Hell on Heelz (Asphalt Gods' MC) (3 page)

No, problem was, I didn’t hate him enough. Our memories kept creeping up on me, weakening my animosity.

What I needed was to get away.

Drinking my weekends away with Shirley and the girls of the Hell on Heelz MC became my escape. That was until his Kelly started showing back up—Yeah, that Kelly, Neil’s Kelly.
She sat at the other end of the bar, drinking—pregnant my ass. The Banshee hadn’t cut her loose. I hated Kelly—I wanted to be Kelly, young and unused. I was all used up. My heart, my belly—my babies didn’t even want me anymore.
I’d not thought it my place to tell Shirley or the others to make her leave.

Since I’d found out this was a motorcycle club, I’d been getting used to the new lifestyle and trying to be a good prospect so I could become a member. Shirley wasn’t Shirley here. She was called the Banshee. President of the Hell on Heelz MC, no one messed with her. Even though Kelly was just a hangaround, meaning they weren’t even considering patching her yet, I wasn’t about to tell the President she needed to make the bitch leave, but tonight, I was drunk and to be honest, I was sick and tired of seeing Kelly flaunt herself in front of me. If she wanted Neil so damn bad, why was she here and not with him?

I shook my head, disgusted with myself. Why did I give a damn? Why didn’t I just leave?

Twink leaned over the bar, her jet-black, straight as a stick hair, wiping across it. Bright colorful tattoos of flowers and hummingbirds covered her otherwise pearl skin. She batted her tiny brown eyes. She was Asian but her accent was as southern as all get out. “I wouldn’t miss that ho bagel. She’s loose as a bucket of soot.”

“I’d call her a whore, but who’d pay for that. Miley took one look at her and stopped twerking,” Pepper said, swirling on a barstool beside me. She was a character, having her hair dyed bubblegum pink, wound up in a beehive today. Covered in tattoos too, Pepper didn’t like to wear much clothes herself, but she owned it.

“There’s only one word for that girl—trash,” Shirley said and took a shot of whiskey at my elbow.

If anything, these women had welcomed me with open arms and very few questions. They had my back, but it was clear they weren’t going to fight my battles for me. I was beginning to suspect they were waiting for me to do something about Kelly. I set my glass down hard, letting my anger show on my face for once.

“Isn’t it about time to take out the trash?” I hollered loud enough for Kelly to hear.

The bitch looked right at me, like only a nineteen-year-old girl can, full of piss and vinegar.

Yeah, bitch, I was talking about you, I thought as my eyes narrowed.

“How’s the divorce going, Edie?” She called over the noise.

I chuckled to myself as silence fell. Someone had cut the music. I boomed, “Don’t you know?”

“Word is you’re not going to get the kids or anything.” She wasn’t looking at me anymore but smiling about it.

Yeah, Neil had been threatening that, saying my fit, breaking dishes the night I left him proves I’m the unstable choice. Besides, he knew so many influential people in this town. I stared daggers at her. “Rumors, better than spreading your legs.”

At that, Kelly whipped her head around right quick. “What are you trying to say?” Her chin jutted up and her hands were on her hips. She was about as big as a toothpick.

I stood up too. I’d had enough of her. Regretting not beating her to a pulp before, I was itching for another fight. Soon I was in front of her, close enough I could smell her cheap vanilla perfume. “I’m saying you’re a home wrecking, dick swallowing, speck of cunt cheese.”

My girls were whooping and hollering in encouragement behind me, fueling my rage.

“Better than being a washed up old hag.” Kelly’s neck wobbled with attitude. “To think, I told Neil I thought you were pretty— for a black lady.”

I snorted with a smirk. Bitch thought that would send me over the edge. Nope. I gave her my best I don’t give a damn face. “You can eat the corn out of my shit. I suggest you leave. I don’t want to hurt a pregnant woman. I actually feel sorry for you, knowing you’ll have to be changing the dad’s diapers soon too.” I’d been thinking of that one a while and was feeling the thrill of finally saying it.

Kelly cackled like a witch on Halloween. “You really are a dumb bitch. I’m not pregnant—yet.”

What? My hand instantly shot to her hair, and I pulled her neck back. Not pregnant? I was about to lose my kids and the bitch wasn’t even knocked up? Tears threatened to surface, but I held tight to my fantasy of beating the ever living hell out of the girl.

Despite me having a hold of her, she went on. “I’m not pregnant yet, but we’re trying real hard.”

The room turned red as my heart turned black. My blood boiling, I thought of my marriage, my kids, my life all stripped from me. In no time, I’d gone from blessed woman to one drowning my sorrows with whiskey, just like my mother. Fuck, I was becoming my mother. Kelly was the shit stain on my life this time.

She batted her big blue eyes at me and said, “If you don’t let go of me. If you lay another finger on me… well, I don’t think Neil will ever let you see little Gavin and Gail again.”

