Motorcycle Man

Chapter Twenty-Two Later

“Don’t worry, Cherry, I’ll get the pig.”

This was Brick accepting the task of finding the pig Chaos was going to roast the next Saturday.

“He always gets the pig,” Hound muttered, grinning at Dog who was grinning back. This told me they were sharing an inside joke. I knew they’d explain if they intended to, they always did, or didn’t as the case may be.

This time they didn’t for no further words were spoken about getting the pig. And seeing as it was a whole pig and that whole pig was a dead pig that would be roasted, I really didn’t want to know how Brick got his hands on it.

I was in my office at Ride’s garage. It was Friday after the Saturday morning that Tack and I had our discussion about tattoos. My office was now filled with rough and tumble bikers. Brick, Dog, Hound and Boz to be exact.

Like the mechanics and body shop guys, members of Chaos hanging in my office was not unheard of. Shortly after Tack officially declared me his woman, this began to happen. It wasn’t frequent. It wasn’t rare. And the boys who came to hang included what I’d discovered was my man’s inner sanctum, in other words, the guys who were closest to him, Dog and Brick (who Tack himself told me were his lieutenants), Hop, Hound and Boz. But I also got visits from all the members of Chaos including the three recruits, Roscoe, Tug and Shy.

Surprisingly it further included the two bikers that Tack confirmed at my question were dissenters but who were back in the fold now that they had to band together against the common enemy of the Russian mob, Arlo and High.

Arlo and High hanging with me at the office wasn’t only surprising because they were the two men I had more than once seen having what appeared to be unhappy conversations with Tack. It was surprising as well because they didn’t seem the type to hang out with a woman and shoot the shit seeing as they were scarier than the other guys. By that I meant scary in a dangerous, menacing way and not just a general, dangerous, rough and tumble biker way. And lastly, this was surprising because, although none of the boys were gentlemen, Arlo and High treated me in a casual, friendly biker way exactly like the others albeit they were more serious and less fun-loving. Nevertheless, the point was made. Whatever beef they had with Tack and/or the direction of the Club was not directed at me.

I’d talked with Tack about this and he wasn’t surprised.

“Like it or not, babe,” he’d started, going what he called gentle-like and I knew he was having a mind to my soft spot with what he was gearing up to tell me. In other words, I wouldn’t like it much. “Chaos, fuck, most MCs, women don’t factor. Only men are members, only men make the decisions. A member takes a woman on, she’s got the protection of the Club. She’s a good woman, she can earn the respect of the men. But she won’t have a say, ever.”

I had nodded and made no response. He was right to go gentle since I didn’t much like what he was saying. But although I didn’t like the information he was sharing, it didn’t surprise me.

Tack kept talking.

“But if a man claims a woman, she’s in the fold and even if she hasn’t yet earned it, they’ll show her respect because doin’ that shows their brother respect. All the men, including Arlo and High, are showin’ me respect by gettin’ to know you.”

That made sense.

“They’re also feelin’ you out,” Tack continued. “Says a lot about a man, the woman he chooses, for a lot of reasons. One ‘a those is it’s the way of the world that men talk to their women. Only men can be brothers but not a one of us is stupid enough to think if a woman has claim to a man’s dick, she’s doesn’t also got time to whisper shit in his ear. They take her shit in, it can sway how he behaves during sit downs. So, with you havin’ my dick and my ear, they’re gettin’ the lay of the land. “

Again, that made sense.

Though his use of the word “shit” as pertains to a woman’s point-of-view didn’t make me feel melty and squishy.

Tack wasn’t done.

“That said, she doesn’t earn their respect, they’ll make the show but in reality, she won’t get it. A brother, they’ll respect always no matter his choice in women unless that woman guides him to doin’ something seriously fucked up. They get you’re my woman now but the last one they didn’t like all that much. Naomi wasn’t popular. The brotherhood is all-important. She made me miserable and she made my kids miserable which made me more miserable. They didn’t like that. And her shit reflected on me and I didn’t like that. She also turned into a bitch and no one likes a bitch. And last, there was a sect of brothers who were on a certain path, a path she didn’t agree with and made that clear. This made that path a fuckuva lot less easy and it was already serious as shit.”

Oh boy.

“And what was that path?” I asked cautiously.

“You knowin’ about that path is for later,” he answered immediately.

I accepted that because I trusted him to give it to me later. I also accepted it because he explained what was happening gentle-like, telling me stuff many women would find hard to deal with or even abhorrent. But it was him and his world. To live in his world, I had to know it, he shared it and he did it honestly but carefully with a mind to my response. So I decided not to press.

