Epilogue Two
Sometimes I think my days are numbered, like not just with Phoenix MC, but in general.
Life so far has pretty much sucked, and I know at twenty-four, many would say I have a lifetime ahead, but I don’t feel it.
What I feel is like I’m wrong somehow. Somewhere inside me, something is wrong.
That’s why I don’t get on with people. That’s why I wind people up, when I’m just trying to have a laugh.
That’s why women slap me, or yell at me, when I’m just trying to make a connection. I know it’s not them. It’s me.
I think my parents have to take some of the blame, I mean they were good people, but just didn’t seem to understand me or try all that hard to at least attempt to.
Face value. That’s where my parents live.
If something looks good, it is. If someone seems less than they are, then they accept it.
Sucks really. We’d have been closer if they’d been able to look beneath the surface, and see that all I wanted was someone to fucking listen and hear me.
My head was like a screaming mass of confusion and despair, but on the outside, I guess I looked like I was living my best fucking life.
I hate that expression. Best life? Does anyone do that? And if there’s such a thing, where’s mine?
I was at my day job, which by the way I also hated, and wondering why I bothered. Accounting. It’s boring. It’s not the numbers I hate. Numbers are great. Numbers don’t fuck about. They just are, and if you can’t get your head around that, that’s a you problem. The numbers just fucking are.
No, it’s the people, it’s the place, it’s the fact that nobody made the effort to get to know me, and some of the girls found me ‘creepy’ and ‘predatory’. Fucking hell. All I wanted was to get to know people.
“You’re too pushy.” “You’re always staring at me.” “You followed her!”
Okay that last one was nothing to do with work, but it was burning me up. To understand what happened there, we’d need to go back to a recent night out.
That damn night
We were at the club Henley had introduced the club to, a place named Grimm’s.
The guy was clearly a biker too, and I liked bikers, but more than that, I loved this fucking place.
There were girls everywhere, all dressed in skimpy little dresses, or full gothed up with the makeup, and the chunky boots, black talons, and those vampire-esque kinda outfits.
I wanted to fuck a goth so bad, but none of them were into me.
I was at the bar, ordering another drink and that’s when I saw her.
She was leaning against the bar, one palm flat on the counter, her eyes closed, and a blissful smile on her face.
She was so beautiful. She had dark hair, and intense dark eye makeup, but she wasn’t as goth as the others around her.
She was taking such pleasure in the music, or the atmosphere, that I could practically feel it myself, and that’s why I gravitated in her direction.
“Hey,” I said loudly by her ear, expecting her eyes to pop open and for her to at least look at me before she dismissed me, because beautiful women like her always did that.
I guess I wasn’t outwardly hot, but I wasn’t unpleasant to look at.
Brown hair, brown eyes, a nice smile, in my opinion, and you know, I was pretty built.
I worked out to keep fit and strong. What’s not to like?
I tried again. “Hey, cool place, huh?”
Again, no response. She was so into the music, or so intent on ignoring me, that she didn’t even flinch or turn away. How fucking rude was she?
“Oi, I’m talking to you!”
Again nothing. I caught a warning glare from the bartender, some guy with black eyeliner and a shaved head, who flicked a gesture at me telling me to back off.
Fuck that. All she had to do was be fucking polite.
Was that so much to ask? I was always getting shit for the way I acted around people, but this was why.
Rudeness. You don’t want to talk, say no thanks. I’m not a monster. I’ll leave.
“Stop fucking ignoring me!” I yelled at her, so fucking frustrated with her continued ignorance that I downed my vodka and coke and slammed the glass down on the bar right near her hand.
She jumped, her eyes flying open as she backed up a step and looked around her.
Yeah that’s right. Look for someone other than me. I’m right in front of you.
“You stuck up cunt, all you had to do was say go away!”
Someone slammed a fist into my face, knocking me back a pace as I caught my balance by gripping the bar.
The woman glaring at me was gorgeous, with dark hair pulled back in a high ponytail and similar makeup to the… wait… she looked just like the other woman.
“Who the fuck do you think you are? Did you touch her? Did you touch my fucking sister?!”
She slammed both hands against my chest and shoved me back another pace, balling up her fist again as I absorbed her words. Sister. She said sister. Fuck me. More than a sister, she was her twin.
“I’ll break your balls, you fucking asshole!”
She lunged at me, and I fell back, catching my foot on a bar stool, and landing on my ass with a bone-jarring thud. Motherfucker!
“Get the boss,” the bartender yelled to someone, while I hurriedly scrambled up from the floor so she didn’t stomp on my nads, since she was definitely pissed enough to, and unlike her sister, she wore the deadly shitkicker boots.
“What the fuck is your problem?” I snapped at her, smoothing down my cut as I straightened up again, and dodged her next attempt to punch me.
“Fuck’s sake!”
The woman I’d tried to talk to was watching from a few feet away, her arms wrapped around her middle as her eyes focussed on my face as I spoke. Oh now she’ll fucking look at me. Too little too fucking late.
