Logan
I dream that I cried last night. I dream that I invited Cora over and humiliated myself by weeping like a little kid. I dream that I told her how devastated I am. I dream that I made a complete goddamn fool of myself. I bury my face in the pillow so that I can go on believing that that’s all they are: dreams. I don’t need to bring them into reality. I can’t bring them into reality, because admitting that I did that is just too fuckin’ much.
Crying in front of a woman is a thing we don’t do, we just don’t fuckin’ do it. Maybe if you’re married to a girl you can cry in front of her, but not someone you just invited over. What if this shit gets out? What if she tells a friend and that friend tells a friend and that friend happens to know one of my men’s girls? Goddamn.
I roll onto my back, head pounding, listening to Cora breathe softly next to me. I take a bottle of water from under the bed—I keep them there for really brutal hangovers—and drink one in two giant gulps. Then I drink half of another and turn over and look at Cora, wondering if she drank anything, too. I can’t remember. All I remember is crying, humiliating myself. What sort of man does she think I am now? What sort of outlaw lets his emotions take control like that? I want to punish myself. I want to slam my fingers into a car door for being so stupid.
She needs to know that I’m not that guy: the weepy, helpless, defenseless guy, the sort of guy who cries about his problems instead of sorting them out. She needs to know that I’m still a man. So it’s good that she’s curled up like that, her knees to her chest so that her ass is sticking out. I feel my animal lust rising, and that’s way better than any weepy emotion. My cock gets hard and I reach down for that perfect ass, remembering what it felt like the last time. I’ll take her hard again, harder this time, and then let her think that I’m not a man. I grab her ass, massage it. She moans, sticking her ass out. One of her eyes opens and then closes, and she sticks her ass out even further. I keep rubbing it and then move my hand between her legs, pressing against her pussy.
She’s already wet. Damn.
I rub the fabric of her panties, glad she took her jeans off at some point in the night. The feel of her clit and lips crushing flat against my hand is so hot I can barely contain myself. I tug her panties down her knees, pressing my forefinger and middle finger firmly against her clit. She moans, eyelids fluttering open and closed, and I reckon this is going to be it: my way to show her, my way to prove it. We didn’t fuck last night and that was a mistake. I can’t invite women over just to cry on their shoulders. I don’t need a fucking therapist. I slide my finger up inside of her, the warm wetness of it making me think of my cock in there, tight and as hot as a bike engine, but then she rolls over and leaps to her feet.
“Oh, fuck.” She covers her hand with her mouth and sprints into the living room, into the bathroom. Even from in here I hear her puking, projectile vomiting against the toilet bowl.
Maybe she did drink last night, then. I get up and go into the living room. The whisky bottle is empty on the coffee table. Maybe I drank a whisky bottle at the bar and another one here; it wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened, but then, maybe she helped me with it. Maybe she doesn’t remember what an ass I made of myself, either. I go into the kitchen and start brewing some coffee.
“Want some?” I call to her.
“Sure,” she calls back.
I make two mugs of coffee and take them to the coffee table. She comes and sits next to me. It’s silent, awkward, as we sip our coffee. I sense there’s a lot of stuff she wants to say to me, or maybe she wants me to be the same weepy bastard I was last night. That’s the thing; I need to find out if she remembers or not.
“Last night was weird,” I say.
“Weird, how?”
“Don’t you remember?” I ask, hoping.
“I remember.” She looks at me, and then glances away, maybe not liking the expression on my face. “You don’t have to be embarrassed. You’re allowed to be upset.”
That’s where she couldn’t be more wrong, because I’m not allowed to be upset. In fact, I’m never allowed to be upset. The last thing I’m allowed to be is upset, because being upset means that you’re a person, and I’m not a person. I’m a man. I’m an outlaw. I think about saying all that to her but then decide against it, because that’d be just another form of sharing myself, and I’m done with that.
“Right. I’m hungry. Can you make me somethin’ to eat?”
