1990, thirty-one years old
I didn’t want to talk to Lenora anymore. She had hit me with too much truth in too little time. It made me want to drink. A lot. So, I ordered another beer. When Lenora moved to leave, I told her to go back to the motel without me. She must have picked up on my mood because she paid for her meal and left.
“We ride at nine tomorrow,” she said before heading out.
Of course we did. Could I get one fucking day to sleep in?
I ordered three more beers after she left and downed each with more fervor than the last. The other patrons of the restaurant eyed me, a lone female intent on getting drunk. By the third beer, I stared back until they looked away, and I felt triumphant in my ability to be in control again.
Lenora had opened Pandora’s box. Even if I was physically free of the Lawless, were they still inside of me? I kept being thrown into shitty situations and it was all Dodge’s fault, and the bastard wasn’t even alive. As I took a drink from the last beer, I cursed Lenora. I was not like the Lawless, nothing like them at all.
I paid my bill and walked out of the small restaurant, almost tripping on a curb. I was a little tipsy but fuck it. I deserved to let loose for all the shit I’d been through in the past two days. Hell, my whole fucking life.
The parking lot between the restaurant and the motel didn’t have much lighting. I leaned my head back to look at the stars in the sky. They were so bright, taunting me like pinpoints of hope in a hopeless world. I raised both hands and wiped them back and forth against the sky, erasing as many stars as I could. But no matter how many I wiped away, they flicked back to life after a few seconds, ruining all progress I made. Frustrated, I tried wiping harder, but lost my balance and fell over, catching myself with one hand on the pavement. My head spun as I stood back up. I scowled at the stars, said “fuck you,” and kept walking to the motel.
As I approached the building a shadow man, surrounded by hazy wisps of cigarette smoke, moved. I faltered in my step for one second. Dodge, back from the dead? The shadow man moved into the light. It was Jackson.
“Pretty fucked up what you did today, Raqi,” he said. I tried to move around him, but he sidestepped in front of me. The air around Jackson was so hot it singed my skin. I stepped back.
“I didn’t do—” I began.
“You knew I was supposed to be there to talk to him. He’s my goddamn point.”
My head felt light and dizzy. I wanted to go to sleep, wanted to be alone, wanted to be in Los Angeles in the court room, my head not spinning with thoughts.
“Always my fault,” I taunted, rolling my eyes, and waving my hands in the air. “Never Jackson’s fault. God, I’m tired of your pussy-ass bullshit.”
I tried to walk around him, but he blocked me again. His anger was so hot it made breathing difficult.
“It is when you get in the way of my job.” He bared his teeth. One flick of my finger and they would crumble from their rotted insides. I laughed and the air around him became a little cooler, allowing me to breath normally.
“Job?” I laughed again. “You’re a fucking drug dealer, man. Wake up, it’s not a real job.”
I used my shoulder to push him aside. The five beers weren’t making it easy, so I used my hand to push him away, too.
“Get out of my way.” I was almost past Jackson. If I could get to Lenora’s door . . .
Jackson grabbed my arm and I hissed in pain at his scalding touch. “Why do you always have to be a fucking cunt?”
That was it. I’d had enough. I punched toward his face but hit the side of his ear instead. His eyes widened in surprise. He drew his arm back immediately. I didn’t see his punch as much as felt it go through my eye and out the other side. My eye throbbed and my sight disappeared for a moment. I stumbled backward into a bike, not quite falling. I righted myself. My eye watered and throbbed, but the shadows retreated as I blinked rapidly.
I stood up slowly, feeling thirty years of anger spill through a hole the size of Jackson’s fist. His mouth hung slightly open, as if shocked by his own action. Tipsy or not, I ran at him with a guttural yell and tackled him at his waist. My linebacker move surprised him, or else it might not have been a success. We fell onto the asphalt in a heap, making an imprint of our bodies on the ground.
I punched furiously. “Asshole!”
He tried to grab my arms but failed.
“You ruined my life!” I yelled. Our hands pushed at each other’s faces and throats. “I hate you!”
