Mirage Page 10

  “What the hell are you doing Skylar?”

  “I told you I wanted to talk Mira. Do you want to go somewhere a little less noisy and talk? It’s quiet upstairs,” he tells me pointing towards the stairwell.

  I agree to go with him. I thought the whiskey and I were going to be good friends tonight, but much like my body and hormones, I am betrayed. Stabbed in the back by whiskey.

  We walk up the dark stairwell that opens up into a small kitchen area with booths similar to the ones on the first floor. I look around; it is basically empty except for a young kid behind the bar. He is wearing a vest, but it doesn’t have anything on the back. Behind the kid was a smaller bar, with limited booze on the shelf. I walk over to the kid and ask him for a shot of Jack and he obliges.

  “You might want to slow down Mira. I don’t want you throwing up all over the clubhouse,” Skylar says to me as he tries to get the shot from my hand before I toss it back.

  “Sky, I have made it the last year of my life without you making my decisions or weighing in your opinion. I’m sure I have this. Please back the hell off,” I say as I toss the shot back. When the liquid finally hits my stomach I realized that maybe I should have listened to Skylar. It hits me like a ton of bricks. I feel a little acid rise from my stomach, but I quickly recover and ask for a glass of coke to ease the burning in my belly.

  “Mira, I’m worried about you. You sat here and in a matter of an hour, drank enough to give a grown man a hella buzz. You have to be drunk out of your mind.”

  “Drunk yes, Skylar. Drunk out of my mind, no. I haven’t been drunk out of my mind in quite some time,” I respond, slurring my words a little and over annunciating the syllables.

  In the six years Skylar has known me, I don’t think he’s ever seen me drunk out of my mind. I think I can count on one hand the times I have been so drunk I thought I was going to die. All but one of those times was when I was in high school, trying to be cool.

  Skylar and I sit down at one of the booths and I lean into the cool red plastic covering the seats. The cool feels so good on my overheated body. I really have no idea if I’m so hot because Skylar is so close or from the whiskey pumping through me. I’ll just think it’s the booze to make myself feel better.

  “What have you been up to Mira? You look less like yourself and more like someone you’re pretending to be,” Skylar says with his eyes piercing into mine.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” I ask. Ah, the cunt is coming out in me after all.

  “No need to get defensive Mira, just want to know what you have been up to in the last year.”

  “Well Skylar, or should I call you Axe? I wouldn’t want your friends to know your real name since Max didn’t know who the hell Skylar was,” I say.

  “Mex. His name is Mex. We don’t really use government names in here. It just makes things easier,” Skylar says chuckling.

  “So did Heather scream out Skylar or Axe?”

  “I never slept with Heather. I wanted to get a rise out of you. I swear it Mira,” Skylar says apologetically.

  “Oh right. You never slept with Heather and I never miscarried our baby.” FUCK.

  For the last ten and a half months I have carried this secret. Nobody knew. Not my mom, not Kylee and certainly not Skylar. I never wanted anyone to know. I wanted to take this to my grave.

  Skylar looks like he is trying to process the bomb I just dropped in his lap. His eyes are roaming, he’s clenching his fists and gritting his teeth. I see anger flash in his eyes before he takes his closed fists and pounds them on the table, making me jump out of my seat, sobering up real quick.

  “What the fuck did you just say Mira?”

  Okay. Breathe Mira. You opened this can of worms. Fuck.

  “Don’t worry about it Skylar. It’s the past. You wanted to talk, so talk.”

  Skylar jumps out of his seat and I sit back in mine. I may feel sober, but my body still has too much whiskey in it. Skylar paces back and forth across the front of the bar. I think the kid asked Skylar a question and Skylar flipped out.

  “Get your shit, get the fuck downstairs. Lock the door on your way out. Let nobody up here. Understood,” Skylar yells at the kid.

  I think the kid was scared shitless. He had such a blank expression on his face. He grabs his keys from behind the bar and moves to the stairwell, taking one last look at me almost saying “you might want to come with me if you don’t want to get thrown out the window” and then kept moving. I heard every step he took running down the stairs. The door at the base of the stairwell slams shut.