“Are you serious?” She places her mug down, a little too hard. “I mean, I don’t have a problem making you something, seeing as you’re hungover. But you don’t have to play the Neanderthal with me. I’m not judging you for last night. I don’t think you’re less of—well, less of anything.”
“What about your Vikings, Cora? I bet they never cried their—I bet they never showed their emotions or shit like that.”
“Actually, they did. Some of their greatest warriors even composed poetry.”
“Right. Well, I guess bikers’n Vikings ain’t really the same, after all.”
She sighs. I get the sense that part of her—the feisty part—wants to tell me to go fuck myself. But there’s another part of her that wills her to stay. I don’t know what drives that half. She stands up and goes into the kitchen. Opening the fridge, she says, “You have bacon, but no bread, no eggs, so how’d you feel about bacon with a side of bacon?”
“Fine. Fry yourself up some, too.”
This is the way to do it: make her see that last time was the exception, not the rule; make her see that it’s not always going to be hearts worn on sleeves, that from now on I’m going to be the president of the Demon Riders, and the president of the Demon Riders doesn’t weep.
“How’re you feeling this morning?” she asks over the sound of sizzling bacon. The smell wisps into the living room. My mouth waters.
“Great,” I say. “A bit of a headache. Otherwise okay.”
“No, I mean …”
She wants me to finish the sentence, which essentially means she wants me to pry my chest open and give her a target. I wait silently.
“I mean about your loss, and everything. I lost my dad, too. I know how hard it can be.”
“Well, the fuck am I gonna do, spend the rest of my life wishing he wasn’t dead? I can’t go back in time and knock that first cigarette out of his hand, can I? So I don’t see what use there is in thinking about it.”
“It’s okay to be angry.”
I won’t turn and face her, even though I feel her eyes on me. If I turn and face her, if I look into those bright green eyes and that sympathetic mouth, frowning and half-smiling in support, if I see that she really is there for me, I might be tempted to collapse again.
“What about you?” I say, ignoring her question. “You must’ve hit the whisky pretty hard with me last night.”
She pauses, and then says, “Just a couple, but I’m not really a spirits girl.”
“What drinks do you like, then?”
“Do you really want to talk about my favorite drink? Logan, you don’t have to be like this. I’m not judging you, or anything like that. I don’t think of you as less of a man, for Christ’s sake.”
“Who said you did? I didn’t say that. If you don’t wanna talk about drinks, let’s talk about that tattoo on your back.”
“What about it?”
She brings two plates of bacon over with some ketchup. I tuck into the food ravenously, speaking between mouthfuls. “I was just looking at it this morning. Where’d you get that? Is it quite a common tattoo? I’ve never seen it before.”
“Oh, it was just something out of a magazine. It was my first-ever tattoo. I used a fake ID. I was fifteen years old. You know how reckless you are at that age.”
“Out of a magazine? Where was that?”
“A place in LA. It was called Ink Stop, I think. Why’d you care so much?”
“One of my boys has a daughter, and she was saying she wants a tattoo like that. Said I’d ask where you got it, is all.”
“Oh, okay.”
We eat the bacon in silence. When we’re both done I lean back on the couch, staring at Cora’s reflection in the TV. I can’t look at myself because then maybe I’ll see what an asshole I’m being. We sit like that for several minutes, a silent war to see who’ll talk first.
“If you want to pretend that last night didn’t happen, that’s fine. That’s your choice. But I don’t see that you have to be like this with me.”
“Like what?”
“Cold, distant, mean. Is that really necessary, Logan? I don’t see why we have to play these games.”
“I don’t see that I’m playing games,” I say, which is a damn lie. “I’m just enjoying my breakfast and relaxing.”
“Right,” she says. There’s a tremor in her voice, the sort of tremor which makes me think an eruption’s coming. “It’s just … surely you can see how weird this is for me. You can’t be—well, you can’t be like you were last night and then just turn into this. It’s … it isn’t exactly fair.”
