TRIGGER: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel (9 page)

Cass

He wouldn’t talk to me after that.

Well, barely.

I knew he wanted to pretend like it never happened, so
I tried to go along with it.

Why would he want to remember that he’d almost put his
dick in a fat, ugly hanger-on like me?

He could have any girl he wanted. I wouldn’t have been
mad if he brought another girl home. I knew he was…well, I knew he was pretty
hard-up for someone to sleep with. I knew because all those mornings that he
thought he was slipping out of bed before I woke up…

Well, let’s just say it’s hard to sleep with a
broomstick poking you in the back.

That’s how I made sense of everything, anyway. He was
a hot-blooded American teenager who was used to fucking girls left and right
(presumably – he didn’t talk about it like that, but I wasn’t that innocent,
even back then.) Of course he woke up with boners, and of course he was going
absolutely stir-crazy with only me to look at all day and night. And the
way
he looked at me sometimes…

Well, it wasn’t the way one friend looks at another.
Sometimes it even made me feel like he might have actually genuinely wanted me…

Because
there’s no one else around for him to have,
I’d have to remind myself.
Girls like me didn’t get guys like that. Never mind that I already
had
him in my bed a few nights a week;
that was
different.
That was mutual
comfort, not raging lust and desire. Not like…not like…like that kiss…

I guess it won’t come as any surprise when I say that
was my first kiss. Not, of course, including Steel. I didn’t count that. How
could I? As far as first kisses go, though, Trigger’s was…immense. It shot all
of those
fairytale
kisses and 9
^th
grade
fumblings
you normally think of straight out of the water.

At first, I’d just been confused, my brain actually
not registering what was happening as a kiss. I thought, wildly, that he had
seen something on my face and was trying to help me get it off…with his face.
But then his tongue had pressed against my lips so urgently, and I’d yielded,
and feeling him against me, the taste of him inside me…oh, if I’d been
standing, my legs would have given out.

It was like being caught in a storm, something larger
than yourself, an act of nature that spilled the contents of my soul out into
the air. It had lasted forever and not long enough. He’d pulled away, I’d seen
that look in his eyes, something like panic…my heart had plunged, knowing that
look. It was the look of a man who’d made some terrible mistake.

I’d wanted to pull him back to me, wanted to grab him
and force him back to me, my body suddenly alive with need…but then he’d gotten
up, and left me there alone in the dark room with the stupid sound of that
stupid movie the only company I had.

Meekly, I’d realized that he’d just been overwhelmed,
mistaken me for something desirable. So I’d tried to tell him I understood,
that it was okay, that I wouldn’t ask him for more, when I knew he could never
provide more. But he hadn’t opened the door. And I’d just gone back to my bed,
to lie on my back, staring at the ceiling in the dark.

That was a night of two firsts for me.

I tried to fight it. I was ashamed. The act itself was
one thing – the places my mind went, another. But my imagination was
unrelenting. Try and try as hard as I could, I couldn’t lasso my thoughts and
pull them away from how his lips had felt, how his hand had felt, firm and
demanding, buried in my hair.

As my hand travelled down, slowly, shaking, I’d bit my
lip and thought:
no, Cass, no, you don’t deserve
to think of him like that, he’d be so repulsed to know you’re doing this, lying
in your bed and thinking of him, his body pressed against yours, his fingers
brushing your hips as they moved downwards, pulling down your panties, parting
your lips,
brushing..

I stifled a cry as I dipped one finger into my
wetness, my first time touching myself, my desire overwhelming my sense of
shame. I slid my finger upward, gingerly touching my clit, my body guiding me
to its own needs. Pressing my face to the side, into the pillow, I thought of
him, just across the trailer, his strong, lithe body, his stubble, his piercing
eyes, all concentrated on me, on taking what he wanted from me. I wanted to
give him everything, wanted to feel his thighs shuddering between mine…

My mouth opened and I bit down hard on my pillow as I
came, my legs squeezing tight together around my hand as it rolled over my
clit. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, my hips bucking upward, my mind
recoiling and rejoicing at the same time over this singular pleasure, hot and
burning, of something I knew I could never have.

That night, I had no bad dreams. Which was good,
because I didn’t doubt he wouldn’t be there to comfort me. Ever again.

The next day, he barely grunted a hello after coming
home from work. The same went for the day after. Each night, I felt desire
tugging at me as I lay in bed, but I denied myself again and again. Why should
I get to feel that sort of pleasure, thinking of someone who only loved me as
much as he pitied me? I reminded myself that he’d be disgusted to know the
feelings he’d aroused in me. He wasn’t the first man I’d ever been attracted
to, but he was the first to conjure up this sort of painful need.

After a week of this, though, the thing that hurt most
wasn’t not having him physically; it was missing him. I missed our movie
nights, our talks over dinner. He was like a ghost in the trailer, sneaking
around with a scowl on his face.

I knew it was my fault – somehow, it was my fault.
Maybe he didn’t feel comfortable having girls over because of me, and that was
the root cause of all this. Then again, there was something more to his misery
than unfulfilled lust – I knew that had to be true. I’d been to high school,
and I knew what horny boys looked and acted like. Trigger was different.
Something was eating him up inside, and he wouldn’t tell me, so how could I
help?

I decided – in a manner quite unusual for myself, I
will admit – to take the first step in repairing our relationship. I wanted him
to know that I didn’t hold what happened against him, that I understood he’d
been confused, that I was always going to be there for him.

