8. Boring as Fuck
Chapter 8
Boring as Fuck
Taz
Kai was here! His eyes were molten as he stared into my soul. I wanted to shrink into myself a little more. I don’t know what I felt worse about. That I didn’t notice him when I came out, or that I was going to meet Riley later.
If it was about Riley… Jesus, it was none of his business!
He slowly put the cigarette to his lips, never breaking eye contact as he exhaled. I breathed it in. I had always enjoyed the smell of smoke and fire. Cigar smoke, cigarette smoke, barbeques, bonfires, even the smell of ammonium after it goes boom. Maybe those weren’t typically “good” smells, but… I liked fire.
And I loved sharing a cigarette with Kai Griffith.
The smoke billowed around his face like he was the devil himself. Something had changed in him. He was always angry. That undercurrent of darkness existed in his soul ever since his wife’s betrayal. But that darkness had changed into something else over the last few months - ever since the bullet to his leg.
I knew it was my fault, and it hurt my soul to think of it. To remember him falling to the ground as blood gushed from his thigh. The panic when I placed the tourniquet around his leg was like a phantom pain that kept coming back in small, angry bursts.
He had left here in a rage after his leg wound healed. The way he looked at me was… disturbing. Dark, and agitated. Like he had something to say but swallowed it down like poison.
While he had to stay in bed, he’d insisted I lay with him. He said he didn’t want to scream for me on the couch if he needed me - after all, I was the reason he got shot. I had groused and moaned about it, but I didn’t seriously protest the arrangement. When he was ready to go back to work, with a profile - essentially modified duties to accommodate his injury - he was wound so tight, like a wire ready to snap. He’d barely said goodbye.
He ignored me the entire day and before he got into his car, he hugged me to his chest, and squeezed the life out of me.
Don’t miss my call, was all he said. My birthday call. No goodbye, thanks, or fuck off. Just a warning to not miss his annual phone call, and that was it.
“Nothing pisses him off, huh?” he said, blowing smoke over my skin.
“Not really,” I gasped, unable to take my eyes off his.
“He sounds boring as fuck.”
I almost laughed, but didn’t, because his eyes hadn’t released me from their spell. He put the cigarette to my lips, and I obediently inhaled, his index finger unintentionally grazing my bottom lip. Damn him and damn the butterflies that threatened to flutter in my stomach.
I turned my face away to blow the smoke out, but he stopped me with his other hand, pinching my chin and holding me in place. My smoke traveled up his skin as well, crawling over his smirk.
“Just because he’s nice doesn’t mean he’s boring,” I whispered, feeling the need to stick up for my choices, even if I hadn’t chosen Riley. Not yet. “And maybe I could use a little boring in my life.”
“Have you fucked him?” Griff asked, that dark rage he seemed to hold fluttering to the surface.
What did he care for? Friends only. Friends.
It felt like he was leaning in further into my space. But that couldn’t be. We were already so close, that any closer his lips would be on my skin.
“That’s none of your business.” I didn’t want to give him the answer he wanted.
His smirk turned into a full grin. “You haven’t, have you, little Psycho?”
I hated his smug superiority.
I pulled my face out of his hands and took two steps back, needing space to breathe. Not because I wanted to, but because I needed to.
To get more air.
It was like that morning all over again, when I woke up from a fever dream, and he was there, naked, our legs intertwined, his hard cock resting on my bare thigh. I barely finished my shower before I realized that we were wrong. That I was wrong for him. A mantra I repeated to myself over and over again until it took on my mother’s voice and became just another crippling halt to my life.
But he didn’t remember. Not really. He pried, as if trying to question me about what happened. If he had remembered…
He was a Griffith. He had a future in the white house. I was a Guerro, the daughter of a washed up catalog model, and an absentee father. My only future was exactly where I was standing now. In a small town in the middle of nowhere, living in a trailer.
We never would have crossed paths if it wasn’t for the Army. It was the only place where he and I were equals. But out here? We were nothing.
Just friends.
“They have good burgers here,” I said, turning away from him as he crushed the cigarette in an ashtray. “The beer is… well… beer.”
“No Edelweiss beer?”
