Say Yes, Senator: A Best Friend's Little Sister Political Romance Page 14

  “Which one?” I asked, swiveling around on my bar stool to them. The others laughed, Slade grinned.

  “There were only two blonds last night,” he said and my lips curled in a smile. Slade was a jokester, but wasn’t exactly great at taking a joke. Although, I wasn’t kidding. I’d meant to tell him earlier, but then I forgot.

  “Exactly,” I said and he lunged at me, knocking the glass out of my hands.

  There were two blonds last night. Claire or something, the one with the big tits, and I didn’t even remember the other one’s name. She had plump red lips and I remembered the way they fit like a latex glove around my cock. She was the one Slade had been working for the past week.

  Girth and King got him off me, while he grit his teeth and flared his nostrils at me. I wasn’t going to fight him. I was having fun but he was family. There was no reason for me to take a punch.

  He was breathing hard when they pulled him off me and he made a quick jerk with his hands to pull his shirt back down into position.

  “This better be your idea of a joke, Commando,” he said and I looked sheepishly at the others. They were smiling but I knew were secretly hoping it was a joke.

  Do I tell him she screamed my name as I plowed into her from behind? That she left me three voicemails this morning? It was so easy to rile Slade up. In the last year since he took Woods’ spot in the Club, he’d become the guy we used as a lovable punching bag. It wasn’t like he was a brother to me. I would have loved to see his face when I told him she was a squirter.

  “Just kidding, bro,” I said instead and emptied the whisky down my throat.

  Slade took a moment to buy it. He went from frowning and huffing to smiling and laughing in a matter of seconds. Did I really have that good of a poker face?

  Hell yeah I did.

  I caught King’s eye as Slade sat down on a stool beside me and ordered another round for the bunch of us. King knew what had happened. He saw me go to the back of the Club with both the women. He was warning me with his narrowed eyes. I raised my empty glass to him and smirked. What was life if not made for fucking anyone available? And that blond was available last night. It wasn’t like I would have batted an eyelid if Slade slept with her tonight. As long as I got to her first.

  “Y’know, you guys could give me a hand with these,” Big D brought us our glasses. He’d always worked alone at the Club. Word was that he was known as ‘Shrink’ on the inside, because apparently, he used to lie down on one of the bunks and listen to these big tatted up men pour their hearts out to him. Now that he was outside, he was the perfect bartender at the Club.

  King whistled at Girth like he was calling a dog.

  “Take him,” he said and we all burst out laughing. Big D rolled his eyes, giving the counter a swipe with the rag on his shoulder.

  “You want to put the two biggest guys in here behind the bar?” he said and crossed his bulky biceps over each other on his chest. We still couldn’t stop laughing. Just the thought of Girth and Big D behind the bar, squeezing themselves in!

  “We’ll hire an outsider, Big D, and don’t let these boys get to ya,” it was Dad’s voice that interrupted our laughter. He was sitting at the end of the counter, surrounded by Crawford and the other older members of the club. He’d overheard the conversation and had spoken in his deep voice, which had the power of silencing everyone in the room.

  Those were qualities that were important to him.

  Power

  Respect

  The Bike

  Women

  He’d tried his best to instill those qualities in me, to prepare me for when it was my turn to become President of the Rogue Rebels. It was just that sometimes I got the order of things mixed up.

  “Yes, Sir,” Big D said and went back to working the bar. A lot of people liked to call Dad Sir or just Elwood. He never corrected them. We were one big family, a family of brothers as Crawford used to say, but Dad made sure that everyone knew who the head of the family was. It was him. And it was going to be me.

  He caught my eye and raised a glass like a salute, I did the same and we drank to that.

  “So how was she?” Slade had sidled up to me while I wasn’t looking. I turned to him, a little confused. Who was he talking about?

  “The tits you scored last night. Man, I heard her screaming!” he said with a chuckle and drank some of his beer. I couldn’t help but wondering which one’s screams he heard.

