Charlie
In the morning, I was waiting in the parking lot for over an hour before Nicolette showed. She was right on time, but I hadn’t been able to sleep very well. The motel mattress was lumpy and there was a weird smell in the room. Now that I was outside, I sniffed my arm to make sure it hadn’t managed to transfer to my clothes.
It had. Just fucking great.
The motel looked even seedier by daylight, if that were possible. The orange and white paint was flaking off the sign and the rest of the parking lot was abandoned. I snickered as I realized that likely, Nicolette and I were the only two people who had actually spent the night in the Old Hills Inn.
“Hey,” Nicolette said shortly. “You have your key? I’m going to check out.”
I tossed the plastic fob to her and she caught it with ease, then practically skipped over to the office. Even though she’d only been outside for a few seconds, the change in her demeanor was immediate. I could tell the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders, and the dark circles were gone from her eyes.
When she came out, she walked over towards the car. “Are we driving today? Or walking?”
“I thought I’d walk up there,” I said, pointing down the road. “I looked it up on my phone last night, and there’s a rental agent a mile or so away. Might be nice to stretch my legs.”
Nicolette pursed her lips. For a moment, I thought she was going to bitch about walking. But after a few seconds, she tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Okay, that sounds good,” she said. “I’ll come with you.”
It took us about twenty minutes to walk to the rental office. The place hadn’t been around for very long – there were almost no reviews online – and it didn’t even look open. I squinted and leaned against the glass, clearing away the dust with my hands.
“Wow,” Nicolette breathed. “This place is cheap. Look.” She grabbed my wrist and pointed towards a poster on the outside of the window, advertising cottages for only five hundred bucks a month. When she realized she was still holding my wrist, she dropped my hand like it had burned her.
“Yeah,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s cheap, all right. So you want me to go in?”
Nicolette nodded nervously. “How are you paying for this?”
I sighed and pulled out my checkbook. “I’ve been saving,” I said gruffly. I didn’t want to tell her why. The money had been put aside for a new bike.
“You don’t have to pay,” Nicolette said. She dug in her purse and pulled out her wallet. “Or at least, let me help.”
I pushed her hand to the side until she’d dropped her wallet back into the bag. “Yes, I do,” I growled under my breath. “Remember? I told you I’d take care of you and the baby.”
Nicolette didn’t reply. She pursed her lips and shifted her weight from one foot to the other as I pushed my way into the grimy office. Finally, just when I thought she was going to stay behind, she skipped in behind me.
There was a girl sitting behind a reception desk that looked like it had been dragged out of a landfill. She barely looked up until we were standing right in front of her. There was an older model of phone clutched in her hand, and when she glanced up I realized she was no older than a teenager.
“Hey,” she said shortly. “We’re not open yet. It’s only nine-thirty. We don’t open until ten.”
“Well, princess, that’s too bad for you,” I said, leaning over the desk and staring at the screen of her phone. “We just need some help and then we’ll be out of your hair.” I raised my eyebrows at her and glared until the smirk faded from her young, tanned face.
“Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll see if my dad is here.” She got up and stalked away from the desk – the effort of her movement was enough to set the decrepit office chair spinning.
“Charlie,” Nicolette hissed. “Don’t be such a dick,” she whispered. “We have to rent from these people. I don’t want them to hate us!”
Seconds later, the girl appeared with an older man in tow. He smiled when he saw us.
“Sorry about my daughter,” he said. “We’re just happy to have someone in here who wants to rent from us. What are you and your girlfriend looking for?”
At the word ‘girlfriend,’ Nicolette flinched beside me. I kept waiting for her to say something in protest, but she kept her mouth shut.
“Something small,” I said. “Like that cottage posted out front? Is that still available?”
The man snorted. “It’s kind of a fixer upper,” he said when he realized I was serious. “But you look like the kind of young kid who could take care of that.” He made a fist with his hand and moved it through the air in some kind of vague gesture. “How long you lookin’ for?”
I turned back to Nicolette and shrugged.
She blushed hard. “Um, about five months? Six?” She turned away, whipping her brown hair over one shoulder.
“What she said,” I said. “But that’s at least. We’re probably gonna need it for longer.”
Half an hour later, we walked out of the agency with a six-month lease for a small cottage, two sets of keys, and a sense of accomplishment.
“So,” Nicolette said. “What do you wanna do? Go back to the motel and get the car?”
“We should probably ditch the car as soon as we can,” I told her. “Jack might be on the lookout. Hell, he maybe even put some kind of tracking device under the hood. That’s real easy to rig up on those older models.”
The blood drained from Nicolette’s face. “You’re kidding,” she said slowly. “I didn’t even think about that.”
“Neither did I,” I admitted. I wasn’t sure whether or not Jack would have done something like that. I wanted to believe that before this little incident, he would have had no reason not to trust me unconditionally. Now I was starting to think otherwise. Had he been expecting me to betray him from the very beginning?
In the end, we walked back to the motel. I gave Nicolette a ride to a shopping center and dropped her off at Target.
“Buy only the basics,” I warned her. “We don’t want a lot of crap filling this place up. I’m gonna go check it out, and I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Pick out some cleaning shit and whatever you need to cook.”
Nicolette laughed. “I don’t know how to cook,” she said. “I mean, I do,” she added quickly, upon seeing my glare. “But Jack always hated my cooking. He said it tasted like slop.”
