King of Hearts

"Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah," I said. "That wasn't the way we started. We used to laugh at people like that."

"Christina, remember when you were a little girl?" she asked. "Most little girls also never want to get older, they want to stay Tomboys and climb trees. Most of us didn't ever want to be girly girls either. But sooner or later we go through puberty and we get breasts and periods and we discover that being a girl really isn't that bad. It's kind of like that whole story of Peter Pan. Sooner or later most real people have to grow up, whether we like it or not."

"Honey, Ray just started to grow up before you did. He got tired of the biker life. He just wanted to settle down with the woman he loved. He idolized your father and what he had." I just looked at her.

"My father is a fucking plumber. He and my mom are the two most boring people on the earth," I said.

"Christina, Ray is a plumber too. Your father got him started and your dad is a great guy. I've met him and your mother several times. We still send and get Christmas cards from them, but let's move on."

"So everything was going great for a few years," I said. "But then just like you said, Ray started to change. And I guess I didn't want us to change. I started doing things to keep us on the path we'd started out on. I loved our life. And the changes were all incremental, but they kept coming. He went to school for plumbing. He did the whole apprenticeship. Then he took a job plumbing and started trying to become a contractor. We spent less and less time with the club. Then he bought that fucking car and it raised a huge red flag with me. I think cutting his hair was the last straw, I went into survival mode. I started demanding that we do things like that last rally. I knew his heart wasn't in it. I knew that he was only there for me, but he shouldn't have just gone to the rally with me and then disappeared. If he really didn't want to go to the rally he should have said something. To take me there and then disappear without telling me why or anything else that was cowardly," I kept my eyes on her just in case she was thinking about hitting me again.

"So that's how you remember the rally Christina?" she asked.

"No Angela," I said. "That's how the rally was."

"Okay, first off, Ray didn't buy the car to piss you off Christina," she said. "He bought the car so the two of you could find something else to love together. He wanted a car that was fast because he knew you liked driving fast. But let's face it motorcycles suck in the winter. And you're right, Ray really wanted you pregnant. Your mother and father wanted a grand kid and Ray wanted a family. So please sue the man for wanting to make a baby with the woman he loved and who he thought loved him." I started to feel bad then. I thought about her daughter and again realized that she could have been mine. It made me feel even worse.

"How's your back, Christina?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Ray noticed that you were having back pains after long rides even back when the two of you were together. They must be worse by now. That was another reason for the car, Christina. And as far as his hair goes; he got the hair cut for two reasons. One was because when he was working under counters or inside of walls getting his hair caught on things or having to wash it to get sawdust or plumbers compound out of it sucked. The second thing was that Ray was trying to fit in. It goes back to the differences between you. You wanted to stand out. He wanted to fit in. He got tired of all of the joking and ribbing the other guys were doing, so he got a haircut. Surely if you loved him as much as you claimed, a haircut shouldn't be a deal breaker."

"But I...do love him," I said. "I..."

"Christina, do you remember the first rally that your club held? Things got a little out of hand. Ray didn't want to force himself on you, but he was horny as a Billygoat. He ended up screwing some older biker chick who threw herself at him. You then ended up doing a gangbang with some woman named Beth. The whole thing just threw the two of you even closer together, right?"

"Yes," I said. "But that was a mistake on both of our parts. We never held it against each other. Besides it was just sex. It wasn't like Ray felt anything for that old woman. And I certainly didn't feel anything for those guys."

"But Christina, that was the incident that made the two of you into a couple and not just friends or riding buddies or whatever, right?" she asked.

"So what's your point?" I asked. But I was becoming nervous.

"The point is, you forced Ray to go to that last rally. You wanted to cure him of growing up and changing. You wanted everything to be the way it had always been, but the only thing Ray wanted was you. When you got to the rally, Ray went off to sign up for some of those Biker contests that for the life of me I don't understand. You went off to hang out with your old girlfriend Beth right?"

"Well yeah," I said. "Beth needed me for something and I wanted to kind of see what they had to offer at the rally, because like I said, I was looking for ideas for our rallies that summer."

