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Mick
When I got back to the office that evening after driving halfway across the state to personally inspect a couple bike parts that I had been considering buying, I found Jessi and Rip looking over designs together. Jessi looked guilty when she saw me come in, and I frowned at her. “If this is your proposed design for J.T.'s bike-” I started to say.
“J.T. took a look at it and loved it,” Rip said. “And Jessi had nothing to do with that—she had asked me for a little help on this project that she was doing for her design class, and I took some pictures of the design without her knowing and showed them to J.T.”
There was silence in the shop. I was livid with the both of them. “Jessi,” I began, “I specifically told you-”
“Mick, I understand that you wanted to design the bike on your own, but you can't blame Jessi for having a great, edgy idea. I mean, just look at this thing and tell me that you can't picture J.T. on a bike like this.”
I looked down at the design and frowned. The thing was, I had to admit that it was good. It had a bit of a street tracker look to it, but with long lines and swept back handlebars. There was a lot of shiny chrome to it, where it wasn't bright cherry red, giving it a classic retro look that, somehow seemed to fit J.T. It would be a great summertime ride, too.
Looking at the technical specifications, I could see that she had also considered the purpose of the bike. The engine was a little smaller than it could have been, but if the bike was just meant for a little showoff ride, it didn't need to have the power of a cross-country bike. And none of the pieces that she had required were too pricey, meaning that the total cost for the bike would stay low, and hopefully our profit margin would be hefty.
“You came up with this all by yourself?” I asked Jessi.
She nodded, looking nervous. “Yeah,” she said. “For my class. Rip helped me with some of the technical things though.”
I nodded and continued to scan the design. “I don't like the seat,” I told her. “Let's change from something scooped like that to something more flat and solid. Like this.” I grabbed a piece of paper and started sketching out my modifications.
By the end of the night, we had a pretty solid idea of what we were going to be building, and Jessi had written down a full list of the parts that we were going to need to scout out. Fortunately, there were a few pieces that we could use from the bikes that I had gone down to inspect that day. Some other pieces were going to be a bit trickier to track down, but I was sure that with Jessi and Rip both on the project, it would only be a matter of time before we had everything that we needed. Then the fun could really begin.
“Dad?” Jessi asked hesitantly as we were preparing to close for the night.
I was instantly put on guard by her tone. “What?” I asked her.
She glanced at Rip. “Rip wanted to take me over to the Hounds of Hades clubhouse and introduce me to some of the guys tonight. Would it be all right if I missed curfew since we're done for the night anyway?”
I scowled at her. She wanted to go to the Hounds of Hades clubhouse and hang out with a bunch of biker dudes who were up to no good? I knew that having Rip around the shop was a bad idea, but I thought I had raised Jessi to be a bit smarter than that. I couldn't believe she was asking to go over there with him. This was exactly why I didn't want her going into automotive engineering. I knew the types of guys that typically worked in chop shops, and I didn't want Jessi networking with them, let alone networking with the kind of bikers that did their own work as a front for their illegal activities.
“Absolutely not,” I told her, mouth thinning into a white line.
“But, Dad, there's no reason for me to have a curfew if I'm not going to be working at the shop anyway,” she complained. “I've finished all my schoolwork for now, so-”
“It's not about missing curfew,” I interrupted. “It's about the clubhouse. I don't want you within 100 feet of that clubhouse, do you hear me?”
Rip was beginning to look uncomfortable. “Look, I'm going to take off,” he said to both of us. He grinned at Jessi, shrugging. “Maybe some other time.”
“No,” I said firmly. “Absolutely not. She is never going to that clubhouse with you, or else I swear that I will kick you out of my house and make sure that you cannot go back to school this fall.” I wasn't sure how I would do that, but there was no way I would allow her to study automotive engineering if it suddenly meant that she was interested in biker dudes and gangs.
“Dad, come on,” she said, rolling her eyes at me. “I'm twenty-two, not twelve. I just want to let loose a little. I've been working hard lately between school and work around here. I deserve to have a little bit of fun. What, you think that I can't control myself or something?”
“You already missed curfew last night, and you took an expensive cab home because you were too drunk to drive,” I reminded her. “Sounds like you already let loose last night. Tonight, you can stay in.”
At some point during our conversation, Rip seemed to have slipped out, because when Jessi looked around for him to back her up, he wasn't there anymore. I rolled my eyes. “Look, I know the types of things guys like Rip get up to in their clubhouses, and it's not all drinking,” I told Jessi. “The last thing you need is to be gang-banged by-”
“Rip would never let that happen to me,” Jessi snapped. “He's a good guy.”
“How would you know?” I asked her. “You hardly know him.”
“He genuinely cares about me,” she continued. “That's the entire reason he asked me out for a drink, because he could tell that something was wrong with me, and he cared enough to ask about it. You never even notice stuff like that. You’re always too busy working on the next project, or too frustrated with the fact that I want to do exactly the same thing with my life as you did with yours. But-”
“Jessi, I don't want to hear another word about it,” I told her. “You have my decision, and my decision is final. If I find out that you've gone anywhere near the Hounds of Hades clubhouse, you can rest assured that there will be serious repercussions.”
Jessi scowled at me for a long moment, her arms folded over her chest. Then she turned and stalked off back towards the house. By the time I made it back there myself, she was upstairs in her room.