I didn’t make it to the end of the story, even though I wanted to know what happened. Unfortunately, the whiskey and exhaustion worked against me, and I found myself passing out with my face pressed against the sticky table. There was probably a lesson in that long tale somewhere. Poet didn’t tell stories without a reason, but I had no idea what wisdom he’d been trying to impart.
* * *
“Jesus,” I groaned at some point the next day, lifting my head from the bed in my room at the clubhouse. I shivered and pulled at the blanket I was laying on until I could wrap it around my shoulders.
I still had my cut on, but someone had pulled my boots off my feet when they’d helped me into the room. I closed my eyes and tried to remember who’d moved me, but the night was a blank slate after I’d laid my head down on the table while listening to Poet discuss his first years at the club. A couple of the boys must have carried me in, I decided. If a woman had helped me, she would have at least covered me with a blanket. It was cold as fuck in my room.
I knew I needed a shower, but I really didn’t want to let go of the little heat I’d found once I’d wrapped myself up like a burrito. I groaned as I threw the blanket back off and climbed to my feet, wiggling my arms like that would help warm me up. I made it halfway across the room to the old dresser I had pushed against the wall before I remembered what had started me drinking the night before.
“Fuck,” I yelled, remembering Mel’s confident words. I lifted my keys from the top of the dresser and threw them as hard as I could against the wall. The sound they made wasn’t even close to satisfying. I searched the room for anything else I could throw, but there was nothing. I didn’t have knickknacks.
My eyes caught on the top drawer of my dresser, and without thinking, I’d yanked it out and tossed it across the room. It hit the wall loudly, splintering into pieces as boxer briefs and socks fell all over the floor.
My hands hit the top of my dresser, and I braced myself as I got the anger under control. “Fuck!” I yelled again as the door to my room opened.
“You okay?” Woody asked, his wide eyes taking in the mess.
“Yeah, kid,” I said gruffly. “I’m fine.”
I strode past him and across the hall to the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I needed a shower and a cup of coffee. Then I’d head over to Molly’s and prove her best friend wrong.
* * *
Two hours later, I was pulling up in front of Molly’s trailer. It actually took four cups of coffee and a big breakfast before I was ready to face her. I wasn’t sure what I’d be walking into, but I was pretty confident that we could figure it all out.
I still wasn’t positive that we could make it work, but I’d been stupid to break shit off. I’d made it all worse in my head than it actually was. I could keep Molly and the club separate. She just had to know that the club came first. That sometimes, I’d be out of town and she’d have to wait. That’s just the way it was. She didn’t have to go to club events and shit, but I did. So she’d also have to get on board with that.
I climbed off my bike and strode toward the door confidently. Before I could knock, it swung open, revealing Molly in a pair of yoga pants and a sweatshirt that hung off one shoulder.
“Hey, sugar,” I said, leaning down to kiss her.
My stomach rolled when she jerked her head away and took a step backward.
“What’s up, Will?” she asked. The words weren’t unfriendly. In fact, they were almost pleasant.
“Just came to see you and Reb,” I said, walking into the house, even though she sure as shit hadn’t invited me in. There were open rubber tubs full of Christmas decorations covering the floor of the living room, and I glanced around to see that she’d moved the furniture so she had room for a Christmas tree. I wondered who was going to help her get one, and almost offered.
“Rebel’s playing in her room,” she said, reluctantly closing the door behind me. She couldn’t stand there with it open because it was so cold outside, but I could tell that she also didn’t want to give the impression that she was letting me stay.
“Look,” I said, smiling at her. “I know I fucked up, alright?”
“It’s fine, Will.”
“Nah, I can tell you’re pissed.”
“I was pissed. I’m not anymore.” She reached up and absently scratched her shoulder before relaxing against the wall.
“Thank fuck,” I murmured, stepping toward her.
“Uh, no,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she held up one hand to stop me.
“No, what?”
Molly laughed in disbelief and stood up straight. “No, I don’t want you anywhere near me.”
“You just said you weren’t pissed anymore,” I said roughly, ignoring her outstretched hand as I moved closer.
“I’m not,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not mad at you. I just don’t want anything to do with you.”
My head jerked back in surprise. “What?”
“Will, you disappeared for almost a week.”
“I was out of town!”
“Oh, my God, shut up!” she yelled, her eyes widening in disbelief. “I don’t care if you were trapped in a lifeboat in the middle of the goddamn ocean, because here’s the thing—Rebel had surgery on Thursday, so you shouldn’t have even been in the goddamn ocean!”
“I’m supposed to plan my life around your kid?” I asked. The minute the words were out of my mouth, I knew how bad they were. I knew, but I still almost staggered at the change that came over Molly’s face.
“Mama!” Rebel’s voice called, rising as she came down the hallway. “Mama! Mama!”
She got to the end of the hallway and caught sight of me, and I thought my legs were going to give out when her eyes widened behind her glasses and her lips pulled up in a huge grin. “Wiya!” she said happily. “Wiya!”
Holy shit. She could say my name.
Rebel started toward me, but Molly scooped her up before she could get anywhere close.
