“So are you and Arsen…” Cassandra trailed off, but Maya knew what she was trying to ask. She slowly downed her shot, letting it linger in her mouth before swallowing it, if only to give herself extra time before answering the dreaded question.
“No. No, we’re not,” Maya said with a polite smile, and she could tell that various club members were listening in on their conversation despite the hoots and hollers of the bikers around her. “I’m just here for a work thing, you know, helping Arsen with a case. I’m engaged now, actually,” she said, gesturing to the ring that she carried on her left hand.
“Oh, wow, congratulations!” Cassandra said, but Maya could tell that she was caught off guard, expecting an entirely different answer. “Who is he? Where’d you meet him? What’s he do? Is he here in town?”
Maya laughed, unsure of which question to tackle first. “Um, his name is Chuck, Chuck Huber. We met at a barbecue a coworker of mine was throwing, and we just hit it off. He’s an accountant, but I don’t really understand any of the work he does,” she said with an awkward chuckle. It felt weird, describing her new relationship to someone from her old life. She wanted to keep the two spheres as separate as possible, not allowing them to interfere with each other. It’s not like Cassandra could possibly do anything to mess that distinction up, but still, it was uncomfortable for Maya to even acknowledge her other, cleaner, easier life when she was mired in the city business.
“Sounds like a great catch,” Cassandra said before drinking her own shot. Maya could tell from the flat, wooden way she said it that Cassandra didn’t really mean it. She was an MC girl, through and through, somebody who’d been hanging around the bikers since she was a teenager. She was what Maya should have been like, honestly, obsessed with hard, tough men with tattoos. But Maya needed something different nowadays. She needed something stable, something easy, something simple and safe. At least, that’s what she told herself.
Maya felt her skin start crawling a little, the vast number of sweaty, drunk, swaying bodies surrounding her making her more and more uncomfortable with each passing second. “Um, I’m going to go mingle a little bit. I’ll talk to you later!” Maya said, shoving her way through the crowd of bodies to get to relatively fresher air in the center of the room. She thought she heard Cassandra shout something after her, probably trying to tell her to wait up, but Maya ignored it, plunging forward until she saw Arsen on the opposite side of the room, his head bowed as he talked to a man that Maya only vaguely recognized.
By the time Maya crossed the room, diving in between little pockets of people talking to each other, the other man had left, heading out of the building, while Arsen just stood there by himself, sipping on a beer. “What’s up?” Maya asked, ignoring the sweet, familiar half-smile that Arsen gave her as soon as she stepped in front of him.
“Hey, talked to Chris. Gave him our girl’s number. He should have the information for us in a couple of days.”
“Just like that?” Maya asked. It was a little scary how easy it was to invade a young girl’s privacy.
Arsen just shrugged. “I had to call in a favor, but yeah, we’ll be on our way soon enough. I told him to rush it, so maybe we’ll learn who she was talking to by tomorrow.”
Maya nodded, her thoughts a million miles away.
“What’s wrong?” Arsen asked, apparently still capable of reading her expressions, even a year later.
“Nothing, it’s nothing,” Maya rushed to answer, faking a smile, but she could tell, just judging off of Arsen’s expression, that her performance wasn’t successful in convincing him that everything was fine. She sighed deeply, grimacing a little as she searched for the right words to describe what she was currently feeling. “You ever feel like…you know when you go back to a place from your childhood, and it doesn’t look like anything you remember?”
Arsen nodded, holding his beer suspended in midair between his waist and his mouth.
“Yeah, well, that’s not the problem here. Everything’s exactly the same,” Maya said, gesturing to the clubhouse around her.
“Except you?” Arsen suggested, raising one eyebrow quizzically.
“I guess,” Maya said, lifting one shoulder and letting it fall limp in a pathetic excuse for a half-shrug. She didn’t really know why it was bothering her, but it did. Maybe because I haven’t changed either, Maya said silently to herself, the thought making her heart seize up in her throat like she was choking on a bone. Maybe I’m the same broken, fucked-up girl I always was. Maybe I fit right in here.
“Well, not everything is the same. Shit changes in a year, even in the MC,” Arsen said, tearing her away from her thoughts again. “Like, we’ve got a new cook now. Great guy, makes the best ribs you’ll ever have in your life. I’ll introduce you, come on.”
Maya really didn’t care one way or another if the MC had a new cook, but she followed after Arsen anyway, smiling politely at various bikers who remembered her on the way into the kitchen.
“Zane!” Arsen called out, rapping his fists against one of the counters. For a second, the chef was nowhere to be found, but then, a moment later, his head popped up from the floor.
“Sorry, sorry, I spilled something. You know me. Slippery hands,” the chef said with a sheepish smile as he walked towards them. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Zane, Zane Havens.”
“Maya Talbot.” Maya offered her hand forward for an introductory handshake, but Zane simply shook his head and lifted his hands, which were covered in flour or sugar or some other white cooking substance.
“Arsen has told me about you,” Zane said, walking over to the counter to wipe his hands on some paper towel. “You’re like a lawyer, right?”
“Not exactly,” Maya said, “but I deal with the law a lot. I help connect victims to the representation that they need.”
Zane nodded and smiled a little, but his eyes remained cold and distant. It was clear he didn’t really care about her job and was just being polite. Maya immediately felt awkward, like she’d been dragged here as Arsen’s accessory, a little finishing touch to his outfit rather than an autonomous person herself. She leaned back against the kitchen counter behind her, crossing her arms and ankles to feel more secure. She’d just let Arsen do all the talking here. He was better at it than her anyway.
“What are you making for us tonight?” Arsen asked, referring to the thick, heavy smell that hung over the whole kitchen.
“Same old, same old. Meat and potatoes, the midnight snack of champions,” Zane said with a laugh. “I am making some dessert for you guys, though, so stick around.”
“Will do,” Arsen said, and then he put a hand on Maya’s shoulder, attempting to steer her back out of the kitchen. For a second, Maya’s body stayed immobile, rooted to the spot like she’d been frozen in time. She stared at Zane even as Arsen applied more pressure to her shoulder and eventually, physically turned her around himself; Zane looked back at her, smiling without any light in his eyes.
Maya felt a little chill go up her spine, traveling all the way up to the base of her skull. Knock it off, she berated herself, turning her head back to face the main room of the clubhouse where various MC members awaited her. You’re just being weird and twitchy because you’re stuck in the city. You’ll be back out in the country soon enough.
“How long has he been with the MC?” Maya asked in a lowered voice, keenly aware that Arsen’s hand lingered on her shoulder, possessively gripping her like she might fly away.
Arsen shrugged. “Little less than a year. He’s really funny. Love that guy.”
Maya nodded to herself, letting the words sink in. See? You’re just being paranoid. It’s a biker gang. There are bound to be weird, stilted people in here. Not everybody is suspicious. Not everybody is a creep.
But no matter how hard Maya repeated those words to herself, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was off. Something’s always off with me, Maya thought to herself as she accepted another shot of whiskey from one of the MC members. Nothing will ever be normal for me again. Ever.
In her mind, she tried to argue with herself, even as she took the shot, feeling herself grow drunker and drunker as the minutes passed by. I’m not broken, she tried to think to herself. I’m not broken. I’m okay. I’m normal. I’m a normal woman.
But Maya was never a very good liar.