by A. J. Downey
The laughs were plenty, the jokes dirty, and the sun was well on its way down. Dusk settled over the party, the citronella tiki torches getting lit, and the bonfires down at the lake starting to smoke and catch.
“Thank you so much for all of this,” Serenity told Dray when she found out his position in his club. She was gazing out toward the lake, past the winking flames of the citronella candles and torches along the paths and staked out in the flowerbeds.
“It’s our pleasure,” he said, and he sounded so much like his dad, the SHMC’s president, I couldn’t help but smile to myself over it.
We ended up by the fire, in a circle with mostly SHMC and their women. Dray and his woman, Everett. Trigger and Sunshine, along with Reaver and Doll. Reaver’s son, Nox and Maren, and her little brother Sage. Of our crew, Cutter, Hope, Galahad, Charity, and Faith were there and I was just about to ask about Marlin, when my acoustic bass was passed in front of my face.
“Ha, ha! Yeah,” I took it and Marlin stepped over the log my little orchid and I were leaning against.
It was cooling off, and Data came by with a stack of plaid throw blankets.
“Anyone need one?” he asked as I tuned up my rig.
“Yeah, man. Can you give one to my girl?” I asked.
He handed one down to Serenity, who took it with a soft thank you and wrapped it around her shoulders. She cast a grateful look in my direction for speaking up for her. I winked and Marlin put his cig between his lips and strummed his guitar.
“Lay somethin’ down for me,” he said, and I gave a nod, and heard someone say from the other fire “Oh, no shit? They gonna play?”
“Ya shut up, we will!” Marlin called out.
Truth be told, these times around the random fires, late at night, playing with Marlin or even just by myself were my favorite.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing with my band but metal wasn’t always my scene. These quiet moments were something else. Something good for the soul. Thrashing it out on stage was a great way to let off steam, to belt out some anger, let it out barreling into the world with all the force of a fuckin’ freight train – but when I finished one of those shows I was exhausted, like I’d spent so much of myself.
This kind of playing, this music, did the exact opposite. This type of playing, this music, put something back.
“Ready when you are,” he said and I nodded and knocked against the side of my rig, tapping out a pattern between knuckles and a slap of my fingers against the glossy black wood. I laid down some chords and kept at it until Marlin figured me out and could lay over my bassline.
The melody poured from us both, an impressive array, but him and me? We’d been doing this kind of shit for a while.
Pretty soon, people were laughing, suitably surprised or impressed, some body rockin’ going on in their seats, and even some claps to keep the rhythm. What I wanted to see was what my little orchid thought, and that sight? Well, that was something else. Her eyes were closed, her face slack and at peace as she listened. It catapulted my heart straight into the stratosphere, I’m telling you.
We drank around the fire, played long into the night, and by the time we decided enough was enough, my little orchid was sound asleep, leaned back against the log, cuddled in her blanket.
“Hey, somebody take this and follow me up so I can take her?” I asked.
“Yeah, brother. I got you.” Trigger got up, and Sunshine rose like her namesake from the ground, her sunny disposition a little ragged around the edges.
“I’ll meet you back at the cabin if that’s alright, baby?”
“Yeah, yeah!” he said and kissed her quickly. “Have Reaver walk you along with Doll,” he said.
“I got ‘em, bro,” Reaver said, helping his woman to her feet.
“Thanks.”
Trig reached out and took my bass from me and I gave a nod. Serenity sucked in a sharp breath and jolted, her arms going around my neck and shoulders as I lifted her. She was barely a buck and some change, and I was used to holding up more on the regular in my line of work. Still, I couldn’t do it forever, and I was glad the lodge wasn’t too far.
I set off in that direction and she laughed and said, “Put me down before you hurt yourself.”
“Not on your life, babe,” I said and I meant it.
I would never let her go.
23
Serenity…
I slept like the dead, safe and warm and loved in Stoker’s arms, and the next morning, at breakfast, the Sacred Heart nicknamed Reaver and his wife approached us, along with Cutter and Hope.