“I think you need to leave,” Molly said quietly as she tried to keep Rebel from squirming away. “Right now, Will.”
“Molly—”
“Go.”
I held her eyes, hoping that she’d change her mind, but after a moment, I knew she wouldn’t. I turned and let myself out the door as Rebel said my name again.
I ignored her. I needed to get the fuck out of there before I lost it.
I’d gotten what I thought I wanted. We were done. It was over.
Chapter 13
Molly
18 months later
“I can’t believe you’re still seeing him,” I said to Mel, throwing my hair into a ponytail. “I did not see that coming.”
“What’re you talking about?” Mel asked, throwing some sodas and juice boxes into my cheap little foam cooler. “You love Rocky.”
“He’s a good guy,” I replied with a nod. “But he was married when you got together.”
“Yeah, what a shit show,” she mumbled, snorting. “But he’s not anymore!”
Her tone had me whipping my head toward her and staring intently. She was grinning, her hands resting on the cooler with one hip cocked out to the side. When my eyes went to her ring finger, she scoffed.
“He didn’t ask me to marry him, doofus.”
“Then what’s with the face?” I asked, tossing her a bag of chips off the table.
“Nothing, I’m just happy.” She shrugged her shoulders and stuffed the chips into a huge reusable grocery bag. “And I’m spending the day with my favorite girls and my favorite guy, at my favorite swimming hole.”
“Hopefully your favorite girls won’t be too tired after an hour,” I said dryly, then called for Rebel.
“She’s still having a hard time sleeping?”
“Not really,” I said, shaking my head. “She’s just waking up at the ass crack of dawn. It might be nine for you, but it’s practically lunch time for us.”
Little footsteps came barreling down the hall,
and Rebel slid to a stop on the linoleum, her hair wild around her head. She was already dressed in her little swim suit with built-in pockets for floaty things, but she’d refused to take her socks off so I could put sandals on her feet.
“You can’t wear socks and sandals,” Mel told Reb, crouching down to meet her eyes. “It’s against the law.”
“Socks,” Reb answered, looking down at her feet with a decisive nod.
She was such a cool kid, but so goofy. I laughed at her annoyed expression. She wouldn’t let me paint her toenails because she couldn’t stand the feeling of the brush sliding over her nails, but it was a fight to get her to wear sandals because her feet weren’t ‘pretty’ like mine.
“Hey, Reb,” I called, walking toward the door where I’d hung my purse high on a hook. I’d started hanging it at eye level when Rebel had started getting into everything she could reach.
The knives were stored above the fridge. All medicines and vitamins were kept in a lockbox on the top shelf of a bookcase in my room.the trunk of my car. There were outlet covers on all of the electrical sockets, safety latches on all the cabinets and my dad had installed slide locks high on all doors leading outside and the bathrooms. I couldn’t be too careful.
The older Rebel got, the more we were able to understand her and her quirks. We’d realized after she’d begun talking that she was definitely on the autism spectrum, though that wasn’t uncommon in kids with Down syndrome. It was just another facet of Reb, nothing more, nothing less. She had sensory issues, but I’d already known that. And she didn’t talk as much as other kids who were three and a half years old, but that wasn’t really a surprise, either.
The tubes in her ears had helped with her verbal skills, though. It was like she’d finally been able to hear herself unmuffled for the first time, and the words had come pouring out. Doctor Mendez reminded me more than once that that wasn’t how the tubes worked, but I still wasn’t convinced. After the tubes had been placed, Rebel had started speaking like never before.
I hated that her second word was Will’s name, but I chose not to think about it. She’d asked for him almost every day for a full year before she’d finally let it go, but there were still days when she’d look at me and say his name like she was wondering if he was real. I’d learned to change the subject.
She had the memory of an elephant. If I told her that we were going to my dad’s and we weren’t able to, she’d remind me every day for a month in a mixture of modified sign language and a spattering of spoken words.
There still weren’t full sentences. I didn’t expect them.
I pulled out a pair of water shoes from my purse and moved back toward Rebel. “Look what I got you. These are shoes for the river.” She tried to take them out of my hand, but I lifted them above her head, making her huff in annoyance. “You can’t wear them with socks.”
“Socks,” she ground out, throwing her arms up in her sign for I’m sick of your shit.
“No socks, Rebel,” I said, still holding her water shoes out of her reach.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
She threw her arms up again, and watched me closely for a reaction. When I didn’t give her one, she plopped down on her bottom and slowly peeled the socks from her feet. Then she stuck her hand out for the shoes.
“You need help?” I asked as I handed them to her.
Reb’s hand made a shooing motion and I heard Mel’s choked laugh behind me.
“She told you.”
“Can you imagine her as a teenager?” I asked in exasperation, standing up and grabbing a pair of scissors from the top of the fridge.
Yeah, scissors went up there, too. For a while, I’d tried to hide that I’d put everything sharp up there, but Rebel had figured it out and one morning, I’d caught her using a chair to climb onto the counter so she could reach them. My dad had helped me tie the chairs to the table legs after that.
