Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
S triker…
It’d been a little over a week and a half since our little date in St. Augustine. The one where I’d left her gentlemanly like at her Jeep with a chaste kiss; I hadn’t stopped thinking about that short, soft press of lips against mine since.
I dreamed of her petal soft kiss every fucking night, woke up to a raging boner weeping precum every morning, and yeah, had to relieve the pressure in the shower every morning, too.
All the texting and talk of the dynamic I craved more than anything else certainly hadn’t been helping, but today? Today I would finally get to see her. Possibly even get to hold her in my arms. That was if everything was cool and went according to plan.
The Iron Horse was back open, but they were still sans their liquor license and according to Rarity, business was more than a little lackluster.
I didn’t particularly care about that. They’d decided to host the Scorpions and not enforce their rules. That’d gotten Rarity hurt. I wasn’t inclined to forgive that… but for one thing. I liked Rarity, I didn’t want to let her lose her job, and if the Iron Horse hadn’t fucked up, we maybe more than likely would have never met.
Our friendship was still a budding one, but after our day together it was now one that I was glad to find was fraught with sexual tension.
She was such a good girl, and the contents of our texts had gotten a little hotter and certainly a lot heavier since our time together. To the point that I had a wild idea on how to help out, at least for one night, with their dwindling patronage.
I’d run it by the guys and they’d been game as long as I put it together, and so a poker run it was.
The guys from Ocala and Jacksonville were game, and we’d advertised on social media for a good while, and I’d contacted a bunch of places to put the run together – it was my position within the club, after all.
The Iron Horse’s owner had welcomed the idea with open arms as a peace offering. An olive branch between the club and his establishment, but he’d insisted on one thing: no colors inside his bar.
I’d figured that was coming and had already anticipated it. So, I’d said no problem. We’d stop out front at the gas station and divest, stowing our colors in our locked cases and saddlebags.
He’d said deal, and so it was a deal.
Riders from all over the state were set to attend. It was a fundraising poker run, after all. The start point was at our clubhouse, where we had our big tent erected, and the plan was to head down the A1A and do a total of five stops between and hold five hands of poker at each stop.
We were no strangers to doing charitable runs, and this one was no exception. We just used them as tax write-offs at the end of the year, and maybe did a little to balance our scales by running them.
This run was us being good neighbors. Florida was used to getting our shit pushed in by hurricanes. It was a yearly occurrence. Usually, we fared okay, but every once in a while? Shit got real and when it did, we all banded together and helped each other out.
Never in a million fuckin’ years did anyone think Appalachia would bear the brunt of a full-fledged hurricane. It was about as ridiculous and as frequent as a blizzard in Miami. That’s what happened, though. A bitch named Helene made landfall in the panhandle and cut an unprecedented swath of fuckin’ destruction across something like seven states total. She fucked up Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, East Tennessee, parts of Virginia and West Virginia. It was wild, but nobody took damage harder than Appalachia.
She fucked up Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee like nobody’s fuckin’ business and those areas that she hit hardest up there were lookin’ at devastation that wiped entire towns and cities clean off the fuckin’ map.
It would be decades to repair the damage in the areas it could be repaired, but there were a lot of places that were just done . Gone. There was no fixing it. There was no starting over. There was nothing left there to start over with, there was nothing left enough to rebuild.
So, this poker run was dedicated to the hurricane relief in the Appalachian Mountains.
It was only a drop in the bucket, sure, but we knew a thing or two about catastrophic storm damage and being hung out to dry by our own government down here. Sounded like similar was happening up there. We wanted to help, and have a little fun doing it and what better way to kill two birds with one stone?
Help Appalachia, and the Iron Horse by bringing people in fuckin’ droves.
By the time we reached the Iron Horse, everyone was full of beer and little else from our previous poker hand stops. We were bringing in a hungry fuckin’ crowd, and the Iron Horse had their kitchens, pits, and smokers going full bore expecting the lot of us.
I was happy to say we delivered.
Tables had been set up in long lines up top, live talent was on the stage, and the smells . Lord, they had our mouths watering before we had our cuts off and were riding in to park.
We had the place so packed, bikes were lining the street and the Ormond Beach PD were out front directing traffic and turning folk over across the street and down some to the Broken Spoke to park.
The Broken Spoke didn’t have their feelings hurt. They’d got on board and had closed down their kitchens, leaving the food to the Iron Horse. Instead, they made up for it by having their taps wide open and the beer and liquor flowing.
It was an exercise in harmony and cooperation and so far, everything was going great.
The Iron Horse’s security was out front, checking ID’s, turning away anyone in colors to put those colors up, and stopping anyone coming in from the Broken Spoke from bringing in any alcohol with them.
The trash cans out front were filling up, and laminated printed signs were plastered everywhere out front with ‘no alcohol beyond this point – we look forward to serving you all the food you can eat.’
I was fucking starving, and posted up in line to grab a bite before heading up to look for Rarity.
She said she would be at her bar, slinging sodas, and floats.
Bar number two had been officially designated as an old-fashioned soda jerk fountain for the event. Rarity’s friend’s idea. The other waitress, Gemma, who’d worked at an ice cream parlor as a teen.
It’d been a good idea, and helped out parents that were excited to have their kids get a look at where they got to hang out as usually the Iron Horse was 21+.
I know Rarity was excited, because her mother and three brothers had reluctantly agreed to attend. She’d said it had taken her, and her mother’s parents a few days to convince them – and I was surprisingly nervous to meet them.