I coughed. “Well, I ain’t in a position to be that desperate,” I told her drily. “Just get what you need. I’ll be back later.”
As soon as I left Nicolette, the panic set in. What if I went back there and she was gone? What if she was there – with Jack – and they were just waiting for me to come back so he could kick my ass? What if this whole thing had been a trick?
But when I remembered Nicolette’s sheer panic at the way I’d pulled away from Durango with her in tow, I realized that couldn’t possibly happen. Jack was an abusive asshole, and I’d basically stolen his girlfriend. I knew I should feel nervous about what would happen if he found us, but the adrenaline high was too much.
I was almost to the cottage when I got the first phone call. It was still early in the morning – back in California, it would have been earlier still. But the sight of Jack’s name flashing across the screen of my phone made me feel as though he were right within my field of vision, like he was waiting for me.
I pressed ‘ignore’ and kept driving.
Ten minutes later, he called again.
I didn’t answer that time, either.
The inside of the cottage was pretty bad, though not as gnarly as I’d been expecting. It was dirty and dusty, and there was a lot of furniture piled into one corner. I managed to extract a wicker loveseat and a set of couches. There were even cushions – dirty ones, but cushions all the same.
There were two bedrooms. One was about the size of a closet, the other only marginally larger. It would have had a lot of charm had it not been covered in dirt from decades of use. I got to work hauling furniture around and clearing the rest out into the backyard. Real white trash, I thought with a wry grin as I worked. Just like what I’m used to.
When I went to check my phone for the time, my heart sank. Jack had called over fifteen times, and I had a bunch of voicemails waiting for me. Instead of listening to them, I called him and held the phone up to my ear.
Jack picked up on the first ring. “Where the fuck are you?” he hissed into the phone. I could picture his face in my mind, angry and contorted with rage. “Where the fuck are you, asshole?”
“I’m still in Durango,” I lied. “I haven’t been able to find your girl since yesterday. I’m starting to think she must’ve taken off for somewhere else. Maybe she’s goin’ back to California, Jack. Maybe she misses you and feels bad about leaving.”
“Fuck that,” Jack growled. “She wouldn’t come back here. She’s a little bitch is what she is, Charlie. If you don’t fuckin’ find her, I’ll come out there and do it myself.” There was a pause. “And you can fuckin’ forget about coming back to the Steel Gods if that’s the case. I don’t need no useless members of my club.”
I sighed. “Jack, I swear to fuckin’ God, I’ll get her,” I promised. Wait, how did this happen? How did I just lie? Three times? Fuck!
“You’d better,” Jack growled. “You better get back here soon, too. We’re goin’ riding next week, and if you’re not there, you’re out of the club. Back on probation, until you can prove yourself.”
“Jack, I’m trying as hard as I fuckin’ can,” I lied, gritting my teeth. “I’m not going to let you down.”
There was an ominous pause and finally, Jack coughed. “Don’t fuckin’ think about letting me down,” he repeated.
“Yeah,” I said drily. “I got that.”
“Good,” Jack said. “I expect you home with the bitch in a couple of days. Find her and bring her back, you hear me?” He laughed and for the first time, I realized how creepy his laugh could sound. “She’s gonna get what’s comin’ to her.”
“I got it,” I repeated. “I gotta go, Jack. I’m losin’ service.”
I hung up before he could reply. My heart was thudding in my chest. I had no intention – absolutely none – of returning Nicolette back to Carlsbad. I shivered when I realized that not once had Jack actually referred to her by name.
After that, I couldn’t stay in the cottage anymore. I had to go get Nicolette and make sure she was okay. Seeing her waiting outside of the Target was enough to make me forget all about Jack. She looked gorgeous. She’d bought some cheap clothes – jeans with strategic rips in the knees and a faux-vintage Rolling Stones t-shirt – and she looked relaxed and happy, her sunglasses pushed on top of her head. Her brown hair was loose and the sun brought out the white-blonde streaks that she’d always worn.
“Hey,” she said shortly when I pulled up. “What happened? You were gone forever.”
“Sorry,” I grumbled. “Come on. What all did you get?”
“Cleaning shit, mostly,” Nicolette said. “They didn’t have a ton of food. You mind stopping at the grocery store on the way home?” She looked into my eyes and I felt a shiver of something strange within my body. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” I lied. “Come on. Get in the car and let’s go.”
Nicolette chattered the whole way. She walked through the aisles of the grocery store, talking my ear off about how she’d finally felt the baby kick that morning, and how she was going to have to start buying maternity clothes.
“And Target is hiring,” she added, after a brief pause in the conversation. “I think I’ll probably try to get a job there. That wouldn’t be the worst thing, would it?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “But how you planning on getting there? We’re ditching the car, remember?”
“I thought I could buy another one,” Nicolette said shyly. She leaned over and picked a package of frozen chicken breasts from the freezer compartment. “I mean, I have that credit card and all. And we’ll need a car,” she added, glancing up at me meaningfully. “I mean, once the baby comes. Plus, how am I supposed to get to the hospital?”
I sighed. “You’re right,” I told her. “I’ll look into it later. Just get your shit and hurry up.”
“I’m ready,” Nicolette replied. “We can go home now.”