jobs and fucking women in the ass.

  My jealousy sky rockets and I feel my blood heating up with anger.

  He fucked all these women? He did that to me? To us? How could he fuck so many women and then just be with me? What’s going to happen when I go on tour and he’s not getting any ass on a regular basis? Is he going to run back to these whores?