Nora
“Hey, guys. Anything I can get for you?” Ed asked from behind the bar as Ryan and I walked up and took a couple of stools.
Ryan shook his head and waved his hand, dismissively declining Ed’s offer. He hadn’t said much all night, not even on the way over to the Reapers clubhouse. Something was bothering him. He was never this quiet or withdrawn.
“Sure, I’ll take a Jack and Coke,” I told Ed. There was no point in missing out on the fun because Ryan was in a foul mood.
“Glad to hear it.” Ed patted the bar and went to work.
“Quiet in here tonight,” I observed, speaking to no one in particular, but hoping one of them would respond.
“Yeah, it’s a slow night tonight. Don’t know what that’s about,” Ed remarked.
Ryan’s eyes darted back and forth around the room, as if he expected something to happen. He turned around and sat with his back to the bar. I’d never seen him so restless before, either. I reached over to playfully stroke his arm, but he jumped when I touched him and recoiled, pulling away from me.
If I didn’t know any better, I would have said he looked like he was about to try to pull a fast one on Shadow Reapers. Either that, or he thought they were about to pull a fast one on him. It didn’t look good, no matter what.
“You okay?” I asked him after Ed walked off to tend to some other business.
“Yeah, I’m good,” he said tersely. His eyes didn’t leave the rest of the room.
He turned around and started tapping the bar nervously. “Hey, man,” he called down to Ed. “Where’s Mark at tonight?”
“He’ll get to you, Ryan,” Ed replied with a hint of impatience.
“What’s going on, Ryan?” I asked him in a low tone. He was starting to make me nervous.
“Nothing. Everything’s fucking fine, okay?” he snapped at me, pulling away from me as if I had been reaching for him again.
I turned back to my drink. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ed watching Ryan. Ed had broad shoulders and thick, massive arms covered in tattoos. On the side of his right arm was a spider web tattoo with a diamond in the middle of it, with 1%er in the middle of the diamond. He wasn’t someone to fuck with, no matter how polite he seemed behind the bar. He smiled to himself behind his salt-and-pepper beard and mustache before grabbing a glass and pouring himself a whiskey.
I wanted to tell Ryan to calm down, but I also tried to stay out of the business side of things as much as I could. I tagged along every time, though, so I could see my best friend Alice. She was almost always at the clubhouse. She was what the MC referred to as a club girl — sort of a motorcycle club groupie.
I didn’t see her tonight. It made sitting at the bar with Ryan awkward. I felt more like a little tag-along than anything else. He waited to be seen while I sipped my drink and tried to keep to myself.
His tapping on the bar eventually turned to drumming as he distractedly tapped out elaborate rhythms with the fingers of both hands. I wasn’t sure if he realized he was doing it. His attention still seemed to be on the rest of the room. His eyes darted around the room in the mirror behind the bar. But his drumming was driving me crazy, and he was sure to draw the wrong kind of attention from Ed.
“Hey,” I barked at him, putting my hand across both of his to stop the drumming.
His eyes snapped to my face. He looked at me in shock and anger, surprised that I had stopped him, and angry, I guessed, because I was still trying to get through to him.
I lowered my voice and spoke deliberately. “Get a drink and calm down.”
Ed must have heard me because as soon as I said it, he passed a shot of some golden liquor across to Ryan. Ryan looked down at the drink in disgust. Then he looked at me and at Ed.
“No thanks,” he said, reaching to push the glass back.
“Take the drink, kid,” Ed said in a gruff, old-timer voice. He put both hands on the bar and leaned forward slightly.
Ryan looked at him with a stern resolve in his eyes. I thought for sure he was about to stand up to this one-percenter in front of us. I knew he understood what that tattoo on Ed’s arm meant. He’d been around long enough to know things like that. There was probably a reason why Ed was behind the bar. He was the bartender and security. And Ryan didn’t want to meet the security side of his job.
“Just drink the damn shot already,” I told him.
He’d just been talking the night before about the possibility of not getting a score one month, and there he was, trying to get himself thrown out of the clubhouse before he could even handle business with the president. What a dumbass! The Reapers was his number one buyer. If he lost them because of some stupid ego-battle, his supplier probably would have axed him. And if that happened, where would I go?
He picked the shot glass up slowly. Ed and I both watched him. I fully expected him to do something stupid, like toss the liquor in Ed’s face. From the grim look in Ed’s eyes, he was ready for the same.