Jackson hit me in the gut, and I lost my breath for a moment. He pushed me off him. I scrambled to my feet and ran at him again, swinging with both arms. I was off balance from the beers and Jackson’s initial punch to my face, which meant my hits didn’t land the way I wanted. He was trying to push me, but I kicked his shin and he doubled over. “Bitch!”
I pulled my fist back to swing again when someone pulled me away.
“Raqi, stop!” I struggled, but they had their arms around my waist and swung us both to the ground. I rolled away when I hit the asphalt. It was Beth. She pushed herself up, panting. The girl was skin and bones—how the hell had she done that?
Seeing her face, I suddenly grew tired and fell on my back in the middle of the parking lot. My breath came in rapid, deep pants. I steadied my heart rate to the twinkle of the stars that taunted me above.
“Go to your room, Jacks,” Beth said.
“She fucking started—”
“I don’t care!” I’d never heard Beth yell at Jackson like that. “Go away, asshole!”
Jackson swore a few times and walked off.
I smiled and then started laughing. The laughter didn’t stop. It came in heaps from the bottom of my stomach. I’d packed those laughs deep inside me for the last thirteen years. I’d not deserved to feel them, to enjoy them, to share them with the world, but the box had been broken and now they were spilling out and causing little bursts of pain from my now bruised and sore body. I rolled to my side and curled into a ball as my body shook uncontrollably in squeals.
Beth knelt in front of me. She placed her hand on my arm and the laughter quieted down.
“Bethie,” I said, smiling. “My savior.”
She smiled a little bit, the first I’d seen since we started the trip.
Oh, no . . . I turned and threw up the beers and tacos.
“Good God,” Beth whispered.
I wiped my mouth and groaned.
“Come on.” She grabbed my hand and helped me up. “Let’s get you to bed.” As she pulled me up, I felt dizzy.
“Hold on,” I said, turning away and pausing. I thought I might throw up again. Was this another concussion? I didn’t throw up but spit out a chunk of what was probably steak meat that had lodged itself behind one of my teeth.
“Gross,” Beth said before pulling me to the motel.
I shook my head and dug my heels in the ground. “I don’t want to go in there right now.”
Beth looked around the parking lot, back at me, then at the motel. “Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere besides here.”
She bit the side of her mouth and looked at the bikes. “You got your key?”
“I’m a little tipsy to ride right now.”
She held out her hand. “Not you. Me.”
I handed her the keys and she walked to my bike and kick-started it to life with one kick. I paused before getting on the bike behind her.
“Since when do you ride?” I asked.
Fire erupted from her shoulders and fanned around her head in a glorious halo of ferocity. “What else was I going to do the last decade without you?”
I fell asleep at some point on the ride. Not the best idea, but anybody who grows up in biking families has done it at one point or another. It probably wasn’t for long because I woke when I felt my balance tipping on a turn and quickly bolted up and grabbed for Beth. It wasn’t a move that I was proud of—when you know how to ride a bike, you don’t have to hold onto anyone. But I was tipsy and had been in a fight and it was nighttime and who the hell was around in Albuquerque to see.
Eventually, Beth pulled into a park, next to a few picnic tables. She waited for me to get off the bike, but I moved slowly. The bruises on my face and ribs pulsed. When I swung my leg over, I felt dizzy and there was a sharp piercing pain in my side. God, I hoped Jackson felt the same way. I disembarked and made my way sluggishly to the picnic table, Beth right behind me. We climbed on top of the table.
“How’d you know about this place?” I cringed as my butt touched the wood. I tried to find a comfortable position, but it was no use.
She stared ahead. “Came here earlier. The guy at the motel told me about it, so I borrowed Garrett’s bike and came out here for a bit.”
“I didn’t know you liked”—I searched for the words—“outdoor places.”
Her voice didn’t hold any emotion when she replied, “You don’t know me, Raqi.”
One more punch to the gut, and this one hurt the worst. I was quiet after that, wrestling with feelings I couldn’t quite name. A few minutes passed.
