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Good Advice
LUKE TOOK A LONG DRIVE early the next morning. He couldn’t sleep, after tossing and turning all night he needed to clear his head. He took the Sportster and flew south on I-91, through the exchange in New Haven to I-95 over the Q Bridge. The Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge spanned I-95 over the mouth of the Quinnipiac River, so instead of calling it the Pearl, the locals called it the Q. He glanced at his watch and seeing it was close to rush hour, got off on the Branford Exit and struck out on Route 17 North. The two-lane road swung through the Connecticut countryside to ultimately land in Middletown. The hilly and twisty roads were just what Luke needed to put his head back together. It reminded him of what he loved so much about bike riding; the feel of the open road, the sense that alone he could conquer anything.
He couldn’t stay angry at Emily long. Shit, he never could. However, he was a man now, not a lost little kid. He didn’t need to be told again he didn’t fit into her proper Catholic, middle-class life. He’d made the mistake once, he wouldn’t let himself do it a second time.
It sucked they couldn’t be together, but life didn’t always work out the way you wanted. He was glad he got to spend one night with her. After high school, it made the good memories kind of complete.
These were the things he told himself over and over as the countryside and the tiny towns flashed by him. His thoughts were thin bandages against his wounded pride and the hole in his heart Emily had torn open again. He’d survived many things in this world, including the first time Emily dumped him. He didn’t need her or the heartache. He had his business and the Hades’ Spawn, and eventually maybe he’d find a woman to share it all with.
Rumbling through Durham, a town whose Main Street was lined with original 17th, 18th and 19th century homes, he debated the merits of breaking off Route 17 to travel Route 68 which would carry him back to I-91 or continuing up Route 17. Again, rush hour played a factor so he continued up the tree-lined Route 17, trying to enjoy the morning quiet. When he arrived in Middletown he made his way to Route 66 towards Westfield, and slowly back to the shop.
“Where’ve you been, Boss?” Gibs sat at Luke’s desk drinking a cup of coffee. “I made coffee.” He pointed at the brewed pot.
“Took a drive.” Luke went over and filled his broken Harley mug.
“Hmph.”
“What’s the problem?” It annoyed Luke that Gibs had to moan the minute he stepped in the shop. “You have a key.”
“The problem’s not with me.”
Raising an eyebrow, Luke stared at him. “Then why are you at my desk?”
Gibs stood up immediately. “Sorry, but I had to sit down after seeing that first thing in the morning.” Gibs pointed to a spot behind Luke.
Luke turned to see what he was pointing at. In the doorway stood Deirdre, wearing tight black skinny jeans, red spike heels, and a very tight v-neck tee. The shirt was so tight it pulled down to show a good amount of her cleavage.
“Hello, Deirdre.” Someone was wearing their fuck-me clothes today.
“Hi, Luke. Can I talk to you?”
“Gibs, shut the garage door behind you.”
“Sure thing, Boss.”
When they were alone, Luke turned to face Deirdre. She walked up to him slowly, giving him a sexy pout.
“I’ve been thinking,” she murmured.
“Uh-huh.” Luke swallowed. It was hard not to notice her nice, tight body. He tried keeping his gaze on her eyes.
“You don’t look happy to see me.” She leaned into him and pressed her lips against his, slipping her tongue into his mouth and pulling back slightly.
Luke sighed. “What do you want?”
She found a spot on his tee shirt and picked at it. “Don’t make this hard, Luke. I was wrong and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have given you an ultimatum. I was just disappointed. I wanted to show off my hot, sexy boyfriend. You can’t blame me for that.” She pouted again and pressed her hips into him. “I was selfish and I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you?” Deirdre slid her hand up his chest and put her arm around his neck while Luke said nothing. She kissed his neck, letting her hand slide over his cock. “Can you forgive me?”
“Sure,” Luke shrugged.
“Really?” She smiled.
“But that doesn’t change anything.”
“Pardon.” She stepped back, unsure if he was kidding or serious.
“You’re right that we have different interests. The club’ll always be important to me, motor biking even more. That’s a huge, unsolvable problem. You said yourself you hate my bikes.”
“I can try.” She pouted again, this time not a hint of sexy played on her face.
“You’d hate it and you know it. Deirdre, life’s too short to keep doing something you don’t like.”
“But Luke,” she whined, “I’ve been so miserable without you! I’d rather do something I don’t like and be with you than to be without.”
“Then you need to change your thinking, because I’m not willing to be with a woman, any woman, that suffers who I am or what I do.”
