Chapter Thirty-Eight
Shawn
“What are they doing here?” my father asked as he eyed the two of us coming in behind Valerie’s mother. He was watching the news, his nightly ritual.
“They have come home for a chat,” Valerie’s mother answered, almost cautiously. Even though she had tried to make it abundantly clear that this had nothing to do with Paul and that we must be mistaken, regardless of the mounting evidence against him, there was still a sense of distrust in her voice.
He spat out a bitter laugh. “Well, I think that my son said quite enough when he moved out and apparently, Valerie decided to follow.”
I watched as Valerie’s mother drew in a long breath and then pulled the note that Valerie had given her for proof. She brought it over toward him and pushed it into his hand. “Did you do this?” she asked, obviously trying to keep her composure.
He glared at it for a long time, before his lips curved into a smile. “No. I didn’t write this. Why?”
“Because I couldn’t imagine who else would. I didn’t…And no one else lives here.”
Casually, my father shrugged and ushered toward me before he answered, “Maybe he did it. You never can tell. He’s sneaky.”
I felt my blood pressure begin to rise as my fist clenched. I have been taking this kind of abuse from my father for too long. I certainly wasn’t about to take any more of it. He wasn’t going to make me out to be the bad guy this time. I was trying to help. I narrowed my eyes at him and stepped closer, but before I could say anything, Valerie’s mother answered him.
“He didn’t do it,” she replied solidly. This made me feel better about the situation. I figured that even if she was upset with me, she was still willing to help me figure out what was going on and that was important. She believed me and right now, she seemed to be the only person on the planet, besides Valerie, who had any kind of faith in me.
I calmed, feeling that at least someone had my back and sunk back a little to watch the scene unfold.
At this, my father turned off the television and stood up, now facing the three of us. Valerie had just come along to bear witness, because she really didn’t want to get involved, but she did want confirmation that what my mother said was correct.
I wanted the same validation, but I was a little more willing to participate, if I needed to, in order to have the truth come out.
However, I did realize that since my father had cut literally everyone else off, it was ultimately between him and Valerie’s mother. She needed him to tell her what happened. We tried to convince her already, but she wanted to hear it for herself.
Therefore, for as much as I could stand, I wanted to remain in the background. There was no reason for me to butt in when I didn’t have to. I remained quiet.
“How can you be so sure?” he demanded, after a condescending laugh.
“Because I know him. And right now, I’m thinking that I might know him even better than you do,” Valerie’s mother replied. “But this isn’t about him. This isn’t really even about Valerie.”
“Of course it is!” he hissed bitterly. “Everything is always about her.”
“No, Paul. You’re wrong. If this is about Valerie in the way that I fear, then the only problem here is between you and me.”
“You know, Diana, she could have written this,” he answered, thrusting it with his hand.
“I did not!” Valerie hissed. “If I wanted to leave, I would have just left!”
Her mother put her hand up to silence the outburst before she looked back at her husband. “No, Paul. Again, she didn’t write it either.”
“Oh and what are you? Some kind of teenage whisperer? You’re pretty naive to think that they wouldn’t pull something like that to tear us apart, just so they could be together…as gross as it is…” With that, my father’s lips curled upward in disgust as he looked between me and Valerie.
“No. I’m not naïve. I’m very observant and just like I know your son, I also know my daughter. I’ve spent far more time with them and don’t you dare say that their love is anything but beautiful!”
At this, everyone in the room gaped at my stepmother. I certainly didn’t expect that.
“They are just doing it to spite us!” my father insisted angrily.
“No. They’re not,” she answered. “I have watched the two of them try to navigate their feelings for one another since before we were even dating. While I hoped, for the sake of our marriage, that things would go differently, I can’t say that I’m surprised. The only thing that I could think of that did make me curious was the fact that they didn’t do something like this sooner.” She shook her head. “Seriously, think about it. You have been completely unfair to Shawn for years and he has tried to be good until now. Doesn’t that say something for the kind of man that he is?”
“Yeah,” my father spat back, “He’s weak. He couldn’t just pick any woman in the world. He had to go after your daughter.”
I felt my teeth clench as I growled at him. “I am not weak, Dad!”
At this, all eyes were on me. I hadn’t meant to speak, but his comment made me so angry that I couldn’t help but try to prove him wrong.
