Judas: Indignant Few MC Book 1, page 8
“No,” I said. “I’m fucking busy. I have to go to work. I don’t have time to keep an eye on you. You know I don’t want you, Betty Sue. I’d rather stick my dick in a cactus than anywhere near you. Get up. I’m taking you back to your place.”
“Come on, Judas. I can’t go back there now. I’m already in deep shit for missing curfew. Let me at least have a couple hours to get my story together. If I go back now, they’ll throw me in jail.”
“Jail’s not so bad,” I said, starting a pot of coffee. It didn’t look like I was going to get any more sleep today before work. I went into the bathroom to take a piss and brush my teeth, and when I came back into my bedroom, she was passed out across the top of the comforter, mouth wide open, snoring like a chainsaw.
“Whatever,” I muttered to myself. The only thing I could hope was that she’d be gone again before I got back from work. Maybe she’d find someone else who wanted to listen to her sob story. I had dumpsters to tend to, one of the least glamorous parts of the job, but one of the most lucrative, too. I filled my thermos with coffee and tried to be as quiet as possible as I stepped out of my room, cringing at the way the door creaked shut behind me.
The hallway was dark, the clubhouse was dead, and I hoped by the time I got back my crew would be home. It was eerie being here without them. The silence reminded me too much of back when I was growing up. I was so alone in the world. The MC gave me a family, a life, loud noises and chaos, enough overwhelming shit that I didn’t have time to be alone with my thoughts. I didn’t have time to dwell on the sad shit I’d been through.
I pulled the dump truck out of the garage, the smell of diesel burning in the air, thick clouds of smoke pouring up into the clear morning sky. I put my black coffee to my lips, wiping the sleep out of my eyes, thankful the prospects would be back to do this tomorrow. I’d graduated a long time ago from the ranks of garbageman. Driving this truck brought back some real wild memories of Colt and me, two teenage boys who thought we were kings of the world getting to drive his daddy’s dump truck.
As I drove down the long dirt road that led to my route, I could’ve sworn I passed the big red truck and trailer the guys hauled out to Vegas. It was dark, though, and I was still half asleep and half worried about what the hell Betty Sue getting kicked out of her halfway house was going to entail. It was probably just wishful thinking on my part. I pulled my good morning joint from my pocket and fired it up.
14
Athena
“Where are you gonna stay?” Isaac asked me as we sat in the idling truck in front of the clubhouse. “Nobody’s up. You just want to come to my house for a little bit until the guys get back in town?”
I didn’t know how he got the impression that I wanted really anything to do with him. He was an easy getaway ride. The only reason why I stayed awake the whole drive back here and talked to him was because I was afraid if I fell asleep, something creepy would happen. He was annoying as hell, overly confident for no apparent reason. If I had to hear one more time about how he fucked his brother’s old lady, I was going to open the door and push him out onto the highway. If my dad was still around, that guy would’ve never made it past hang-around. Hell, he’d probably be missing some body parts by now, the way he ran his mouth. Colt really needed to tighten things up if he was going to keep this club functional. Why the fuck did I care, though? I definitely wasn’t going to be able to stick around for long.
“I’m fine,” I said to him. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how it was going to feel walking through those doors for the first time after all these years. I never lived at the clubhouse, but the amount of time I spent there growing up was more time than I spent in my house. In some ways, it was more etched into my soul than my actual home. So many memories, good and bad. So many turning points in my life, like the first time I caught my dad cheating on my mom, or the first time I saw someone bleed to death on a concrete floor. My first beer. My first kiss. “I kind of want to be by myself for a little bit. Thanks for the ride.”
“I’m going to see you around, right?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, grabbing my stuff and getting out of the truck. The sun was just starting to come up over the mountains, a sight I didn’t realize how much I had missed. The air was wet, cool and crisp, and just standing out in front of the gaudy yellow aluminum-sided building made me feel like I stepped into a time machine. Everything looked the same. The faint smell of diesel fuel was in the air, the gravel kicked up dust as he drove off, and the way the wooden steps on the porch groaned under my feet was exactly the way I remembered it. I was overwhelmed. This humble little shack was nothing like the places I’d lived since I ran away, but it felt more real than any of the fancy apartments or hotels or mansions I’d laid my head. The hair on my arm stood up as I imagined the vision of my father and his men lined up at the bar on the other side of the door. I knew it was impossible.