The memory of a cold Belgian white beer bottle in his hand sent shivers down my spine. The way he had run it over my heated skin, as he placed himself between my naked legs five years ago…
I had to shake the thoughts of my head and stay rooted in the present. The past didn’t exist. Just now, and this friendship between us.
“I think the only things imported are Corona or Guinness,” I chuckled.
I had never been able to order a Belgian White Beer without blushing, so I never did. It was still a guilty pleasure in the confines of my trailer, though. Much like the intimate thoughts of our secret night together, which I remorselessly replayed in my mind in the privacy of my bed.
Griff winced. He liked to say that he wasn’t much of a snob, but he was. Especially about his adult beverages. It came with the blue blood. He ran his thick fingers through his straight hair. He scratched at the nape of his neck in a way that emphasized his defined forearm. Beneath the black button-down was a man with perfect golden skin, bisected by gorgeous, healthy veins.
I grabbed my hair and pulled it over to one side, undoing the braid, then finger combing it out, suddenly self-conscious about my appearance. Mindlessly, I started putting it into a braid again. Once I got to the end, he took the rope of hair, pulling it towards himself. Then he tied it with a black rubber band he had around his wrist.
He pinched my chin again and gave me a lopsided grin.
“You make it so easy.” He put a finger along my brow line, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear.
“I make what so easy?”
“Coming home.”
I flinched away from him. It was all getting too heated, too intense.
I remembered too much. I remembered clearly the things we did while he was drunk. Too drunk to remember.
Unless, of course…
“Did you just break up with someone, or something?” I asked, the picture becoming clear in my mind.
“What?”
“Did you just break up with a girlfriend, or something?” That had to have been it. I was a rebound. Again.
“You think I’ve been out for two years going on dates? Seriously?” he asked as I turned away, heading back into the noise of the bar. “I’m just traipsing around, going to galas and seducing princesses? Maybe an heiress or two?” He laughed, clapping his hands together. “James Bond, step aside, I get a new Griffith Babe every episode of my franchise?”
He droned on and on. Galas, dinners, balls, seducing actresses and the like. He kept on teasing me as we walked into the building, and the familiar scent of cheap pine assaulted my nostrils. Pine, and stale beer. The sound of country music blared off the speakers, and I made a mental note to change that as soon as I could make my way to the Jukebox.
Ellen, the bartender, took one look at me and scowled.
She was a 30-something woman, more worn out than her years would suggest. And she hated outsiders. She must be having a conniption with the new MC in town.
“Mm-hmm?” was all she said, throwing a rag over her shoulder. Her hair was bleached straw blonde, and fraying around her ears.
“Uh,” I said, still stunned by her cold reception. “I’ll take a Corona.”
It was the first place my eyes landed, so that was what I was ordering, I guess.
“Hmm,” she said, as if she was judging my choice.
You’d think I had pissed in her wheaties.
Griff leaned on the bar with one elbow, his body still facing towards me as he casually smiled. Her reaction to him was far different from hers to me. Typical.
“Hey, hon,” he said, giving the honey-thick charm offensive. “You got anything Blonde or white back there?”
He leaned to peer at what was on tap, and she almost preened forward to display her breasts for him. She pursed her lips to the side, looked at the offerings, then slowly said, “I guess the Allagash white.”
The fuck? When I had asked the same question months ago, she gave me a roll of her eyes and told me no.
“Ah! A Belgian will do,” he said. “Give us two. Cancel whatever she wanted.”
“I’m not gonna do that, sugar,” she said, leaning her breasts forward until they hovered over the bar top. “Ladies get to pick their own drinks here.”
“My friend here doesn’t want a Corona, do you, Guerro?” He didn’t break eye contact with her to speak to me, and I knew he was on full seduction mode. I’d seen it dozens of times after his divorce, and familiar bile crawled up my throat. Whatever hatred Ellen had for me, I was ready to spit back at her.
I could literally feel the feminism leaving my body, replaced with the jealousy of seeing him flirt with someone else.
“You two friends?” Ellen asked, as mesmerized by his eyes as any warm-blooded woman would be.
