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“I thought you guys were leaving today?”
I licked my spoon clean and dropped it into the empty cup. “Some of the guys did.”
We had driven for a couple of hours before we needed gas and something to eat. We had looped back over to Conroe, where we filled up and found an ice cream place. We had grabbed some ice cream and one of the picnic tables they had.
“Some?”
I nodded and tossed my trash in the garbage. “Yeah. Yarder, Cue Ball, Fade, and Smoke headed back to the clubhouse.”
“You guys separated?” Sloane asked. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
I chuckled and shook my head. “No, babe. We’re not constantly together. Sure, Yarder was a little pissed that I wanted to hang back, but he’ll get over it. Not like anything is waiting for us back home.”
“None of you guys have ol’ ladies?”
Hearing Sloane talk biker was kind of funny, but it was also nice to know I probably wouldn’t have to explain a ton of shit to her. “Nah, not anymore. Yarder was seeing someone, some chick called Poppy, but they broke up last year. Throttle was seeing someone too, but we never met her.”
“Interesting,” she mumbled.
“Why is that interesting?” I asked.
She shrugged, “I don’t really know why it’s interesting,” she laughed. “Though it is kind of weird that you never met the woman he was seeing.”
I shrugged, “Nah, it’s not weird. We do have lives outside of the club.”
“Do you?” she asked.
“Let me rephrase that,” I chuckled. “Some of the guys have lives outside of the club.” The club was my life. They were my family.
Growing up in the system, being moved from foster home to foster home didn’t give me much of a family. When I joined the Iron Fiends, a hole that was in my heart was filled. I wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t have the club.
“What is your typical day like?” she asked.
“I answer this; you know you are going to have to answer it next,” I bargained.
She rolled her eyes but agreed. “Fine, but you first.”
“A typical day,” I sighed. Every day seemed different. “Well, I normally wake up and head to work.”
“You work?” she asked.
I chuckled and nodded. “Yes, babe, I do work; otherwise, I wouldn’t have money.”
“What do you do for work?”
“The club owns a gym and a body shop.”
“I figured a body shop, but I’m kind of surprised by the gym.”
I shrugged, “We have the gym as a place we can all work out, but it is open to memberships. Mt. Pleasant isn’t the biggest town, but we have a few members. The body shop is where the club makes most of our money.”
“And where do you work?”
“Guess.”
She tipped her head to the side and smiled. “I’m going to assume the body shop because if I think about you working at a gym, I picture you in too-small shorts and walking around talking about protein powders and how bad carbs are for you.”
I busted out laughing and held up my hand. “That is not me at all, babe. I do work at the body shop. No one really works at the gym full-time. We all take turns cleaning and maintaining it, but it more runs itself.”
“Nice. So, what do you do at the body shop?”
“Hey, I thought I was telling you about my day, not playing twenty questions with you,” I protested.
She flitted her hand at me. “Fine, fine. But just know I will likely have questions when you are done.”
“I can do pretty much anything around the shop, but I tend to be the paint guy. We work on any cars, but we tend to get a lot of restorations and classics coming through the door.” The shop did its fair share of oil changes, too, but that was because there were only three shops in town. “We shut down between six and seven, and then it’s back over to the clubhouse where someone makes something for dinner, or we order in, and then we just hang out for the rest of the night.”
“So you live pretty much every man’s fantasy? You get to hang with your friends all the time and work on cars?”
Not sure it was every guy’s fantasy, but it sure as hell was mine. I loved my job, and I loved the club. There wasn’t a day when it felt like I was working. Do what you love, and you’ll never feel like you worked a day in your life.
“What about you, babe? You mentioned you work at a factory, but what do you do there?”
“Uh, well, the plant makes ice cream, and I run one of the machines in the mixing room. I’ve worked there for close to ten years.”
“Ice cream, huh?” I chuckled. “I’m surprised you wanted to stop here.”
She shrugged and glanced around. “This is nice. Now, if you wanted to tour a factory or something, I might not want to. I see the inside of a factory five, sometimes six, days a week.”
“So what do you do when you’re not working or reading?”
“Hey,” she protested, “you didn’t like when I asked questions.”
I held up my hands. “Sorry, sorry.”
She leaned back and tipped her head to the sky. “It sounds so lame when I say it out loud, but I really just work and read. Sure, I go shopping and hang out with Dove, but besides her, I don’t have many friends. Honestly, we might only be friends because we work together. Forced proximity, ya know? I’m also in a bunch of book groups on the internet, but it’s not like I see them ever. We pretty much just talk books, and that is it.”
“Seems like we both have boring lives.”
She furrowed her brow. “Yeah, sure, your life is pretty boring being in a motorcycle club. Totally the same as me.” She scoffed and shook her head.
“I don’t know if you think my life is like Sons of Anarchy or something, Sloane, but it’s not.”
She held up a finger. “You live in a clubhouse.”
I nodded.
She added another finger. “You have a president.”
I smirked and nodded.
One more finger. “You get to ride a motorcycle. All the time.”
“A lot of people ride motorcycles all the time, Sloane. That doesn’t mean they’re living some crazy life.” We live in the South. Motorcycles were all over the place, and not all of those people were in a motorcycle club.
She shrugged and now held up four fingers. “You have amazing parties all of the time.”
I hadn’t even mentioned that to her, so she was either pulling that from her books or the damn TV show. “Lots of people have parties, Sloane.”
“Come on,” she laughed. “Why can’t you just admit that you have a kick-ass life, and mine is boring with a capital B?”
“Because your life is not boring. And if you think that it’s boring, then you need to make it unboring.”
“That’s not a word,” she drawled.
“It is to me.” I stood and held my hand out to her. “Let’s go get some real food.” Ice cream was not going to keep me full for long.
She squinted up at me and shielded her eyes with her hand. “Why don’t we go back to the hotel and see what Dove is up to?”
“She’s with the guys.” Dice and Pirate had tried to weasel their way into coming with Sloane and me, but thankfully Compass and Throttle had made them hang back. I had pointed out that they could entertain Dove, and they were all on board with that. “I’m sure Dice and Pirate are entertaining her.”
“We could go in the pool,” she suggested.
“You swim, babe?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I normally don’t like to, but it is hotter than heck out here. I feel like I’m baking on the back of your bike.”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her over to the bike. “Well, then, I guess we better head back to the hotel and work on cooling you down.”
“You’re sure you’re okay with that?”
I threw my leg over the bike, and she got on behind me.
I was good with going swimming because it meant I was going to be able to see Sloane in a swimsuit. “I mean, I like riding, but we can go swimming if you want,” I lied.
She wrapped her arms around my waist and sighed. “I don’t mean to cut our day short.”
I cranked up the bike and kicked up the kickstand. “Who said we’re cutting the day short? I didn’t have any plans today other than to be with you. You wanna go swimming, and I'm more than happy to watch you float around in a swimsuit.”
“Ha,” she laughed. “I bet you’re happy with this change in plans.”
Fucking ecstatic about it. “I’ll live, babe.” I rocketed out of the parking lot and headed back to the hotel.
I never had anything planned much in my life, and that was the way I liked it. Besides, we rode for two hours, got to know each other, and the day was still young.
*