  “The kid didn’t do anything wrong Skylar, calm down and we can talk about this,” I say trying to calm him.

  He looks at me and continues to pace. What the hell? I can’t deal with this shit much longer. I stand back up and put my hand on his shoulder trying to turn him. He shrugs his shoulder sending my hand to fall to my side.

  “Skylar?”

  Skylar walks to the far wall and punches it so hard his hand goes straight through the drywall. I am so scared. I had never seen him this mad. There were a few times I had seen him mad, but never like this. He punches it a few more times and I start to cry as I sit back in the booth. I scoot all the way back to the wall, lean against it, and pull my knees to my chest. I put my head on my knees to hide my tears and give me some protection if his anger turns to me. My dark hair makes somewhat of a curtain, blocking my side vision.

  I hear him walk to me. I lift my head a little to just to confirm that he is standing directly in front of the bench I’m sitting on. His fists are opened and relaxed at his side. At least if I was going to get hit, it would be open handed, I think to myself. I gain a little more courage and lift my head to meet his eyes.

  To my surprise he has tears falling from his eyes. His entire face is saturated with wetness. I immediately look to his hands that are bleeding and look back up at him. I drove him to cause physical pain to himself. I start crying even harder as I reach for his hands. I know it sounds stupid, but I have the urge to kiss his pain away like he was a child, starting with his bloody knuckles.

  As I reach for his hands, he pulls them away and takes a step back. I look back up to his face. The tears have stopped and he becomes emotionless.

  “Sky, talk to me. I’m so sorry. Where is a first aid kit? I need to clean your hands,” I say.

  “Do you think I give a fuck about my hands Mira? Really? I could give a fuck,” he says slamming his fist into yet another wall, “These hands don’t fucking mean shit.”

  I try to get out of the booth when he sits down, blocking my path of escape and brings his face within inches of mine. He is seething. If cartoons were real, with the smoke coming out of ears and all, this is exactly what would be happening right now.

  “We had a child,” he whispers.

  Casting my eyes downward, picking at the edges of my shorts I whisper back, “Yes.”

  “I know this isn’t your fault Mira. You can’t control a miscarriage, but I had a child. I made a child. I made a child with you? You have no fucking idea how happy and how depressed that makes me, do you? Do you think I cried over my hands? If you do, you’re fucking dense. I had a child. A child you hid from me. You went through something so terrible and I couldn’t be there for you. Why would you do that to me Mira? How could you do that to me? If nothing else, we were friends. I would have given anything to you and you couldn’t even have the decency to tell me about something like this? A life that we created together? Tell me Mira, since you didn’t even tell me you were pregnant, what would have happened if you didn’t miscarry?”

  I couldn’t meet his eyes. I knew exactly what he was asking me. I knew the answer to that question. It wasn’t the answer he was looking for. By my silence, he figured out my answer. He knew that I wasn’t going to keep that baby. That I was never going to even tell him about it. I had felt bad when considering the alternative to having a baby with a man who didn’t love me or want a life with me, but nothing felt worse th
an this feeling. The feeling of absolute guilt and depression. I try to look up to see his face when he stood up from the bench and starts to walk towards the stairwell.

  “You have hurt me in the worst possible way Mira. This pain that I feel, you will never experience. I wasn’t even worth a phone call,” Skylar says as he storms out of the stairwell leaving me alone to wallow in my own misery.

  He was right. I didn’t even give him a phone call. I don’t deserve his friendship but I will do anything I can to try to make this betrayal up to him. I wasn’t strong enough to do it before, but now, knowing that I hurt him to his core, I know I have to fix this.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Skylar

  I couldn’t stay here with Mira tonight. As I leave the stairwell, I run straight into Kylee, still dancing. She had developed quite the fan club, that girl. There were guys sitting on the tabletops just staring at her move. If I didn’t know her better, I would be worried, but Kylee loved attention. More than that, she loved attention from the opposite sex. I think there were even times she enjoyed attention from the same sex, but that was in college, I thought as I laughed to myself.