“I wish I could help you with that,” I say. “I really, really do. But the thing is, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Maybe you want me to act a certain way and I’m not doing it. Maybe you want me to be this super-emotional guy or somethin’, but that just ain’t who I am. Whatever happened last night, I was drunk. It’s a cruel goddamn woman who throws something a man did when he was drunk in his face.”
“So you’re telling me that it had no relationship to reality, absolutely none, that the way you behaved was just—what? Random? Is that what you want me to think? I’m not trying to drag anything up—”
“Yeah, you are.” I turn to face her briefly, but I can’t stand the look on her face: open, ready to understand. The last thing I need right now is a woman who’s ready to understand me. I’d prefer if she was shouting and slapping, spitting and growling. I’d prefer if she told me she never wanted to see me again. This openness is too much to handle. “You are,” I repeat, staring stubbornly at the table, the floor, the wall, anywhere but at her. “You want me to cry again. Maybe if gave you some sort of sick thrill. I don’t know what you got out of it. All I know is you want it to happen again.”
“So you admit it happened,” she cuts in, voice razor-sharp. “We’ve established that, at least.”
“You about done with that?” I pick up our plates and carry them into the kitchen, where I drop them into the sink. Then I go into the fridge and get myself a beer, crack it on the counter and drink down half.
“It’s not even noon,” she says with disgust.
“This is how I do things in my house,” I tell her. “If you don’t like it, the door’s right there.”
“You’re such an asshole.” She jumps to her feet, fists clenched. She looks cute and lethal at the same time, chaotic and orderly. It’s a combination of moods only she can pull off. She folds her arms and purses her lips. “You clearly like me. I feel self-conscious as fuck saying that, but it’s the truth. And now you’re gonna make me stand here like an absolute loser not knowing if you like me back. I get it. You’re a big tough biker and big tough bikers don’t share their feelings. Okay? Cool. That’s really, really awesome. But here’s the thing: last night I saw a side of you I bet you’ve never shared with anyone, and I think it’d be a real shame if we had to pretend it didn’t exist.”
I watch her for a long moment, wondering if I might really be a person, wondering if I might really let myself feel something. She’s right there, offering me the chance to change, even just a little, but maybe as time wears on I’ll change a little, a little more, and then one day I’ll be the sort of man who can take my lady to a barbecue and kiss the nape of her neck and all that tender shit, and not even have to feel awkward about it. Now wouldn’t that just be something …
But then I get potent flashbacks of crying, of being hunched over and weeping like a baby. I turn away from her so that her gaze can’t cast spells on me and drink the rest of my beer. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Cora.”
“Fine!” she snaps. She stomps around the apartment, collecting her things. “If that’s the game you want to play, fine! See if I care! You know, I made the effort, Logan! I came over here at almost midnight to try and—”
“What?” I shoot back, turning on her. “Why exactly did you come over here?” I march over to her, leaning close, so close that it would be no big thing to grab her thighs and tackle her to the couch, to push those thighs apart and lick the sweetness between them. I want to, and she wants me to—I can tell—but neither of us makes a move that way.
“I came here to …” She licks her lips, trailing off. “What do you care, anyway? You’re just an asshole.”
“Yep.” I step back. “I’m just an asshole.”
She walks to the door and turns back with it half-open. “I …” She sighs. “This morning could have gone so, so differently. I wanted to … There’s something here. Logan, you know there is. I don’t see you as any less of a man for being upset that your dad’s dead. Who’d think a horrible thing like that?”
She leaves, shutting the door softly behind her. I crack another beer and pace around the apartment, trying to stay angry, trying to convince myself I was in the right. But when I sit down and stare at myself in the TV screen, I can’t hold onto my anger, and I can’t pretend that I was in the right. All I can think of is her open face, waiting for me to drop the act, cut the shit, waiting for me to kiss her meaningfully, kiss her like I’m a man and not an outlaw.
I lay my head in my hands, trying to remember who I am.