Sunny
“C’mon, Sunny girl! Come sit by us. Killer says it’s alright if we watch from here.”
Slutty Mary pats the empty space on the rust red beach blanket next to her with the palm of her hand. She smiles at me, missing teeth and all, as she beckons, “You’re not gonna see anything from where you are.”
She’s right. This spot is garbage. I only picked it because it’s where Ricco dropped me off. I figure if he wants to find me after the match, I better be where he left me. But after our lame and boring night together with him sighing heavily at the best parts of the movie and spitting tobacco on my apartment entrance, I really couldn’t care less if he ever finds me.
Of course, as soon as I take the spot Mary offered me, she launches into an assault of questions about my time with Ricco.
“I hear he’s real nice and treats his girls good. Leann was with him a few months ago, and he bought her all kinds of nice shit… like a necklace and some stuff for her kitchen. Real fancy, quality stuff.”
Mary’s not that bright. Ricco didn’t buy Leann shit. He stole it off the back of some guy’s truck—or it’s one of those gifts he passes on from girl to girl. None of his old ladies ever stayed with him for long. He either grew tired of them and lost interest, or they saw right through his facade and realized how freaking boring the guy is. I’m glad I caught on at the end of date one. I didn’t have to put out or anything like most girls would have. Filthy Bastard MC rules only force us to spread for a guy on date two if he pays.
Still, I’m not going to be rude to Mary. These girls are my family. They are the only ones who understand what it’s like to live this life. And we look out for one another, even though it’s pretty clear that most of us really, truly despise each other. I guess that’s what a real sister is supposed to be like. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen or heard from mine in years.
“Yeah,” I mutter as I play with a few of the grease covered rocks that dot the gravel ground of the underpass. “He was a nice guy. He’s not really my type though. I don’t think I’ll answer if he calls me again.”
Larissa butts in the way she always does. “Oh, girl, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she says. She can’t help but be the gossip among us. She has to know everything and anything about our lives or else she’ll die or something. But sometimes it comes in handy to have a know-it-all in the group.
My ears perk as I listen to her explain, “Ricco is Killer’s right hand. You can’t get closer to Killer unless you are screwing with Cobra. And that’s impossible.”
Killer, the President of the Filthy Bastards, is like a trophy to most club girls. For one, he’s fine as hell for a guy in his early forties. He’s got that red-blonde beard and the curly hair with salt and pepper streaks that make him look as if he’s stepped off some Viking ship. At nearly six feet tall, he’s as imposing as one too. The first time I met him was on my 18th birthday. He was welcoming me into the club as club property. He even did my brand right on my shoulder—a small skull and axe that singed quickly into my skin. I was too distracted by the guy, the booze, and the excitement to even notice the pain.
I learned quickly that Killer kept his inner circle small. Unlike the majority of the guys here, he only took one lover for a long period of time. That girl usually disappeared from our circle once he claimed her. I heard that he bound her to secrecy about what goes on in the background, so she kept out of day-to-day club life. Leann was his old lady for a while. We hadn’t seen her for months when we figured it out. She only appeared at socials and didn’t talk much when we begged for answers, but it was clear who she was staring down throughout the night.
Besides his girl, Killer has a VP, a second-in-command, by the name of Cobra. They call him that because of his slight lisp and the long, dark snake tattoo that covers his spine and reaches up over his bald head so that between his ears appears a striking snake head. It gives him a look of someone chasing death, which I suppose with his job of managing club assets and running security, he is.
Cobra is the one who arranged tonight’s fight with the Wilderkind MC. Like always, there’s some dispute about one of the Wilderkind crossing into Filthy Bastard territory to harass one of their business partners. Ricco mentioned it to me as he rudely interrupted the movie to read his text that announced the fight. I couldn’t have rolled my eyes harder hearing about it.
It is pretty routine that these bouts happen. In fact, it was really messing with my schedule. Club events meant that the girls had to get dressed up to the nines. Missing one, with the exception of death or near-death illness, meant you’d be cut off from the small amount of money that trickles in from club revenues to the ladies. Hell, you might even lose the rent they paid. I can’t risk that. Outside Filthy Bastard headquarters, I have absolutely no place to go if I got cut off.
So, I threw on this ridiculous black and blue (Filthy Bastard colors) bodycon dress that barely covers my tits or my ass and put on my heavy black eye makeup that feels as if my face weighs about a million pounds and marched my way to the overpass under the skyline bridge. The lights of Los Angeles shine brightly enough that I don’t need any more light to study the rest of the girls sitting cross-legged on the blankets. They all wear similar outfits like mine. They have to.
