Chapter One
I’ll Make You Coffee
It was ten to eight when I held my breath and turned off Broadway into the wide, cement-covered drive that took me around the big warehouse auto supply store that was part of Ride’s operation. I made it to the forecourt of the three bay garage that was the other part of Ride’s operation.
I studied the mammoth garage as I approached.
Ride Custom Cars and Bikes, my new place of employment, was world famous. Movie stars and Saudi Arabian sheiks bought cars and bikes from them. Their cars and bikes had been in magazines and they were commissioned for movies. Everyone in Denver knew about them. Hell, everyone in Colorado knew about them and I was pretty sure most everyone in the United States too. I was pretty sure of this because I knew not that first thing about custom cars and bikes. In fact, I knew nothing about non-custom cars and bikes, but I still knew about Ride.
I also knew the Chaos Motorcycle Club owned the garage and four auto supply stores, this one in Denver, one in Boulder, another in Colorado Springs and the last one that just opened in Fort Collins. I knew the Chaos Motorcycle Club too. They were famous because of Ride and because many of their rough and ready looking members had been photographed with their custom bikes and cars.
I also knew them because I’d partied with them.
And that day I was starting as the new office manager of the garage.
And that day was only one, single day after I’d been laid by Tack, the president of Chaos Motorcycle Club and, essentially, my boss.
And lastly, that day was only one single day and one single night after Tack had slam, bam, thank you ma’am’ed me.
“God,” I whispered to my windshield as I parked in front and just beside the steps that led up to the door next to the triple bays of the garage, a door with a sign over it that said, “Office”, “I’m such a stupid, stupid, idiot.”
But I wasn’t an idiot. No, I was a slut.
I didn’t know how to cope with being a slut. I’d never been one before. I did not jump into bed with men I barely knew. I did not have flights of fancy where I thought they were beautiful, perfect, motorcycle man daydreams come to life and therefore did tequila shots with them and then had hours of wild, crazy, delicious, fantastic sex with them.
That was not me at all.
I was not the kind of person who lived life like Tack did. I was thirty-five and I had lived a careful, quiet, risk-free life. I weighed decisions. I measured pros versus cons. I wrote lists. I made plans. I organized. I thought ahead. I never took one step where I wasn’t absolutely certain where my foot would land. And if I found myself in a situation that was unsure, I exited said situation, pronto.
Until two months ago when I looked at my life and the toxic people in it and I knew I had to get out.
So I got out. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t measure the pros and cons. I didn’t organize my exit strategy. I didn’t think ahead. When I’d had the epiphany and realized where I was, how dangerous it was, how unhealthy it was, I had no idea where I’d land when I jumped off the ride that was my life. I just straightened from my desk chair at work, grabbed my personal belongings, shoved them in a box and walked out. I didn’t even tell my boss I was going. I just went.
And I didn’t go back.
For the next two months I bought the paper every Wednesday and opened it to the want ads section. On each page of the want ads, I closed my eyes and pointed. If I was qualified for the job my finger touched, I applied for it.
That was the extent of my plan.
My best friend Lanie thought I was nuts. I couldn’t say she was wrong. I had no idea what I was doing, why I was doing it, where I was going and what would happen once I got there.
All I knew was that I had to do it.
So I was.
Now I was here and here was where I decided I needed to be. I’d spent all day the day before trying to figure out if I should show for my new job or not. I’d screwed everything up, literally, and I hadn’t even started the job yet. I didn’t want to see Tack. I never wanted to see him again. The very thought was so humiliating, I felt my skin burning and I had that very thought nearly constantly since I slid out of his bed, dressed and, mortified, slithered out of his room.
But I had been out of work for two months. I had a nest egg but I also had a mortgage. I had to find employment. I had to start my life again. Whatever I was supposed to be doing, I had to do it. Whatever I needed to find, I had to find it.
There was no going back now. I’d jumped out of the roller coaster at the top of the crest, just before it took the plunge and I was falling.
I had to land sometime and it was here that I was going to land.
So I’d been a slut. There were lots of sluts out there, hundreds of thousands of them. Maybe millions. They went to work every day and some of them surely went to a workplace where there were people with whom they’d had sex. They probably didn’t blink. Their skin probably didn’t burn with mortification. They probably didn’t care. They probably just found a new workmate or random guy that made their heart beat faster and their skin tingle with excitement and then they slept with him. They probably liked it. No, they probably loved it.