Her uttering my kids’ names reached into my insides and gutted me all over again, made this, my nightmare even more real than ever before. The pain, fresh, echoed throughout the hollowness betrayal had carved out of me.
“One day she’ll hurt like you.”
The Banshee’s words zipped through my mind, but I didn’t believe them. Kelly had taken everything from me, everything I’d worked for, sacrificed my life to gain, and she’d never know the emptiness that remained.

She screamed bloody murder, snapping me out of it. I’d stuck my dad’s knife in her pretty blue eye and twisted before I realized I’d even pulled the thing out of my pocket. Regardless of her screams, I was prying her eye out like I was pitting a cherry. I dropped her head like it was hot. Pocketing my knife, part of me wanted to scream too, to hurl, but I held it together as if none of this was real—nothing but a nightmare.

My ears rang as the women shouted things all around me. I couldn’t make any of it out. A fight started between Kelly’s friends and the other Heelz. I went back to my bar stool, my drink, wrapping my bloody hand around the cool glass. The burn in my throat and lift in my head was just what I was longing for. Even if Kelly hadn’t lied to Neil about being pregnant, he was the no good cheating bastard who’d fucked around in the first place, I comforted myself as I took another drink straight from the bottle this time. I didn’t check to see what happened to Kelly. Did someone take her out of the chaos? I didn’t know. My mind was somewhere else, spinning on what ifs.

Before long, the noise died down and Shirley, or rather, The Banshee patted my back. She was helping me into a vest.

“You’re one of us now… Rage.” A sense of pride jolted through me. Shirley hadn’t given me a road name until now.

I glanced around to see the other girls gather around me. Coming out of my fog, I realized they were disheveled, some bloody. Then I had a sinking feeling that dumped cold water on my excitement.

“What about Kelly?” I didn’t see her or her friends lingering around anymore.

“Bitch bled out,” Miss B, the enforcer of the club belted out, her blonde hair in a big rat’s nest from fighting.

“Dead,” the Banshee confirmed, her mouth held tight.

My whole body sagged as I almost fell off my bar stool.

The Banshee’s firm hand gripped my shoulder, holding me up easily.

My hand went to my mouth as I tasted the bile coming up in my throat. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d been sure Kelly’s friends would take her to the hospital. The nagging fear of being arrested for assault morphed into a shocking prospect of being slapped with a murder charge.

The Banshee read my horrified face. “Don’t worry, sister. We’ll take care of it. It’s what we do.”

The others agreed with nods and words of encouragement.

I moved into cabin number 4 that night, knowing my freedom depended on the Heelz.

Shirley led me to my cabin while I was still in a state of shock. Somehow, I still noticed the mess I’d have to clean up as she walked me through the overgrown yard and up the wooden steps. The porch light was on as if the shack had been waiting for me— waiting for me to fuck up and have nowhere else to turn. Then I saw the broken porch swing and almost smiled. My kids and I spent many a night on our porch swing. My mind on my babies, all I could think was I’d never see them again. I’d killed a woman and my life was over.

We made it to the bathroom without me seeing much more of the cabin because Shirley had left the lights off. I stood helpless as she started running me a bath. How she knew that was just what I needed, I didn’t know. My mama had always run me a hot bath anytime I was feeling down or hurt. I remembered when I’d fallen off my bike when I was eleven. No, I’d been pushed off by another kid. He’d stolen my bike too. It just so happened, I started my period for the first time that day.

Mama ran me a bath, telling me I could use her oils and salts. “You’re a woman now. People are going to shove you down in the dirt, but you’ll clean it up and go on with yourself.”

“Get undressed.” Shirley’s voice brought me back to the present. “We’ll clean this mess up. You need to pull your shit together.”

I went to undo the buttons of my shirt, but my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. My hands were shaking, weak. I felt weak all over.

“Here.” She came and helped me undress, just like my mama had that day. “Step out.”

Barely able to lift my legs, I stepped out of my pants. Looking down, I saw my bloody hands, hanging uselessly at my sides. It clicked that Shirley was just trying to get rid of the blood, the evidence, but I was thankful all the same. She helped me into the water. It was scorching hot, just like I liked it. I sat, feeling my butt burn and not caring. I leaned back slowly, relishing the scald elsewhere. Just like I’m going to burn in hell, I thought and snickered to myself. I’d gone and killed someone, a fucking whore but also a little girl.

I stifled a wail as a snot bubble came out my nose. Letting myself sink into the water until it covered my ears, I was only a face and knees now, eyes, nose and mouth bobbing in the water and my knees were cold. Shirley’s red head loomed over me. She was talking, but I could barely make it out—she was leaving, and I’d be okay, something like that. She disappeared, shutting the door behind her I realized when I’d sat up. The water was tinged, streaked with the little bit of blood from my murderous hands. Leaning back again against the cold porcelain, I remembered another time my mama had run me a bath.