“Are you even gonna tell us what Ricco is like, Sunny? You’re being all spacey and shit.” Mary taps me on the shoulder, bringing me back to my place on the blanket. I shuffle uncomfortably. “You know what they are saying about you, right? They say you act too good for them. That’s why the younger guys aren’t going for you.”
“I don’t want the younger guys,” I snap back. “If I’m going to be some guy’s property, he best be able to provide for me.”
The girls around me who aren’t even trying to hide that they’re eavesdropping nod their heads knowingly at me. None of us want to mess with the riders who just have earned their spot as a Filthy Bastard. Those guys come and go. A true MC rider is a lifer and a rare find. The ones who hold on to some power, are put in control, or elected to serve a leadership role, get paid the big bucks.
Even then, getting security from being an official old lady meant that your man had to claim you as his property, offer to take care of you, and stop seeing the rest of the girls in our club. Fat chance that it happens just like that when us ladies are out there on a platter to be picked and passed around. But for the girls like me, the only way to guarantee it is to have a guy’s baby. Then, club laws force him and the MC to provide for you and your kid no matter what.
“Well then, what about Ricco? Wasn’t he good enough for you?” Mary asks again. She’s not going to let up until I give her an answer. Dammit.
I think over my words before I say anything. Not only do I have an audience, but my audience also has ears and mouths. Those ears hear one thing, and the mouth says another—often to guys who can put me in danger with the club. If the boys were already saying that I am snobbish, dogging on Ricco could be a nail in my coffin.
Instead of letting them have the truth, I put it as nicely as possible. “Ricco was friendly. We didn’t get very far. I don’t know if I’ll meet up with him again.” I pause for dramatic effect before adding, “Why, Mary? You want him?” She smiles as she sits up a bit straighter. Her long neck cranes towards the guys gathering around a fire pit in search of him. He’s not hard to spot. Ricco’s the only one wearing a leather jacket and navy blue bandana on an eighty-degree evening.
“Can you guys shut the hell up?” an unmistakable voice behind us interrupts, “The fight is about to begin, and Cobra actually let me put some money on this.” Kitka appears next to me, flashing her long, silky, tanned legs. She slips off her heels and scoots next to me on the blanket, forcing me to move over for her. I can smell the cheap perfume rolling off of her skin as she leans over and steals the bottle of Jack the girls have been passing around. With her head tilted back and her red lips covering the rim, she chugs it back like a pro.
“C’mon, Kitty Kat! Save some for the rest of us. Sunny over here hasn’t had more than a sip yet, and it sounds like she didn’t get it good enough tonight. Let the poor girl take a turn.”
Thanks, Mary. The last person I want to tell my story to or even complain around is Cobra’s main girl, Kitka.
Ever since I joined the club four years ago, she made it clear that I would never be her ally. Other girls joined the inner circle when she felt like it, but not me. As I take a long, hard pound of the warm alcohol, I glance over her way. Leann, when she was around, told me that Kitka was jealous of me. I am the youngest one here, and that by default made me hot shit to the guys. Unlike her, I haven’t been passed around or claimed. Kitka, on the other hand, has been claimed by Cobra for a good long while now. All of us know, however, that Kitka’s eyes were on Killer. She has got some mad ambition like that.
But looking at her, I still don’t understand it. Why, besides the fact that I’m younger than her, would she be envious of a girl like me? Motorcycle club guys die and go to Heaven when they land a girl like Kitka. Dark skin, tattoos, jet black long hair, and always decked out in something leather—she was a dream. I, by contrast, look like I just stepped off a school bus. I’m tall, but I’m awkward about it. You can’t catch me out wearing those sky-high heels she wears on a daily basis, and my pale skin would look like patchwork with tattoos as colorful as hers. Add in the blonde hair, blue eyes, princess look and I rarely turn heads unless the guy is into that kind of thing. Nine times out of ten, they are eyeing a girl like her down.
Even now, with the boys down by the drawn-up ring placing their bets on the two fighters representing the Filthy Bastards and Wilderkind clubs, some of the guys look up and over at us. No doubt, to get a glance at Kitka and her latest outfit. Sure enough, a guy lifts his chin to her as she smiles slightly and looks away and back at our group. I take another long drink from the bottle. I need to pace myself. I’ve probably had at least half of this between my long swigs.
“Cobra says this is gonna be a good one,” Kitka explains. “The guy fighting for the Wilderkind is like a semi-pro or something. He fought when he wasn’t in the club for some boxing ring. But that rarely transfers to bare knuckle. The guy’s going down in two rounds, for sure.”
“Two rounds?” Mary shouts, “No way! Look at that guy—he’s a freaking beast! That’s why they call him Bear.” She points out the man leading a crowd of Wilderkind members towards the center of the drawn-up ring. He stands about three to six inches taller than the rest and is covered in black tattoos that I can make out from here. His thick, curly brown hair bounces as he moves stealthily through the crowd of men patting his back and giving him high-fives.