“Luke,” she said, an appeal in her voice, “I’m not willing to give up on us. I can change.”
“I’m sorry, Deirdre.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got to get to work now.”
Deirdre bit her lip. She didn’t say anything as she spun around and left the shop.
Gibs opened the garage door. “Good. She’s gone. The other one’s much better.”
“Shut up, and get back to work.”
Deirdre’s visit and Gibs’ words worked a nerve in Luke he couldn’t put aside. He was too raw from Emily’s rejection that seeing Deirdre only frustrated his morning. Working on a bike repair, he slid the wrong size bolt in and ruined the thread for the third time. “Dammit!” He drilled the tool in his hand across the room. “Gibs, I’m taking a break.”
“For how long?”
“For as fucking long as I want. Lock up if you have to.”
“But what about—”
Luke was out the door before Gibs finished his sentence. He jumped on his bike and pulled out on the highway, not knowing nor caring where he went. He drove around aimlessly for a while, and then spotted a Catholic church on a corner of the road. It was a brownstone building with a parking lot to the right, and a green lawn in front with an ancient blue stone pathway from the parking lot and also from the street to the front doors. Flowers edged the pathway, pink, blue and white laid in alternating clumps.
He pulled into the parking lot, not sure why he was there. Maybe he wanted to see for himself what the damned attraction was, what was so important that Emily would follow it down a road away from him.
He tried the front door and found it was locked.
“Friggin’ figures,” he muttered. He picked up a rock lying on the slate walk and flung it at the brownstone wall. Luke didn’t throw it close enough to hit any of the stained-glass windows, but it was an act of defiance nonetheless.
“It’s all your fault!” he yelled. “All your fucking fault!”
“Hey,” someone said behind him.
Luke stood like a deer in the headlights when a priest came from the other side of the building. “Is there a problem?” The priest was a medium height and built man, with graying black hair. He watched Luke, not in anger, but with concern. He held some bags in his hand.
“I’m sorry.” Luke knew his face was burning. “I’ll go.”
“That’s your choice. However, the good Lord brought you here, maybe it was for a reason.”
Luke looked away, not knowing what to say.
“Look,” said the priest, “I’ve got to open the church for a service. Come in and see inside. It’s really quite beautiful, especially with the morning light coming in. Here, you can help me with these.”
“Sure,” Luke mumbled. He was embarrassed at his childish behavior and felt the least he could do was lend the man a hand.
“I’m Father Peters, by the way.”
“Luke Wade.”
The priest unlocked the door with his keys.
“You know we hate to do this, lock the doors. But when vandalism got to be too much, the bishop ordered it.”
“Understandable.”
Luke entered alongside the priest into a vestibule of white washed stone. On either side, stairs led upwards to some unknown place. The priest walked straight forward into the church.
On either side of the aisles stood wood pews, and ahead on raised steps behind a railing, was a marble altar. There were four windows on each side, depicting biblical images in stained glass.
“They’re quite beautiful.” Luke tried to make conversation, still too embarrassed by his actions.
“The windows were imported from Austria in the eighteen hundreds in pieces. The pieces were assembled and leaded on site.”
“That’s amazing.”
The priest walked up the steps where the railing was, knelt quickly and crossed himself. He gave a backward glance to Luke.
“Not Catholic, are you?”
“I’m not anything.”
The priest continued past the altar and into a side room.
“We call this the vestry. It’s where I dress for services.”
“Oh, I should leave.”
“No need. All I do is put on the chasuble and the alb. Here, give me those.”
“What are they?”
“The Eucharist and the sacramental wine for the service.”
“Better be careful there, Father. Your Boss might not appreciate someone like me handling them.”
The priest chuckled and took the bags.
“You mean that stuff on your jacket?”
“Well, they aren’t stuff. Those patches mean something.”
“I’m sure they do, like my vestments. If I remember my Greek literature, Hades was the god of the dead. Some people equate Hades with transformation. Oh, not like death, but the deep changes that happen from time to time in their lives.”
“That sounds about familiar,” Luke said, amazed the priest was even having a conversation with him.
“So are you going through one of those changes now?”
Luke looked away and nodded. He wasn’t going to lie to a priest.
“And you blame God?”
Damn, he had heard Luke outside. “No, it’s really her parents. The girl’s.” He tried to laugh. “It’s always about a girl, isn’t it?” He shook his head as the priest patiently waited for him to finish. “It’s just that they are very Catholic, and they don’t think someone like me is good enough for their daughter.”
“Really?” asked the priest, his face completely unreadable. “Have you broken the law?”
“No.”
“Drink or do drugs?”