“Hey!” Reaver dropped down onto the bench beside me and I slightly leaned away from him into Stoker. There was something about him that bothered me, and something more that made me immediately feel guilty about it. I mean, he was a genuinely nice and funny guy. Just, something about a coldness in his gaze told me there wasn’t something quite right with him and I’d glimpsed scars on him when he’d been wandering around shirtless, in just his leather vest, the day before that told me he was absolutely no stranger to violence.
“What’s up?” Stoker asked him over my head.
“Heading on out for a ride to go check out some waterfalls,” Cutter said. “Wanted to know if you wanted to come along.”
“That sounds wonderful, actually,” I said looking forward to a slight break from all of the people.
“Excellent!” Reaver crowed and tousled my hair. I jerked back from under his hand with a slightly offended laugh and he bounded up. Stoker smiled at me and I smiled back, and he gave a nod.
“Just give us a bit to finish up our breakfast and change clothes and meet us out at the bikes,” Cutter said.
“You’ve got it, Captain.”
“I’ll have Contessa pack us up a picnic lunch,” Doll said.
“Ooo! Good idea, baby!” Reaver kissed his woman, Hope winked at me over her sunglasses, and the four of them melted off into the crowd while I finished my sausage, eggs, and fruit a bit more quickly than I should have.
“Slow down there! They’ll wait fer yah.” Dragon, the president of the Sacred Hearts mother chapter was kind in his admonishment, but I still blushed.
“Too late now,” I said, smiling. “I’m done.”
He chuckled and tapped the filter of a fresh cigarette against the rest of his pack. “Keep the shiny side up, my friend,” he told Stoker, and Stoker gave him a nod.
“Will do, thanks.”
I was kind of in awe. If only our leaders and politicians acted like the leaders of these clubs who clearly cared about every individual, the world would be a much better place.
We went in and changed, I braided my hair over my shoulder, and Stoker smiled over at me as he pulled on his scuffed motorcycle boots and adjusted the cuffs of his jeans over the top.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Just about.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed beside him and pulled on my own boots, a pair of laced boots I’d had in the back of my closet and not nearly as well-made as the riding-specific boots he owned, but serviceable. I laced them up and tied them tight so the laces wouldn’t come loose and stood up. He got up and held my jacket – again a much cheaper knock-off – with my new leather vest over it. I shrugged into it all and turned around, running into a surprise kiss.
“Mm, what was that for?” I asked.
“Because I love you,” he murmured.
I smiled. “I love you, too.”
“Glad to hear it, baby. You ready now?”
“I am.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
We spent the day on a sunshine-filled ride, the wind whipping all cares or worries away. Hope rode double with Cutter this time as we wound our way on scenic highways and byways on a loop of waterfall exploration.
Let me tell you, these weren’t anything like the waterfalls in Florida. The waterfalls in Florida were barely a trickle by comparison. We picnicked on a big blanket near one of them, which is where I learned ab
out Cutter and Reaver’s propensity for knives as well as that the entire trip had been staged for my benefit – that part of the fun for these guys was target shooting back at the lodge, and rather than place me near the gunfire, they’d opted for this day-trip so everyone could be satisfied.
I couldn’t be upset about it. In fact, I couldn’t believe they had gone so far out of their way for my benefit. I may have even teared up a little.
“Aw, don’t cry!” Doll had hugged me and Hope had shaken her head a bit ruefully.
“You’ve got a family now, Orchid. Better get used to it.”
It was more than a bit of a foreign concept.
I’d been a mistake. My mother had, for the most part, been a working-poor single mother. I’d been a welfare baby, had been mostly in charge of taking care of myself starting when I was seven. I mean, from seven to nine I was a latchkey kid while my mother worked shifts at the local WalMart.
Then she met Daryl. He’d moved in, and let me tell you, he’d never had a problem telling me what a drain, what a waste I was.
