Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
LEXI
NOW
I ’d been back in Haven Cove for seven days, and for the few days after my dad’s funeral, I stayed hiding out at home because the few times I did head into town, I ended up running into someone who knew my dad and wanted to offer their condolences. Whilst it was nice to hear how loved he was, it also hurt every single time someone mentioned his death.
I knew I needed to start packing away some things and get the house in order, but I was still so undecided on what to do with the house. Ryan said the other day that Haven Cove is my home and there is a part of me that agrees with him. I grew up here, my parents lived here. Jay lived here. How could I just pack up the house and sell it? It would be like selling all of our memories. But if I didn’t sell it, what would I do? Would I move back and live here? I didn’t know if I could live here, not on my own. The last time I was in this house, my dad and brother were filling the other bedrooms; now the house is just too silent.
I decided today was the day I would start by tidying up and getting rid of the junk and packing away the things I wanted to keep. I stood outside my dad’s bedroom door as I tried to build up the courage to go in there. I had been crying over everything and anything these last few days. I cried the first morning I woke up and opened the cupboard and found his favorite coffee mug. I cried when I was cold and went to grab a blanket off the couch which ended up being his old flannelette shirt. I cried when I went to do some washing and found a load in the dryer. I held one of his shirts close to me just to feel like he was hugging me.
I couldn’t face his bedroom today. I turned around and walked back down the hallway, lightly running my hand along Jay’s closed bedroom door along the way. I knew that I should go and see Jay but I’m not sure if I will ever be ready to do that. I went back downstairs and started cleaning up the kitchen by washing the dirty dishes and throwing away the rubbish when I heard a loud bang come from the garage. I looked out the front window and noticed a large black truck in the driveway that I hadn’t seen before. I wasn’t sure who would be at my house, let alone in my garage. I picked up my dad’s flannelette shirt and put it on over my singlet and leggings and went to see what was causing the noise.
The garage door was wide open and I looked in to see someone bent over, looking through the cupboard. He was wearing a white shirt, black jeans, black boots and a black baseball cap. I knew even from just looking at his back that it was Ryan. He didn’t know I was standing there but I looked around to get a closer look at what he was doing. He would pull a tool or bike part out of the cupboard and then inspect it and then either throw it into the bin next to him or put it back in the cupboard. When he threw the next tool into the bin, I knew that was the loud bang I heard as the tool hit another one that was already thrown away.
I cleared my throat after he put down another tool to let him know I was standing there. He turned around quickly and stood up off the ground.
“Shit, you scared me,” he said as he wiped the grease off his hands onto his jeans.
“I scared you? You’re the one in my garage without me knowing. I should be the one scared.” I laughed back to him as I could see his body relax.
“What are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to help where I could. I knew you would have no idea what to keep or throw away in here so I figured I could take this room off your hands at least.” He pointed around the room. He wasn’t wrong, even though I grew up around bikes and cars, I was completely clueless in that department and the boys never let me forget it. Every time they were in the garage working on their bikes, they’d ask me to pass them a tool and I never knew which one was the right one, so I would pass them something completely incorrect.
“Thank you, you’re right. I would have probably thrown it all away and turned the garage into a painting studio or maybe a pottery studio.”
“Do you know how to paint or do pottery?” Ryan laughed. These had never been hobbies of mine and he knew I had zero creative flair.
“Not at all, but maybe that’s because I never had a studio.” We both laughed, knowing I wouldn’t ever turn it into a studio.
“So, if you’re thinking of a studio, does this mean you’re planning on staying?”
“I still haven’t decided. I don’t know what I should do right now but, I have taken temporary leave from work for the next month to sort everything out.”
“Okay, so I have a month to convince you to stay. That’s a month more than I had last time so I’ll take it.” Ryan smirked in my direction, although his comment felt like a punch to my gut and he must have seen my reaction.
