5.

Elise

“Elise fuckin’ Manning! Where the hell you been girl?”

At the sound of her shrill voice the entire bar turns to look at the figure shadowed against the backdrop of streetlamps pouring into the room as she stands, filling the doorway.

And when I’ve only managed to stand halfway from my stool, I get tackled by that shadowed figure who moves surprisingly fast for such a little thing.

We both fall to the sticky floor. As she squeezes the breath from me, men’s laughter fills the space around us.

“Okay baby,” Tommy Doyle says through his laugh. “Don’t kill her before the reunion even starts.” Then she’s plucked off me as seconds later I’m peeled off the linoleum and pressed into Mark’s arms.

He’s all crooked smile. Tommy smiles. Then I look to Maryanne. She’s even prettier now then she was in high school, if that’s possible, because Maryanne Buckley was a freaking knockout in high school. Small, thin, but curved in all the right places. Porcelain skin still flawless. Chocolate brown hair with natural highlights swept over her shoulder in a long, awesome braid, a braid like Elsa from Frozen, if Elsa had chocolate brown hair.

Marriage looks good on her. Of course Tommy Doyle being her husband, it doesn’t surprise me. He was always, always so nice to us when we were being pains in the asses of the seniors while Maryanne and I were still juniors. And he was hardly hard to look at then, or now. Now even more so with that fit ‘I’m a badass cop’ physique he’s got going on.

Still despite how good she looks, Maryanne is Maryanne. Which means she goes from hollering redneck to crying just that fast. Since I have this rule where no one cries alone in my company, as her pretty brown eyes tear up and spill, so do mine.

“Oh shit,” I whisper. “My mascara. I’m gonna look like a raccoon.”

Mark presses a kiss to my jaw. He’s a touchy-feely guy. And, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I deprived myself from human contact for so long, but I don’t mind it. Being here, surrounded by Mark and my old friends, reminds me of how it felt so many years ago, when I first arrived in Thornbriar. Reminds me of what made me want to stay.

Maryanne certainly doesn’t mind Mark’s PDA, smiling, but turns up the pressure on her waterworks. “Holy shit!” she cries. “You two really are together…after all this time.”

Tommy, still holding Maryanne, kisses her cheek and says something in her ear for just the two of them to know. She nods then speaks to Mark. “We need drinks.”

“Toby,” Mark calls out to the bartender working tonight, every bit as bearded and tattooed as Mark, but with big, black gauges in his ears. They look like small drain stoppers, not the open ones. His hair is so brown it’s almost black and his eyes, they’re equally as dark. Must be a job requirement to be a bartender, to be so ridiculously handsome.

Toby walks over to us. “What can I get you pretty ladies tonight?” Mark throws a slightly playful, mostly menacing look to his bartender. “Anything they want. They both have rides home so let ‘em have fun.”

“You got it, Bossman.”

“My car was trashed this morning by vandals who want me out of town,” I tell him for whatever reason. “What do you suggest to take away that sting?”

“Whiskey Sour it is.” He grabs a bottle of Maker’s Mark from behind him.

“Make it two,” Maryanne tells him.

Maryanne and I pull up stools at the bar to sit. I’m rewarded by a kiss from the “bossman” while she’s rewarded by a scorcher from Tommy before the men head to the opposite side of the bar. The last I see of him before Maryanne snags my attention is the two of them racking up at the pool table.

Toby knows his way around a Whiskey Sour, for sure. I’m just happy to be enjoying a drink with an actual friend but apparently she’s done waiting on me to pony up the information.

“I’m serious,” she says looking me directly in the eyes so I can see how serious she is. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I left.” And I say it with a shrug.

“You left? That’s all you’ve got for me? We were best friends. You called layin’ all that shit in my lap. Then Logan. And you just disappear from my life without a trace. I lost my whole world. You, Logan, and Beau in one fell swoop.”

“I’m sorry.” I really am. We were a Manning, Hollister clusterfuck, but over the past five years I neglected to take into account how many other people we brought down along with us.

“You’re sorry?” Her tone hardens as she takes a huge swig of whiskey sour. “I barely survived. If it hadn’t been for Tommy, don’t think I would have.”

“The shit with Logan—the whole town turning on me. Then Beau turned his back on me. I was so lost. My whole world fell apart too, but I didn’t have Tommy to fall back on.” I want to cry but am so angry the tears, they won’t fall.

“Did you give it up?” she asks.

Now I can’t keep my voice under control.

“Give it up?” I scream at my once best friend, not giving two shits that the entirety of the place sits in engaged silence listening to my freak out. And here I am giving them the gossip. “I didn’t give it up. I lost it. The stress…The stress…” Anger finally ebbs replaced by the crushing sadness I’ve been avoiding for years. “I lost my baby.” And I fall back, not onto the stool but into Mark’s arms. I didn’t even hear him come over.

“Shh…” His consoling word feathers against my breaking heart. “Shh…” he says again.