I left school bullied and generally beat down, only to go home and suffer through it some more. I was living proof that words sometimes could hurt more than a rock or a fist. I don’t honestly know how I held my shit together, how I hadn’t attempted suicide or something.
Yes, you do.
Kyle.
Kyle, and then Linny.
“As long as it’s how families are supposed to work,” I said, “then I’m on board.”
Cutter shook his head and asked me, “Just what happened to you, anyway?”
“Shitty home life,” I said with a shrug. “Shittier school life. Kids are assholes,” I said and didn’t want to expand much beyond that.
“It’s cool,” he said. “You ain’t gotta tell us shit. We all got our pasts and secret pains. Just know that with us, you ain’t gotta hide it. You really do just get to be you.”
“I am,” I said with a smile. “There’s really not much to me.”
“Now, that is a damn lie,” Stoker said and pulled me into his side, smacking a kiss to my forehead. Everyone laughed and I laughed too, but I honestly didn’t see it or understand it. There really wasn’t anything to me that I saw.
“Someone mentioned you were in a school shooting, that’s why the little road trip – what was that like?”
“Reaver!” Doll slapped him in the chest, but he didn’t move, just kept that unsettling, still gaze on me.
“Awful, and no offense, it’s not something I talk about,” I said shifting uncomfortably.
“I’m sure Reave didn’t mean anything by it, sugar. What I think he meant to say was if you ever need to talk about it, any one of us is around to listen. Doesn’t do well to bottle things like that up,” Cutter said, stretching.
“He’s right, on all accounts,” Hope said.
I nodded.
“No, I know, I just don’t talk about it and would really rather not – like ever, if I can avoid it. It’s too painful.”
“Alright, you guys,” Stoker came to the rescue.
Doll jumped in to help.
“It’s totally time for a change of subject,” she said, and just like that, the subject changed to the fights that were supposed to happen that night.
As in fist fights between the guys. I was pretty sure Hope was the only female just as enthusiastic about it. I understood things like boxing and televised MMA fighting, but just randomly beating the crap out of someone that was supposed to be your brother?
“See, I don’t get it,” I said, laughing. “Maybe it’s lost on me because I never had any siblings.”
“Probably,” Reaver agreed, bobbing his head like a bobble-head doll. I laughed and he winked at me. I could recognize a certain kind of broken in him. He had a driving need to be liked by everyone around him and used comedic action to that end. I recognized it, because I felt the same driving need to be liked, I just went about it a different way. By being useful, by trying to remain unobtrusive.
I had a lot of food for thought on the ride back to the lodge. Stoker checked me regularly in the side-view mirror, reaching back to squeeze my knee affectionately. I smiled for him, but I would like to talk… to him. It was no offense to anyone else in his club. I was just far more comfortable with Stoker, which considering how intimate we were, only made sense.
I took a long time to warm up to people, to trust them. While I loved Faith and Charity, I was intimidated by Hope, and to some degree, Hossler, too. Everyone with the SHMC I just plain didn’t know well enough to spill my deepest darkest secrets. That, and merely talking about them seriously felt like complaining, and I had learned early on, complaining about things didn’t get you anywhere, so why do it?
When we got back to the lodge, it was just as dinner was about to start. Lunch had been a while ago and I could eat, so that’s precisely what we all did; went in and changed into cooler clothing and went out to the back deck to load some plates.
Everyone was in good spirits when we returned and there was a bunch of chatter about Trigger ‘doing it again’, and a bunch of guys from both clubs congratulating him for it.
I just ate quietly beside Stoker, my mind still turning thoughts and interactions from earlier in the day over and over.
I mean, I knew I needed intensive therapy. The only problem was any mental health services I would need were too far out of reach for me. It’d helped, the times I’d gone when the services had been available right after – well… right after. But, then I’d been transferred, and those services were for Rachel Alice Morgan students at Rachel Alice Morgan… I wasn’t at Rachel Alice Morgan anymore, so I had slipped through the cracks.