I could almost hear the wails of my mother when she found out what happened at the strip club that night. I could feel the collective sadness of all the old ladies and sluts gathered around the room, mourning their beloveds. The rage of my brother and the other survivors burned so hot, it felt like everyone was going to spontaneously combust at any minute. I was suffocating, just a dumb seventeen-year-old with a nice set of legs and an unhealthy daddy complex, looking to run off with the first man who paid attention to me. I bailed because of how hard it was to be here in the aftermath.
It was still hard.
I felt like a little girl again, peeking in the windows, not knowing what I was going to find on the other side of the wall. I felt my posture shrink, like I wanted to disappear all over again. They wanted me here, but why?
No signs of movement inside, I took a deep breath and pulled on the door. I was relieved it swung right open, albeit confused. Since when was everyone so careless?
The rising sun shined just enough through the window blinds to softly light up the barroom. It looked exactly like I left it: the huge Indignant flag hanging on the wall, wooden barstools, and couches scattered throughout, the hardwood floor scuffed from years and years of dirty boots. Cheap perfume and cigar smoke wafted through the air, along with the smell of stale spilled beer. What a dump. These men might run a garbage business, but at least they could keep their hangout clean. What the hell were prospects for these days anyway?
I was jolted from my exploration by the sound of snoring coming from one of the couches. A woman’s voice murmured incoherent babble. I’d know that voice anywhere, even after being away for so long.
“Tressica,” I whispered into the dark. “Is that you?”
“What?” she groaned. “Oh fuck me, what time is it?” I ran over to the nearby couch, squatting down next to my longtime high school friend. Last I’d heard, she went off to college to become a lawyer. What she was doing slumming it here was beyond me.
She looked pretty as ever even in her state of confused slumber. Her wild blonde hair looked like a mane, crimped and curled, and her smeared lipstick and running eyeliner didn’t detract from the delicate features of her face. She was built, tall, strong, curvy, her feet hanging off the edge of the couch. The sweatshirt she was using as a blanket barely covered her nearly naked torso.
“Hey,” she said, smiling from ear to ear when she realized who she was face-to-face with. “Oh my God, Athena, I’m so happy to see you.” She grumbled a little as she threw her arms around me. I hadn’t been hugged like that in as long as I could remember. Not the cordial kiss on the cheek type of hug, the genuine kind, the kind that only a true friend was capable of. I’d only been back for moments, and already I was being sucked right back in.
“Tress, I’m so happy to see you, too, but what are you doing here?”
The overhead lights flicked on, startling us both, and I slapped my hands over my eyes.
“Rise and shine!” my mother shouted. “Who’s ready for some hair of the dog?”
“Mom…” I stammered, watching her clank liquor bottles around behind the bar. “What are you doing?”
“Hey, baby,” she said, her big warm smile exactly how I remembered it. Mostly everything else about her looked older, from the wrinkles on her neck to the gray in her hair, but the tight black tank top and skinny jeans she was wearing proved that her body was still as firm as it was when she was in her twenties. “I’m fixing breakfast. You want?”
She pulled out a bottle of Bloody Mary mix and I shrugged. It wasn’t even 7 a.m. and I was deliriously tired, but a drink would probably knock me out hard enough right now that I’d be snoring like Tressica in two minutes flat. I needed to rest before I plotted my next move anyway.
“You’re not going to hug me?” I asked.
“Honey, I’m scared I’ll break you in half. You’re skin and bones other than those airbags, and I know for a fact those aren’t factory issued.” She slid a glass across the bar, eyeing me suspiciously. So much for a mother’s love. She was always quick to pick, especially about my appearance. I didn’t know why I thought time might’ve changed her. “How about you, Tress? You ready to keep the party going?”