"Ray, didn't sign up for any contests," she said. "He ended up getting into a fight. He had to pull a couple of guys off of one of those fake bikers who was at the rally."

"Ray always did like to stand up for other people," I said.

"The fake biker was my brother John," she said. "That's how they met. To pay Ray back for his kindness and to try to impress him, my brother decided to show Ray what he thought was the coolest thing at the rally."

"Let me guess," I said snidely. "Was it that giant Harley with the ten foot long front forks? No one could really ride that thing. It was strictly for publicity. They dropped that bike off at the rally on a semi-truck and..."

"Nope it wasn't a motorcycle," she said slowly. "My brother showed him a tent where two women were screwing eight or more guys and..." all of a sudden I didn't want to hear anymore. There was a roaring in my ears and I could barely hold myself up.

"He didn't see me..." my words trailed off. "...but it was Beth who..." She shook her head.

"Christina, he loved you so much and he'd already had so much tragedy in his life," she said.

"But he got over it the first time and we got so much closer," I said. "And I only did it to help Beth, she owed that guy some money and..."

"Christina, the first time you did it, the two of you weren't a couple. That time you were not only a couple, but you knew he wanted to marry you. Shit, he'd been pressuring you to have a baby and he thought you were working on it. But seeing you doing that, didn't make him leave you. It made him angry as hell at you. He wrote you a note and..."

"He didn't leave me any God damned note," I screamed. My tears were running freely down my cheeks by then. "He never left me a fucking note. He's lying. There was no fucking note. It was only sex and he wasn't supposed to find out..."

"Christina, I know this is hard to hear. But you need to know what happened," she said.

"But they were going to beat Beth up," I said. "I had to help her and..."

"Christina, Beth knew there was a chance she'd run into that guy at the rally. Why would she go to it? There's also the fact that A) the guys in your club would have protected her if she'd said something and B) if she had to do a gangbang and wanted help, there were several unattached women in your club who would have liked to participate. Why pick someone who was in a relationship?"

"But he..." I couldn't even make words. I'd had no idea that King had ever known. It was as if my head just split open.

"As I said," she continued. "He got so angry at you that he wrote you a note. The note said that you had to make a decision. He'd arranged for someone to let you ride home with him, but when you got home you had to choose between Ray and that lifestyle. Christina he also told you all kinds of things about how much he loved you and the things he wanted the two of you to do..."

"He lied to you, you stupid bitch," I snapped. "He never left me a note..."

"Christina when he went to put the note in your purse or I think he said your backpack. It was something you carried all of the time, that was what made him change his mind," she said.

"He changed his mind because he didn't like my backpack," I screamed. "He fucking bought it for me. Why the fuck..."

"Christina, when he opened the backpack to put the note in, he uhm, found your birth control pills."

"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked.

"Well, according to him, you'd supposedly thrown them away, when the two of you decided to get pregnant. I guess in his mind, everything you'd said to him was a lie. It shattered him, Christina. First he lost his parents and then found you. Ray is a very strong man, but emotionally he's kind of needy. He never wanted to share you with anyone and half of everything he did was always with you in mind. Imagine how he felt that day. He'd already arranged for someone to make sure you got home safely, so there was just nothing left for him. In the same way that you and he had just said, "Fuck it." And turned your backs on college life, Ray walked away from the biker lifestyle. I think you know all of the rest."

I just stared at her with tears running down my face. She actually leaned over and wrapped her tiny arm around my shoulder and patted my back.

"Christina, you have to understand, Ray loved you. You broke his heart. All of this time he's always felt that he let you down in some way or he wasn't giving you something you needed. He felt like he wasn't good enough, so you'd looked for other guys. That's why even now, when our life is perfect, I needed him to confront you or at least talk to you about it. I needed to get him some kind of closure, the kind that could only come from you knowing what really happened. I'll handle it differently now though. At the same time, I think it was important for you to understand why Ray left, so you can move on too. From talking to your friends, I think that you've been kind of stuck in the past hoping that the two of you will get back together or something like that. Christina, it's just not going to happen."

