Chapter 26 #2
“I’d do anything for both of you, threat or no threat. You’re my family, and I lost sight of that. Fuck Frank, and honestly, fuck the club if they have a problem with you being gay. You and Mom are the most important people in my life.”
“You really mean that?” he asks, tears fill his eyes, as he looks at me with so much hope .
“Of course I do.” I stand and pull him up into a hug, like I should have done the night he came out. “I’m so sorry, Donovan.”
As I say it, I feel my own eyes well up, and for the first time since I was a child, I let the tears fall.
After we’ve hugged and cried, we sit back down, laughing at how unusual this is for us.
“Shit,” I say, wiping my face, “fuck you for making me cry.”
But that just makes him laugh even harder.
“So, am I forgiven?” I ask.
“Yeah, well, ninety percent,” he says, “I’m still pissed off about something.”
“Okay, tell me.”
“Look, I take full responsibility for getting Beth involved in this; I shouldn’t have asked her to tell you. I guess I just hoped you’d react better hearing it from her, seeing as though you two were… well, whatever the fuck you were—”
“Are you mad because we were together? She told me you knew, and the guys knew. But I know I shouldn’t have gone behind your back like that.”
“No, I’m not mad about that, we were all rooting for you from the start. I’m angry that you’ve gone behind her back. Not only is she heartbroken, but she’s sitting at Slim’s place thinking about you having a threesome with some girls at another clubhouse.”
“What the fuck?” I ask.
“Yeah, she knows. How could you do that to her? ”
“I didn’t,” I say, “I swear, nothing happened with any girl. I spent the night outside, smoking with the guy I fought at the Pit.”
“Wait, so you haven’t been with anyone else since Beth?”
“Fuck no! I was at the Diablos Rojos clubhouse, and I wasn’t even interested in any of the girls, all I could think about was Elizabeth.
But knowing I’d lost her and that I’d have to move on eventually, I went upstairs with a girl, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t do it, I ran out of the room.
I only want Elizabeth… and now she’s gone. ”
“But this is great,” he says, “you need to tell her.”
I sigh, letting my shoulders drop. “I don’t think she wants to hear from me; besides, she might have already moved on.
I overheard Slim tell the others that she got dropped off late one night by some guy in a town car; and she was all dressed up even though she told him she was staying at a friend’s house. ”
Donovan laughs, but there’s nothing funny about the image in my mind of her with some other guy.
“Seriously, the pair of you need to stop listening in on other people’s conversations and start fucking talking.”
“What?” I ask.
“She overheard that you had a threesome with some girls, she felt hurt and angry so went to try and get over you the same way, but she couldn’t do it either.”
The pain in my chest that’s been there since overhearing Slim talk to the others about that night eases slightly.
“What do you mean? How do you know that?”
“I was literally on the phone with her last night when you called. She told me about it, she met a guy but couldn’t go through with it and his driver ended up taking her back to Slim’s place.”
“Elizabeth hasn’t been with anyone else? She hasn’t moved on? ”
He grabs my shoulders. “No! She loves you; she misses you. The only reason she’s not with you is because she thinks that you can’t be accepting of gay people. Which, after our conversation and you apologizing, I’m hoping isn’t the case.”
“No, of course not, wait, she still loves me?”
Hope surges inside me, there’s a chance I haven’t lost her.
“Yes, you need to tell her that you and I are good, tell her what you told me, do that whole ‘fuck the club’ speech, it will be all romantic and shit, she’ll love it. You can get her back.”
I’m speechless… my brain is running a million miles a minute. But I haven’t lost her, it’s not over. I know I don’t deserve her, but I have to try…
“Not yet,” I say, “I need to fix this with the club first, prove to her that I’m not who she thinks I am. Then I can try and get her back.”
I’m nodding at Donovan, and he grins.
“Okay,” he says, standing and pulling me into a hug this time.
Elizabeth
“Can you hand me that screwdriver, please?” I ask, nodding to the one by Slim’s feet.
“This place looks great, Beth. You really didn’t have to do all of this,” he says, looking around his spare room.
When I moved in it was basically a plain white cube, but now three of the walls are painted a neutral tone with one of the walls the same green as the dining room; mainly because we had some paint leftover, but it also looks great in the space.
I’ve bought curtains that have the same green in the pattern and a couple of bedspreads that compliment it too.
Once we get this bed put together and the wardrobe built, this place will be ready for future guests.
I shrug. “Well you didn’t have to let me stay here, but you are, and I appreciate it.”
It’s funny, before all of this, he was the person I spoke to the least; Tank was always chatty and kind, Pretty Boy was mainly flirtatious, but Slim barely said a word to me.
He’s still not much of a talker, but he feels more like an older brother now.
Our evenings have been spent watching films, sitting on the couch I helped him to buy.
He doesn’t seem to mind dropping me off at work and picking me up, sometimes even eating at the diner to keep me company. It’s been nice to have a friend.
