4.
Bear
T he hangover was hitting hard and fast as I blinked the world back into view, a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes twisting and turning like I was on some fucked-up merry-go-round ride at the state fair. My stomach heaved and I leaned over the bed, or whatever the hell I was lying on, and puked my guts up. I heaved and retched until my stomach ached in a way that told me if I didn’t stop puking I was going to pop something internal.
“Fuck, man, you’re gonna have to clean that up,” a voice called from somewhere in the room.
I squinted, my eyes stinging as sweat trickled down my face. I was sweating so hard that when I tried to wipe my face more sweat went into my eyes, making it almost impossible to see. I grabbed the hem of my T-shirt and swiped that down my face, finally clearing my vision.
“That fuckin’ stinks. What the hell is wrong with you? There’s a bathroom ya know. We’re not animals.”
“You know it’s bad when the junkie in the room tells you to go to the bathroom,” another voice echoed.
I forced myself to sit up, the world spinning into view as I swung my legs over the side of the bed. I was panting, my stomach aching like it wanted me to throw up some more, but I forced the feeling away, knowing there was nothing left in my stomach but bile. Looking down, I saw my feet were firmly seated in the puke. I wriggled my toes in my socks, feeling the sick absorb into the material, and I grimaced as it squelched between my toes.
“Shit,” I mumbled.
I needed water. I needed some painkillers. I needed a fucking double cheeseburger, and I needed a shower. But first I needed to know where the hell I even was. The last thing I remembered was sitting in the Laughing Moose and doing a line of…how many shots was it? Five? Six? Seven? I wasn’t sure. By that point I was already seeing double. But I had thrown back those shots one after another after another to the roar of cheers and chanting, and then… then it goes black.
Looking around the room, I took in the graffitied walls, the filthy moth-eaten carpet, and several prone bodies asleep in separate corners. I was the only one on a bed; everyone else seemed to be either on mattresses or just on the floor. There were several people around me, all asleep, mouths hanging slack, open, empty bottles lying near them. It was obvious that some were high as hell, and I quickly checked my arms to make sure I hadn’t done anything stupid. Well, stupider than my usual shit.
Drugs were a no-go with the Kings. Unforgivable, inexcusable, and unacceptable. There were no second chances. I would be out of the club before I knew what was happening. My arms were, thankfully, clear.
I stood on shaky feet, the room swaying momentarily before coming to a stop. I found my boots and my leather jacket and staggered from the room.
“You need to clean that up,” a voice said from the corner of the room.
I looked over, not recognizing the pale face and bug eyes staring back at me.
“I don’t care who you are, I’m not cleaning up your puke.”
“Fuck off,” I growled before leaving the room.
More memories of last night came back to me as I passed through the abandoned house that looked like it had needed to be torn down twenty years ago. The living room, like the bedroom, had people asleep in its corners. They lay there like dirty secrets waiting to be found, their backs turned to the world. Most people were still sleeping, but a couple sets of eyes followed me through the house, their wide-eyed tweaking gazes nervous at the sight of me.
I saw my big black leather boots by the front door and paused halfway to them, that same gut-wrenching pain hitting me so hard I almost fell over. Because even now, no matter how fucked up I was, I always remembered to leave my boots by the door.
His voice spoke in my head, telling me I was okay. That he was with me. That I just needed a shower and some food, and then I would feel better.
“But I won’t,” I said out loud, to him and to myself.
Because it was true.
I would never feel better again.
He was gone and I was here alone.
“I won’t ever feel better.”
“Did you say something?” someone asked.
I had nothing but photos and my own mind to remember him by. Not a kid to pass his blood on through. Not a sister or parent I could talk about him to that would remember him like I did. No, I was alone in this misery. This eternal damnation that some called life but I called a never-ending nightmare.
“Hey, you okay?” a voice said from the sofa, and when I turned to look I saw a vaguely familiar face peeking out from beneath an old blanket.
“No,” I bit out.