“Look, I’m sorry, Beth—”
“You should be! You abandoned me, Raqi. Me.”
Tears formed around the edges of her eyes. She could never yell without crying. Her tears fell onto the wooden picnic table forever staining them with circular blots that tasted of salt and betrayal.
“You left the Lawless and you left me. You were”—She struggled to speak—“my best friend and you threw me aside like I was nothing.”
My pounding head and bruised body didn’t compare to the guilt that stretched, twisted, and pulled my insides like a never-ending game of Jacob’s Ladder.
“Fuck, I know. I wasn’t thinking. I needed to get away from it all.”
“That meant me, too?”
Beth wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and I was transported to when we were fourteen. We had caught Walter, a junior Beth had been dating, locking lips with some girl from another school at the carnival. Beth cried for fifteen minutes by the Porta-Potties. When she’d finally had enough crying, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and asked me how to get back at him. We spread a rumor that he was talking shit about Jackson and his friends, and they beat him up the next day after school.
“God, Bethie, I’ve messed up a lot in my life, but what I did to you fucks with my mind. I’m so sorry.”
There had been moments when I’d tried to call her, even picked up the phone. But I knew that being friends with Bethie would bring me closer to the Lawless and Dodge and that made me quickly put the phone back on the receiver. Besides, life without the Lawless had sped up when I removed myself from them. I met new people and ran in circles that Beth would never fit in. Without her around, I could be someone new with a different past.
Beth shook her head and wiped her nose on her shoulder. “You’re shit, you know that?”
I smiled. It was something we used to say. An old Lawless, Rick, said it after every other sentence. We mocked him until it became our own overused inside joke.
I looked away. “Yeah, I am.”
We sat quietly. I felt Beth look at me after a few moments.
“You look like shit, too,” she said.
“God, I feel like shit.” I laughed.
Bethie shook her head. “When I saw you two going at it, it reminded me of when we were kids. Raqi and Jackson fighting again. Felt like nothing had changed.”
The thought made my stomach hurt. Jackson and I had been a volatile combination since the first time we met, and it hadn’t gotten much better when we’d fallen in love as teenagers. Yelling matches were frequent between us and sometimes it got physical. But that’s how we were taught to love in the club. We didn’t think anything of it.
A Lawless hitting their Old Lady wasn’t a given, but it wasn’t abnormal either, especially if she let her mouth run and didn’t respect his authority or club matters. For Mamas and Sheeps—it was expected. Better to keep your mouth shut, appease the men when you could, and never expect that to be enough. Even Bethie, who had been the sweetest girl, had been backhanded by her dad and boyfriends many times. I may have been treated a little better than some of the other girls, because I raced with the boys and Dodge took me along on rides with the club, but it wasn’t enough to protect me from everything. I had to learn when to be quiet and when to fight back—because the wrong choice could be the end of me.
It wasn’t until I separated myself from Dodge and experienced the real world that I learned to let go of my false belief that passionate violence equaled love. But look at me now. I had been with the Lawless for just a few days, and I’d fallen right back into my old patterns with Jackson tonight.
“Things have changed. I’ve changed. I shouldn’t have let that happen tonight,” I said.
“My dickhead brother shouldn’t have come at you like that.” Beth sighed. “You’re going to have a black eye.”
Great. Just what I needed.
“At least, tell me I got a good hit or two in.”
“It was a little dark, but he could have had a busted lip.”
I sighed. “Lost my touch.”
“Seems like it.”
From my peripheral vision, I saw her smile.
I stood up slowly and climbed off the table. “Can we get a burger? I’m starving.” I had thrown up all those tacos, so my empty stomach craved to be replenished.
Beth jumped up, much faster than me. “You’re paying, rich-ass lawyer.” She jogged to the motorcycle like we were kids again. I moved a lot slower but smiled.
“I’m not rich. Still paying off student loans.”
“Oh, boo-hoo,” Bethie taunted and kicked the motorcycle to life.