  “Kylee, I’m going to head out. Mira’s upstairs. When she decides to come down, please make sure she gets home alright?” I ask as I give her a hug goodbye.

  “What do you mean when she decides to come down? What the hell did you do to her?” Kylee scolds.

  “It’s not something I can talk about. If you want to know, ask your girl. I need to get out of here for a while. Hopefully when I get back, she’s not here anymore. Please just make sure she gets home okay, Ky.”

  “Skylar McBride, if I find out you hurt her again, I swear, I’ll have your balls,” Kylee says staring at me with her hands on her hips and attitude on her face.

  “Trust me Kylee, I’m not the one that did the hurting tonight. That’s all on Mira. I’ll talk to you later, okay. Text me when you get her home, she’s pretty trashed.”

  I give Kylee one more hug as I head towards the door of the clubhouse. I walked over to my bike when Mex walks towards me, shaking his head.

  “Those girls were something else, huh brother?” Mex asks stopping a few feet from my bike.

  “Something else is an understatement, man. What are you doing? I’m gonna go hit another clubhouse. Want to go?”

  “Yeah man, I’m down. Let me run and tell Prowler we’re leaving,” Mex says walking into the bar.

  A few minutes later, we’re on the road. I didn’t know which house I wanted to go to tonight. I just knew that I needed to get somewhere that was laid back and chill. Knowing the exact spot I was thinking of, I took off even faster down the highway. Mex follows behind me, letting me do my thing. Riding is my outlet, it always has been. After Danny’s accident, the joy of the road beneath two wheels was almost stolen from me, but I’m happy that I still have one thing in my life that makes me happier than almost anything else.

  We pull up to the clubhouse. It has a different set up than ours. There were no large gates blocking the building and there were no probies working the front. They had a graveled parking lot next to a building that was painted black and had surveillance cameras at almost every angle. I park my bike near the edge of the parking lot and wait for Mex to park his bike and catch up to me.

  I walk into the clubhouse with Mex and the party is in full effect. I hear the lyrics of Lynard Skynard as soon as we open the door. I knew that the minute I started drinking, it was going to be bad news. I really just need to clear my head.

  Making our way through the doors, bouncers that would put the regular Joe’s to shame are checking bags of patrons and patting down the men. I have my cut on and am skipped over. This patch really gets me out of the shit Danny and I had to go through just to walk into another clubhouse.

  In the front of the clubhouse, I notice a stripper pole with a somewhat attractive girl, twirling around the metal rod. This girl isn’t anything special, but alright to look at. Her massive double d’s were out for the world to see, giggling with every twirl of the pole. Her body was great and I thought I might take her for a spin. Her face wasn’t so wonderful. She might have been in her late twenties, but you could tell she has some miles on her. Taking a step towards her, I notice she had an old lady vest stacked neatly on top of her clothes.

  One hundred percent off limits.

  Moving further into the room, there is a DJ in one corner, pretty close to the mahogany bar stacked with booze. I walk over to the bar scanning their inventory for something to dull the pain away but not put me into a stupor.

  Fuck it. Jaeger it is.

  Ordering a pint of Jaeger and a can of coke, I move through the room with Mex. We end up at a tall table that was reinforced with what I thought was steel to the floor. There was a woman, naked from the waist down lying across the table. We move closer to get an idea of what exactly was going on and notice there are ping-pong balls in a cup sitting on the table next to her exposed snatch.

  “No shit. She’s going to shoot a ping-pong ball out of her ---,” I stop Mex before he can even finish the sentence.

  “Bro. Get a grip,” I say exasperated with his immature attitude. This type of shit isn’t new. We do this every weekend. I should have known better than to go to another clubhouse with a probie, but I really just needed some company.

  After Mex’s immature display, I decide I really needed to separate myself from him. I walk out of the bay door in the back and there’s a huge bonfire. The music is playing just as loud outside as it is inside. There must be speakers out here, I thought to myself. When the song playing came to the part about being born and raised in south Detroit, all of the drunk girls made sure to belt that part out.