“Can I help?” she said.
“You wanna help me?” I asked, a small laugh in my voice.
“For a price I’ll help anybody,” she replied. And maybe it wouldn’t have seemed so bad if she didn’t look so sad about it. Maybe if she would have forced a smile and tried to be a little flirtatious with me, I wouldn’t have noticed the pain behind her eyes. I still would have said no, but it wouldn’t have hit home so hard.
I shook my head and grabbed my boots, leaving the house before I made another stupid mistake.
Outside the sun was shining like this was just any other day. I had no idea what day of the week it was, or even what month it was—I had stopped making note of them three months ago when my world had fallen apart—but it bugged the shit out of me that today it was sunny. That there were flowers growing and dogs barking and birds fucking tweeting and shit. It made every second breathing even more painful, because the world just kept on going and nothing and no one seemed to care that he was gone.
The world continued to turn, life and death going hand in hand. A thousand or more babies had been born since I had lost him. And a thousand or more people had died since then too. Yet the only person that mattered or that held any importance to me was him.
His death.
His life.
His story.
He was gone, and I wasn’t, and that was my penance for not being better. For not being able to protect him. For being too scared to help him.
A quiet breeze blew down the deserted street, and I could almost feel his hand on my shoulder, his touch heavy. And then it was gone. He was gone again. His touch was gone and I was alone once more.
I leaned over, almost falling in the process, and I dragged my puke-soaked sock off my foot and shoved my bare foot into my boot. I pulled the laces taught and pushed them inside the boot, and then I looked up and down the street for my bike. I was almost hoping I had ridden it here, because if I hadn’t I was going to have to make a phone call that I really didn’t want to have to make. After several minutes searching, I scowled and pulled out my cell, took a deep breath, and called him. I wasn’t sure what his real name was anymore, but to us at the clubhouse he was the Confessor. And he was the saint on my shoulder trying to guide me back into glory when all I wanted to do was die.
After three rings, he picked up. “Yep?”
“It’s me,” I sighed heavily. “Need you to come pick me up.”
Silence.
I waited a beat to see if he would say anything, but when there was nothing I spoke again.
“Did you hear me?” I snapped. It wasn’t his fault, but I was pissed off had a raging hangover and no fucking clue where my bike was. I didn’t need his games right now.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Give me a road name and I’ll come find you.”
I walked to the edge of the sidewalk and looked up and down the sunny street, finally seeing a road sign further down.
“Hang on, I’ve got one.”
My heavy footsteps sounded too loud in the echo of the empty street. No curtains twitched in windows, no one was watching from peepholes and wondering who the big bastard of a biker was walking up and down their street. This place was for the dead, the dying, or the ones who were calling to the Devil himself. I fell in the latter category.
I shielded my eyes from the sun as I stared at the rusted sign. “Holland Avenue,” I finally said. “I’m outside the house with the boarded-up windows and the blue door.”
“I know where that is. I’ll be thirty minutes,” Confessor replied.
“Make it twenty and bring some water,” I snapped back before cutting the call off.
I sat on the side of the road, my head in my hands as the sun beat down on my back. At some point I must have fallen asleep, because I woke to the sound of the Confessor’s truck pulling up in front of me. Wordlessly I stood up, opened the door, and climbed into the back of it. I lay across the back seats and closed my eyes again. The A/C was on, and within minutes I was feeling more awake and much less nauseous.
“Did you bring it?” I asked him, my eyes still closed. Sweat trickled down the side of my face.
“On the floor by your head,” he called back.
I reached over, eyes still closed, and put my hand inside the paper bag. I latched around the bottle of water and pulled it out, quickly unscrewing the cap and downing the whole bottle in one.
“There’s another there for you,” Confessor said without me having to ask. “And a burger. Took some persuading to get that for you, because it was before eleven and they didn’t have the burgers cooked yet.”
“Breakfast menu?” I asked and he grunted a yes. “Appreciate it. I fuckin’ hate the breakfast menu.”