I scoot myself over a bit to watch him a minute more. The rest of the girls turn their attention to our fighter, a guy Cobra picked out himself to rough the guy up and bring home a victory for the Filthy Bastards. But I’m transfixed on the Wilderkind guy. I’ve seen my fair share of riders and MC members, but none like him. In my hazy, rapidly turning mind, I imagine him lifting me on his shoulders and riding off with me to some forbidden lair out in the middle of the wilderness. Standing on my knees, I take another long drink of the burning liquid. My tongue traces over the rivets of the bottle top as I try to think of what a man like that even tastes like…
And just when I think I see him turn his head toward me and smile, I get pulled back down to the group by Kitka’s claws. “What the fuck, Sunny? Are you really giving that guy your attention? You know who the hell you’re representing, right?”
I hand her back the bottle, my arm swooshing heavily and without much control towards her. “I know. I know. I was just… looking. No harm in looking at the competition.”
“That’s not the kind of looking you should be doing to a guy like that, and you know it,” Larissa adds. She always has to be a freaking square about this shit.
“Girls, girls, please. Let the lady have some fun. That guy is fine as hell, and we all know it. There is no shame in looking every now and then. And it’s not like Sunny’s got a guy claiming her. She’s a free agent,” Mary says.
All our eyes turn back to the fighter called Bear. This time, he’s clearly looking up at me. My face turns beet red, the kind of red you can’t conceal when you’ve got skin the color of milk.
“If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll close her legs and her eyes and pay attention to what’s going on,” Kitka says, with a sneer.
My haunches raise. I don’t need to be told what to do. I’m a fucking Filthy Bastards’ girl. I took my oath and my pledge to serve the club. I pay my dues and work my shifts. And just because I had a momentary eye-fling with some guy from another club, it doesn’t give her any right to badger me about my loyalty!
But, of course, Kitka’s gotta play Queen Bee and add another nail to the coffin. “Plus, there’s no way in hell that Sunny would ever land a guy like him.”
“Excuse me!” I say as I turn my head towards her. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Are you saying that I’m not hot enough to bed him?”
She smiles one of those toothy grins that makes me want to punch her in the mouth and then sighs with fake concern. “No, no, Sunny. That’s not what I mean at all… I am simply saying that no guy from the Wilderkind could ever want a girl with a brand from the Filthy Bastards.”
Sure, Kitka. Sure. Every single girl knows what she meant. The Wicked Stepmother of the club clearly dissed my look and my ability to land a guy. I don’t know if it’s the drink running in me or the fact that down in that circle, a guy named Bear is still checking me out. I give him once last glance, this time fully putting on the flirty stops. My head turns towards my shoulder, my long, blonde hair flies backward, and my mouth curves. And to my surprise, the guy winks at me. He actually winks! It’s barely noticeable from where we’re sitting, but I know exactly what he just did, and it practically makes my insides squeal.
I grab the bottle of Jack back from Kitka and use a big drink of it to clear my throat. When the liquid courage is fully flowing through me, I’m ready to lay it on this arrogant little bitch.
“You want to make this interesting, Kitka? You want to actually challenge me on this?”
She laughs as she asks, “On what, Sunny?”
“On if I can get that guy to sleep with me,” I reply. Kitka pauses and looks me over. Her face transforms from that plastic fakeness to something more cold and terrifying. This was the real Kitka I knew.
“Okay, Sunny. You go ahead. Try to sleep with him. I’ll even be nice and give you twenty-four hours to lock it down. But I’m not going to take your word for it or any of these hoes. You better come back with something.”
“Like a prize!” Mary shouts as she claps her hands in excitement.
Both Kitka and I turn our heads towards her, beckoning her to shut the hell up and mind her own business.
I bite my lip and glare at Kitka again. “Oh, I’ll come back with something alright, and it won’t be just some hokey token to prove I bedded him. I’ll come home with something that’s really precious to him.”
“Yeah, whatever,” she throws back, clearly not banking on me bringing back a personal possession of Bear’s.
I take another drink, letting it wash over me. What’s done is done. And I just took on the bet of a lifetime.
“You heard me, Kitka. I’ll bring back something very precious to the guy, and then you can suck on it.”
“We’ll see,” she mutters.
“Yeah, we will. Then we’ll see who has more respect around here.” I keep glaring at her until she is forced to look away—towards where Cobra is prepping our fighter.
We all sit in stunned silence, but this time, I look on at Bear with a new, resounding determination. Kitka has pushed my buttons one too many times, and I am going to prove to her that I am worth my membership, even if it means sleeping with the enemy.