  “You want me to invite you to watch the next time I have a girl bent over my bike?” I asked. King and Girth laughed. Slade shrugged his shoulders and sat back in his chair, tipping it dangerously backwards but keeping it balanced perfectly.

  “Maybe I’ll learn something,” he said with a laugh and I shook my head.

  Slade was all right. He was new to the Club, just a pup, but he had my back. Which meant, that I would always have his.

  xxx

  We were fucked. How long had we been drinking? Time had overlapped and meshed together, to form one long stream of booze and bad jokes.

  “Which one of you is gonna tuck my man into bed tonight?” a woman’s voice interrupted us. We all turned to the door of the bar in unison and saw Jewel Elwood standing there, with her hands on her hips. Her wispy brown curls were framing her face, and her eyes were stern.

  Mom.

  “Elwood, your old lady’s here to collect you,” I heard Crawford joking and Dad passed him a smile. Mom’s gaze searched me out in the dark crowd of the bar and she rolled her eyes at me. She’d married a biker. She’d raised a biker. This was the life she’d had to settle for, not the one she’d chosen and sometimes, I felt sorry for her.

  I saw Dad lazily slip off his stool and reach for his leather jacket, while Mom remained standing at the door, watching Dad’s every movement.

  It took a lot of trust and a lot of guts to forge the solid marriage that Mom and Dad shared. It wouldn’t have been easy for her. Dad’s code of life included women. They were at the bottom of his list of priorities, but they were there. I didn’t have to rack my brain hard to recall how many times she’d caught him with someone else, and how many times she’d threatened to leave.

  I blamed Dad then. Blamed him for how much pain he caused Mom, and I vowed that I would never put another human being through it. I wouldn’t put my kids through the heartache of watching a family fall apart. It was why Moira left the first chance she got. She couldn’t stand to see Mom being broken, over and over again. Even though Dad hadn’t been unfaithful to her in over eight years now, Moira had just always expected it to happen again. She didn’t want to be around when it did. Now she lived in the other part of town, and secretly I was glad she stayed away from the Club. It gave the boys less chance to drool over her.

  Some of the guys hooted and cheered when Dad walked up to Mom. I’d seen photographs of the two of them together when they’d just met, before Moira and I were born. They were hot stuff and probably still were.

  Dad grabbed her by the ass and pulled her to himself, before kissing her. I rolled my eyes and looked away. I’d grown up watching the two of them slobbering over each other. Fucking gross.

  “Go home!” I barked at them, and the others continued to cheer. When Dad released her, she looked directly at me and arched her eyebrows, before turning to the others.

  “You all should go home. It’s late, boys,” she said, in a threateningly authoritative voice. Over the years, she had slipped into her role as the matriarch quite well, and I knew it had only strengthened the marriage between the two of them.

  “Jewel is a gem, get it?” Slade joked and I shook my head indulgently.

  “How’s Moira?” Girth asked, knowing exactly the effect it would have on me.

  My head was already swimming with alcohol and I was fighting the urge to take Mom’s advice.

  “Safe now that she’s away from you,” I said to him and he sniggered. Moira was off-limits and they all knew it, but that didn’t stop them from taking potshots at my peace
of mind.

  “Hey, aren’t you satisfied with one guy’s sister?” Slade was quick to interject. Girth had recently started seeing Sophie, Slade’s sister, and they had embarked on a strange life together. A relationship that none of us thought was going to work. Sophie was sweet and knew what she wanted. Girth was young and scruffy and had too much going on in his family to recognize he had a good thing with her.

  But he enjoyed how much this was annoying Slade, nonetheless.

  King made to stand up. I could see it on his face that he was done. Since Dad took him under his wings four years ago, we’d been best friends.

  “Where are you going?” Girth asked him and King pointed to his watch. It was three in the morning.