“Oh, really? Then why are you always the one to mess everything up for everyone. All you do is leave a cloud of destruction in your path. You’re just like your mother! All she ever did was build her life up, just so she could tear it apart. She had you and took off and you brought Diana and me together, probably just so you could watch us fall apart.” He narrowed his eyes at me and stared me down. “You’re not stupid, but you are pretty conniving…” He smiled in a wicked way and took a few steps toward me, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.”
“Just tell us the truth!” I answered, trying not to say anything that I was going to regret. Even though my blood was boiling and my level of aggravation was skyrocketing, having all of those things said about me that wasn’t true, I refused to stoop to his level. Now that all eyes were on me the only thing I wanted to do was ensure that the truth was spoken. That was it. “Did you write the letter?”
My father ignored me, continuing to taunt me with his words. “You probably don’t even like Valerie. You are probably just doing all of this so that you can make the world fall apart. You strive in destruction and chaos. While the rest of the world burns, you think you are going to rise from the ashes. Your mother thought the same thing, but look where she ended up…”
I asked him again, “Did you mess with Diana’s phone?”
“You’re pathetic!” he yelled.
“Answer my question,” I replied, trying to stay level-headed as my father moved swiftly into my personal space. He was crowding me profusely, and it was all I could do to keep from hitting him.
“Even if you did like her, she would eventually figure out what a loser you are and she would leave you, just like your mother left me!”
“Answer me!” I screamed, but just as I was about to lose all control, I felt an arm push me back, while Diana ended up between us.
“That’s enough!” she exclaimed, glaring between me and my father, until finally, she stopped to focus on my father. “You know what? I’ve had enough. Even if you don’t want to admit what you did, I have had enough of this! I’m leaving!”
At that, the whole house grew deathly silent and my father gaped at Diana, as though she was completely out of her mind.
I backed up and eyed Valerie. For as much as I didn’t want to be the cause of their unhappiness, it was Diana who had made the decision and to that, all I could do in response was smile.
Epilogue
Four years passed. The divorce was final and as I stood in front of the mirror, staring at myself as I reflected in awe of what was about to happen and as far as we had come, I heard my mother come in behind me.
She smiled as tears welled up in her eyes. Her hand covered her mouth carefully as she tried to hold back the rush of emotion she felt. Behind her, Shawn’s mother came in and beamed brightly.
“You look absolutely beautiful,” Cindy said. “Shawn couldn’t have asked for a more perfect bride.”
In the four years since the two women finally found the real culprit behind all of the lies and manipulation, they first found common ground, and eventually became friends.
Shawn’s father had never admitted what he did or his end goal, but eventually, his reason and even his admission ceased to matter. Life went on for the four of us without him.
Even with all of the planning, all of the memories and all of the excitement that had led up to this day, I still couldn’t quite believe that it was here.
I was nervous and the jitters of both my mother and my soon-to-be mother-in-law didn’t help. Still, I was happy that they were there.
“Everything is going to be perfect!” my mother answered. I could tell that now, even with all of the reservations she had about the two of us going through with this at such a young age, she was completely content and at ease with our decision.
She didn’t say anything, but I could tell by the excitement in her eyes and that made me extremely happy.
“Thank you,” I answered, turning around in a flash of form-fitting white. My long train was my mother’s idea, but now that I was wearing it, I had come to enjoy the thought of having something traditional; even though we weren’t such a traditional couple.
I smiled and took a deep breath, trying to calm my frantic nerves.
“I think it’s almost time,” Cindy answered as she stuck her head out of the door and then made her way to her seat.
My mother hugged me briefly, probably afraid that she was going to lose it completely before she made her way back to her seat also.
It had been a long road. In addition to college and distance separating us at times, Shawn’s relentless, unsuccessful attempts to have his father join back into his life had caused a few highs and lows in the relationship, but we had persevered. And now, we were about to make our love official.
A few moments later, the organ started up and I began my walk toward my handsome groom. It was true, we were both young, but after dating through the rest of high school and college, we knew what we wanted so it didn’t make sense to wait anymore.
I smiled as I walked past the small congregation. Every face in the crowd I knew, but there was one that was not present, who I was certain would only be missed by one person.
