Oh no you don’t.
I started the engine, shifted the car in reverse, and backed out of the driveway. As the car came to a stop in the street, he was a block away at the intersection at the end of the block.
Think you can outrun this motherfucker?
I shifted the car in drive and stomped the gas pedal to the floor.
Think again, Vince.
The car lunged forward, and the tires began to spin. As the smoke bellowed out from the rear fenders and the car continued to race forward at a very rapid pace, Vince pulled away from the stop sign and crossed through the intersection.
I released the gas pedal, frustrated that he hadn’t waited on me, and slowed down for the stop sign. Upon seeing no cars coming from either direction, I opted to stomp the gas pedal again and run through the intersection without stopping. Within a few seconds, I had caught up with Vince and was following close behind him.
After a slow-paced cat and mouse game that included covering half of the city and consuming no less than another hour of time, it appeared Vince was riding back toward his house. Fifteen minutes later, and I followed him into the driveway and parked the car.
He parked the bike in the middle of the drive, shut it off, and sat on it staring at the garage. Upon realizing he had no intention of walking up to the car and talking to me, not only did I realize that he was angrier than I hoped he would be, but I knew that I was going to have to get out and talk to him about what had happened.
So much for having the comfort of my music and my car.
I pushed the car door open, cleared my throat, and walked alongside his motorcycle. “So, I was doing book reviews and I guess…”
“Save it,” he said flatly.
Still staring at the garage, he held his gaze for a moment. As his eyes shifted down toward the gas tank, he spoke again, and as he did, he closed his eyes.
“Just go,” he said.
Oh shit. He’s really mad.
“Do you want to come over later? Or maybe I could bring some pizza over here, and we could…”
He turned his head to the side and glanced upward. “No, Sienna, I don’t want to come over. You broke a promise. You left me sitting at my mother’s house like a god damned fool, and I had no idea…”
“Wait, I’m sorry, I just fell asleep…”
He raised his left hand in the air and held it between us. “Like I said, save it. I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
He pointed his finger at me, and then wagged it back and forth between us. “This. You and me. It’s over.”
A lump rose in my throat and I felt hot all over. My throat constricted and I fought to breathe. This couldn’t be happening. As I fought for each choppy breath I was able to eventually take, I was sure he didn’t mean what I felt like he meant.
“Wait. Over? What?” the words came out as if someone else had asked them.
He reached for the handlebars, started the motorcycle, and shook his head.
“Yeah, over. Don’t call, don’t come over, don’t write, don’t fuck with me. You broke a fucking promise, Sienna. I can’t do this again,” he said.
My eyes welled with tears, and as much as I wanted to say, to scream, to grab him, to apologize, to hug him, or just stand and talk, I was paralyzed.
He released the clutch, slowly pulled forward, and turned around in the yard. As I heard the sound of his motorcycle’s exhaust fade down the block, I realized he was gone. I stood in the driveway staring down at my feet and crying, incapable of doing anything else. It seemed like a terrible dream. As I cried and shook from the heartfelt pain, I prayed for answers. Answers never came because I believe there weren’t any; but eventually, through the many tears, it began to make sense.
In Vince’s mind, I was no different than Natalie. To him, the circumstances didn’t matter. The depth or the latitude of the broken promise, as far as he was concerned, was irrelevant. I had unknowingly done the unthinkable. I had broken a promise.
And I had done so to the one man who would probably never be able to forgive me.
VINCE
May 24th, 2015
It had been two weeks since Sienna didn’t come to dinner, and I hadn’t been back to my mother’s house since. Partially embarrassed, somewhat disappointed, and totally heartbroken, I felt there was no way I would ever be able to face my mother again. I realized in time I would probably change my mind and be able to one day return, but I had no idea when that might be.
“I can remember when you said you’d never do anything with a bitch but shove her full of cock, remember that conversation?” I asked.
Axton crossed his arms, glared at me, and sighed. “What’s your fucking point?” he asked.
“I just made it,” I said. “Never thought I’d see the day you had an Ol’ Lady on the back of your bike.”
“She isn’t my Ol’ Lady, she’s a friend,” he said.
I shrugged my shoulders and turned away. “Doesn’t matter to me. You’ll learn your lesson sooner or later.”
“Hold up, I wasn’t done…”
“I’m done,” I said as I walked out of the office.
“God damn it, Vince, you can’t…”
I pushed the door closed, walked out into the shop, and fired up my bike. There was nothing I wanted to listen to about him trying to justify some chick who had been hanging off the back of his bike for the last two weeks. As I sat on the bike and waited for it to warm up, I lit a cigarette and took a long, slow drag.
If there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was a hypocrite.
My parent’s had proven to be the only people who mattered to me that hadn’t eventually let me down. The two women in my life, one who I mistakenly thought I loved lied to me and broke a vow. The other, the only woman I truly loved, broke a promise and left me looking like a god damned fool.