“I wasn’t a whore, Mark. I wasn’t. The baby was his. He might not have wanted it, but what his mom said, what his aunt said—Lenore and Margo hated me. But I swear…I swear I’m not a whore.”

Some people have a higher tolerance before reaching their breaking point. Some have lower. I’d like to think since it’s been five years that I’m the former. Though, higher or lower, I’ve just about reached mine. He twists me in his arms to full-on hold me with his entire body, warming my soul with his care.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you,” he whispers against my neck. “I should’ve been there. I promise I will never let you down again.”

We keep holding on, tuning everyone else in the bar out, for who knows how long. The rest of the world building up and crumbling civilizations around us. Both of us content to remain so, at least in my mind.

“Did you know the toothbrush was invented in Kentucky?” He asks, out of the blue, and a ninety degree turn from the last words he’d spoken.

“What? No.” I shake my head, wiping away tears with the back of my hand.

“If it were invented anywhere else, it’d be called a teethbrush.”

Idiot. I laugh, loud and obtrusive, garnering head turns from people all around us. Mark chuckles around pulling a drink from his longneck. Tommy and Maryanne join in too, the laughing and the drinking.

“Should’ve given you Whiskey Sours years ago,” Tommy says, then. “Glad to have the old Elise back.”

“Are you, Sgt. Tommy Doyle of the Thornbriar Police Department, condoning underage drinking?”

He shoves my shoulder. “Only when it keeps my wife and my best friend from hurtin’.”

***

With all the heaviness behind us and three more Whiskey Sours down, Maryanne and I pivot on our stools barely able to keep ourselves from slipping off, to watch the men deep in a game of pool again.

“I wish I’d been at your wedding.” I halfway slur.

“Wish you’d been there, too. I had to ask Tommy’s sister Beth to be my maid of horror.”

“Don’t you mean honor?”

“Not with Beth.”

“Oh man, I remember. She was a piece of work.”

“You have no idea. She wanted us to have a ceremony right outta the puritan handbook. Should’ve seen her, I mean her entire face turned purple when I told her I didn’t want to wear white because I wasn’t a virgin. I kid you not, she fell to her knees and prayed for mine and Tommy’s immortal souls.”

“How do I even respond?”

“Well I’ll tell ya, she went from purple to red when I told her I would not be agreein’ to obey Tommy, either.”

“Really? She got angry with you?”

“Yeah. Because I told her I’d stop the ceremony then and there if she tried to get the minister to slip it in. And I wouldn’t go any further until he retracted it.”

“That’s my girl.” We try to fist bump, totally missing. “Was Mark there? At your wedding?”

“Sure. He…he was the best man.”

“How? We never hung out with him in school, did we?”

Maryanne’s hand finds my shoulder. “Listen,” she says. “What you need to know—” But her words fade, the sound of her voice drowned out by another. This one low, husky and soulful.

We redirect our gazes to the small stage kitty-corner to the pool tables and the gorgeous black woman standing atop it.

“Isn’t that Whitley Burgess?” I ask Maryanne.

She only nods as Whitley begins to sing.

“He said I love you…I said ‘I do’… I came home from work. What I found was you…

“He said he was sorry…Never again. Stabbed in the back by my husband and closest friend…

“I got the blues… I got those cheater man blues.

“Never again? He got that right. I ain’t seen him since that very night.

“My mama, she warned me. My daddy did too. And now I’m stuck nursing my cheater man blues…”

She’s sad and glorious, and I could listen to her sing the rest of the night. The live band I’d been too distracted by my Whiskey Sours to notice setting up accompanies her bluesy riff after bluesy riff.

Her song ends. Right when I think she’s about to start another, she steps off the stage allowing someone else to take her spot. When her applause dies down, the next woman begins to sing, although without nearly Whitley’s ability to carry a tune. But just because her voice sounds like fingernails scraping a chalkboard, doesn’t mean her words are any less heartfelt.

“That’s why I called it Lady Sings the Blues.” Mark found his way to my side again, just as stealthily as before.

“Do only women sing, then?”

“No. Men sing sometimes. Back then, I was lost. Used to sit here with old man Gallbraith, drinkin’ my problems away. He’s the one who introduced me to Billie Holiday and jazz and the blues. It’s sort of taken on a life of its own. Every Friday from nine to close is open mic.”

“What kind of bar is it the rest of the time?”

As if taking directions in a play, the glass door opens and about fifteen bikers spill inside. I’m the only one to even blink out of place at the intrusion. Violent thugs is what they really are. How are more people not freaking out about this?

“Mark,” I whisper. “There are bikers in your bar.” And I tense in his arms as the mostly hairy, leather-clad men saunter up to us.

“Hey Bossman,” one of the men, this one not hairy, says to Mark, eyeing the both of us standing so close together. Despite that he’s beautiful and looks as if he should be hanging with California surfer dudes from the neck up. From the neck down he’s all biker, and I’m not wholly comfortable with the way he predatorily peruses my body, or the way Mark smirks at him in turn. “This her?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Mark answers. “This is Elise.”