“I gotta go to work,” she said. “but I’ll be back tonight. I want to catch up, Athena. I’ve missed you so much.” She scurried out the door before I even had a chance to say goodbye, and I could tell something was off just by the way she walked. Tressica had always been a shoulders back, head high kind of girl, but something about her looked squished. Sad. Like all the other club sluts doing their morning walk of shame.
“Who’s she banging?” I asked as soon as the door shut behind her.
“Your brother,” she said.
“What? No… what about Zelda?”
“Oh, she’s still in the picture. I don’t think Zelda knows about the severity of the situation, but I tried my best last night to get ’em nice and liquored up so I could watch them scrap it out. Tress held strong though. She really should’ve finished law school. She lies better than any lawyer I’ve ever met.”
“You’re sick,” I said.
“Hey, I gotta get my kicks somehow. With the boys out of town, there isn’t a lot of entertainment around here.” She took a long swig from her drink, which was definitely more vodka than tomato juice, and I rolled my eyes at her.
“Why don’t you get a hobby or something? Aren’t you a little old to be running around with bikers and day drinking?”
“And aren’t you a little whorish to be judging people’s life choices?” she asked with a wink. She poked me square in the nose. “How much did that set you back?”
“You’re a bitch,” I said.
“I missed you, sweetie.” She stroked her fingers through my hair and cupped my chin in her hand. “I don’t care how many people have seen your ass on the internet; to me, it will always be my cute little baby bum. I’m really glad to have you home.”
Classic Reena. You never knew when she was being cruel or being kind. You never knew if she genuinely cared or if she was just getting you buttered up so she could rip out your beating heart.
“This isn’t my home, Mom. I’m just here for a minute. I have some business I need to take care of and then I have to move on.”
“Right, right,” she said. She topped off her glass with vodka.
“What are you doing here so early anyway? Why aren’t you at the house?”
“Oh, honey, I sold the house years ago. It was too lonely being there all by myself with you and your brother gone and your daddy dead. I didn’t need all that. I live here now. Makes it a lot easier to keep an eye on the boys, make sure they’re clean and fed. When is everybody getting back? I should probably start breakfast.”
Weird. Growing up, my mom never had a maternal bone in her body. She could barely keep Colt and I clean and fed because she was too busy worrying about who and what my dad was doing. Maybe she was making up for lost time. Maybe she was just hoping another husband would fall in her lap so she could go back to the only life she knew. It was sad, bordering pathetic. My mother was a beautiful, bold woman and was basically reduced to a live-in maid for a bunch of outlaws. I was definitely going to do whatever I could to not follow in her footsteps.
“Well I guess I’m going to go find a spare bedroom to crash in since I don’t have a house anymore.”
“Here,” she said, tossing me a set of keys. “Nobody ever took Rubin’s old room. You’re more than welcome.” Poor Rubin. He was always one of my favorite men, a little weird, a little quiet, and definitely completely misunderstood by the world. The club was all he had. He didn’t die that day in the strip club, but the guilt ate him up so bad he drove his bike off the Main Street bridge three days later. Had a backpack full of cinder blocks strapped to his back. It was just another testament to the fact that you die by the patch one way or another. Just another reason why I wanted no part of this life, even if mine was a complete mess.
“Is it still full of snakes and porn magazines?”
“Oh no, honey,” she said with a giggle. “We found good homes for all the snakes. I don’t know what happened to the porn magazines, but I can probably find them if you want to go through them and look for pictures of your friends so you don’t feel lonely.”
I shot her a middle finger and headed for the hallway. When I was a kid, I knew better than to ever walk through that swinging door that separated the clubhouse from the living quarters. It was basically a dormitory for deadbeats, a den of filth, a corridor of anything goes. The one time I went back there looking to bum a smoke off of Colt, my twelve-year-old eyes saw more than they could process when I walked past a room and locked eyes with a woman pleading for her life as my father and his friends were impaling her body.