Axton seemed like a hypocrite, talking out both sides of his mouth about women. One day he was talking shit about how if the MC wanted a man to have an Ol’ Lady they’d have issued one to all new prospects, and the next time I saw him he had an Ol’ Lady hanging off the back of his bike.
Axton may have been the president of the club, and I might have respected him, but he was no friend of mine. I had one friend, and only one, in my entire life.
We made a pact. A promise to each other. Best friends forever.
That’s what we said.
We walked down to the railroad tracks and put pennies on the tracks. Sitting in the row of trees along the tracks we would wait for the train to come smash the pennies, talking about our futures. He was going to be a doctor and I was going to be a fireman; at least when we talked about it the first time. For me, at least, each time we talked my desires changed. But he always wanted to be a doctor.
He said doctors saved lives.
To be able to take a dying person and redirect the hand of fate, allowing someone to live – when in the absence of your actions they would die – would be miraculous. As a young boy of six his desire to save lives didn’t make as much sense as it made when I was an adult, but the older I got the more I respected him for standing firm in his wishes.
A fireman, a police officer, a tree trimmer, and an ice cream man were a few of my childhood dream careers. I found it funny that as I grew older my view on what was important changed. In my opinion, at least as a boy of six or seven, an ice cream man was much better than a doctor. Although a doctor may be able to save lives, an ice cream man could make everyone happy, the sick and healthy.
We lived our lives convinced that a bank robber rode the train through town as a means of escape, and that during his way out of town, he had tossed a bag of money from the railcar. Convinced all we needed to do was find it, we scoured through the weeds and along the edges of the trees to find it. From when we were six until we were ten, we searched along the tracks almost every day, but never found anything.
One day, right before his tenth birthday, we were both convinced that was the day we would f
ind the bag of money. With expectations running high, we searched like never before. As the day unfolded and the money was undoubtedly under the base of the very next tree, I asked what he was going to do with his share of the riches.
Walking along the edge of the wooden railroad ties while dragging his stick behind him, he shifted his eyes upward and in my direction. Three weeks older, and much wiser in my opinion, I walked along the top of the steel rail, towering above him. I continued to walk slowly, being careful not to lose my balance as I waited for him to respond.
After a few steps, he paused and began to tap his stick against the tracks. When he finally stopped tapping the rail, he responded. As he spoke, I continued my balancing act.
“Buy a new doctor,” he said.
I stopped and attempted to turn around without falling off the edge of the rail. Eventually I felt the need to speak more important and jumped down.
“Why would you need a new doctor?” I asked.
He cleared his throat, stared down at the tracks for a long moment, and shifted his eyes out toward the tree line. “A cardiovascular pathologist. He’s in Texas.”
I’d never heard words that sounded so important, even out of an adult’s mouth, let alone a kid my age. Impressed at his intellect, but now concerned with why he would need an out of state doctor with such a name, I pressed him for more information.
“Why?” I asked.
He turned to face me and shrugged his shoulders. “He’s the best.”
It made sense. Who would want anyone that wasn’t the best at what they did? Satisfied with his answer, and knowing nothing of the real reason why he needed a doctor, I stepped onto the railing and waited for the command he always gave before we started our journeys.
“Lead the way?” he asked.
“Follow me,” I said.
We never found the bag of money, and Jackson never got to go to Texas. His heart stopped two weeks later, just before he turned ten years old.
The school shut down for his funeral, and it seemed the entire city attended. We searched for a spot to park the car for what seemed like forever, and after finding a place, walked along the sidewalk for much longer than Jackson and I ever walked along the tracks. In that time I thought of him, our friendship, the permanency of death; and about losing the only friend I ever had.
I wondered if the pain I felt in my heart was similar to the pain Jackson felt from the disease I learned he had. I decided as we walked into the funeral home that if I never befriended another person, I would never be forced to feel the pain again.
As the sound of my motorcycle’s exhaust echoed throughout the shop and I stared blankly out into the street, I realized I was wrong.
And I suspected this new pain, no differently than the pain I felt from the loss of my best friend, would only be able to be temporarily suspended and not totally eliminated. As an adult, I had learned it wasn’t a doctor or the ice cream man that caused the pain within me to subside, it was a machine.
And that machine was between my legs.
SIENNA
June 8th, 2015
I had waited a year for the day to arrive. Instead of a celebratory dinner and discussions of our fond memories as a couple, I sat alone under a blanket of pain. A month had passed since I last saw Vince, and although I hoped the pain would eventually stop, it hadn’t so much as decreased.
As severe on this particular day as it was the day he rode away, it was apparent living with the pain was something I would be forced to deal with. Over the course of the last month I prayed a lot. Not for Vince to return or for the pain to diminish, but for the ability to continue to be myself and not to fall prey to the evils of anger or hatred.
The same fate that brought Vince and me together broke us apart, and for me to reserve gratitude for one and misery for the other would be to second guess the hand of God. I could never claim to fully understand life or all of the rewards, gifts, complications and losses associated with it, nor did I feel I needed to.