“Sorry Lexi, I didn’t mean that”
“It’s okay, I deserved that. I am going to head inside and make some lunch” I said before turning to walk back into the house, but I stopped in the doorway and turned back to face him.
“Are you hungry?” I looked at him as he adjusted the baseball cap on his head and nodded at me.
“Starving.” He smiled back at me.
I let him know to come inside in half an hour before I walked back through the door. He bent back down to the cupboard to continue working through the tools. I looked back and a flood of memories hit me, watching him in our garage.
I headed into the now half cleaned kitchen and opened the fridge to see what I could make for lunch, but since I hadn’t been to the store yet, we had zero food. There were two-minute noodles along with some frozen meals of my dad’s still in the freezer, but I wasn’t going to feed Ryan either of those options. I decided to call up the local pizza shop and order us two large pizzas instead so we could at least have some proper food. I ordered one margarita and one meat lovers, hoping meat lovers was still his favorite and he hadn’t suddenly turned into a vegetarian in the last five years.
I continued to finish cleaning the kitchen as I waited for the pizza to arrive. I turned on some loud music to keep me motivated and I was dancing around the kitchen, singing along to my favorite song when the smell of pizza hit me. I stopped to see Ryan leaning against the doorway with the two pizzas in his hand and trying to hide his amusement.
“So when you said you were making lunch, you meant calling Joe’s and ordering pizza?” Ryan called out.
“I didn’t realize I had no food to make us anything and I thought this would be better than two minute noodles.” I grabbed the boxes off him and put them on the kitchen bench and sat beside them, while he pulled out one of the stools on the opposite side.
“You remembered my favorite,” he said as I opened the box containing the meat lovers pizza.
“Well, you did eat it almost every second day and I had hoped you didn’t suddenly have a taste change or become a vegetarian.” I grabbed a slice of my pizza and took a bite.
“Trust me, Lexi, not much has changed about me.”
“Except for the ‘Vice President’ patch,” I mentioned, remembering his cut from the other day. “Congratulations, by the way. I know how much that means to you.”
“Ah yeah, I suppose that has changed.” Ryan tilted his head and laughed softly. “What happened to Stubs? I noticed he wasn’t at the funeral.” Stubs was the Vice President the last time I was here and he was Preston Blake’s right-hand man. Preston would say jump and Stubs would say how high. He was an absolute sleaze and I had witnessed multiple fights between Stubs and the other Vipers, especially Ryan.
Ryan looked hesitant to answer the question.
“Viper law, right? No information to outsiders?” I asked. The Vipers had a set of laws that they followed, the main one being never to disclose club information to outsiders.
“You’ve never been an outsider, Lexi,” Ryan said firmly, looking straight into my eyes.
“There was this job we were doing about two years ago. It was pretty dangerous and risky, which we all knew going in, but my dad had to leave town so he wasn’t there to take control of the situation. Stubs wouldn't listen to any of us, the stubborn asshole. The job went south and most of us fled before the cops got there, but Stubs refused to come with us.”
“So he got arrested?” I passed Ryan a beer bottle from the fridge as he reached to put a piece of pizza on the plate in front of him.
“Stubs always said he would never go back to prison. He pulled out his gun and the cops shot him dead on the spot.” He took a swig of his beer before looking back at me.
“He got himself killed instead of going to prison? No one else got caught?” I asked in disbelief. It must have been a job that would’ve got a large prison sentence if Stubs would rather die.
“I was the closest one there, everyone else fled but I didn’t want to leave him behind. I heard the gunshots and hid until the cops had left. I saw his bike still there and the blood on the ground and I knew he was gone. The police showed up at the clubhouse the next day looking for information on why Stubs was there and then they told us he had been killed.”
We had both finished our pizzas and beers by the time Ryan finished telling me the story. I watched as his eyes watered as he spoke about Stubs. I knew that even though they didn’t get along, Stubs was like an uncle to him and it would have hurt Ryan to be given the Vice President patch knowing the only reason he got it was because Stubs was dead.