It was only a couple of years after the bike incident. I was thirteen, and I’d gotten home from a school dance. My friends and I had walked home—you could back then. We only lived a couple of blocks from the school anyhow. Mom’s new boyfriend Curtis was living with us. Soon, I was bleeding again, but it wasn’t from my period. 

I tried to block it out, the memory resurfacing now.

“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in.” Curtis was drunk. Mom was drunk too. This was becoming a typical Friday night at home.

I buzzed right on by him, went straight to my room. For the first time in my life I noticed I didn’t have a lock on my door, but I shut it. I didn’t want to hear the things I would hear, Curtis and mom fighting or fucking, usually a little of both. Curtis had come into my life, bringing shit with him. Before him, my mama would’ve moved mountains for me. Now all she wanted to do was drink.

Tonight their fight was about me, but it was more than that, I could tell something was coming. Like a brewing storm, trouble was on the wind. I thought about going out the window but buried the thought. Mama wouldn’t let anything happen to me. Would she?

“Why the hell are you letting her stroll home at eleven at night, like some streetwalker.” Curtis had taken it upon himself to pretend he was my dad.

The no good, no job, loser he was had to have something to make him feel like a man. That’s at least how my mama explained it when Curtis had first started trying to discipline me. “He’s lost his job. At least he’s trying to help me raise you, unlike your own dad.”

Why my mom who had worked so hard to become a R.N. would want to support a man was beyond me? It’d have been different if Curtis had been a good man or if they loved each other, but as it was, Curtis was using my mama, and she was too scared to kick his ass out. She wasn’t scared of him beating her like he did. I’d thought so at the time, but as an adult, I’d realized she was scared of being alone.

“She’s just like you, strolling in here hours after you say you’ll be home.” Curtis went on, his voice getting louder and more animated with every word as he berated my mama.

I rolled my eyes. My mom was a nurse. It wasn’t like she could come home on time if the hospital still needed her. I’d tried to take up for her before but had gotten chased to my room.

This night, I crawled in my bed and covered my head with my pillow, not wanting to hear another word of it. Suddenly, my light was on and Curtis was in my room. He’d never come in my room before. The room felt smaller, like it was folding in on me.

“She’s a good kid,” Mom strained as she stood back in the hallway.

And I was a good kid with good grades and good friends. I went to church voluntarily.

Curtis towered over me. “Your mama told you to be home at ten. What were you doing out on the streets?”

“Mom?” I whined, looking over to her. I wasn’t about to answer him. She hadn’t told me to be home any earlier.

Mom didn’t speak up for me as things got worse. I can’t remember the back and forth, but basically, Curtis was saying I was a whore. I’d smarted off like any teen would and soon my jeans were a target. Why were there holes in them? What did I want the boys to think of me?

It didn’t take long—being screamed at by a man ten times my size before I began to feel trapped. I started trying to appease him, to get him to leave. I said I was sorry to everything— anything to make him go away. If he said I was out late, I apologized. If he said I was probably giving my mother a bad name, I said sorry about that too. My tiny voice begged as he screamed. But he didn’t go away. It was like he was feeding off my submission, my degradation. Instead of being appeased, me giving in only fueled his rampage.

“So, you’re just a nasty ho, just like your mother? Admit it.”

My mama was no longer in the hall. Fear rumbled through me but came out in a hateful scream. “No, you son of a bitch, I’m a virgin and unlike my mother, I respect myself, I’d never give it up to a no good nigger like you.” I’d said it like a white person says it. Nowadays nigga might get thrown around more freely, but back then it had been the biggest, baddest word I could think of since my mama despised it being used in the rap I listened to.

His massive hand slapped me across the cheek. The pain was unreal. My mama had slapped me before but never like this. My dad, when I’d gotten to see him, he’d never laid a finger on me.

As soon as I’d recovered, Curtis’s hand came down again, striking me on the other cheek. My head flew back this time. I saw stars just like from the cartoons. Lights danced in front of me whether I closed my eyes or not. My breath had left me as well I soon discovered, and gasping, I thrashed to reclaim it.

During my fight to breathe, Curtis had my jeans pulled down to my knees, and his sausage fingers in my white cotton panties before I could even struggle.

“We’ll see if you’re pure, little miss perfect.”

As soon as I had my breath, I kicked and punched to no avail. The unthinkable was happening and all I could think to do was to pray for God to stop it.

Curtis punched a finger inside of me, hard and all the way, causing me to scream out. It’d hurt in a vile way. He brought up bloody fingers, smiling happily at me even though he’d proven me right. It donned on me then, all too clear in his pleased smile, he wanted more than to find out if I was a virgin. He’d been messing with me, something my mama had always warned me about, men wanting to mess with me. 