Shawn’s father was invited to the wedding, but he never responded, despite the calls that Shawn had placed requesting his presence.
Still, even in his father’s absence, Shawn looked happier and prouder than I had ever seen him before.
This year had been good for us, even though things had not gone exactly as we had planned. Shawn’s father not caring about getting back into his son’s life wasn’t the only hurdle, but we had made it through and that was the important thing. After all, it was our life that we were living.
“It’s just as I told you a long time ago, Shawn…” I whispered to him as I made my way up to the altar and stood in front of him, “and it’s even truer today than ever before.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” He smiled and swallowed hard before turning toward the priest.
“No matter what, we’ll always be friends forever,” I replied, smiling softly.
Then, just before the music officially stopped and the ceremony began, I heard Shawn whisper, “Yes, but starting today, we officially become so much more.”
At that moment, I couldn’t have been happier. I turned and smiled, realizing that was the moment when it all sunk in. This was finally happening and it was then that I started to look forward to our tried and true happily ever after.
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RUINED
THE COMPLETE MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE SERIES
By Alycia Taylor
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.
PART ONE
Chapter One
Dax
“I’m gonna hope we don’t see you again,” the property officer said and handed me the last of my things.
All my pitiful possessions collected over the past two years in a cardboard box.
“I’m not in any hurry to see your ugly face again, that’s for sure.”
This officer was one of the good guys. Some of the correctional officers had something to prove and some of them came in every day and did their job. Hernandez had worked in the prison system for twenty-four years. He didn’t have a damn thing to prove and even after all of those years in service, he remembered that although we may be the dregs of society, we’re still human; at least most of us are.
“Somebody coming or are they driving you out to the Amtrak?”
“Nah, my mom’s coming,” I told him.
My poor mom. I had put her through some serious crap over the years and she was still the only one who made the trip up to Pelican Bay to see me every Sunday. Most of what was in the box I held came in packages she sent. I left a lot of it for my cellmate. He was still looking at another ten years. I was coming out after two. I didn’t know if I would survive if I had to go another eight.
Hernandez turned serious and said, “Next time you think about doing something stupid, give a thought or two to how hard this had to be on her…and she stuck by you too.”
“I know H—Thanks! I won’t be seeing you, so take it easy.”
I stepped into the sally port with the transportation officer, Collins. Collins didn’t like his job and he really didn’t like inmates. As far as he was concerned, paroled or not, I was still an inmate. He treated me like one as he loaded me into the van. The only difference was he wasn’t allowed to put the waist chains on me. I think that pissed him off.
I, Collins and another parolee named Simons drove in silence to the gates. It was overcast, but that was the normal weather there. I was actually looking forward to getting back to the heat in the valley. Crescent City might be a nice place to visit, but I didn’t want to live there any longer.
My mother had to wait at the little “friends on the outside” trailer to pick me up. They couldn’t release me inside the prison gates to her. Simons was heading to the Amtrak. He was worse off than I was, not even his mother wanted to pick him up.
I saw her blue Saturn parked as we approached. She had an SUV, but she refused to drive it up there. She said it ate too much gas. It wasn’t like my father couldn’t afford it, but Mom was never one to spend frivolously.
She got out when she saw us and opened the trunk. Collins stepped out of the van, opened my door, handed me my box and gave a curt nod in my mother’s direction. Then he climbed back into the CDC van and headed out to drop lonely Simons at the train.
“Hey, Dax,” my mother said.
She was pushing fifty, but she was still a beautiful woman. She had light blond hair and it was natural, not from a box or a bottle. Everything about my mother was natural, she wasn’t into the big fake boobs or any of that like a lot of the “old ladies” at the club were.
“Hi, mom, how are you?” I gave her a kiss on the cheek. She always smelled good too. She had worn the same perfume since I was a baby. I didn’t even know what it was called, but whenever I smelled it, it reminded me of her.
“I’m good now. I haven’t slept in two years, but tonight I’ll sleep like a baby.” She smiled. I believed her when she said she hadn’t been sleeping. She was a great mom and she wasted a lot of time worrying about me.
I gave her a hug and asked, “Want me to drive?”
She laughed and said, “Get your ass in the passenger seat.” She was a sweet lady, but when she told you to put your ass somewhere, you did it.