“Very good friends, right, Guerro?” My name is Taz. Why the fuck isn’t he calling me by my nickname? The answer was clear, of course. He was telling Ellen that he wasn’t my boyfriend. “We were on a team together back in the Army.”
I’m not allowed to be jealous. He’s not mine. We’re just…
…
Friends.
“Put it on her tab,” Griff said, giving her a wink. “She owes me for almost getting me killed.”
Was he trying to make it obvious that we weren’t together? Because that was definitely how Ellen took it, as she beamed at him, before her eyes cut towards me with a look of absolute contempt and scorn. Jesus, if looks could kill, I’d be burned to a cinder.
“Fuck you,” I said, punching him in the arm.
“Nuh-uh,” He wagged a finger in front of my face like a reprimanding teacher. “Got anything that can beat this?”
He threw a coin on the bar, and it rolled on its edges, emitting a high, ringing sound as the metal ran along the wood. It’s just as big, though twice as thick, as a silver dollar. It settled, vibrating with its last throes of movement before laying flat.
“Shit,” I said under my breath. I did not have a coin that could beat his challenge.
“That’s what I thought,” he said, triumphantly putting his fists in the air.
It was a challenge coin from the President of the United States. It was a silly prize of thick metal, with a gold border, the Presidential seal, and the number “50” in silver script. The name “Lau” was laser engraved on the border.
Challenge coins were once created as a means of giving an IOU. One could use the coin to call for the aid of the person who gave it. In more recent times, it became a military and government token of appreciation - a useless trinket we collected for random tasks and performances. So we did what soldiers do… turned it into a drinking game.
In a bar, if a soldier threw down a coin, it meant their mates had to pick up their bar tab. However, if another man “challenged” them with a higher coin, then he must buy the other man’s drinks. He might even have to do a free round for all those around as well.
“How the hell did you get this?” I said out of frustration, and immediately regretted it. It skirted too close to asking the questions that would give away the secrets that kept him safe. The secrets I wouldn’t ask for. It’d be considered unprofessional to do so.
But he smiled, undisturbed.
“Work,” he said, cryptically before changing the subject. “You are my bar bitch tonight.”
Ugh, what was it with rich people always wanting free shit? I had no choice. I opened a tab, and Griff was on it.
That was just so typical. The intimacy of what we had when we were alone never matched what we had in public - the one where we were just buddies. I was just one of the guys. For all my regrets, leaving him the morning after our mistake was not one of them. Moments like this told me why.
“Is the kitchen still open?” Griff asked after Ellen placed the beer in front of him, and practically slid mine towards me. She didn’t even have the decency to give me a paper napkin.
“Of course!” she said, wiping her hands on her apron, before pulling out a food menu.
Griff took it and perused as I grabbed my bottle of beer before saying, “I’m going to the Jukebox.”
He didn’t look away from the menu as he dug into his pocket, pulling out several quarters and holding them out to me.
“Breakfast Club,” was all he said, before dismissing me entirely and making conversation with Ellen about the offerings.
I guess I wasn’t going to eat tonight.
I placed my hand on the old Jukebox. It was the size of an old pacman game, and the songs listed in it hadn’t really been updated since 1995. Not that I minded. I preferred music before Y2K.
I put in some coins for Don’t You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds when a long shadow blocked the overhead light.
“About your Ducati…” The voice drawled, and my head whipped up. It was him. The gray haired man from the Prodigal Sons, his cut still on his shoulders, emphasizing his thick biceps as he crossed his arms. “I can’t imagine you haven’t tried to clock it. So what’d you get it to?”
I clenched my jaw. “I don’t speed.”
“Oh, I didn’t say that you did, kid,” he chuckled, as he leaned his back onto the Jukebox, staring down at me. “I’m not a Fed, so it’s not like I’d report you.”
Something about those brown eyes unsettled me. Almost as if I’d seen them before, but that couldn’t be.
“Don’t bullshit me.” I turned to him fully, my fingers itching for the gun at my back.
I had a concealed carry for moments just like this. For moments when a vindictive asshole would come around, getting revenge for some guy I dumped at the bondsman. But I didn’t expect them to come at me in a bar. I didn’t expect it where others might see. It witnesses complicated things.
