“What’s this place?” I asked.
“This is the local chapter house,” he said as he parked his bike in the garage.
I noticed several more bikes parked out in the street in front of the house, each of them black and chrome and various sizes.
I followed R.J. out of the garage and onto a back deck. We entered through a back door into a kitchen that was lacking any sort of updates. The floors felt sticky under my shoes and the counters were covered in beer cans. It definitely looked and felt like a frat house.
“Gina, Candy, Tiffany,” R.J. called out as we walked through the kitchen, past the dining room, and into a gigantic living room filled with various, mismatched sofas and chairs.
The room was filled with a handful of rough-looking women who all glanced up at me with their eye lined eyes and teased hair. Most of them wore low cut shirts and way too much makeup. They didn’t look friendly at all.
I began to panic when I wondered if R.J. was really a pimp and had taken me from Blaze so that I could belong to him and be pimped out. It did seem too good to be true that he’d all of a sudden want to rescue some girl he didn’t even know.
I thought for sure I was going to have a panic attack right then and there. The walls were closing in and my breathing grew harder and harder.
“Why are you out of breath, honey?” one of the women asked. “You okay?”
“This is the girl I was telling you about,” R.J. said.
I knew it. I knew it. He was going to add me to his collection of prostitutes. Suddenly being tied up and ordered around by Blaze didn’t seem half as bad.
I suddenly began to cry. I fell to my knees in the process, not caring what they thought. I had lost all hope right then and there.
“Oh, honey,” one of the older women said as she came to my side and rubbed my back. “It’s going to be okay.”
“No, it’s not,” I cried. I looked up at her, and a confused look spread across her face as she exchanged looks with R.J.
R.J. looked doubly confused and let out a bit of a laugh.
“What do you mean, honey?” she asked. “We’re going to get you home.”
I immediately stopped crying and looked up at her.
“You are?” I asked.
I looked over at R.J. who had raised eyebrows as if to say, “See?”
“What did you think…?” the woman started to ask before she stopped.
I wasn’t going to tell them they all looked like a bunch of common prostitutes. Not when they were offering to help me. That would’ve been the worst thing I could’ve said.
I instantly felt bad for assuming they were anything but nice people as the woman helped me back to a standing position. The other women stared at me as awkward silence filled the air.
We could hear the drunken laughter and clinking bottles and beer cans outside on the front porch from some of the bikers.
“I’m Candy,” the woman said as she rubbed my back. She had to have been in her mid-forties. She had wrinkles all over her face, but her blue eyes were kind and gentle. She was very motherly.
“These women are going to see to it that you’re well taken care of tonight,” R.J. said. “In the morning, we’re going to run you over to the bus stop and put you on the first bus back home, wherever that is.”
“Thank you,” I said as I looked up into R.J.’s dark, mysterious yet kind eyes.
He nodded and walked off, leaving me there with the women in the living room.
“So you got mixed up with old Blaze, eh?” a redheaded woman asked. “I’m Gina.”
I rolled my eyes at the mention of his name. “I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I fell for him.”
“He’s crazy I hear,” she said with a laugh. “Don’t worry, he’s been trying to find a nice girl to date for a while. They all end up seeing through him and it never works out.”
“You seem like a smart girl,” Candy said. “What made you fall for him?”
“I didn’t fall for him,” I clarified. “I fell for his act. He preyed on my loneliness and said all the right things. But when I wouldn’t agree to come back here with him, he kidnapped me.”
Candy covered her mouth and shook her head.
“What a fucking psychopath,” Gina said.
Tiffany, the younger blonde I presumed, stayed quiet. She just sort of stared at me from her chair in the corner, not saying a word.
“She’s shy. Don’t mind her,” Gina said as she noticed me looking Tiffany’s way. “If you were sticking around longer, I’m sure she’d warm up to you.”
“Wow,” I said with a laugh. “Shy and biker gang. You don’t hear that kind of a combination every day.”