  “Do you have to say your morning prayers?” Slade said with a laugh, and Girth, King and I all shot him threatening looks. King’s religion was out of bounds, just like Moira was. Even I thought it was a little weird when I first met him, but by now we knew it was what kept him sane. He used to be a street kid, the gang was going to kill him if he didn’t get out and he believed it was his religion that had brought him to Elwood. We respected his beliefs. Slade seemed to be a slow learner and hadn’t caught on.

  “Remember what your Mom said,” King said to me, and gestured a salute to me with two fingers. I smirked at him.

  “Pussy,” I called after him as I watched him exit the bar, taking his leave from the others as he went.

  Now it was just Girth, Slade and me at this end of the counter, still swirling our drinks. At least Girth had Sophie to see if he wanted to. All I had was Sheila, and she wasn’t exactly a human being. It was late and I’d had too much to drink but it was too early to go to sleep as well.

  I slipped my cellphone out of the pocket of my jeans and I scrolled through the voicemails.

  Meet me behind the bar

  I texted the blond. The one who Slade had undoubtedly been calling all night. I could tell from the shifty look in his eyes that he was waiting for her to respond to his messages.

  I’ll be there in ten minutes, hun - Barb

  She replied almost instantly.

  Chapter 2

  Ava

  I was standing in front of the mirror in Charity’s bedroom, staring at myself because I hadn’t decided if what I was wearing was good or terrible.

  “Will this do?” I echoed my thoughts aloud. Charity was sprawled on her double bed, which we had been sharing for the past five days. She was scrolling through her phone and eventually looked up listlessly at me.

  “Well, it depends, what impression do you want to create?” she said and I stared at my reflection some more. What impression did I want to create?

  Please give me a job so that I can rent a matchbox sized apartment in the bad side of town. If you like the way my jeans hug my ass, maybe you’ll like the way I can pour drinks into an endless stream of glasses that you won’t mind if I break. Maybe if you give me this job, I’ll be able to save enough money to make it through college.

  “I think this needs a black shirt,” I said, instead of replying to Charity, and began to roll my t-shirt off. I was walking around in the hot-pink bra I had on and a pair of jeans that were the only decent ones I could find.

  When I looked up at Charity, I noticed the look of sympathy she had in her eyes. I didn’t want her to be sympathetic. I wanted her to help me find a black shirt!

  “I would have offered you one of mine, but you’ll float in it,” she said and smiled. She liked to self-depreciate herself. She was what…a size 16? She was big and curvy and had the kind of boobs I was jealous of, but she liked to call herself that ugly word… “fat”. To me, she was beautiful and needed to embrace her body more.

  “Don’t be silly, Charity, you seriously need to stop talking about yourself that way,” I said, bending down to fling clothes out of boxes as I rummaged through them.

  “I’m being honest. You’re skinny, I’m not…which means that my smallest black shirt…you know, the one whose buttons keep popping open when I wear it, will be five sizes too large for you,” she continued in that same tone and I rolled my eyes at her.

  I still hadn’t found it.

  I was hunched on the floor now, flinging clothes around me. I was going through box after box but there was no sign of a black shirt anywhere.

  “What the hell am I going to wear? Everything is in boxes. I need to be appropriately dressed!” I barked at nobody and nothing in particular.

  “Just calm down, Ava, we’ll find you something to wear,” Charity said and I shook my head, still frustrated with everyone and everything. I knew I had no reason to be taking it out on her, but I was trying so hard to keep my emotions in check and now things were beginning to get a little out of hand.

  “What am I going to do?” I said, a tear rising in my voice and she jumped out of bed and came over to give me a hug.

  “I’m gonna go check the laundry and see if I can find something for you to wear, okay?” she said and I nodded my head and threw her a smile. I was grateful for having a friend like her, and I’d stopped myself from erupting.

  The only way was the way forward and the sooner I left my frustrations behind me, the easier it would be for me to move on.

  Charity left the room in search of a black shirt or something appropriate that might fit me, and I remained on the floor, flicking through clothes and other possessions…most of which I couldn’t even remember buying.