“Only man that ever did,” he replied.
Eyes closed, I reached into the bag again, finding the burger and unwrapping it before shoving it to my waiting mouth. My empty stomach growled appreciatively as I swallowed it down. Between the water and the burger, the acidic taste of sick and bile was finally going.
“Anything I need to know?” I asked. I had finally opened my eyes, trying to build up the courage to sit up. Too soon and I would be puking all over again; the buildings speeding by had a tendency to do that to me.
“Yeah. A lot of stuff actually,” Confessor replied. “Not even sure where to start.”
“Start with the stuff JD is gonna give me the most shit over.”
“Well, let’s start with that someone tried to take a hit out on JD last night and you weren’t there.”
My eyes sprung open at the news. “Fuck.”
“Indeed,” he replied.
“He’s okay though?”
Confessor mumbled something under his breath, but I didn’t bother to ask him what he had said. We both knew that I was only going through the motions. Of course he was okay. My club would have come and found me wherever the fuck I was if JD had been killed. I wouldn’t have been out drinking all night doing whatever the fuck I had been doing, that was for damn certain. Because where JD was concerned, the world would be stopped if anything happened to him.
“He’s fine,” he finally replied.
“They get who did it? I’m taking it Gods and Moose have been up most of the night having fun with whoever it was.” I laughed humorlessly.
I don’t care…
I wanted to scream the words.
Yell the words.
Carve the words into my own flesh.
I didn’t fucking care.
I didn’t give an ounce of hell if JD was okay, and I knew that was messed up because he was my prez and he had earned my love and respect tenfold. But I had gone beyond the grief and had moved on to nothingness. I was nothing and I felt nothing, because nothing mattered to me anymore. Not even my prez.
I had been absent more and more these past months, and while I didn’t want to lose my club, I couldn’t stop myself from making the same mistakes over and over. Nothing seemed to matter to me anymore. The guilt had poisoned every part of me and now it was slowly strangling me. Each minute of each day it was a coiled snake around my throat, tightening more and more.
One of these days it would be over.
“You should know that JD is more than pissed at you, brother. I don’t think an excuse will cut it this time.”
I grunted my acknowledgment.
“There’s more that happened. Much more, but I don’t think you’re in any fit state to hear it right now.”
I stared up at the ceiling of his truck, the motion of it making me feel drowsy and sick in equal measures.
“Everyone’s okay? Club’s all right?” I finally asked.
Confessor didn’t speak for a long moment. “No, brother. Shit’s not okay.”
The beat of silence was too long, and I knew with Confessor telling me that things weren’t okay that something big had gone down and I hadn’t been there for it. There would be hell to pay for this.
I opened my mouth to say something, but wasn’t sure what I could say that would make it any better. It didn’t matter though, because he beat me to it in the end, filling the empty silence with the lecture I knew was coming.
“This has to stop, Bear. You know that, right? You’re going to kill yourself if you keep on like this.”
Everything I wanted to say died in my throat because I knew what was coming next.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
The truck slowed at what I presumed was a stoplight, and I took that moment to sit up slowly. The burger and the water sloshed in my empty stomach and threatened to reappear.
“You can’t keep on like this,” he continued. “He wouldn’t want this for you.”
The truck started moving again, but I kept my eyes firmly fixed on my hands in my lap.
“You can’t keep blaming yourself. Are you listening to me, Bear?”
“Yeah,” I replied quietly.
I had heard it a thousand times before.
It wasn’t my fault. It would have happened anyway because the doctors were getting a court order. He wouldn’t want this for me. But he wasn’t here so it didn’t really fucking matter what he would want for me. And if I wasn’t a pathetic piece of shit I wouldn’t have allowed any of this to happen.
“Can you not—I can’t do this today,” I finally said. I looked up, catching his gaze in the rearview mirror.
