There was some purplish-blue bruising but hardly any swelling at my temple. There was a dull ache too but only when I thought about it. I brushed and flossed my teeth and washed my face. Then I bent and picked up Buster and put her on the vanity counter so she could keep me company while I put on moisturizer, powder, blusher and mascara. She watched me do this, her tail hanging off the edge of the counter and flicking, her eyes blinking but curious. This was new to Buster. Tate obviously didn’t moisturize or apply makeup.
Then I got dressed in jeans and a girlfit, faded aubergine colored t-shirt that on the back had a set of black wings. It wasn’t really me but Wendy found it, made me try it on and it fit really well, I liked the wings at the back, they screamed Biker Babe! so I bought it. Under this I wore my purple underwear with black lace.
I packed everything up, an activity Buster wanted nothing to do with and I knew that because she pranced out of the bathroom.
I went back into the bedroom and gathered my clothes from the floor and shoved those in my bag too. Normally I would make the bed but there was no point in Tate’s room. The floor was littered with clothes and the surfaces of his nightstands and dresser were covered with the flotsam and jetsam from his life (likely from his pockets) – change, receipts, slips of paper. There was no point tidying.
I walked out of the room, down the hall and all the way to the mudroom where I dropped my bag by the door to the garage. Then I went into the kitchen and searched the cupboards for mugs. We hadn’t done the dishes last night. The bacon fat was still in the skillet. The plates in the sink.
I didn’t tidy those either, mostly because I heard the sliding glass door open.
I didn’t turn. I went to the coffeepot and started pouring.
My mug was mostly full when I felt bearded lips at my neck and an arm slid around my ribs.
“Mornin’, babe,” Tate muttered against my skin as he pulled my back into his front.
“Morning,” I said to the coffee and put the pot back under the filter.
“Come out and sit with me on the deck,” he ordered, his lips just under my ear, his soft words vibrating on the sensitive skin there in a way that would be delicious if I wasn’t heartbroken (okay, maybe it was an invitation voiced as an order but I was in no mood mainly because I was heartbroken).
“Thanks but I need you to take me home,” I told him. “Go for a swim.”
I felt Tate’s body go still.
He didn’t speak so I asked the coffeemaker, “Can you let me go? I need milk.”
He let me go but only so his hand could curl around my mug, pull the handle out of my fingers and put the mug on the counter. His mug joined it then his hands came to my hips and turned me around. He stepped in and I had no choice but to press my hips into the counter because of the limited space he allowed.
He put his hands on the counter on either side of me. I tilted my head back to look at him and saw he was studying me.
He did this for long moments so I repeated, “Tate, milk.”
“What’s up your ass, babe?”
Okay, now I was thinking maybe I was hallucinating during all those times Tate was supposedly sweet. He was most definitely a jerk.
“Nothing,” I lied. “I just need caffeine.”
His eyes moved over my face.
Then his voice changed to gentle when he asked, “You nap?”
“Sorry?” I asked back, confused at his tone and his question.
His hands on the counter came to my sides and slid around to my back, pulling me to him so he was holding me against his body. Because of this, I had no choice but to put my hands on his biceps.
“You don’t get enough sleep, baby.” His voice was still soft. “When do you catch up?”
“I don’t,” I told him and looked toward the fridge. “Now, if I can get some –”
“Ace,” he cut me off and I looked back at him.
“Tate, I’d like some coffee.”
He ignored me. “Everyone needs sleep.”
“Like I keep telling you, I’m used to it.”
“Yeah?” he asked as if he didn’t believe me.
“Yes,” I answered like I was getting impatient which I was.
His eyes moved to my temple as his hand slid up my back and then wound my ponytail around it, coming to rest with fingers curled around the back of my head.
“Your head hurt?” he asked.
“Only if I think about it,” I answered.
“Bruised,” he muttered, his eyes still on my temple.
“It’s not that bad,” I pointed out and it wasn’t. This was surprising, considering how much it hurt when it happened, but it was true.
His gaze moved to mine.
“What’s wrong, Laurie?”
“Nothing will be wrong once I get my coffee.”
“Why do you wanna go back to the hotel?”
“To swim before I have to go to work.”
“Deck time now. I’ll take you to the hotel and hang while you swim after work, before we come up here.”
I shook my head.
“I’m not coming up here after work,” I told him.
His fingers at my head tensed and his arm around my body tightened.
“Come again?” he asked.
“I’m not coming here after work,” I repeated and his face changed from searching and gentle to a little bit scary.
“Why not?”
“I’ll need to call Mom, Dad, Carrie, check in. Make sure everything is still okay. I haven’t called for a couple of days.”
“You can do that here.”
“It’s long distance.”
“So?”
“We talk a long time. It might be expensive.”
“Been leakin’ money awhile, babe, but just got two big paychecks and I wasn’t destitute before that. Think I can cover a long distance phone call.”
I tried a different strategy. “I don’t want you to watch me while I swim. It’ll put me off.”
“Then I’ll hang with Ned while you swim.” His faced dipped closer and his tone dipped lower. “And then hang with you when you shower after you swim.”