“Tommy. Maryanne.” The man nods respectfully to our friends, leaving me dumbstruck that Tommy Doyle, police officer, would be as comfortable as he seems to be with bikers.

“Elise, this is Chaos.” Mark introduces us.

“Chaos? Did your mother not love you?”

He and the other men laugh. “It’s my ride name. Bossman’s birth name isn’t Bossman, either.” I’m piecing together what he’s said when he pretty much crumbles my world with what he says next. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”

As his words really sink in, of course I look to Mark. And from Mark I look to Chaos, the other men and back to Mark again. Reality.

“You’ve got to be shitting me?” I step free from the arms of the man I felt so safe with only moments ago, keeping clear of his friends. “So what? Are you going to threaten me with a knife, too?”

“I—huh? Who threatened you with a knife, darlin’?”

“It doesn’t matter. But this—”I move my hand between the two of us“—can’t happen. Not now. My dad gets buried in three days. Shit, I thought you were one of the good ones. I’ve watched biker shows, read my share of MC novels. We all know how this ends for me.” Before he can capture my arm again, I stomp off for the door yelling ridiculously loud, “I cannot deal with this.”

Yeah, I realize that Mark hasn’t been anything but wonderful with me thus far, a real friend, nor does he know about the biker from my childhood. But that incident from so long ago put the fear of God into me, at least where bikers are concerned. There’d been so much blood. A gruesome sight for a six-year-old.

Once outside, able to breathe in the crisp nighttime air and clear my head, I concede that I probably overreacted. But hey, they aren’t called irrational fears for nothing.

As I look around the parking lot, I realize something else. I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere Kentucky without a car, no one will rent me a room, and all my stuff is at Mark ‘the lyingsonofa biker’s’ house. Lying by omission is still lying.

This cannot be happening. How did I end up here?

“You’re embarrassin’ me in front of my club.” Predictably, the burly bar owner followed me out.

“Don’t care.” I call back at him over my shoulder while flipping him the bird high in the air. With my mighty salute, I keep walking.

He follows.

“Woman, you better stop.” His command causes me to pause. But then I remember he’s nothing to me and continue moving. “Get back inside.” He warns through what sounds like clenched teeth.

“That’s really not going to work for me. Luckily, I’m not beholden to you or any man, so I’ll carry on my way. Knowing what you are, it’s for the best.”

“What I am, huh?” From the anger in his voice, maybe that wasn’t the best choice of words. “Where will you go?”

“The bus station.”

“So you’re gonna bail on Maryanne again? Ditch your father’s funeral?”

“Maryanne is just as much of a liar as you are and Hadley can handle things. It’s her day to shine anyway. My dad was a respectable man. He’d understand.”

“Your dad was a respectable man. And he was one of us.”

That went too far. “You liar! I hate you.”

“Wouldn’t let my old lady get away with this shit,” some man not Chaos calls out to Mark, and that’s when I realize our entire exchange has been witnessed by a gang of bikers.

“That’s it.” Mark fishes out what look like keys from his front pocket and starts for me. I, in turn, take off running away from him. Yet with the way my luck has gone these past five years, he easily overtakes me. First kissing me, and then he flips me up over his shoulder, walking toward his truck to the shouts and cat calls of our audience.

“We’re not what you think,” he says.

“Mmm…says the asshole carrying me caveman style.”

“Looks like someone’s old lady’s about to be punished,” another not Chaos calls out.

“I’m not his old lady,” I call back to the congregated mass. “I’m not your old lady,” I repeat to Mark directly.

“You are.” Then he slaps my bottom. Actually slaps my bottom to the tune of more biker cat calls, then drops me inside the front seat of his truck. “Get out of this car, and you will be sorry.”

What happened to my nice, sensitive Mark who understood me? I think about jumping out when he rounds the truck but the unpredictability of scary biker Mark keeps my stinging bottom planted where he dropped me.

And then he has the nerve to reach for my hand as he drives toward two streets over from my dad’s house. I pull away, scooting as far from him and his stupid hand as I can in the small cab. He doesn’t talk to me, just laughing and shakes his head. As if any of this is funny?

We pull into his driveway, and he cuts the engine.

“Listen, Elise.” Listen? I refuse to listen to anything he has to say, turning my head away from him to look out the window instead. “Fine.”

When Mark climbs out of the truck, I hastily lock the doors on him. He hits the unlock on his key fob. I lock it again. We go through this game three more times before he smartens up, putting one hand to the door handle and pressing the unlock with the other, opening the door before I have the chance to lock it again.

I wish he hadn’t.

Tossed over his shoulder again, he slams the truck door harder than necessary, walking us up onto his front porch. The Neanderthal still refuses to put me down while unlocking the door. Or once we’re inside. My shoes come off as he walks us toward his bedroom. His bedroom.