But Griff was here. He’d have my back.
“What do you want?” I asked, my body square to his.
But he stayed casual. “I’m just talking about bikes.”
I scoffed. “Cut the bullshit. I know you saw me arrest your buddy, Kyle Lowell.”
He gave a slow, solemn nod. “Yeah, that was too bad. But if you think I’m here to give you a rough time about it, you’re wrong. Kyle was an asshole, and I told him not to skip bail. He got what was coming to him. We’ll handle the rest the way we’d handle anything else.”
I narrowed my eyes in disbelief. “Sounds awfully civilized for an MC.”
“It’s not,” he said with a small tilt of his head. His brown eyes seemed almost green in the center. It was an unusual combination. “But you ain’t got nothing to worry about while I’m around.”
He turned his head, scanning the room, where some of his guys sat at tables with women on their arms, hunched like the depressed gargoyles on the top of a cathedral.
“But that only goes while I’m in the room, you get me?”
“Why?” Alarm bells were ringing in my head. Who was this guy, and what the hell did he want? They always wanted something. “You get that I’m not going to sleep with you, right?”
No one gave anything for free, especially not protection. I wanted to kill that possibility as soon as possible. It was a habit formed from years of being surrounded by men in the Army. Too many men and not enough women to go around could really make a whacked out society.
The old man almost snorted the beer out of his nose.
“Jesus, no!” He wiped at his nose, as he pulled the bottle from his lips. “God, you’re young enough to be my kid. What do you think I am?”
He seemed truly disgusted with the idea of being with a younger woman.
“You’ve got kids?” I asked, assessing him from head to toe. He seemed like one of those guys that spent all their time on the road. I doubted he spent a ton of time with anything that would resemble a healthy family.
“I have a daughter,” he said. “Light of my life.”
There was a glow in his eyes, and that familiar pang of envy came back to the surface. Again, what would that be like? To be the light of someone’s life?
“Lucky kid,” I said, turning back to the Jukebox to line up another song.
I found the song I wanted - the First Picture of You by the Lotus Eaters. An over dramatic one hit wonder from the 1980’s.
“I hope she thinks so,” he said with a fond smile.
Again, another dagger in my heart. I bet my dad didn’t smile thinking about his kid. Maybe he had other kids. But I was probably a forgotten, distant mistake.
“What’s with the name?” I finally asked, nodding to his cut with the name proudly emblazoned on a scroll. “You religious or something?”
He shrugged. “Not particularly. It's more… symbolic of the fact that we’re fallen from what we used to be.”
“What did you used to be?”
“We’re all veterans,” he said. “A bit disgruntled with how things are going.”
“Disgruntled?” I pried, wondering exactly what kind of disgruntled they were.
Were they marching down the DC mall with signs disgruntled, or Timothy McVeigh, bombing a building with Federal agents and their kids in it kind of disgruntled?
“The Prodigal Sons aren’t thrilled with the current administration, and the bureaucratic decision making that occurs in relation to certain non-State actors,” he said, looking away, his tone flat, like he was reciting a trivia fact. The song changed to the one I chose, and he smirked. “This is a good song.”
When the song came on, he nodded in approval.
“Good one hit wonder,” he said with a charming smile. His eyes went back to me. “Where’d you hear it? What’s the story with you and this song?”
“No story,” I said, wondering why he was being so intimate.
These weren’t the usual questions a person would ask. So, what was his deal?
“Your old man sing it to you or something?” he said as if it was something he would know. Like maybe he did that for his kid.
“Nope.” I shrugged. “My old man bailed, and never looked back.”
Why the hell was I admitting that to a stranger? It wasn’t a badge of honor. It wasn’t much of anything. It was just… fact.
“Oh?” He said, instantly curious. Almost too curious.
“Yup,” I flipped through the little list in the Jukebox to find the next song I wanted. “Mom got pregnant, and he bailed. Fed her some lame excuse for why he left. She looked him up a few times, but I guess he lied about everything.”
He tilted his head.
“What about child support?” That was a curious place to go with his questions. Rarely did people go straight into thinking about child support, but hell, maybe he did. I didn’t see a wedding band on his hand.