“I was just trying to say hi to her, she didn’t have to be so fucking rude!”
“Rude? I’ll give you rude, you fucking prick!” She shoved me again, and that was it, I was done being pushed around for talking to a fucking woman. Especially one so fucking stunning that she was a bitch.
“Touch me one more fucking time, and I’ll-”
“Finish that sentence at your own risk.”
That vampire guy who owned the place was now here too, shoving me away with a palm against my chest. I opened my mouth to yell at him for it, and he shot me a glare.
“Don’t show up your club like this. Shut up.”
He turned to the women, and the one who’d hit me started bitching about me, but wait… what did she say?
“Deaf? She’s deaf?”
Fuck me. She didn’t ignore me. She couldn’t fucking hear me!
Talk about feeling like an asshole. It never even occurred to me that she couldn’t hear me because of something other than the heavy beat.
“Fuck. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
The vampire guy said something to the bitchqueen from hell, and she nodded, wrapping an arm around her sister and walking away, but he wasn’t done with me yet.
“That’s how you talk to women? I trusted your club. I trusted you guys to come here and be civil. To be fucking respectful. You call a woman a cunt? You’re out of here, and if you ever want to come back, you’ll be kissing some asses first.”
He called over another big guy, the one who’d been manning the stairs, and the two of them flanked me as the vampire guy stormed off.
A moment later, Harley was approaching and encouraging the fuckers to kick me out.
It was fucking humiliating, but the fact that I’d been yelling at a deaf woman, thinking the worst of her, fuck me. I did that. I really fucking did that.
So yeah, that was the beginning of the end of me, see, because she consumed my every fucking thought now.
It wasn’t that she was deaf, but the fact that she was maybe the first woman who’d never rejected me, sure, she hadn’t been able to hear me, but still, it felt significant.
So what if her sister had torn me a new one as a result?
It wasn’t the end for us. We’d cross paths again, somehow.
“Neil, you got that budget ready? My meeting’s in five minutes.”
Fuck. I nodded vaguely, watching the boss walk off while I frantically added the last few figures into the shared document he’d be accessing once he got into the meeting. Ha. See, it wasn’t a lie. I was nearly there.
Of course, these weren’t the kinds of things you should rush, as I found out an hour later, when he was back at my desk, yelling at me for adding an extra zero that threw the entire fucking budget out.
So that was my day, and my ride home was my only fucking pleasure. At least until I saw her again.
Claudia
One of the things I learned when I stopped being able to hear things, was that people could get pissy if you weren’t paying attention to them, which was really hard to do when you couldn’t hear them in the first place.
One reason I loved going to Grimm’s was the heavy booming music.
I couldn’t hear it of course, but I could feel it.
It resonated through the very building that housed the club.
I could feel it in every wall, through the floor, and through the bar.
The booming gave me something to move to, something to focus on, something that felt almost as if I could hear it, because it filled me, vibrating through me from every point of contact.
It wasn’t the first time a guy got pissy with me for ‘ignoring him’ but that guy that night, the biker guy, it seemed to hit harder than it had with others.
Was it his rage at being ignored, the way it seemed like I’d damaged him personally, rather than just irritating him? Or was it the look in his brown eyes? Was it the insecurity and hurt I saw there.
Marissa was quick to attack, quick to defend me, so I didn’t get a chance to apologise, but I would have. I generally did anyway, but because it seemed to be so hurtful to him, I’d really wanted to.
Marissa could be terrifying when she went into one of her rages, and since she’d had to look out for me ever since we were twelve, and I became ‘disabled’, she’d become ferally protective of me. Her weaker twin.
Sometimes I wondered if it was guilt. Because she didn’t get meningitis and lose her hearing. She never really got sick at all. Did she feel like I felt it was unfair? We didn’t ever talk about it. About how she felt about it. She’d always change the subject, making it about me and what I’d lost.
I didn’t feel like it was a loss though. It’s true what they say about other senses being heightened, when one is removed.
Someone shoved past me as I walked down the high street, and my balance eluded me for long panicked moments, until I grabbed the wall and regained my equilibrium.
The guy shot me a glare and kept marching onward, which told me he’d probably tried saying ‘excuse me’, and of course I hadn’t heard him.
Blind people had canes to show their situation to others, but for me? For people who were just completely deaf, there was nothing so obvious. Sure, I could choose to wear a damn t-shirt saying something like ‘Deaf Bitch Walking’, but they’d just think it was humour.
Someone ran past me, and I caught a flash of black leather, and bright colours, but before I could focus on it, he was gone, charging down the side street, and out of sight.
Lucky I hadn’t stepped into his path, or I’d have been mowed down, and that wouldn’t have done my plight any good.
See, my sister was so convinced I couldn’t manage on my own, she’d even taken to tracking me when I was out, just to make sure I was safe.
I’d call it stalking, except that I knew she was doing it out of love and protection, and not some predatory need.