He sighed heavily. “Okay. But we’re going to talk about this later. You come see me tonight after JD has finished stringing you up by your balls,” he finally agreed against his better judgment. “Whatever happens, club or no club, I’m here for you, okay.”
There was a slight panic in my chest as his words sank in, and I wondered if I was going to be kicked out of the club, and if so, how I really felt about that. Did I care? Was I relieved? I wasn’t sure of anything anymore, but I knew he was right about one thing: I couldn’t keep on like this.
Several minutes later he pulled up next to my bike, which was parked outside of the Laughing Moose. A pile of puke was next to it.
I dragged a hand down my face before reaching into the paper bag and pulling out the second bottle of water and opening my door to climb out.
“Bear?” Confessor said as I slammed the door shut behind me and his window rolled down.
“What?” I asked, already knowing what he was going to say, but knowing that out of respect I had to hear him out anyway.
Confessor pulled off his sunglasses so he could look at me good and proper, and I met his gaze head-on. “If he could tell you anything it would be to live.”
I’d heard these words and his warnings so many times before that I practically knew them by heart, yet it made no difference to me. Was I trying to kill myself? I didn’t think so, but I also wasn’t so sure. Not anymore.
“You need to remember him in better days.” He reached his hand out of the open window and I took it in mine, giving it a firm shake as he squeezed.
I pulled my hand free from his and gave him a sad smile. “The thing is, Confessor, I just don’t care what he would want anymore. He’s gone and I’m here. All that matters is that I can’t sleep and I can’t eat and I can’t think, because the guilt of that night is sucking me dry.” I cleared my throat and looked up and down the street as I composed myself.
“Bear, it was time—”
I held up a hand and cut him off. “I was supposed to look after him, Confessor. He was my brother and now he’s dead because I didn’t protect him. He’s dead and that’s on me. It will always be on me.”
I turned away from him before he could say anything else. I was done talking. I didn’t have it in me today.
“I’ll see you back at the clubhouse. There’s more stuff you need to know, okay?” he said instead of continuing to lecture me.
“What is it?” I asked, only half interested. “Just tell me.”
He looked like he wanted to say something but stopped himself. “I’ll see you back at the clubhouse. You’ll find out soon enough.”
He pulled away and I watched after him with a heavy heart. I twisted off the lid of the bottle of water and downed it in one. I knew I stank—I could smell myself, the pungent scent of sweat and vomit. Of stale alcohol seeping from my pores and whatever had been on that rank-ass mattress in that house. I stank and needed to shower, but I also knew I needed to go see JD, because if he sent someone for me, it would only make things worse.
Sitting on my bike, I pulled the keys out of my jacket with shaking hands. I shook them out and squeezed them together to stop the shakes. I needed another drink, yet the thought of drinking turned my stomach. I looked across at the lit-up sign of the Laughing Moose and thought about going in and getting one for the road. Just one to steady my nerves and calm me down. If JD was going to be yelling in my face, it was better to do it with calmer nerves than what I was feeling at the moment. Right now I might just flip the shit out and lose my cool. And doing that to him wouldn’t end well.
Inside my jacket I could feel my cell vibrating against my rib cage. Over and over it rang, and I wondered which of my brothers it would be. Would it be JD, my prez, finally ready to throw my sorry ass to the sidewalk? Or Rocky, my VP, ordering me on the road in the hopes that time away from this city would clear my head enough so I didn’t screw everything up. Or just one of my brothers ready to beat my ass for not being at the clubhouse for days on end. For missing out on what was going on. For not being around to help protect JD.
I ignored the call and stayed sitting on my bike for several minutes, staring at the Laughing Moose. Heat penetrated my clothes and sweat began to trail down my spine.
A cold beer would be the best-tasting thing right now.
And hair of the dog always clears a head, I assured myself.
I got off my bike and strode toward the doors. One beer for the road and then I would head to the clubhouse and take the earful I deserved.
Just one more beer and I would be able to listen to it without losing my cool and just telling everyone to fuck off.
Just one beer.