“Nope. Nothing.” Hell, any support would have been nice. We had lived on the brink of disaster my entire childhood.
“Did your Ma tell you that?” His bushy, sculpted brows came together. “Something like that,” I grumbled.
“Interesting,” he said.
And he meant it. He was acting like my mundane story was something that rocked his world.
“My name’s Cobra. “He held his large hand out to me, his palms calloused and dry. I took it, and nodded.
“Seriously? Did your parents not like you or something?” I was testing him, trying to see how sensitive he was. Getting someone pissed was a great interrogation technique, especially with a hostile. As kind as he was acting, I knew that bad guys could flip that on a dime.
“Taz,” I said.
“Taz?” he quirked a brow, then smiled again. “Did your Mom not like you or something?”
He turned my words back to me, and I laughed.
“I don’t know,” I turned back to the Jukebox again, looking for more familiar songs. “I guess it’s short for Trinity.”
“Trinity.” His lips parted, as he let out a breath. “That’s a… beautiful name.”
“I guess my mom started calling me Taz and it stuck. I thought it went away when I joined the Army, but they started calling me the Tasmanian Devil so…”
“You were in the Army?” He said with surprise.
I prickled. I hated this part, sometimes. The assumption that I couldn’t be in the Army.
“Special Forces,” I said, throwing back my shoulders and daring him to contradict me. A lot of men did, refusing to believe that the last bastion of combat arms had opened its doors to women. Too tough on the frail masculine ego.
“That’s impressive,” he said, with a satisfied nod. I couldn’t begin to figure out why. “Were you an 18C?”
Curiosity laced his features.
“Yes, I was, why do you ask?” 18 Charlie, Special Forces Engineer.
Under normal circumstances, I’d keep this information close to the vest, but if they were going to attack me, they might think twice if they knew I could fight back.
“Everything alright, here?” Griff was staring daggers at the old man. He slowly slid his arm around my shoulders and tucked me into his side. “This guy bothering you?”
I shrugged him off, giving him a glare. Cobra looked at Griff up and down, before scowling like he didn’t approve.
“Put it away guys,” I said loudly, then grumbled, “Before someone pokes an eye out.”
Griff wasn’t one to be easily dissuaded. He came forward and stood between me and Cobra, squaring up like they were in a pissing contest.
“Seriously, Griff, I’m fine.” I turned back to the Jukebox, more than annoyed at the impending sausage fest. “Go sit down before you start a fight.”
Some people might think that being the only girl in a room full of guys was a good thing. It wasn’t. I made a mental note to get more women in my life because men were just too dramatic. If I didn’t like the feel of cock, I would have started dating women long ago.
“I’ll be watching you,” Griff said it to me, but I knew it wasn’t for me. He was saying it for Cobra’s benefit.
“Keep it North of the belt,” I said as a joke.
“No promises.” His eyes flicked down my body and back up before he walked away.
I took the time to admire his backside with cheap, decidedly unfriendly appreciation. The man had a tight ass, and a gorgeous set of shoulders. There were ass men and breast men. There were ass, chest, shoulder, and arm women. And I was into all of it.
I was a sucker for a guy who could pump iron.
“That your man?” Cobra said, disapproval written all over his face.
“Nope. Just friends.”
“That’s some kind of friend.” He looked out the door, seeming to gaze across the street to where I’d parked my bike. “What about the other one? The fireman?”
“Nope.” I wasn’t going to give any more details on that.
I didn’t know for sure about Riley, but I knew that for all his faults, Griff was the best kind of friend. He may hate VD with a burning passion, but he’d still have his back no matter what. And at this point, he wasn’t really mad at VD anyway. He was just a standing reminder of his failure when it came to marriage.
And Griff did not like to fail at anything.
“Your buddy at the bar is looking at me pretty hard for a guy who’s just a friend, ” Cobra said with a smirk.
“He’s probably my best friend, actually.”
Again, I wasn’t sure why I was confessing everything to this… Cobra. But here I was.
“What’s your daughter’s name?” I asked, finally. Trying to pull a shred of information from him, if I could.
Then the door burst open, and a breathless Riley scanned the room, his baby blue eyes landing right on me.