I cut the little plastic tie between Rebel’s new water shoes as soon as she had them on her feet then watched her walk gingerly around the room. After a few minutes, she glanced in my direction, but not directly at me, and nodded once.
I guessed they’d passed the test.
Within minutes, we were piled into my car and headed toward the river. It was still pretty early in the summer, so we probably wouldn’t swim, but the sun felt nice after the gloomy winter and spring we’d had. A light on my dash flashed on, and I debated how far I could drive before I ran out of gas, deciding at the last minute to pull into a gas station.
“I’m only putting ten bucks in,” I warned Mel as she took off her seatbelt. “Don’t take forever.”
“I won’t!” she protested, even though we both knew that it would take her a solid ten minutes in the store. She had the hardest time deciding on what to buy, it didn’t matter what she was shopping for. “You want something to drink?”
“We’ve got soda in the cooler,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, but that’s not gas station soda. That’s grocery store soda.” She climbed out of the car, then leaned back in the open window. “I’ll get you fountain drink.”
She blew me a kiss and sauntered into the gas station just as the attendant came to my window. He took my wrinkled ten dollar bill and started the pump as I tried to get more comfortable in my seat. My thighs were sticking to the fake leather, but my air conditioner was broken so it didn’t matter how much I moved, they were still going to sweat and stick.
I’d just tugged my shorts a little lower on my hips when the sound of a Harley’s pipes filtered in my window, making me freeze. They always made me freeze.
Over the past year and a half, I’d only seen Will four times, and only because I kept my eye out for him. Once at the grocery store, twice when I was driving to work, and once when Reb and I had been walking out of her speech therapist’s office and he’d been going into the building across the street. I never talked to him. I practically hid.
The attendant was unhooking the pump from my car when the bike rolled to a stop just fifty feet from us in a parking spot. A man and a woman got off, and my stomach sunk in realization.
Will’s hair was longer than it had been when we were together, and it was tied back in a super short ponytail at the base of his neck. A few strands fell forward as he pulled off his helmet, and he unconsciously brushed them behind his ears as he laughed at something the woman said. I glanced at her and my stomach rolled. She was pretty. Long brown hair that looked tangled from the ride, and light eyes, either blue or green. I couldn’t tell the color when she moved her sunglasses to the top of her head.
I sat frozen as Will fiddled with something in his saddlebags, and I contemplated just leaving Mel in the store and taking off, but I was too afraid to turn my car on and bring attention to myself.
Will was turned away from us when Mel finally walked out of the glass doors carrying a couple of fountain drinks and a little bag, but her eyes widened in recognition when she glanced toward him. She practically sprinted across the parking lot.
My eyes were glued to Will as Mel jumped into the car, taking in the easy way he set his hand on the woman’s hip as she messed with the front of her shirt, the way his head tilted toward her like maybe he couldn’t hear her or he just wanted to be a little closer. My throat grew tight as I watched his fingers squeeze for a second and pull her toward him.
“Molly,” Mel said quietly. “Let’s go.”
I jolted out of the weird space I’d been in, and turned the key, breathing a small huff of relief when Will’s head didn’t move in our direction.
But then I heard something in the back seat. A tentative word. Rebel said it again a little louder, like she was getting used to it, like she was making sure it sounded right. Then she was yelling it at the top of her lungs, and it was flying out her open window and across the parking lot.
“Will!” Reb yelled excitedly, kicking her legs and pulling at her seat buckle. “Will!”
I watched in horror as Will’s eyes jerked to my car, his jaw dropping as he pulled the sunglasses off his face.
“Will!”
His smile was the widest I’d ever seen it in the entire seventeen years I’d known him.
He took a step forward and I frantically slammed the car into drive.
Our eyes met just as the woman he was with said something to him, laughing, and the smile dropped off his face.
“Holy shit,” I mumbled as I jerked away from the pump, my hands shaking as I flipped on my blinker and sped back onto the road. “Holy shit. Holy shit.”
“No!” Rebel yelled in the back seat. I looked in the rearview mirror to find her twisting toward the back window of the car. “No, Mama!”
“Calm down,” Mel said, putting her hand on my thigh. “You’re okay. It’s over. You’re fine.”
I whipped into a parking lot less than a mile down the road and threw the car into park, covering my face with my hands.
“No!” Rebel was throwing a full-on tantrum in the back seat, ripping at her seat belt and arching her back against the restraints as I tried to get my breathing under control. “Will! No!”
“Jesus Christ!” I blurted, tears coming to my eyes as I frantically pushed myself out of the car. I wanted to go get her, hold her in my arms and tell her that everything was okay, but I couldn’t.
Rebel couldn’t stand for me to touch her when she was having a fit. It was too much stimulation. It had taken me a long time to get used to my baby not wanting me to comfort her, but I’d managed, even though it still killed me to leave her alone when she was having such a hard time. She was safe in her seat. She couldn’t accidentally hurt herself. I needed to remember that.
“Goddammit!” I yelled, lifting my hands to my hair. “Motherfucking son of a bitch!”
“You’re going to get us arrested,” Mel commented as she followed me out of the car. “You about done?”