My family was working poor and didn’t have the luxury of medical insurance. Nor did I really have the luxury of it now. I mean, I lost a good portion of my wages to have it, but the deductible was so high on it, it wasn’t like I could ever really use it. In fact, it would have been cheaper to incur the tax-time penalties every year than have it. At least for a while.
I was in that subsection of Americans that suffered rather than benefited from the Affordable Care Act, but I couldn’t fault the government that had implemented it. They really were trying to help, at least I liked to think so, and I also liked to think that someday they would come up with something better that worked better for people like me.
Again, there wasn’t any use complaining about it. It just was what it was, had to be accepted, and I had to move on and make the best of what I did have.
I was a pro at that, or so I thought.
I was in the kitchen of the lodge, bringing in one of the big, mostly empty potato salad bowls, trying to be useful and bring things in from outside when it happened.
Boom!
I froze, and it was like a scene from a movie inside my own head. The kitchen wavered, the expensive tile floor, the no-slip matting shifting and disappearing, replaced by flat linoleum that sparkled with polish under the overhead fluorescent lighting.
I heard it again – Boom! Only this time I wasn’t at the lodge anymore.
My mind had taken me right back to Rachel Alice Morgan’s halls. To people running, the emergency exit chained shut – fuck! I panicked. I took a deep breath, then another one before the first had been completely exhaled. The urgency there, the flight instinct in full swing.
Okay, out. I have to get out.
But I wasn’t there, and somehow in the back of my mind I knew I wasn’t, and even though, in my memories my feet traveled forward, I felt myself sink to the floor in this cognitive dissonance of both being aware and totally unaware at the same time that you’re not really there.
I couldn’t stop it, though. My mind had me trapped on this hellride of having to bear witness to everything I tried to keep locked away in the overflowing vault of bad memories, and bad waking dreams of ‘shit I lived through.’
Down the hall, through the open fire doors, take a left, down the next hall – Boom! Was that closer or further away?
I picked up my pace, I was running now, running even though it felt like someone held me still. Terrified tears ran down my face as I made the worst decision and even though my mind screamed silently, no, no, no, no, No! Don’t go in there! I did… I went through the doors leading into the cafeteria and froze.
She was lying on her side. Caroline. Caroline Caruthers, in the midst of all that shiny linoleum, the dark stain of her blood seeping across it. Wrong all wrong. Her blue eyes sightless and staring, her face gore-flecked from the blowback of the gaping wound in the center of her chest where her heart should be, but was just raw meat.
I retched and looked up into the ice cold gaze of…
“Kyle?”
I whimpered.
He smiled at me, and his gaze warmed and I couldn’t understand… He racked the sawed-off shotgun between his hands and I jumped. He smiled at me like he held all the power, and he did...
“I did it for you,” he said, and he looked so little-boy-proud at his accomplishment.
He stepped toward me and I stepped back, asking, horrified, “What have you done?”
“Made it so these fucksticks know who’s in charge! Made it so these fucking animals can never hurt you again!” he shouted, and I cringed.
I couldn’t keep the horror, the terror, off of my face and Kyle’s face pinched in anger as he screamed at me, “Don’t look at me that way! You’re supposed to be happy! I did this for you! I did this all for you! Come on now, Serenity!”
He took a step forward, I took a hurried step back, and his face contorted into a sort of agony.
“Kyle, don’t,” I begged, but it was too late, he pressed the barrel of the shotgun under his chin.
“Kyle, don’t!” I screamed and BOOM!
Oh, my God, his face! His face vaporized into near-nothing, his body falling as I fell to my own knees, screaming, screaming over and over, wordless, panicked, soulless as everything I was was hollowed out of my center, splashed across the linoleum floor along with Caroline and Kyle’s blood which seeped into the holey knees of my jeans as I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to hold myself together.