  How obnoxious.

  There was a group of girls standing off to the side. I would say they were in their mid twenties and were without any property patches on their clothing. JACKPOT.

  I walk up to one of the girls and strike up a conversation.

  “Come here often?” I ask to one of the girls. The brunette. Ever since Mira, I can’t find myself being attracted to anyone else. She fucking ruined blondes for me.

  The girl twists her head towards me, without turning her body. I thought she was going to brush me off like just another joker with a lame pick up line. Her eyes travel my body and rest on my cut. With her too long dark lashes beginning to flutter, she meets my eyes. Fuck, green eyes. Just another nail in my coffin, I guess.

  “Hey there,” she says looking down at my name patch, “Axe. Do you want to buy a thirsty girl a drink?”

  She fully turns her body so we were standing toe to toe. Her hair was a lighter brown, but those green eyes remind me so much of Mira’s eyes, I can’t look away. She puts her dainty hand on my chest on my name patch. When her tongue leaves her mouth to moisten her plumb ruby red lips, my cock twitches a little.

  “Lead the way,” I say realizing that I don’t know her name. She must have seen the question in my eyes and responds, “Jodie.”

  “Well in that case, lead the way, Jodie.”

  “Do you mind if my girlfriend comes with me? We kind of came together and I don’t want her to get lost or talk to the wrong kind of guy,” Jodie asks me.

  “Sweetness, you do realize you’re in a clubhouse full of guys that fuck for fun, fight for the rush and kill for the pleasure. But if you’re worried about your friend getting hit on by the wrong kind of guy,” I say to her sarcastically. “Tell her to come on, I’m not trying to stay here all night.”

  Jodie and her friend, Candy, go into the building ahead of me. I will say; I’m an ass man. Jodie has an okay ass, not too big but perky. It would probably look better in those stretchy pants the girls wear these days to make their asses look better than they actually are. False advertising, if you ask me.

  I like Jodie’s ink though. She’s wearing a backless shirt and no bra and her hair is casually pushed over her shoulder, leaving the giant pin up girl tattooed on her back open for all to see. The girl
on her back almost looked like a nude Rosie the Riviter. Don’t ask me why, but this turned me on. Like I wouldn’t mind watching this tattoo while I fucked this girl from behind.

  Candy was wearing a short too-tight black dress, a necklace with a single charm nestled between an amazing pair of tits that looked like they were begging to escape the confines of the dress, and black heels that had studs on them. I’m not gay or anything, but those shoes are kind of kick ass. I bet they would look amazing wrapped around my head.

  Well, I guess the Jaeger is doing its job. I feel less miserable, less angry with Mira and horny as shit. To add to the amazingness of the Jaeger, I didn’t know which girl I wanted to bag. Shit, I guess I’ll have to shoot for the both of them.

  As I slam the rest of my Jaeger, Mex comes up behind me and whispers into my ear, “There is an issue at our house. We need to head back. Bring the bitches if you have to, but Prowler wants us back now.”

  Even better, I thought to myself. There won’t be any awkward “Hey do you want to come back to my place” conversation. Prowler wanting us back to the house isn’t a good sign. I really hope Mira left right after I did.

  “Alright ladies, slam down those drinks, we’re out of here. I have to head back to the Hooliganz House. You girls are coming with,” I say with a bit of a demand laced in my words. Let’s see how far these bitches are willing to go to please me.

  To my surprise, Jodie and Candy start walking towards the front door. Both girls stop at the front door and lean over the counter. They were talking to one of the bouncers. Within a few seconds, the bouncer hands each girl a purse and a cell phone that they checked at the beginning of the night. It’s been so long since I have been to a clubhouse with civilians, I almost forgot they weren’t allowed cell phones or purses on the inside.

  We walk out the door and into the night. The air was crisp, but not too bad. Looking at Candy, I’m wondering how this is going to work on the back of a bike in that short ass dress. Suddenly, all kinds of twisted images of fucking her on my bike flash in my head.