"But he..." I cried.

"Loved you?" she said. "Yes he did and very much. But he loves me now, he moved on a long time ago and you need to as well."

She held me again as I sobbed out all of my pain. Then we got back in the car and she dropped me off at Peggy and Gonzo's house.

"Christina," she said. "Take a couple of days off to get over this. I think working will actually be good for you though. So don't stay home for too long. Besides you have some decisions to make and you're not as alone as you seem to think you are.

I stayed in bed the rest of the day, crying. I felt awful but at the same time I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

Knowing that Ray knew what had happened was somehow freeing. It was as if the air between us had finally been cleared. On the other hand, I now realized that things with Ray were over. There were no more cards to play.

Everything about me ached, but again in some ways I felt better. It was like having someone that you love very much in the hospital in a coma for a long period of time. On one hand the person is alive, but on another they're not really able to do anything or respond to you, so it's as if they're not alive. After a while, you just want something to happen and either way, whether they come out of it, or they pass, you just want the suffering to end.

Ray and I hadn't been together for a long time. I was just holding onto something that was no longer possible. He had truly moved on, and he was happy. Now all I had to do was figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my God damned life.

Alicia came over to see me, the next day. She was really concerned that I hadn't been to work. I noticed something about her then. She was dressed totally different from the way she always did. Her ratty jeans were gone. She had on a nice skirt and flats. Her hair was also nicely styled. We talked for a while and she seemed happy. She never mentioned the club or going home. She and Trey were renting an apartment and she talked about all of the furniture shopping and other things they'd occupied their time with. I wondered why they were doing all of that when we'd be leaving in a little over three months. We might even leave sooner if the weather was better.

After Alicia left I decided to get out for a while. I hadn't seen Beth in a couple of weeks but I knew where she and some of the others that had come with us stayed. They all lived in a motel out near the highway so I headed in that direction.

When I got to the motel, I was shocked at the condition of the place. It just didn't seem like a nice place. It seemed dirty and unkempt. There were beer bottles all over the place and it was loud with door slamming and people staggering around. Was this the way we'd always lived?

I looked up and realized that I knew one of the guys who'd just staggered out of the room where most of the noise was coming from.

He bent over and threw up over the edge of the porch that went around the building. As I stared at him, he gave me the thumbs up sign.

"Hi Iggy, have you seen Beth?" I asked.

"She's working," he grinned. The expression on his face when he said it was one of pure lust.

"Just walk down that street over there and wait for a while. You'll see her," he grinned.

"Iggy, why aren't YOU working?" I asked.

"Because I'm not a fucking plumber or a box monkey," he snapped. "I don't know shit about pipes and I don't want to learn about them. I also have no intention of running around some big assed warehouse finding boxes of shit that someone else wants. Fuck that!"

He raised his hand up and pumped the air. "I'm a biker," he intoned as if it was some sort of sacred oath. "I'm the read deal. All I want to do is get out on my bike and ride. I want to do that every fucking day. I need the wind in my hair and the smell of the road. And when I feel like it I want to drink all of the beer in sight, whether it's mine or not." He burped loudly when he said that. The odor of the burp wafted towards me and made me sick. Another guy who I recognized only vaguely came over and listened to what Iggy was ranting about.

Iggy, seeing that he had an audience, continued his soliloquy. "I want to take a fat assed joint and fire it up, whenever I feel like it and not have to worry about some asshole expecting me to pee in a God damned cup so he can fire me. Fuck firing me. FIRE UP the weed."

"Hell yeah, brother," screamed the second drunk. "Fire it up!" the two of them high-fived each other and started dancing in a little circle together screaming, "Fire it up!"

Iggy looked over at me as if he expected me to join in on their pathetic little rain dance, that was even then, losing steam. I just shook my head and wandered in the direction he'd told me I'd find Beth.

I walked down the street and several cars honked their horns at me. It seemed weird to me. But I guess it was only strange because I didn't know any of the drivers. These southern towns certainly were friendly places.