Living, it itself, was my gift; and I felt it was my responsibility to do so to the best of my ability. Keeping my chin up and my spirits high, despite the pain I was feeling, was not only in my best interest, but mandatory to me keeping my sanity.
Attempting to grow from the situation I had put myself in, I developed my own opinions of pain and healing. I convinced myself the process of healing brought along with it pain; the more difficult the healing process, the more severe the pain. The pain acted as a reminder of the damage done, and in the mind of the wise, a deterrent to repeat the process which brought about the pain in the first place.
It made perfect sense, at least to me. A runner with a torn muscle felt pain until the muscle had healed, and the process took weeks. A broken bone was painful until the fracture mended itself, requiring a few months to heal. A burn victim with severe burns over half of their body might take an entire year to heal, the pain requiring a morphine drip to be manageable. Seeing the differences in these damages, the healing processes, and the severity of the pain allowed me to believe one day I would no longer hurt.
But I knew the healing process would be a long one.
Although I continued to review books over the last month, I hadn’t had a drink of wine since the day I passed out drunk and missed my date with Vince. I didn’t swear off alcohol, or convince myself I had a drinking problem, but I did realize my having drank too much wine on that particular night caused a problem that I wouldn’t have had in the absence of the wine.
Coffee, however, was a different story.
“So, is that your Continental?” he asked.
I turned toward the voice and nodded my head. “Sure is.”
“Mid-sixties?” he asked as he pointed to the seat beside me.
I nodded my head at his guess of the year, not at his request to sit.
“1965,” I said.
He sat down and smiled.
I did fully expect to one day heal, but in the end I knew I wouldn’t forget Vince, stop loving Vince, or ever be able to love anyone else. My love for Vince wasn’t something I had developed; it had been inside of me for a lifetime, waiting for the person who was entitled to it to come along and claim it.
I believed there were many women, who in the absence of finding the right person, convinced themselves the person standing before them was the right person. I didn’t have to convince myself of anything with Vince, all I had to do was be in his presence. Long before the first kiss, I was well aware he was somehow special to me, and although I wasn’t sure why or to what degree, the first kiss was all it took for me to fully understand what it was he provided to me.
He, through his actions, words, wisdom, and expression, provided proof that he was entitled to receive the love which had been reserved within me for a lifetime, and without my expressed consent, he received it.
I initially found it odd that I didn’t make a conscious decision to give Vince my love. I almost felt cheated that I didn’t have to convince myself what it was I was feeling at the time, I simply knew, and allowed it to happen. It was natural, it was simple, and it required nothing on my part to exist. It was not developed, nor did it happen over time. I had always felt I would allow someone to have my love, or that I would give it to them, but that wasn’t the case with Vince.
Something in me simply snapped as if a switch had been flipped. My love was his and he merely took what he was entitled to.
It was then that I knew the love I felt was true.
The day of the money shot.
“Would you mind sitting somewhere else?” I asked.
He ran his hand through his hair, shook his head lightly, and his hair fell down along his forehead. “I just thought you might want some company,” he said.
I shook my head and grinned. “I’m in love. I have all the company I need.”
VINCE
July 21st, 2015
The Sergeant-at-Arm’s Ol’ Lady had a brother who had been in prison for some time, and according to Axto
n’s Ol’ Lady, who was a paralegal for a local attorney, he was wrongfully convicted of a crime. The legal firm she worked for requested a new trial, received one, and a mandatory meeting had been declared to attend the trial. It was the opinion of the club that a strong presence at the trial would provide support not only to the man who was being dragged through the court, but to the patched member of the club and his Ol’ Lady.
I didn’t dispute the benefits of attending the trial, but I had a man in another state who had skipped bail, and needed to travel with a bail bondsman to attempt to extradite him. After discussing my work requirements with Axton, I was given permission to work in lieu of going to the trial.
So, while all of the other members of the MC attended the trial, I rode shotgun in a truck to Omaha, Nebraska.
“So the other day, I had this kid that skipped out on bail, and I got a tip on where he was. Kid was 19 years old, and it was a conspiracy to distribute cocaine charge. Kid was facing five years, but since he skipped out, was probably looking at six or so. Anyway, so I go to this house and knock on the door, and this little fucker answers,” he said.
He was about my height, had a shaved head and was covered in tattoos, but weighed an easy fifty pounds more than me, all of which was muscle. He owned his own bail bonding company, and had hired me over the years to assist him with difficult clients. Through the course of doing business, we developed a good business-client relationship, he being the walking intimidation, and me being his physically persuasive partner. It was a good cop bad cop routine we played, and played well.
“And?” I asked.
“Well, his eyes get all big, and he looks at me and says, ‘Biggs, I was meaning to give you a call.’ Now I fucking know better, and I tell this little fucker we can do this the easy way or the hard way and I ask him to pick.” He paused, lit a cigarette, and offered me one.
I shook my head and pulled my pack out of my cut.
After we each lit a cigarette and exchanged glances, he continued.