On Thursday, when we both happened to have the next
day off, I splurged and bought an 18-pack of Bud from the gas station, and two
frozen pizzas. It was hellish trying to lug it all back to the trailer, but it
was going to be worth it even if I slipped on the ice again. When I finally
made it back, huffing and puffing and cursing myself for being so out of shape,
I made myself busy cleaning up.

Usually, our days off we both cleaned, listening to
music and trying to have fun doing it. This way, he could relax the next day
and nurse the hangover that I could only hope would result from a night of
drinking and reconciling. When I heard the telltale creak of the screen door,
my heart nearly dropped out of my chest. What if he just breezed past me with
that scowl on his face?

“Have a beer,” I blurted out before he even fully made
it through the door. His eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline, but the smile
he gave me, something that seemed to escape before he could call it back, gave
me a vote of confidence. “Please.”

The smile faded slightly. He studied me, as though I
were laying out some trap. I bit my lip and shrugged, trying to show my
innocence.

“Well,” he finally said, letting go of the door and
stepping into the trailer. “If you insist.”

Three hours later, we’d completely demolished one of
the frozen pizzas and Trigger had put away almost half the 18-pack. I was
lagging far behind, my lower tolerance making me giddy after only three drinks.

He’d been regaling me with a story from the week that
had gone by since we’d spoken, some slightly slurred and disjointed tale of
wingnuts
gone awry. As always, his telling of the tale was
funnier than the story itself; he had a way of animating everything he said,
using voices that perfectly mocked his coworkers and customers, and overblown
hand gestures that seemed to build upon themselves in a symphony.

I was fairly rolling on the floor with laughter, and
he seemed more relaxed than he’d been in months. When the story came to an end
and I was through with my fit of giggles, the silence between us was
comfortable.

“Do you remember,” I said, feeling the bubbly
tipsiness of the beer in my cheeks, “when I was tutoring you and that librarian
kept walking by our table dropping things? And looking at us?”

“Oh yeah,” Trigger said with a smile. “Like she was
the god damn purity police. I half expected her to get out a ruler and measure
the distance between us. God, what a fucking bitch.”

“I know,” I said. “Like…there was no chance of
anything happening, I don’t know what she was thinking. We were in the damn
library, for
gods
sakes! Not doing whippets in the bathroom
at a school dance!”

Trigger laughed, but the sound seemed almost to fade
as his eyes fell on me.

“Why wouldn’t anything have happened?” he asked,
cocking his head to the side. “I bet students get busy in the stacks all the
time. I sure as hell would have….”

As his voice trailed off and he blushed, his eyes fell
to the can of beer. He brought it to his lips and guzzled quickly, gulping with
fervor. My voice caught in my throat, but I recovered quickly.

“Yeah, I guess so. I meant more, like, you and me…we
weren’t exactly in the same league, you know?”

Oh,
I thought,
flushing red.
That was not how this
conversation was supposed to go…

Well, it was as good a time as any, I supposed, to
address the fact that I knew he could do better than me, and wouldn’t hold it
against him when he did. To my surprise, though, his eyes grew cold and he
raised them to me slowly. His fist seemed to close tighter on the can. My heart
thudded heavily.

“Yeah, I guess not,” he said with a sneer. I felt tear
prick at the backs of my eyes from the mere way he said it, the look he was
giving me enough to turn a person to stone. “
Kinda
hurts to hear it though, Cass.”

Oh fuck,
I’ve fucked it all up now, I’ve…wait…

Puzzled, I hid my eyes from his and quickly took a
swill of my own beer. It turned out to be the last swill in the can, and I set
it off to the side with an empty clatter.

“I…okay, sorry? I just mean…you know…I don’t…I don’t
think…I don’t think the thing…the things you do for me, you know, I know you’re
just being nice. A friend. I know…I know you want…what kind of girl…I know it’s
not…oh, I’m sorry, just forget I ever said it,” I said, my thoughts jumbling
together, ricocheting off each other aimlessly. Something about what he’d said
didn’t make any sense, but I chalked it up to the beer.

“Fuck, Cass, just dig the knife in deeper, why don’t
you? What kind of girl
do
I want?
Some moron, right? Some moron like me who’ll start popping out kids as soon as
she finds a man who doesn’t want to just throw her away? A meth head? A pill
addict? That the kind of girl you think I want?” His anger was getting the
better of him again; it was just like the time I’d accidentally walked naked
right in front of him, or when I hadn’t stopped moving around on the couch. The
change was instantaneous, scary…except under all that rage was one thing that I
couldn’t fault him for: frustration.

“No, I mean, you know…someone
….beautiful
and…good enough…for you,” I said, nearly mumbling, wishing I hadn’t drank so
much that I wasn’t making myself understood. If I was just better at
talking,
if I didn’t always put things
in the worst way, if I wasn’t so damn awkward and weird and…

He laughed. Short and hard, he laughed. And I blushed,
tears ready to escape at any moment.
He’s
laughing at you,
I thought.
Of course
he is, why shouldn’t he? Doesn’t the whole world laugh at you? Don’t you
deserve to be laughed at?

“You’re the smartest idiot I ever fucking met, Cass,”
he finally said, the words hitting like bullets against my brain. I pressed my
palms against my eyes, willing my lower lip to stop trembling.

“You don’t have to be cruel,” I whispered, rising to
my feet, ready to run bawling to my room like a middle schooler who got turned
down at the dance. As I made to leave, though, I felt his hand, warm and
strong, around my arm.