I pulled my head back.
“Tate, what I’m saying is, I need some alone time.”
His head pulled back too but his arm grew tighter.
“What the fuck?” he whispered.
“Alone time,” I reiterated.
“Just had three weeks of alone time, Ace,” he reminded me, his voice back to a little bit scary.
“Tate –”
“Laurie, I’ll repeat my earlier question. What’s up your goddamned ass?”
At his words and tone, my hands reflexively clenched his biceps and I stared at him.
Then I told him. “This isn’t working for me.”
With a hint of alarm I watched his eyes narrow and I felt that dark, bad vibe energy start to spark from him.
“What isn’t working?” he asked.
I took a hand from his bicep and motioned between him and me before putting it back and putting pressure on both.
“Us,” I answered.
My hips went back into the counter because he pressed them there.
“Seemed to be workin’ last night when you were fuckin’ me so hard you couldn’t breathe,” he reminded me.
“Yes, well…”
“Yes, well what?”
“Um…”
His hand left my hair and became an arm wrapped around my upper back, jerking me tighter to his body.
“Jesus, Lauren, I’ll ask one more fuckin’ time. What’s up your goddamned ass?”
At that, I lost hold of my temper which was my only choice since the only other thing I could do was lose hold on the tears I’d been ignoring since my couch contemplations last night and our scene in the bed early that morning.
“You’re a jerk!” I snapped.
“Yeah, I get pissed, I am. So?”
I felt my eyes get wide. “So?” I repeated.
“Not some
thin’ you don’t know about me, Ace.”
“I don’t like it!”
“Yeah?” he asked and went on before I could answer. “And I don’t like it when you lose hold of your attitude and turn into a bitch. But since most of the time you’re sweet or hilarious or you make my dick get hard, I can put up with that.”
“There it is,” I pointed out, trying to slide away at the same time pushing against his biceps but his arms got super tight and I stopped.
“What?”
“You just called me a bitch!”
“Babe, honest to God?” he asked, his voice impatient.
“Honest to God!” I snapped, my voice rising.
“You don’t know you can be a bitch?”
“No, I don’t. Normally I’m not. You draw it out in me.”
“So I’m not only a jerk, it’s me who makes you a bitch,” he stated.
“Yes,” I replied.
His arms didn’t loosen even as he tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“Let me go,” I demanded and his head tipped forward again.
“No,” he replied.
“And there it is again!” I declared instantly.
“What?” he clipped, his arms giving me a mini-shake.
“I get that you’re an alpha male, Captain, but bossing me around, making me do stuff I don’t want to do? Not… liking… that.”
His face dipped close. “All right, Ace, get it all out. What else?”
I’d had enough, more than enough, so I got up on my toes and got close to his face too. “Okay, Captain, here goes,” I started. “Neeta, Wood, Neeta, Wood and maybe a little bit more of Neeta and Wood!”
“You wanna expand on that?” he growled.
“Not me not expanding, Tate,” I snapped.
Tate head twitched then, immediately, he started his story.
“Knew her for as long as I can remember. Hooked up with her in high school. Partly ‘cause she was gorgeous, mostly ‘cause she put out. I was seventeen, she was fifteen and I wasn’t her first.”
I gasped at the knowledge that Neeta put out (and he wasn’t her first) at the age of fifteen. I lost my virginity at the age of twenty-one to my college sweetheart after his pre-graduation fraternity dance. We’d been going together for two years and he’d taken me to a posh hotel and bought me roses and told me he’d love me until the day he died after we did it. We were still friends and he called me on my birthday every year and each time he did we laughed together about the good old days for at least an hour.
It was doubtful at fifteen Neeta held out for posh hotels and roses and equally doubtful her first still remembered her birthday, if he ever knew it at all.
Tate continued. “She was wild but I knew that about her and it was a fuckin’ blast, always. She could have fun, Neeta. Always smilin’, laughin’, dancin’. She’d get up from watchin’ TV and dance into the fuckin’ kitchen to get a drink. The world was a dance for her. A party all in her head. But when I hooked up with her, spent that much time with her, something struck me, somethin’ not right about it. It wasn’t until later I realized she wasn’t wild. She was desperate. For what, I still don’t fuckin’ know, spent years tryin’ to figure it out same time I spent those years tryin’ to give it to her. All I know is, back then, I was too young and too addicted to her mouth wrapped around my cock to think of much else.”
This was way too much information.
“I –” I broke in but he shook his head.
“You wanted to know, babe, here it is,” he told me. “I think you get I was a good football player. And I was good. So good, I had scouts comin’ to games my junior year. Senior year I had six offers before I took the seventh and two came in the day after that. Neeta, she liked that, bein’ with me, lookin’ into our future, plannin’ it all out. It wasn’t about me, what I could do, what I earned. It was about what Neeta could get outta it.”
I bit my lip, Tate held my eyes and kept speaking.