My mom made small talk on the way home. She was spouting a bunch of bullshit about all the people who were going to be so happy to see me. They all knew where I was the last two years. Yet it was only my mom there to visit on Sundays and holidays. If they had missed me even a little bit, they would have at least sent a letter or a card. I just let her talk though. It helped her to believe what she was saying. It helped her to believe there was some good left in my father and the rest of the “family.” It was delusional, but I wasn’t going to be the one to take that away from her.
“Have you heard from Olivia?” my mom asked suddenly.
“Nope. Last time I heard from Olivia was just before I went into court for my sentencing. What I heard from her was, ‘Dax, I don’t ever want to see you again.’ I have to give her credit; so far she’s stuck to her guns.”
“She was scared, Dax. You were both so young.”
“I haven’t heard from her. Not a word. She didn’t even come inside for the sentencing.”
“Did you reach out to her? Did you try? You could have written to her or called her. She really loved you, Dax. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you. I’m sure that whatever changes she’s made in her life could be…readjusted.”
“I’m not the same kid who went in. I was a thin, fresh-faced, respectable looking little kid back then, back when she told me she didn’t want to be with a guy who was doing time. She didn’t want to be with a felon. I look like an inmate now or at the very least, a hardcore member of the MC. Whether I was guilty or not, I’m a convicted felon and that will be with me forever. She’s not even going to see the same guy she used to see when she looked at me. She’s going to see a guy who did hard time every time she looks at one of my tattoos.”
“It’s the man inside that counts, Dax.” My mother truly believed that and she must have seen something in my dad that I couldn’t see or she would have left him decades ago.
“Let’s change the subject,” I told her.
It was hard for me to think about Olivia. When I first got locked up it was all I did. I drove myself crazy thinking about her, wondering what she was doing…if she was moving on with her life.
I fell in love with her the first time I saw her. I literally bumped into her my first day in college. I knocked her down, but she dusted herself off and laughed. After I helped her up, I realized how pretty she was. She had long, thick dark hair that hung down her back and big, deep brown eyes that a guy could get lost in and I did. I got lost in them and stayed lost in them, right up to the day she told me she wasn’t going to wait for me. That she didn’t want to be with me any longer.
“How’s dad?” I asked, desperately reaching for anything that would make me stop thinking about Olivia. The days of us being two carefree college students were long gone and we would never get them back. I learned the hard way that wishing things were different was never going to make it so.
“Oh, well, you know your father,” she said. I had to smile. That was what she said every time I asked about him.
Yes, unfortunately I did know my father. He was the president of his motorcycle club. I’m not talking about your Sunday afternoon guys who wear suits all week and need a little adventure type of club. I’m talking hardcore, we own and operate a bar up front but we deal in drugs and guns and anything else illegal but profitable in the back kind.
The club members called themselves The Smokin’ Jokers and their “territory” stretched for miles along the northernmost part of Central California. I had grown up with it, around it, but once I was old enough to choose I had refused to take part in it. I had gone to college like my mom urged me to my entire life. She wanted me to move on, to get out. She didn’t want me to live my life the way my father did. I was searching for a better life for myself, but the fact that I was the son of the president got in the way of that…as it had countless times before.
“Is he at the clubhouse right now?”
“Probably. It’s a little after four; the bar will be getting busy for happy hour at five.”
“Will you drop me there?” Don’t ask me why I wanted to go there, why I wanted to see him. I couldn’t have explained it if I tried. It must have been some weird DNA pull or something because there was really nothing about him that I liked or respected.
“Dax, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I was hoping you would come to the house with me and we can talk about what your plans are now. I got a catalog from the college and fall classes just started. I’m sure you could still get into one or two. I can take you there tomorrow; we can make a day of it.”
“Mom, I do want to go back to school and we’ll talk about it. But not tonight, okay? I turned twenty-one in prison, tonight I’d like to walk in that bar and have a beer and see my dad and the guys.”
If anyone understood the pull of that man, my mom should have. She was just afraid that my intentions weren’t entirely pure I’m sure.
“I don’t want you to get in a fight, Dax.”
I laughed. “I’m not going there to confront anyone. I really just want to see them. I’ve been gone for two years. Don’t you think I missed my father…who by the way, never visited me, not one time? I’m a big enough man to get past that without punching him in the face.”