Didn’t take me long to figure out who her family was as three little boys were up on bar stools across from Rarity, each tow-headed and wearing glasses, all three in matching little outfits of olive drab long shorts, navy blue polos, and smart little high-top sneakers.
Nearby, there was an umbrella high-top table with an older couple and a woman with graying blonde hair that had to be Rarity’s mother.
I didn’t go there right away. I made for the bar and the last open bar stool left between one of Rarity’s brothers and a woman and her man.
I slid up onto the stool and set down my food on the bar.
“Hey, you!” Rarity called and asked, “What can I get you?”
“Root beer if you got it,” I said.
“Absolutely, a float or just the root beer?”
“Make it a float,” I said with a grin and her smile was a million watts.
“Boys,” she called out, scooping ice into a plastic cup. “I want you to meet my friend Striker.” Three little faces turned up to me.
“Striker, this is Caden next to you, Braden in the middle, and that’s Aden at the far end.”
“Nice to meet you, boys!” I said jovially, taking a bite of my garlic butter-soaked steak tips over mashed potatoes.
God that was good!
I was met with a chorus of timid “hi’s and a “hey” from her brothers.
“Nice to meet you, boys. You having fun?” I asked.
“Yeah,” they all said, and the middle one slurped a spoonful of his float.
Rarity set down a float in front of me and I winked at her and she winked at me.
She and I chatted while I ate, and we all listened to the band down below.
When her mom and grandparents came over to collect the boys to head to the beach, Rarity didn’t introduce me – not yet. I got that. Things were still new enough that I was just a guy she was talking to. Not enough of a thing yet to go that far. When the kids and her elders had disappeared down the steps, she turned to me and was a bright pink. I smiled from behind my float as I sipped it from the rim.
“Sorry,” she said. “I feel like an asshole now for not saying anything…”
“Don’t,” I told her. “We definitely aren’t serious enough for that yet. I get it,” I said.
She shifted uncomfortably on her feet and leaned on the bar from her side and pitching her voice low, for my ears only, said to me, “It sure feels like things are… you know… getting there.”
I smiled and nodded knowingly. “Glad we’re on the same page, but for real – I’m not offended and my feelings aren’t hurt.”
She nodded and sighed. “Thanks,” she said.
“Don’t mention it.”
The Iron Horse was going to be closing much earlier than it usually did. The party wasn’t ending, it just moved on over to the Broken Spoke where the liquor flowed.
I didn’t move with it, though. Even when some of the guys came around looking for me, I stayed put in my seat at Rarity’s bar.
The sun was getting low when two hands clapped down on my shoulders and tightened, thumbs digging, shaking me back and forth on my bar stool in their exuberance.
“We gonna catch you two later back at the clubhouse?” I lost my tense posture at Renegade’s voice.
Rarity looked up from her cleaning and sorting back behind the bar and smiled, happy-go-lucky, “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve got to run out to Daytona in the morning and I have work here tomorrow evening for a few hours. This was great, though! Thank you guys so much for putting this all together to help us out.”
“Aw, it was to help everybody, really,” Renegade said, sliding up on the stool next to mine.
“Float for the road?” Rarity asked him.
“Yeah, I believe I will,” Renegade declared. “You got any of that birch beer back there?”
“I surely do,” Rarity said cheerfully.
“Rarity, this is Renegade,” I introduced them. “Renegade is the President of our chapter.”
“Hi,” Rarity said. “I kind of figured, you look like a man who’s in charge.”
Renegade laughed and nodded, “I get that a lot,” he said.
She and he bantered a bit while she made his float and handed it over.
“Thank you kindly, Ms. Rarity,” Renegade said.
“I’ll see you guys later, back at the club,” I told him, and he gave me a nod.
“Y’all have fun, whatever you get up to,” he said and took his float and went off to join a knot of Bastards at the top of the stairs.
Suddenly, it was just me and her up here, the next nearest person her friend Gemma over at bar three and a couple of the guys in charge of trash duty and security getting floats from her and likely shooting their shot.
“So, how much longer you got to hang around here?” I asked her.
She checked her slim silver watch, the band old and stretched to where it slid around her even slimmer wrist and she gave a gusty sigh.
“Not long,” she declared. “Just have some clean up and need to check in with Rob and I think I’m pretty free to go.”
“Heard my name,” a balding older man with a paunch said coming up the back ‘employees only’ staircase around the back of the bar.
“Hey,” Rarity called, tossing things in an oversized trash bag.
“What was the question?” he asked.
“No question,” Rarity said.
“I just asked when she was off and getting out of here,” I said.
“Ah, now if she wants to,” Rob said. “Go on, I’ve got this,” he said.
“You sure?” Rarity asked.
“Girl, with how well this went, I’m thinking about making it an all-ages yearly event so families can come enjoy some good food, good music, and some ice cream – already in talks with the Broken Spoke for them to handle the liquor like this round and close down their kitchen. The whole thing was lucrative for both of us.”
“We can see about making it a yearly deal,” I said. “Rotate charities for the poker run.”
“Well, alright then,” Rob said. We sat and shot the shit, shook on things, and I shot a text or two to Renegade who shot back ‘no problem’ and that we’d sort it out in church the following week.
All in all, it was a good fuckin’ day for everybody, and it was looking like it was about to get even better for me.