38
Winter faded, spring passed through, summer conquered in all its heat-filled heady glory. I rode every day without fail. I kept busy on jobs, on charity runs, on looking out for the prospects.
I was in Minneapolis for a meeting of the Midwestern chapters, representing our region. I’d called Tania a few days before, and she’d agreed to meet me. I was at my pow wow all day, and she was at some museum. We met at a motel in the afternoon. I had to be back at the local chapter’s clubhouse for the big shindig before me and Drac left the next day.
Tania passed me the roach, and I took a deep drag on the last of it. “Did you like that?”
“What exactly?” She raised her head up off the bed. “The weed or your cock gymnastics?”
“The weed. Take some home with you.”
“That is damned good happy green.”
“It is. You never take any home with you.”
“I like doing it with you. I don’t want to do it on my own or share it. Then they’d ask me where I got it, and I’d have to admit that I know an outlaw, and that’s a well guarded secret by me and my snatch.”
I dropped what was left of the roach in the empty beer can by the bed. “You need any cash?”
She raised herself up on her elbows, shooting me a frown.
“Don’t give me that look. I want to help you if you need help. I like helping you. I happen to have cash this month, I’d like to use it for a good reason.”
She gazed up at the ceiling. “I appreciate that, but it’s okay. Really.”
“You found a new job yet?”
“I’m hostessing at this fancy restaurant now. I just got a raise as I’m the only one who can function at seven a.m. for the business breakfast crowd. I can remember names and faces, make introductions, be cheery, and keep those tables moving.”
“You should work for me.”
She let out a laugh and rolled on her side, facing me, her head propped up on her hand. “Hey, what happened with Gloria? Last time we saw each other, you said you were going to—”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I did. Then I got rid of her.”
“You already ditched your first old lady? Finger!”
“She was in my shit all the time.”
“If you’re in a relationship with someone, that’s how it is, from what I can remember. They’re in your shit, and you’re in theirs.”
“Don’t like it.”
She turned over on the bed. “You’re impossible.” Her tone was quiet this time, not the usual sarcastic.
“Hey.” I touched the curve of her lower back, and she immediately looked up at me. I didn’t usually touch her much after we’d finish. “What is it?” I whispered.
“I only wish you felt bad,” she said.
“About what?”
“About anything!” Tania flopped onto her back. “I wish you felt something. That you felt bad for breaking up with Gloria. That you felt bad for ditching Donna last year and cheating on her with me. That you felt anything, for fuck’s sake!” She raised her voice.
My pulse heated. “I’m sick of feeling, Tania. It’s nothing but a ripping in my gut, bleeding me dry over and over again.”
She jacked up on her knees on the mattress. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”
That image of Lenore and her baby—her husband’s baby—in the middle of that Christmas wonderland flashed in front of my eyes. Thick bile and vinegar slid down my chest, searing my insides. I jerked off the bed and slid my leathers up my legs, grabbed my tee from the floor and pulled it over my head.
“Finger!”
“Yes! I saw her.” I shoved my feet in my boots, buttoned my leathers.
“Wait—What are you—”
I couldn’t. I didn’t want to discuss, didn’t want to deal. Didn’t.
Snapping up my keys on the small table, I threw open the motel room door and stormed outside to my bike.
I didn’t want to talk about her. I couldn’t talk about her. I was still trying not to think about her. I couldn’t even say her name anymore, not even with Tania. I didn’t want to. That made the loss of her acute. More acute.
She was good where she was; a memory I’d stuffed into a bottle, corked and sealed and tossed to bob in my sea. Always in view, though.
I needed that view.
I rode off, leaving Tania and the motel behind me in a cloud of dust. I didn’t know if I’d hear from her again, but I also knew I didn’t have to explain myself. We were good that way. I’d leave it up to her.
Three months later she called me.
“I’m on a vacation in New Mexico with a couple of girlfriends. Are you...around?” she asked, her voice breathy, hesitant.
I happened to be in Arizona on a run to oversee a new meth distribution operation in the area. I could only spare maybe two hours with her at best with the riding time included. I couldn’t be under the radar too long, but I’d do it to see Tania again.
“Hell yeah, I’m in Arizona. What are you doing now?”
“I’m in the hot tub by the pool getting picked up by these men my friends like, but I can’t say I do.”
“I can be there in four hours. Can your hormones wait until then?”
Only her laughter filled the line.
“Give me the hotel information.”
Once I got into town, Tania texted me. She was in the bar lounge of a sprawling resort hotel where she was drinking with two other women and two men. I spotted her the moment I entered, my colors covered up by a thin black hoodie. She blushed, that slight smile perked up on her lips as she uncrossed her long legs, and I gestured with a slant of my head toward the bathrooms by the elevators.