“But Neeta, she’s not like you. She isn’t smart. She doesn’t work hard. She thinks of the future with her head in the clouds. And she doesn’t work for shit. Always, even when she was a little kid, expected everything to be handed to her on a silver platter. So she wants to party, have fun and she wants me with her. And I’m with her because I’ll get laid or get a blowjob but also because I’m not, there’s no fuckin’ tellin’ what she’ll get herself into. And, fuck me, I love her. Not just her mouth or her cunt, but her. The way she is, the way she dances through life.”
“Tate –”
“So I gotta look after her. Problem with that is, she gets bored, she wants somethin’ new, new faces, new adventures, new ways to have fun. And there I am, at her side one night when she finds that shit and the party we’re at gets busted. I know in my bones it ain’t where we’re supposed to be, these people are older than us, rough, no good. But she wouldn’t go, she was havin’ fun. I could go, she told me, but she was stayin’ and I knew no way I could leave her there on her own. And I was right, they were no good. So Neeta and I are there and we get busted along with them. Drugs, not pot, not coke, not a little bit of it, they had crack and they had lots of it because they dealt it. When I made the papers, local football star busted at a party hangin’ with drug dealers, Ace, let’s just say the football program at Penn State, they didn’t like that much.”
“My God,” I whispered, horrified at what he was telling me.
“They almost pulled the scholarship. Dad and Pop didn’t talk to them, explain things, they would have. They were puttin’ their money down on a future All-American. Not some asshole who gets his shit in the papers.”
“Tate –”
He cut me off with a dare. “That’s the first time she fucked up my life, you wanna hear more?”
“But you went to Penn State,” I reminded him quietly.
“Yeah, thanks to Dad and Pop,” he returned. “I quit Neeta and went to school.”
“So, um… later you took her back?” I asked cautiously.
“More times than you got fingers, Ace. Each time, she fucked up my life.” His arms gave me a powerful squeeze that made my breath catch and his voice got so low, I could feel it vibrating in my chest. “So I find this woman, see. High-class, great fuckin’ hair, legs that go forever but I see her when I’m pissed. I’m pissed at Bubba and I’m pissed at Krystal but most of all, I’m pissed at Neeta ‘cause I let the bitch play me again. Next day after Neeta plays me, the next fuckin’ day, that’s when I find this woman. She’s workin’ in my goddamned bar,” he growled and my heart stopped. “And I do not need that shit. Had years of that shit. I need that woman and the trouble that’s written all over her in my bar like I need a hole in my head. So I get pissed, say shit I don’t mean and what happens? I walk out after sayin’ that shit and she looks at me and I know she heard. Part of me, gotta tell you Laurie, is glad. Part of me can’t take it. Which part wins?”
“Tate –”
I got another squeeze. “Which part?” he demanded to know.
“I don’t –”
“You’re right here, Ace.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“What’s that say about me?”
“Sorry?”
“What’s that say about me?” he repeated.
“Honey, I don’t understand the question,” I whispered.
“Babe, honestly?” he asked.
“Yes.” I was still whispering.
“You’re standin’ there wonderin’ what the fuck you got yourself into after gettin’ yourself outta that jacked up situation with your asshole ex. After makin’ two piss poor choices in the women I let in my life, what do you think I’m thinkin’?”
I couldn’t be sure but I thought I knew what he was thinking.
“I’m not Neeta,” I said quietly.
“You’re your own brand of trouble, I know that and you’re still right here,” he told me and I felt my heart start beating
faster.
“But I’m a good girl,” I whispered. “I’ve always been a good girl.”
“Laurie, you strut up to a fuckin’ garage, all tits, ass and legs. Jesus, if you had a fishin’ pole, you couldn’t’ve hooked those boys faster.”
“I needed my oil changed,” I reminded him.
“Wood didn’t come out first, babe, no fuckin’ joke, the rest of those boys woulda fought to change your oil and bring you margaritas while they were doin’ it.”
“That’s crazy,” I breathed.
“Ace, hello?” he called. “I was fuckin’ there.”
“Tate,” my voice was stronger, “I needed an oil change.”
“Yeah, there it is,” he shot back, “your own brand of trouble.”
“I don’t understand what you mean!” My voice was definitely stronger since I was semi-shouting.
“What I mean is, two months ago I scraped off the bitch who’s been ruinin’ my goddamned life for over twenty years. The next day, the next fuckin’ day, you’re in it. You’re totally clueless, wanderin’ through a biker town like you’re in Disneyland. And, I’ll repeat, the day before I met you, I scraped off the woman who I spent two decades with, a different kinda clueless woman who lived in her own head.”
I felt my head twitch.
“I’m not clueless,” I whispered.
“You’re clueless and you’re lost,” he returned.
“I’m not lost either,” I told him.
“Lauren, you live in a hotel.”
“So? It’s home!”
“You can tell yourself that, babe, but a hotel is not home.”
I switched topics because he kind of had me there.
“And I don’t live in my own head.”
His face changed, his voice changed, everything changed when he spoke again.
Everything.
The whole of Tate.
I watched it and it was so dazzling all I could do was stare.
“Honey,” he whispered, using an endearment he’d never used on me in a voice he’d never used either, a voice that was quiet and sweet and the expression on his face was so tender it made my heart turn over, “you’re so deep in your head you can’t even sleep.”