Chapter 7
Ethan
“You know what?” I asked the drowsy form beside me.
“What?”
“I want to take you somewhere.”
“Like on a real date?” she asked, sitting up. Her hair was wild and my eyes slid down to her perky tits without her permission. She smirked instead of covering up in self-consciousness.
“Yeah,” I said, pulling my eyes up to hers. “Like on a real date.”
“Okay,” she said, running her fingers through her hair, trying to calm the mess on her head. “When? Where? Do I need to dress up?”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Let’s see now. It’s a surprise, and no, you can wear what you’re wearing now.”
“Okay,” she said, jumping from the bed. “Give me a second to clean up.”
I shook my head. I told the woman she could go as she was and she still felt the need to “freshen up.”
“We’re leaving in five minutes,” I said, redressing my naked form. There was a place Evan had shown me once. It was a ledge with a great view of the city below. I was going to take her there. I didn’t know why I wanted to go there, but I wanted to share it with her.
“You’re not hungry, are you?”
“I could eat.”
“Then we’ll grab something before we go up.”
She came out with her hair in a bun that I wanted to take down and her makeup reapplied. “You looked fine before you went in there.”
Something about her blushing was satisfying. “Thank you.”
I held out my hand, not questioning all the weird shit I was doing because nothing about this was normal, and led her outside.
“Where are we going?” she said, her voice quivering just a little.
“To my bike.”
Her hand tightened around mine and she came to a full stop. “Oh. Ethan. Um.” We had only spent two nights together, and yet I could see she was not the carefree woman I had spent my time with. Her muscles were bunched together and she suddenly looked like she would be sick. “I can’t.”
“You can’t what, babe?”
“I can’t ride.”
Oh, that. Most women thought riding was scary, but it really wasn’t, if you had a driver who knew what he was doing. “Well, it’s not that hard, babe. I’m the one driving. You just hold on,” I said, turning and walking a step towards the bike. She let go of my hand, rooted to the spot she was in before.
“No. You don’t understand.” She was on the verge of a panic attack. I could see tears pooling in her eyes. “I can’t.”
I turned back and wrapped my arms around her. I could feel her heart racing in her chest and her chest rising and falling quick. “Okay. Okay. Calm down. Just calm down. Let’s talk about this.”
This was not me. I did not calm women. I left women who couldn’t control their emotions, but there I was, standing in a motel parking lot, rubbing the back of this woman and I was actually interested in what was going on. She knew about bikes, so she had to have been around them. How could she also be afraid of them? I felt her breath on my neck and once it slowed a little, I stepped back to see her face. It was red. From trying to quell her emotions or embarrassment, I didn’t know.
“Talk to me, Molly. What’s going on?”
“I can’t get on your motorcycle.”
“Why not?”
She looked so pitiful, chewing her bottom lip like she was afraid of what she might say. “Because I’m afraid.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Crashing,” she whispered.
“Do you think I would crash my bike?”
“No.”
“Do you think I would want to put you in danger?”
“No.”
“Do you think I would want to endanger my own life?”
“No.”
“Then the rational and logical thought would be there’s nothing to fear. Right?”
She nodded.
“But fear isn’t logical,” I said with a sigh. Nothing I said had calmed her stance.
“I’m sorry,” she said in tears.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t apologize.” I kissed her forehead. “You’re all right.” We stood like that for a moment, my mouth resting on her forehead, before I smiled down at her. “Come on.”
She stiffened, rigid and ready to protest.
“Molly, look at me.” Her eyes were glued to my bike like it might attack her. “Look at me, sweetheart.” She looked at me. “I just want us to walk to it. Okay?” she looked uncertain. “We’re just going to stand beside it. That’s it. Do you think you can do that? Just walk beside me and stand next to my bike.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
Slowly, hand in hand, we walked to my bike and stood beside it. I could almost feel the tension her body was displaying. She stood next to it, but angled away and closer to me. With our joined hands, I outstretched her hand toward the bike. I moved slowly enough for her to pull back if she wanted to, until we were both touching the seat.
“Okay?”
She nodded.
“You ever rode a motorcycle before?”
“I used to.”
“So you know that your bike doesn’t do anything you don’t do. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“If you turn left, it turns left. If you stop, it stops. If you lean, it leans. Right?”
“Right.”
“If you lose control, the bike loses control. My bike doesn’t do anything I don’t want it to do, Molly. Do I seem like a man out of control?”
“No.”
“Do you trust me?”
She stared at me for what seemed like years. I stood there for as long as she needed, trying to show I was trustworthy. For once, I wanted someone to see me, the real me, under all the bullshit, addiction, bad attitude, and behavior. I wanted someone to see me. I was trustworthy and I wanted someone – Molly – to believe in me.
Finally, she nodded and I pulled her tightly into my arms.