“I drink socially, but I never do drugs.”
“Disrespected their daughter?”
“No.” He didn’t think he had.
“Disrespected them?”
“No.” He hadn’t seen them in over a decade. Well, aside from driving by to drop their twenty-eight-year-old daughter off at her house.
“You work?”
“I own my own business. It does well.”
“Then I won’t ask you who they are, because I might know them, and I surely will know their priest, but I’ll ask you one more thing. Do you love her?”
“Yes,” said Luke quietly. “I always have.”
“Then I’ll tell you a secret,” the priest said conspiratorially. “That’s all that matters.”
Luke shook his head. “That doesn’t seem to be the case.”
“No, it is always the case. It is the loving that is important. Achieving that, that is the purpose of life. Whether or not you are together isn’t the point.”
“Then I don’t see the point.”
Father Peters sighed. “It’s a difficult concept. On the other hand, I don’t think that once God brings two people together he means for them to be apart. That is why we say in the marriage vows “what God has brought together, let no man break asunder”.
Luke looked into the man’s eyes and the priest nodded. “Thanks, Father.”
“I hope things work out for you. Now,” the priest smiled, “unless you care to join me, I have to prepare for my service.”
#
WHEN EMILY PULLED IN her driveway from work she found a motorbike parked in her spot and Luke sitting on the rocking chair on the porch. Her heart sped and danced a crazy rhythm. “Luke? What’re you doing here?”
“Please hear me out.” He stood. “If you still say no, then I’ll walk away and never bother you again. There’s something I have to know.”
“What is it?” He shouldn’t be here. If Evan was lurking somewhere and reporting to the police, everything could be ruined.
“Why didn’t you visit me that summer?”
Emily hung her head. She knew what he was talking about and was surprised he hadn’t brought it up the other day. “My parents wouldn’t allow me. My dad, well, he was only trying to protect me.”
“From what?” He threw his hands up in the air. “And now? They won’t allow you to see me?”
“No! It’s just that things are complicated with Evan and my court case.”
“Fuck Evan!”
Emily looked at him, shocked.
“And for that matter, fuck the court case! Em, are you seriously going to tell me that you’re going to let bullshit like this get in the way of us?”
“Luke, please,” pleaded Emily.
“No.” He shook his head. “It’s time for you to grow up, Em. I’m a man, an adult, and I’m not going to play these high school games with you. You’ve got a problem, then solve it. That’s what adults do. I’m offering, if you want, to solve it together. But for the love of all that’s holy, stop thinking that pushing me away is going to solve your problems! It sure as hell didn’t solve a single thing for me.”
Emily swallowed hard. “It didn’t?” She had believed he was better off without her.
“Not at all! In fact, it creates a hell of a lotta new ones.”
“What do you mean?” She hated seeing him upset.
Luke bent over by the rocking chair. “Like what the hell am I gonna do with these flowers?” Luke straightened and held out a bouquet of a dozen white roses.
Emily stared at them, and then him.
“But that’s not the worst of it.”
She wanted to smile but his face looked beyond upset. “What is?”
“What am I going to do with this?” He pulled out a long flat jewelry box from his pocket.
“What is it?” Her heart thundered against her chest.
“Open it.”
Emily took the box and opened it with trembling hands. She gasped. Inside was a small emerald cut sapphire on a silver chain. “Luke, it’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“Let me put it on.” He took the pendant from her hand and clasped it around her neck.
“Are you trying to bribe me?” said Emily.
“Not at all. I did think,” said Luke, whispering in her ear, “that a diamond ring would be pushing it. I bought this the day of the accident and... well, let’s just say it belongs around your neck.” He put his arms around her waist and kissed her gently. “Are you willing to give us a chance?”
Emily looked into Luke’s eyes, and knew she wanted nothing more.
A ring chime filled the air. Luke grasped at his right pocket and took out his cell phone. “Sorry, Em but I gotta take this.” He stepped back and began pacing on the porch. “What? Shit! Yeah, I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He looked at Emily with apologies in his eyes as he shoved his phone in his pocket. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”
Emily stared at him bewildered. “Is everything all right?”
“Honestly, Em. I haven’t a clue. It’s some serious shit with the club.” He kissed her quickly on the cheek and bounded down the steps to his bike.
Emily watched Luke roar down the street and wondered how things were ever going to work out if when she was supposed to stay clear of the Hades’ Spawn Motorcycle Club.
What kind of trouble were they both getting themselves into?
~ THE END ~
Book II
ONE THAT GOT AWAY – NOW AVAILABLE
