"Yeah, just look at ‘em," he said, but he never took his eyes from mine.
15
Tell me about yourself, he'd said.
There's not much to tell, she'd said. And he'd pulled her closer.
Of course there is. There's, what, 25 years to tell me about?
Nice guess, but I'm 27, she'd said with a laugh. The sand had been prickly but warm and soft underneath them.
Even better. Two more years to tell me about, he'd said. She'd giggled. He liked that sound.
Well, my mom was Italian and my dad was Puerto-Rican …
And so she'd talked. For a long time, but not long enough, in his opinion. He wanted to hear every detail. He wanted to know the color of the dress she'd worn on her first day of grade school. He wanted to know the first concert she ever went to. He wanted to know the name of her kindergarten crush, the color of her college roommate's hair, how she liked her coffee.
He didn't know why he wanted to know all those things, but he did. He was hungry for them. Starving, in fact. Desperate like a mutt gnawing scraps from a bone. Her black hair spread across the sand like gleaming ribbons in the moonlight. It reminded him of a poem he'd heard once, a long time ago. Look for me by moonlight, watch for me by moonlight, I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.
It was getting colder as she spoke, and her voice was drifting, downward, as though she were on the verge of sleep. He would have slept there with her, covered her with his cut and kept her warm until the morning sun washed the valley in blazing heat. He would have slept with her anywhere. A gas station bathroom, the back of a truck, a jail cell, anywhere, he would have held her and listened to her breathe and slept beside her through the whole long night.
But why sleep on the ground when he had a king-size bed waiting for them in his room?
And so that was where he brought her, both their bodies spent and aching from their ecstasies on the sand. And now she was sleeping beside him, and he was awake, staring into the darkness of the room and wondering about her dreams.
You're going down the rabbit hole, his mind said, a warning. He didn't care. He wasn't afraid. He could deal with this like he'd dealt with everything else in his life. His way.
Well, not everything else in his life …
He didn't want to think about that now, though. Not with her in his bed. He didn't want any memories sullying his bed when she was in it.
Besides, memories were just memories, they couldn't hurt him anymore. They weren't his father's fists. They weren't his sisters' tears. They were just figments, ghosts, spectres.
Or, they would be that, as long as she didn't ask any questions, and he didn't have to give any answers. But she would ask questions. Of course she would. She was smart, lively, he could see it in her eyes, her desire to know more and more about everything around her. She'd listened to him talk about the club, about his life, but soon she would want to hear everything.
And he wasn't ready to talk about it. If he lived a million years he wouldn't be ready to talk about it. He shut his eyes, the darkness of the room suddenly feeling heavy, cloying. It was only darker with his eyes shut. The darkness wasn't in the room, it was inside him.
He sighed and rolled over, reaching out to latch onto her soft, plush hip. She can't stay here, he thought. She's too good for this place.
The thought made him want to scream. He finally had this … this … whatever this was. This thing that he didn't know he'd needed. But he couldn't keep it. He couldn't keep her. She was too pure, too smart, too good for the club. Too good to spend her life like Honey, or like the other old ladies, who waited through long nights with their hearts in a vice because they didn't know if their men would ever come home.
But he couldn't go with her. This was his home. His life. His whole life. He was next in line. He couldn't leave the club, his family. The poem came to his mind once more.
But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.
Reign was tired. He wanted to sleep. But he couldn't. Reign, the man who would sleep anywhere, anytime, couldn't sleep. Because when he woke up, it'd be morning, and he'd be one day closer to losing her.
16
Honey rolled over, the sunlight beginning to filter through her lidded eyes. A rare day off; it seemed she spent more time in that damn bar than she did in her own apartment. She was slightly, though not entirely, surprised when her hand grazed soft skin in the bed beside her.
Peeking through her eyelids, she saw the girl she'd brought home last night sleeping like a princess, on her back, lips parted slightly, one arm thrown above her head and the other resting lightly on her chest. Honey smiled, tried to remember the girl's name. She'd drank quite a bit the night before, but things were starting to come back to her.
Honey had never thought of herself as gay, but she also never really liked labelling herself. Sometimes, she saw a girl that just needed to be kissed, and then next thing she knew she'd be waking up just like this. She let one of her hands travel downwards, parted the lips of her sex and dipped a finger in, feeling the residual wetness from the night before.
It must have been a very good night, she thought sleepily, only a little sad that she could only remember bits and pieces.
That's what mornings were for.
And weren't these mornings so much more beautiful than all the other mornings of her sad, long life? Certainly better than all those mornings she'd woken up unsure if she could get out of bed for the pain in her back. The mornings she'd pee blood from a kick to the kidneys. The mornings she'd lay, trying not to breathe, praying and praying and praying that he just wouldn't wake up this time. That he'd stop breathing and she could slip away, finally safe and free.
She'd come to Ditcher's Valley a long time ago – at least ten years, maybe fifteen, maybe more. She looked good now, but she'd been a real piece back then, even with a face that was more bruise than not. Short red hair, bright green eyes, a body to kill for. She'd been all alone for the first time in her life, having jumped straight from a drunken stepfather to a drunken husband.
All alone except for the baby she'd been carrying. The reason she'd finally got the courage to leave. The baby that hadn't made it past four months in her belly, but that she still loved in her deepest heart. The baby she thanked every day for giving her the reason to leave. She'd been distraught when she first miscarried, but time and years and perspective had left her with only a dull ache that would throb at strange times, like an old wound that you only remember when it rains.
Honey owed the club everything. They'd taken her in, hadn't asked for anything in return. The aging president, Charcoal, had taken pity on her and given her a place to stay, a job at the bar. And she hadn't even needed to prove herself by shacking up with half the club – of course, she did, eventually, wind up doing just that, but only on her own time, on her own terms.
She was lucky, so lucky, and she reminded herself of this as she gazed at the girl beside her in bed. She wondered about this girl. She was a local, one of those girls who'd probably stay in Ditcher's Valley another five years before she realized there wasn't any kind of life for her there, that being someone's old lady wasn't actually the best thing that could happen to you. Good for her, Honey thought, imagining the girl waking up in a better place and a better time.
It was too late for Honey to think of herself doing anything different with her life. And she didn't really want to do anything different. She wasn't like this girl, or any of the other girls who hung around the club. She was just as much a member as any of the dudes, if not more.
She even had a cut, even though her boys didn't like her getting her hands dirty. All she had to do was tend bar, keep a weather eye out, and take care of her men. Hold their hands while they moaned over some girl who'd run off, pour a stiff drink after a funeral, sing along with whatever drunken tune they picked on the jukebox.
Keep a weather eye out, she thought to herself, still half-sleeping, the phrase sticking in her mind. Why? Something seemed wrong that morning, a nagging feeling that she had seen something the night before, something important, but that she'd forgotten.
Georgia, she thought to herself, the name drifting up to her from her subconscious. That was the pretty girl's name. She frowned, eyes still closed, and tried to push the nasty feeling away. It wasn't the girl's name she was forgetting it was … something else. But it wouldn't help her hangover one bit to obsess about something that she'd either remember or not remember.