Ryan knocked it back and slammed the shot glass back down on the bar. He didn’t even flinch as he drank the room temperature liquor. It had to have been whiskey or bourbon, something harsh when it wasn’t chilled.
Ed cheered and patted him on the back. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?” he asked. He grabbed the shot glass and held it out to Ryan. “Want another one?”
“Yeah, and get me a beer while you’re at it,” Ryan said.
“Atta boy,” Ed praised him for coming around as he pulled up a bottle of PBR and poured another shot.
“What?” Ryan snapped, looking at me with a sour expression on his face.
Okay, so whatever it was that was bothering him so much, it was my fault. I wasn’t exactly sure what I had done, but that was fine. At least it wasn’t something stupid, like he was plotting to double-cross the MC or his supplier.
“Nothing. I was just making sure you were alright,” I said, returning to my drink.
“You know what? You worry about you, okay? Let me handle business.”
I wondered if he had another woman on the Canadian side of the border. That was where he spent most of his time, and the last few times he came to visit, he had seemed a little preoccupied, a little less interested. Part of me wanted to believe it was all work-related, but if I was the problem, there had to be something else going on with someone else.
“Hey, Ed, can I get a refill?” I asked, sliding my empty glass across.
“Did you come here for moral support or to get drunk?” Ryan asked.
He’d really turned into an asshole lately. I didn’t even acknowledge that he’d said anything. I took my drink and slid down to the far end of the bar, figuring it was better to sit alone than deal with his belittling remarks. What did he care anyway? Even when I came along with him, I spent most of my time sitting with Alice. What did he know? Did he really think I didn’t hang out here when he wasn’t around?
I wasn’t a club girl. I didn’t come down to the Reapers every night of the week, but I would occasionally let Alice drag me down to the clubhouse for drinks. I was here often enough for MC members like Ed to recognize me even without Ryan.
The main room of the clubhouse was set up like any other bar. There were dart boards and pool tables. There were a couple of TV’s at the bar. There were tall round tables off to one side of the room. There was a jukebox in the corner hooked up a pretty decent sound system, and the guys had it set up so that it was free to play music. There was a large open space on the floor in case anyone wanted to dance after a few drinks and a large, carpeted lounge area with a few leather couches situated in front of a large flat screen TV for watching the game or a fight.
Normally, the Reapers was packed out like a club or a bar, too. There were always bikers and their old ladies hanging out with club girls and prospects. I had never seen the place empty. Even at two, three, or four in the morning, it was still going strong most nights.
Off to the side of the main room was a small office. I hadn’t actually been inside it, but from what I had seen through the door, it was a warmly-lit space with a wooden desk and pictures of the MC on the walls. There was also a boardroom off of the main room, and I figured that was where they held any important club meetings. I wondered how they were able to do that with all the noise of the bar going on right outside their doors.
It was so quiet that it would have been a good night for a meeting, though. I could even hear the voice on the TV above me at the bar.
Ryan got up after a few minutes and walked down to stand next to me.
“Look. Whatever happens tonight, I want you ready to go when I’m finished with Mark,” he said without looking at me. Something in his tone told me he didn’t expect things to go well.
“When am I ever not ready to leave by the time you’re finished in there?” I asked, looking away from him. It was as if we were pretending we weren’t talking to each other.
“I’m just saying, don’t get too drunk tonight sitting out here, okay?”
I didn’t appreciate the way he seemed to assume I was trying to get drunk. “I’m only having a couple of drinks,” I told him. “Relax.”
He huffed and took another long drink from his beer, ultimately finishing his drink.
“What the hell is wrong with you tonight?” I dared to ask.
We were in a safe place. I didn’t have to worry too much about his attitude or his remarks at the bar. He’d already said about the worst he was going to say in front of other people tonight. He wasn’t liable to lash out at me in front of the MC. He knew these guys weren’t going to tolerate that kind of disrespect towards a woman.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he lied. He carefully, purposefully set his beer bottle aside and leaned on the bar with his hands together. He wore a messenger bag across his back. That was where he kept the product he was selling to the MC. I never knew how much he was bringing with him or how much he made off the sale.
I came along for the free drinks, and usually for the company. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any company tonight, just this pissy drug dealer boyfriend of mine. He wasn’t even my boyfriend, not really. There wasn’t enough liquor behind the bar to put up with much more of his attitude tonight.