She shot up from the small sofa where she sat with one of the guys who tugged her back close to him. She bent over and whispered in his ear, and his face lit up like she’d promised him a lap dance once she returned. He let her go and she moved away from him. She wore a short tight green dress that looked hot on her pale skin paired with high heels.
Rolling her eyes, she strode across the lobby towards the bathrooms, her hips swaying, making my dick come to life in my leathers. She turned the corner, and my arm shot out pulling her into the men’s bathroom. I headed for a stall, her heels eagerly clipping the tile floor behind me.
In the stall, she plastered herself against the wall and raised her arms high. She knew my drill. I locked the door and slid my hand down over her ass. My pulse fired. “Fuck, Tania. No panties tonight?”
“That’s for you.”
I yanked up her dress. “You’re totally bare.”
“That’s for my bikini.”
“I like it.” I palmed her, my hand sliding over damp, smooth skin. “You don’t want to fuck anyone out there tonight?”
“They’re jerks. My friends like them, but I’m not into drunken bonkfests. They’re really drunk too, so it’s only going to be sloppy, and they’ll probably whip out their phones and film the whole thing. Nowadays everyone thinks they’re doing a spring break video for the Playboy Channel.”
Tania talked. A lot. That hadn’t changed, and I liked it. My muscles relaxed. She wasn’t mad at me for being out of touch for so long. She still wanted it from me, and I definitely still wanted it from her. We were good. I squeezed her tits over the slippery fabric of her dress. No bra either.
Her fingertips curled into my beard, tugging. “Shit, your beard got longer. It really suits you.”
“You like it?”
“Yeah—” She stumbled on her high heels.
I suited up in a rubber, and hitching her legs around me, thrust inside her slickness.
She let out a loud cry, clutching my shoulders. “Tomorrow, when they can’t remember shit about whatever they do tonight, I’m going to remember this.”
I dug my fingers into her ass, nailing her up against the quivering divider. Banging her.
She came, and I pulled out of her, turned her around. She trembled in my grip, and my blood rushed into my head at the feel of her anticipation, her jitteriness, her lust. I thrust into her very wet pussy and pumped fast and hard. My balls screamed, my muscles burned. She moaned loudly, shuddering, and I roared right after.
I ripped the condom off me. “Get on your knees and get me there again.” I yanked the top of her dress down and her breasts spilled out. “I want to come on those tits.”
She wiped the sweat from her upper lip and got down on her knees in the stall and worked my cock until I started coming in her mouth. I spattered my cum over her tits.
“Rub it in. Let ‘em smell me on you.”
She made a face at me, but she did it. I helped her up, and she wiped at her skin and dabbed at her dress with a wad of toilet paper.
“I’m not done,” I said, pinching a nipple.
She grinned. Neither was she.
Twenty minutes later, with the urinals being used and flushed in the next room, men’s knowing chuckles and overly loud coughs having set a soundtrack to our fucking, I sent her back out to her friends, a lazy grin on her rosy face, her legs wobbling on those hot high heels.
“I’ll call you.”
“You do that,” she mumbled as we passed each other in the lobby, her hands smoothing over her hips.
I strode down the grand front staircase of the resort hotel, the parking valet boy shuffling back in my wake.
For years, Tania and I met in towns and cities all over the country, sometimes in motels for a night or only a couple of hours during the day. Anywhere convenient for a quick fuck. It was never regular, once every few months at most, off and on. But it happened, and I liked it.
We never discussed any other women in my life, of which there were many.
And we never discussed her. Not ever again.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I got your text message,” said Tania. Wind blew hard in the background from the payphone she was using somewhere in Chicago.
“I’ll be there by three. This cold weather sucks, icy rain in the forecast too.”
“Finger?”
“Yeah?”
“The thing is, I can’t meet up today.”
Her voice was unsteady. Ordinarily, if one of us said no, we didn’t ask details about why. But something in her tone made me want to know.
“What’s going on?”
“I met someone.”
I didn’t respond.
“It’s going well, and just keeps getting better and better, and I want to give it a real shot, so I can’t meet up with you anymore.”
I breathed out.
Almost ten years had passed since me and Tania had started meeting up. Life was moving on, no matter how I tried to shape and mold it to my will, to keep it still or keep it narrow. I was glad for her. She should be getting on with her life, not slipping me in whenever and wherever as we’d been doing over the years. We’d had our fun. We’d both gotten satisfaction out of it.
I was going to miss it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice filling the silence between us.
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
Lenore had gotten married, had her son. And now Tania was actually committing to a relationship. We were all older now, were we wiser? Stronger?
“You be happy, Tania.”
“I will,” she replied, her voice steadier. “I want you to be happy too.”
I didn’t answer. I hung up.