“You can stay as long as you want,” he says.
“Thanks, but I’m going to start looking at other places this week. Don’t get me wrong, living with you is great, but I feel like it’s going to be harder for me to move on from Diablo when I can still hear stuff that he’s… you know… up to.”
“What do you mean?” he asks, sitting on the floor near me and leaning back against the wall.
I take a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.
“I know it was wrong to eavesdrop, but the other day I overheard you and Pretty Boy talking, and well… hearing that Diablo was off having a threesome at another club, it put me in a bad headspace, and it made me do something I didn’t really want to do.”
“Threesome? Diablo?”
“Yeah, when they went to see Diablos Rojos.”
“Pretty Boy was talking about himself, Tank, and Tipo. Diablo spent the night talking to El Jefe. He went upstairs with a girl for less than five minutes, but apparently ran outside so fast it was like he’d seen a ghost. El Jefe said he disappeared outside and spent the night smoking with Alejandro.
Diablo didn’t have a threesome, and he hasn’t been with any of the girls at the club either. ”
I don’t know what to say, I can only stare at him. Angel hasn’t been with anyone else…
“You said you did something you didn’t want to?” he asks.
“Nothing really happened, but after hearing that call, I went to Platinum. I met someone, but I couldn’t go through with it. We had a drink and then his driver dropped me off here. Diablo really hasn’t been with anyone?”
He shakes his head. “He loves you, Beth, he misses you too. I still don’t even understand what happened between you two.”
“I can’t tell you; it involves me keeping a secret for someone else. But the fact that we love each other isn’t enough, this is something I can’t ignore.”
“What if I were to guess?”
I laugh. “You can try, but you’ll never get it.”
“What if I told you that I had a suspicion about Donovan, and a certain rule the club has that might make it complicated…”
“Go on…” I say, terrified but desperately hoping that if Slim does know he’ll take it better than Angel did.
“There was this guy in my squad, Parker, back when I was in Iraq. While the rest of us were talking about girls he was always real quiet; he’d get involved in the conversation enough to not draw attention to himself—he’d respond to jokes, make jokes, but he never really said anything off his own back, you know what I mean? ”
I nod, letting him know I’m following.
“One night, this other guy in the squad—he was a fucking asshole—he made this joke about gay people, and at the time I thought it was banter, that’s how we talked.
So we all laughed along, even Parker did, but his laugh wasn’t the same as ours.
Later that night, I went out for a smoke, and he was out there, but I could see he’d been crying.
Shit, I was still young then, and at that time ‘Don’t ask, Don’t Tell’ was still in place,” he pauses and looks at me. “You know about that?”
“Yeah,” I nod, “I read a lot of books for our LGBTQ+ group at college.”
“Right. I mean, I personally couldn’t give a shit if the soldier next to me wanted to fuck men, women, or both, as long as they were a good fucking soldier.
But some people, like the asshole who made the joke, they didn’t think gay people should serve in the military at all; usually because they were bringing bullshit views from back home with them.
Anyway, that night, Parker told me that he was gay.
With ‘Don’t ask, Don’t Tell’ he shouldn’t have, he was putting a lot of trust in me, but I guess he just couldn’t keep it in any longer. ”
“What happened?” I ask, knowing that too many people were discharged from the military just for being gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
“Nothing. I never said anything to anyone, and we both carried on as normal; I think he just needed someone to know, you know?”
“Yeah,” I say, “do you still keep in touch?”
“Yeah, he’s got a husband and two kids now, ‘living the dream’ as he puts it.”
“That’s good.”
“So, the reason I brought that up… obviously I could never know for sure, but hearing the way Donovan talks about girls, seeing his reactions to jokes… I guess he always reminded me of Parker a little bit. I never said anything, it wasn’t my place; but now, all this shit with you and Diablo… it got me thinking.”
“Hmm. Why does the club have your bullshit rule? ”
“Frank, and the guys who set it up, they made the rules.”
“And that’s the only reason? In all the years since none of you thought to change them?”
“Yeah, you’re right, we should have done something about this sooner, before waiting for it to become an issue.”
We sit in quiet for a moment, letting it all sink in.
“How about this,” he says, “we deal with this Diablos Rojos shit, and then I’ll speak to El Jefe about the rules.”
“Sounds good.” I nod. “What’s going on with all that anyway?”
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking about it. I can’t help it, Angel joked about me coming up with a plan to get them all out whole, and, well, an idea has been forming in my mind…
Slim sighs. “No idea, it’s all a bit shit. How much do you know?”
I explain what Angel told me, about the club debt and the work Diablos Rojos wants them to get involved in again, and the joke Angel made about a plan.
He chuckles. “You didn’t happen to come up with something, did you?”
“Uh… well… maybe?”
“Shit, we’re gonna need some beers for this, come on.”
I follow him as he makes his way downstairs, wondering if I should even be getting involved… but what the hell, it’s just an idea… right?