It was a turning point for me. A vision I could never shake. It didn’t matter that she kept hanging around the club after that. It was part of the reason why I went into the porn business to begin with. Nobody was going to do stuff to me like that unless I signed up for it. No man would ever take my power from me like the MC did with these women. No one would ever leave me without a soul like my mother.
I got chills as I passed that room.
Three doors down was another room that gave me a different kind of chills.
Judas’s old room. When he got out of jail he moved right into the clubhouse. The men took him in quickly, probably because they knew his history of darkness and wanted them to be a part of their army. They wanted to groom him to be just like them. He was always just ‘different’ though. Even in his youth, he had this quiet dark power about him. Nobody ever went in his room unless it was by strict invitation. He kept things so neat and tidy to the point of sterile, clinical. It made me sad thinking that the place he was most comfortable his whole life was in a jail cell, judging by the way he kept his room. Everything had a place. He obsessively vacuumed. He never let the sluts clean up after him like most of the other men did. His space was sacred.
I lingered outside his room for a minute, and I swore I could smell him. It was likely my brain playing tricks on me, but the earthy fragrance, like the aftermath of a thunderstorm, rushed over me. I wondered if he was in there, sleeping. I ran my palm up and down the stainless steel door, trying to feel for something on the other side. A sign. A reason to pop my head in and get a glimpse of this man who supposedly never gave up on me, even after all these years.
I got my sign loud and clear as the door swung open and a bug-eyed brunette popped her head out into the hallway.
“Can I help you?” she asked. I jumped a little before composing myself. Even with this broad standing in the doorway, I couldn’t resist peeking over her, trying to catch a glimpse of what his life looked like now beyond the pockmarked face of a girl I assumed was Betty Sue. “Excuse me?” she said impatiently.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just looking for Rubin’s old room. Haven’t been back this way in a while. I kinda got lost.” His room was exactly how I remembered it, nothing remotely out of place except the crumpled up comforter where she was likely sleeping.
“Oh.” She shrugged. “Is anybody out there?”
“Just my mom,” I said. “Er… I mean, Reena.”
“Shit,” she stammered. “I thought you looked familiar. It’s nice to actually meet you. My man seems to be a really big fan of yours. Is that gonna be a problem?” Even though she was standing right in my face, trying to make herself big and threatening, I knew I could probably poke her between the eyes and she’d drop to the ground. My momma thought I looked frail? This bitch looked like she was on a strict diet of dick and meth.
“It’s not going to be a problem at all,” I said. I meant it, too. Never in my life would I fight for a man. I didn’t need to take what wasn’t mine, and I sure as hell wasn’t trying to settle down here.
“I mean, his birthday is coming up. Maybe we could arrange something… just the three of us?” I tried not to throw up in my mouth.
“I don’t think you have that kind of money laying around,” I said, trying to sugarcoat my disgust. “I’m flattered though.”
“Whatever. Your loss.” I watched as she felt the locks on the other side of the door before jiggling the handle to make sure it was locked. She slammed it shut, and for some reason, that stuck in my mind. If they were that serious, why didn’t she have a key of her own?
Maybe she lost it. Maybe she got confused and put it in her crack pipe and smoked it. I didn’t know what the purpose of hanging on to any thread of hope was. He and I were nothing. We’d never be anything. I definitely didn’t belong here.
Maybe I’d mistaken his alleged concern for me according to Isaac for the way that most men saw me. A fun fantasy, but not something you’d want every day. Girls like Betty Sue were for every day. I was just the third wheel. At least I used to be.
Now that part of me was dead.
Dead like the smell coming out from underneath Rubin’s door. How had nobody noticed this? It was probably one of his many pet snakes. Probably one got loose and wedged itself somewhere and nobody cared enough to find it. I turned the key in the lock, and as I opened the door, the smell overpowered me to the point of gagging. I screamed at the top of my lungs and took off running down the hallway as fast as I could when I spotted the creature there, snapping his jaws as he thrashed around in the little plastic pool.