Then a run-down truck slowed down in front of me. The passenger side door opened and Beth got out. She pulled a far too short skirt down over her wrinkled ass and started walking. I screamed at her and she turned towards me.

She smiled and waved at me as I ran to catch up to her. It all made sense then. I understood why the drivers had blown their horns at me.

"Beth, what the fuck are you doing?" I screamed.

"I'm just getting a little money," she smiled. "We need some weed and some beer."

"You're a biker, not a hooker," I said.

"They're all just labels," she said. "Who cares? Not all of us can be plumbers."

"I'm not a plumber," I said. "I work in the office, now. Beth, I'll get you a job. I can talk to Angela and..."

"So you're friends with the queen now?" she asked.

"Why are you calling her the queen?" I asked. "Sure, she's rich, but she actually gives a damn about people. And she doesn't act all stuck up, like you'd think."

"Shit, I don't know how she acts," laughed Beth. "She's married to King, so she's a queen."

"How did you know about..." I asked.

"Jeezus, Christina," she said. "I'm not a moron. I know all about her and your man. It's all they talk about around here. And no matter who you talk to they're not going to give me a job. I have a couple of felonies on my record. That's why I didn't bother to apply."

"But I'm not going near that place anyway. It fucks people up. Most of the guys we know went in there as proud, strong bikers and they all changed. Some of them aren't going back up North with us in the spring."

I nodded my head. I'd begun to suspect as much. "It's good to see that your little talk didn't fuck you up," she said.

"What little talk?" I asked.

"Your talk with King," she said. "Did you work everything out? How's it going to work? Are you going to be his little pussy on the side or is he dumping the dwarf totally for you?"

I looked at her then really carefully as she continued to talk. "How'd you work it out between you, did you tell him that it was only sex? Guys usually fall for that, especially if you throw in a line about how they're much better and their dick is bigger. Men are so stupid, it's ALL just sex. Somehow they always want to believe that doing it with them is somehow more special. They want to believe in magic. A dick in a pussy is just a dick in a pussy no matter who it's attached to and they..."

"You fucking knew didn't you?" I hissed. She looked at me then. Her words just trailed off.

"For almost four God damned years, you lived in my house, you ate my fucking food and you knew all along why King left me. But you never said a God damned word. You let me believe that he'd just run off on me for no good reason. You watched me every day and never said a word," I said angrily.

"Christina it was for your own good," she whined.

"You mean it was for YOUR own good," I screamed. "You knew all along that he'd seen us. You were the one who begged me to do it. You swore to me that no one would find out. What kind of woman are you?"

"I'm your best friend," she whined. "He was changing too much, Christina. He just wasn't one of us anymore. I knew he was going to leave when he started trying to get Marcus to take over the club. He was going to take you away from me and you're my best friend. I just didn't want to be alone." Tears ran down her face as she spoke.

"Christina he was leaving and you loved him so much. I was sure he'd take you away from us. Tell the truth, Christina, if he'd left, you'd have gone with him wouldn't you?"

"Hell yes," I yelled in her face. "And I'd be happy now. I'd have a husband who loves me and a baby and a beautiful house and...You stole my life, you drugged out whore." Rage over took me then. I grabbed Beth by her long greasy hair and started slamming her head against the wall. She fell down and I started kicking her. Before I knew it someone had grabbed me from behind and restrained me.

The emotions running through me were simply overwhelming, I passed out. When I woke up, someone was pulling me out of the back of a car. The next thing I remember, someone was finger printing me and shining a light in my eyes. I looked up at the same desk officer, who'd booked me a few nights previous.

"You again?" he said shaking his head. "You just can't seem to stay out of my jail can you?"

As I sat in the cell all of my thoughts were jumbled. In my mind I was constantly comparing my friends with...my friends. The two groups of people were very different but both groups contained some people who seemed to care about me. I was confused because more and more I just didn't know where I fit. Alicia, the woman I'd started out hating, had come to see me and try to make me feel better. I ate lunch with her every day and she felt more like a friend now than my supposed best friend Beth ever had.