My mama stormed in the room and that stopped him from going further. He wiped his hand on my pink comforter while meeting my mom’s eyes. I took the opportunity to pull up my pants and back away to a corner to cry. She didn’t say anything to him, but took me hard by the arm to the tub.

“Get cleaned up,” she coldly advised me, running my water. Her words slurred. She was still drunk.

I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t want to get in the tub, afraid to be naked in the house with Curtis around.

“You shouldn’t have been out so late. I was worried sick,” she mumbled as if nothing happened while she undressed me.

Stepping out of my jeans and undies, I couldn’t speak. I was so shocked. Mom threw my bloody panties in the trashcan beside the toilet before she left the room like my pain didn’t matter. My pain was disposable like my underwear.

Alone, I stared at the bath, thinking of drowning in it.

Eventually, I did get in the water and scrubbed myself raw. Later that night, sleeping on my bare mattress, I heard Curtis and my mom fucking.

Still in a daze, I called my dad the next day and told him what had happened—probably the smartest move of my life. Almost instantly, I was living with my dad, soon going to the high school where I’d met Neil. Neil...
I stopped reminiscing.

The water had turned cold, so I opened my eyes. The tub was lined with marvelous products that I’d never waste my money on. I didn’t think Shirley would be into this expensive stuff either but was thankful I’d smell wonderful after running another tub full of water to bathe in. I didn’t want to bathe in Kelly’s blood after all. Even though, I had a feeling I’d be bathed in her blood forever anyway. I soaped up. I scrubbed just like I did that night so long ago and just like I had ever since, until my skin was about ready to peel off. From that moment on, I’d needed my life to be spotless.

Refreshed as much as I could be, I grabbed the pretty yellow towel hanging the closest. I dried off, feet first as to not get the rug wet. Part of keeping things clean was not getting them dirty to begin with. I wrapped the towel around my hair like a genie. As soon as I stepped on the rug, naked as the day I was born, the door creaked and opened. A man stepped in.

“Excuse me,” I screeched, squeezing my legs together and cupping my breasts the best I could.

“No, excuse me.” He walked right to the toilet to pee, pulled it out right in front of me and everything.

I took the towel off my hair and wrapped it around me right quick. I zipped out of the bathroom quicker than spit. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” I shouted back, sounding as confused and frustrated as I felt.

I listened for his answer but only heard the water running. He was washing his hands—at least there was that, most men didn’t. I waited for an answer, for him to come out, anything. What the hell was he doing in there? I waited some more, tapping my foot. After what seemed like an eternity, the man finally stepped into the living room. Getting a good look at him, I saw he was tall and thin, but built strong. He had a handsome enough face, young but certainly not my type. His eyebrows were perfectly shaped and above them, well, his hair looked too good. He was a pretty boy, alright—the type of guy you’d see shirtless on a romance novel, holding a swooning woman in his arms. But none of this mattered—I’d never seen him here at the Roost before.

“I live here,” he told me like it was common knowledge.

“I thought this was a woman’s club.”

He could read the skepticism on my face. “Oh, honey. Didn’t Shirley tell you? I’m Sugar, and I’m your roomie.”

“Come again?”

“I’m gay,” he blurted out loudly.

I continued to stare at him like he had two heads. It’d taken me all of two seconds to figure out he was a confirmed bachelor from his name. The fact was supposed to make me more comfortable with him pissing in front of me and gawking at me in nothing but a towel. The man’s eyes still roamed my body.

“If you’re so gay put your tongue back in your mouth and look at my face.”

He crossed his arms, wobbling his head a bit. “I was told to get you dressed. I’m trying to see if that booty of yours can fit in my jeans or sweats, come on.”

I followed Sugar to his room, pigsty it was. He muttered as he searched his closet, “Like I know a goddamn thing about women’s clothes. I like it up the ass—doesn’t mean I’m a fashionista.”

Nevertheless, he slung a pair of purple women’s leggings at me. I huffed and put them on under the towel. They fit me pretty snugly. It’d been like pulling up hose. He threw a glittery orange tank next, warning me, “Don’t ask.”

I caught it and went back to the bathroom to look for my bra. Thank goodness, Shirley hadn’t tossed it with my clothes. I wasn’t the sort of woman who could go without one. I shut and locked the door this time. I hung up my towel neatly before I stretched my bra around me to buckle it in the front and then twisted it around and up right. Pulling on the tank, I straightened myself in the full-length mirror that hung on the back of the door. Hell, I looked like a black Richard Simmons.

Sugar was waiting for me on the other side, dressed like any other man around these parts, in worn jeans and a t-shirt but he had on a vest with pink flaming high heels on the back no doubt. “Well. Come on. You’re being sworn in.”