“He couldn’t stand the thought of seeing you in there. It upset him,” she said, still making excuses for him.
She had been making excuses for him for twenty-five years. She didn’t know what else to do. She was right about one thing; I bet it did upset him since it was his fault I was there. He was probably scared to death every day that I would give up and rat him and the other guys out. I had known my dad was dealing drugs since I was fourteen. I hadn’t ever been a part of it. Circumstance had put me in the wrong place at the wrong time though and I had taken the fall…for all of them.
“I know,” I said.
I didn’t want to upset her. My dad gave her plenty to be upset about. She didn’t need any more headaches from me.
“I promise I just want to see them and have a beer. No confrontation, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “You’ll call me for a ride if you need one? I’ll be up late.”
I laughed. “If I need one, I’ll call. You’re supposed to sleep tonight though, remember? You’re going to run yourself crazy worrying so much.”
“I love you, Dax,” she said out of the blue.
“I love you too.”
It took us a couple of hours to get to the bar from the Pelican Bay. When we drove up in front, the first thing I noticed was that it hadn’t changed…at all. The sign that said “The Smoke Joint” was still hanging tilted to the right like it had been since I was a kid. The ugly light blue paint was almost completely peeled off in places and the rain gutters were hanging loose. You would think a bunch of guys without real jobs would have time to fix it up every now and then.
The big windows still had a mirrored tint so you could see out from the inside, but not in from the outside. They took care of those. I couldn’t see a single scratch. The club needed their privacy. The lot out front was filled with Harley Davidsons and the sum total of their worth would far outweigh that of the property they were parked on. I took a deep breath and looked at my mom.
“Be good,” she said with a nervous smile.
“Always,” I said as any good ex-convict son would.
I got out of the car and the gravel crunched underneath my prison-issued boots as I made my way through the sea of hogs to the front door. I hesitated for just a second. I didn’t let myself hesitate any longer than that. If I did, I might have turned around and got back in my mom’s car. She was still sitting, watching me. I could see her in the windows of the bar. I guess it was going to take a while for us to get back the relationship we had before I went to prison. The one where I was her grown up son and she trusted that I would get through the day without getting arrested.
The big heavy wooden door still groaned like it used to as I pulled it toward me, but the music coming from the jukebox was too loud for anyone inside to hear it. The old jukebox was older than my dad and I was surprised it still worked. The music was scratchy, but if you turned it up loud enough and drank enough beer, no one really noticed. No one even seemed to look at me when I walked in; everyone was busy bullshitting or making out. There was even an old, fat biker with a young, hot babe out on the tiny little dance floor looking like they might do it right there. That was enough to turn my stomach.
One thing about “The Smoke Joint” that attracted people besides of course the outdated décor and the Smokin’ Jokers meeting room in the back was that when you walked in, you felt like you had walked into something hidden and personal. It was off the beaten path and not a place that couples or tourists usually frequented. It was rare to not see the same five guys sitting on the same five worn, blue vinyl stools at the old Formica bar. It was like when surfers find a “secret surf spot.” They keep coming back and they don’t go spreading the word around for fear it would be taken over by “undesirables.”
In the case of The Smoke Joint, an “undesirable” would be a suit or a cop. Eighty percent of its clientele were bikers who still rode daily or old, tired bikers who were too arthritic to ride any longer but couldn’t give up the lifestyle. The other twenty percent were women with biker fetishes. Those women came in all shapes, sizes and ages and as I looked around I noticed that they seemed to be coming younger than they used to. Hopefully my dad was having the guys check IDs, but I doubted it. Even though I found much to complain about as my eyes scanned the place, it was still home and I still felt instantly comfortable there.
“Son of a bitch!” I heard a voice shout. It was a deep, gravelly voice and it belonged to an old coot named Buster Balls. No, that wasn’t what his mom named him, but I had never heard him called anything else. One of the guys told me once that Buster was like the whipping boy. He was always the one who got an ass chewing in the club whenever anything went wrong, even when it wasn’t his fault and that was how he had earned his nickname.
“It’s Dax, as I live and breathe. Boy, you put on some meat and some muscle since I saw you last.” He let out a low whistle. “And look at all them purdy CDC tattoos. They sure are making them nicer than they did in my day. All that hunger striking for the colored ink was well worth it.”