“Trust me, Molly. Just trust me. I won’t hurt you. I’m not going to let anything hurt you. You can trust me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Now, let’s get to that date.”
I slung my body over the bike and started it as she clung tightly around me. I pulled out of the parking lot slowly, careful of the skittish passenger. She held me like a second skin as I drove under the speed limit to the grocery store.
“We’re here, babe.”
Her face was nestled into my back and looked up only when I spoke.
“You all right?”
She nodded and took my hand to step off the bike. I could feel her hands shaking in my own.
“If you want to sit here for a minute, you can. I’m just going to go inside real quick and get some food.” She looked at me a bit dazed and shook her head. “You want to stay here?”
“No. I’ll come inside.”
She followed me inside, holding my hand, and together we grabbed some sandwiches and chips. I grabbed a blanket and a backpack too. We were checked out in less than fifteen minutes. She almost relaxed and forgot about her fear. She took the backpack full of food and as soon as we walked back outside, she froze up.
I could see the fear glistening in her eyes in the light of the street lamps.
“Remember what I said, Molly. Trust me,” I said, adjusting the backpack on her back. “Now, let’s go. I promise this is going to be fun.”
“Okay,” she said, swinging her leg over the bike a little more confidently.
I drove consciously. I didn’t speed or take any turns as wild as I might normally have if I was on my own. I made the ride on autopilot, driving through the foliage and onto a beaten path. I helped her unclick her helmet. Her hair was a sexy mess from my helmet and her cheeks were flushed from the wind. Anchored on my body, she swung off the bike and came face to face with the view. The reason why I came up there.
“Wow,” she said.
From up there, there was nothing but the stars above us and over the cliff, and lying out before us were all the lights of the city. They were sprinkled below us quite like the stars above us.
“It’s beautiful.”
“I think so too,” I said as I helped her off the bike.
We unpacked our haul and soon our picnic was set up. We lay down and for a moment, I could only hold her. I pulled her bun down, happy to play in her hair as we lay side by side.
“How long have you been afraid of riding?”
“Since I crashed.”
“Is that how you got those scars on your back?”
She nodded and looked into the distance.
“Was it as bad as you thought it would be? Riding with me?”
“No,” she said, cuddling closer to me.
“Do you think you’ll ever ride by yourself?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sighing heavily. “I hope so.”
I didn’t push the subject and pulled the food out. We ate the sandwiches in silence. I could tell something was on her mind. I waited, knowing it would emerge eventually.
“How did you get addicted to meth?”
If she was anybody else, I would have responded differently. I would have said anything in the world, but the truth was she wasn’t anybody else. This was Molly, and I wanted her to know me – the real me. Plus, I knew she would not judge me.
“I ran into it at a party. Happened accidently. I wasn’t at a good place. My dad had just died and I didn’t have anyone. Well, I had my brother and my mom, but I just felt….”
Silence fell open in front of me and she finished the word I wasn’t sure I could say.
“Alone.”
“Yeah.”
She understood me. She understood exactly what I wanted to say even when I couldn’t explain.
“So when they offered it to me, I took it. I didn’t think it was anything dangerous. You know? Everybody does it where I am from so I didn’t think too hard about it.”
I stopped talking, thinking about the moment when it all changed for me. I tried it once and I was addicted.
“It only took one sniff and I was hooked. It was like a religious experience. At first, I was kind of scared, I was so young and I didn’t know my body could feel all that. It took me so high. I felt empowered, like nothing could get me and for once, everything just felt slow and easy.”
“And it got out of hand?”
“Exactly. I lost control. I didn’t know for a while though. You know, motorcycle clubs, we party. We get wild and it’s nothing for drugs to be around. So I had a lot of enablers and no one wanted to call me out for it, but then the truth couldn’t be denied. I lost myself and finally, when the crew couldn’t take any more of it, they sent me to rehab.”
“What was that like?”
“Hell on Earth. At first. Then it became the best thing that happened to me. It wasn’t easy, but I like me better now.”
“I like you better too,” she said rolling over and smiling up at me.
“You know what else I’m glad about?”
“What?”
“Going to that NA meeting. I hadn’t been in a long time and my sponsor, Luke, suggested I go again. I didn’t think I’d like it. Well, I didn’t like it, but finding you was worth it.”
“I’m starting to feel like it was more than a coincidence. You know? Like what are the chances that I’d see you at the club and then days later see you at the meeting?”
“Right,” I said, laughing. “I thought I was going crazy when you told me about my bike and then drove away.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t remember your name,” I said, chuckling.
She slapped my arm. “You ass.”
“Hey! That’s all you were at the time.”
“And now?” she said, rolling over and pinning me to the ground.
“You’re more than that.”
I saw my happiness reflected in her eyes.
“You want to get out of here?”
“You read my mind,” she said, smirking before leaning down to take my lips.