  It was strange to see that my whole life had fit into five boxes. Five perfectly square cardboard boxes were the sum total of my life. I was just glad I hadn’t adopted the puppy I was going to last Christmas, this whole ordeal would have been a million times more difficult if I was also responsible for another soul.

  With my arms sunk into one of the boxes, I tried pulling out a silky material which I thought could be the black silk shirt I remembered buying some years ago. Instead, when I pulled it out, I saw that it was a silk scarf and I dropped it from my hand, like I’d touched lava.

  It lay on the floor innocently at my feet. Orange and beige patterned, one I used to wear quite often, not necessarily because I liked it…orange was never really my color…but more so because it was one of the first gifts that Blaine had given me. And when I spent the day with it tied around my neck, it reminded me of him and I liked that feeling, of belonging to someone.

  Blaine and I had met a year after high school, well, my high school. He already had a high-flying job and a career. The fact that he was a little older gave me a kind of thrill that I hadn’t experienced with other guys before. High school’s sloppy kissers and awkward dancers had turned into this man who had a job, could afford to rent an apartment by himself and last more than three minutes in bed.

  The foolish twenty-year-old me believed that she had met her dream man. The foolish twenty-year-old me didn’t realize that there were other signs to look out for. That it wasn’t exactly paradise I was living in.

  Within six months of dating, he had asked me to move in with him and I was more than thrilled to have an opportunity to leave home. I should have gone to college, I should have studied to become a Vet Tech like I always wanted to, but instead, I settled for playing house with a man I didn’t really know.

  Blaine had the makings of a good boyfriend.

  He opened car doors for me, held out my chair at dinner, replied to my messages and left me little gifts in the bathroom before he left for work. These were the signs I was looking for. I believed these were indications that I’d found my soulmate.

  What I hadn’t been looking for, was the way he looked at me, if the smile reached his eyes when I cracked a joke. If he kissed me goodnight when he went to sleep. If I always went to bed with him by my side.

  I was younger than him, and he had me believe that I didn’t understand what it was to have a real job and real responsibilities. He always claimed that he was out earning a living for us, to build a home for us and the fact that he worked hard and worked late into the night; were suppos
ed to be testaments to how much he wanted us to have a good life.

  In my hand now was the scarf that I had discarded on the floor. The gift he had given me on our third date and the one I liked to wear often, no matter how garish it looked with the clothes I had on. And as I held it in my hands, I could still remember that time he didn’t come home the entire weekend.

  One whole weekend. Asshole.

  He barely answered my calls and only replied to my texts to let me know that he was alive and well. When he returned, he warded off all my questions with the excuse that he was caught up in meetings and couldn’t leave the office.

  That was when I started looking for other signs. I tried to rack my brain and think about all those nights he hadn’t returned home, or if he did return home late; how he had been drinking and how his clothes smelt of someone’s else’s perfume. He’d always made sure that I was aware he worked with a lot of female colleagues, but how close were they working together for their perfumes to have rubbed off on his clothes?

  That weekend away was a line he had crossed and after mulling over it for two days, I decided to confront him.

  I was twenty-three by now, working two part time jobs and still dreaming about a life surrounded by animals. My daily schedule had revolved around Blaine’s up to this point, and I wanted to know if it had all been in vain. If he had been cheating on me this whole time.

  When I confronted him after work that evening, I could see the rage in his eyes. I hadn’t realized how much he hated being questioned. We had shared a quiet, vanilla relationship with scheduled sex once every four weeks if I was lucky. I hadn’t ever raised my voice to him before and the fights we had; always ended with him taking me out to dinner or buying me something expensive. The fact that I was challenging him for the first time, didn’t please him. Not one bit.

  I continued to grill him. Questioning the late nights. The perfume. The weekend away and his slap came out of nowhere. He’d caught my jaw and it felt like a punch and I fell down to the carpeted floor from the force.