I smiled. He was right. The inmates in the SHUs (Security Housing Unit) across CDC had spent three summers in a row on an organized hunger strike in an effort to gain privileges. Colored ink was one of the things they had been given as a bargaining chip.
“How goes it, Buster?” I put out my hand and although he could barely curl his distorted one into a fist he tried and instead of shaking, he bumped mine.
“I ain’t dead yet, so I ain’t complaining. Why you hidin’ over here by the door? Don’t you want to say hello to your daddy and the other boys?”
“Yeah, where’s my dad?” I didn’t see him in his usual booth and he wasn’t behind the bar.
“He’s over there with that new little kitten, Samantha. Hey J.J.! Look who I found.”
Suddenly, all heads turned toward me and even in the dim overhead lights I felt like a spotlight had been shined on my face. My dad looked up from the barely legal girl he had been…talking to and at first it looked like he wasn’t sure who he was looking at. I had changed a lot in two years and the lighting in the bar wasn’t all that great. I was surprised Buster recognized me. But recognition finally crossed his face and something akin to…discomfort, maybe. He knew I had just done two years’ time for the club and not through any fault of my own. I often wondered if he felt even a little bit guilty. I had to doubt it. His discomfort, fear or whatever it was always came from a place of self-preservation.
“I’ll be damned,” my dad said. “Dax!”
He came toward me and put his hand out. Grabbing mine, he pulled me against his massive chest and patted my back hard. Before I went in, that used to hurt…a lot. Thanks to my daily organized workouts, I barely felt it.
“How are you, kid? I didn’t even know you were getting out.”
“Mom didn’t tell you?”
“No, hell no. We would of had a party for you. Wouldn’t we, boys?”
I noticed that the rest of the club members had gathered around. Once they realized I didn’t have a weapon and I wasn’t there to exact my revenge, I spent the next ten minutes shaking hands, receiving high fives and pats on the back.
My dad grabbed two beers from behind the counter and led me over to his booth. For a second I forgot where I was and who I was with. I thought he was going to sit down with me and ask how I was and how the last two years had been. Instead, he called over two of the barely legal in daisy dukes and introduced them as Lila and Crystal. They were known as club girls. In other circles they would simply be known as sluts. They sat down and my father whom I hadn’t seen in two years went back to his own club girl in the corner.
“Did you just get out of prison?” the one named Lila asked.
“Yeah,” I said, taking a long pull off the beer. Damn, that was good. I forgot how much better beer was than pruno that had been brewed in someone’s cotton sock.
“What was it like?” she questioned.
I furrowed my brows. Her affect was completely incongruent to the question. She was smiling, flushed with excitement, talking to a muscular and tatted up stranger in a biker bar about just getting out of prison. She was getting turned on by it and making sure that I knew it.
The one named Crystal saw something she liked on the other side of the bar and excused herself by saying, “I’m gonna get me some of that.” You just can’t buy that kind of class. Lila was still looking at me adoringly and waiting for my answer. I went with the one that I thought might get rid of her the fastest.
“It wasn’t all that bad, I had me a cute little cellmate and I got to tap that ass as much as I wanted—” That was as far as I got before she was making a disgusted face. I guessed there were some things that didn’t turn her on.
“Um…I gotta go check on Crystal,” she said.
I chuckled as she hurried away. That was kind of fun; I would have to remember that line. For the next half hour I ate peanuts and sucked down one beer after the other as all of the guys came over one or two at a time to see how I was doing. A few of them had the decency to seem nervous, but most of them had a smug self-satisfied look of people who had just spent two years on the outside while I was doing their time.
I was sitting alone at last and just under pleasantly drunk when I saw the doors swing open and my best friend since I was a little kid walked in. I guessed since he never came to see me that I might need to amend the best friend thing later on, but at that moment I was ecstatic to see him. He had a girl on his arm, but in the dim light I couldn’t see her. If I knew Terrance though, she would be a looker. He liked the pretty girls. I was just about to holler at him when she stepped into the light.
“What the fuck?” I groaned.
I downed the rest of my beer and squinted to make sure I was really seeing what I thought I was. The girl on Terrance’s arm was most definitely a looker. I knew this because she used to be my girl. It was Olivia. Mother fucker…