Though, I had to admit, time was passing. We’d been “official” now for a month. In that time, although there were times when I went to bed without him, I never woke up without him. Most nights we had dinner together, usually at his house because that was where the kids were. Naomi was laying low. Lanie and Elliott had settled in wherever they were (and I didn’t know where they were, I just knew they were both still alive and breathing). I was getting to know and like his kids more and more. And life was settling. It wasn’t a pattern, Tack didn’t do patterns. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t settled.

But I knew Tack hadn’t forgotten those three hours the Russian mob had me.

Chaos was setting up for something. I just hadn’t been let in on what. And I was beginning to get a little antsy because, even though the guys were planning a hog roast, the vibe was constantly alert. There were lots of close huddle discussions all over the forecourt and garage. Tack and the boys had a number of “sit downs” and, lately especially, I went to bed alone because Tack was “seeing to business”. Business he didn’t explain. Business I’d cautiously began to ask about. Business Tack brushed off giving me explanations with his “laters”.

And since this business involved the mob, my man, his brothers (who I was also getting to know and like) and vows of rivers of blood, I was getting a bit impatient with “later”.

Although this made me antsy, the boys hanging with me I liked. They didn’t hang for hours. They were funny. They liked and respected Tack openly (except, of course, Arlo and High but they hid it well, mostly). They didn’t mind if I worked while we chatted. And, it must be said, it broke up the day.

They also made me feel weirdly like I was part of a family. An unusual, scary, badass biker family but a family all the same.

This gave me a sense of why they pledged their lives and loyalty to the brotherhood. There was an honor to it, a beauty. It was nonconforming and some might think twisted, but it was there all the same.

And I liked that too.

“Roscoe’s in charge of gettin’ the hooch,” Dog told me and I came back into the room.

“What can I be in charge of?” I asked, thinking party plates, napkins and red Solo cups for beer.

“Wearin’ a short, tight skirt, showin’ cleavage and strappin’ on a pair of high heels,” Boz answered, his lips surrounded by his full, salt and pepper beard tipped up.

“And inviting your friends who’ll wear short, tight skirts, show cleavage and strap on heels,” Hound added.

I mentally drew a line through the item on my to-do list that said I needed to go to Costco.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I muttered, smiling at Hound, thinking that Gwen, Elvira and the girls would like a hog roast. I thought this because, before my time, a few of them had already attended one or two. And I thought this because I’d spoken frequently on the phone and I’d twice shared drinks with my new posse since our first night. I had found they were pretty much anything goes types of gals. Though Mara was kind of shy and Tess was settled in home life with her and Brock’s two boys, still, they’d be up for it.

I heard Dog’s phone beep.

He pulled it out, looked at the display then his gaze cut through the group.

There it was. The alert vibe made its presence known and it did this when, with only that glance from Dog, the boys quit lounging around on my chairs and the beat up couch under the window, their faces got serious and they all started to make a move.

They’d been called to action.

“Business, Cherry,” Dog told me what I already knew. “Later.”

“Later,” I replied, lifting my hand to flick it out when the phone on my desk rang and I could see the display said “Tack Calling.”

I reached for it, calling out laters in response to laters as the men shifted out my door. They were still filing out when I flipped the phone open and put it to my ear.

“Hi, handsome,” I greeted.

“Hey, babe. Just checkin’ in to tell you you’re at your place tonight. I’ll meet you there but I’ll be late. Probably way late. Called Tug, he’s takin’ you home. Go to bed without me.”

“All right. So you’re saying I’ll wake up with you?”

“Do you ever not?”

“No,” I whispered, liking that.

“Then no.”

“Okay.” I heard the boys’ Harleys rolling out of the forecourt when I reminded him, “Tabby and I are shopping tomorrow.”

We were and I was looking forward to it.

Rush and I were forming a bond.

Tabby, on the other hand, was melding herself to me.

I didn’t question it and I didn’t mind it. Her relationship with her mother was strained (to say the least), something it wasn’t hard to notice at first because it was so out there, it was in your face. But since then I’d discovered it was more. From what I could tell, Naomi loved Rush and showed it. Her daughter, not so much. Why, I didn’t know. But it was happening.

Therefore Tabby had latched onto me as the woman in her life. I liked it because I liked kids so I just liked it but also because Tabby was sweet, charming and funny. I enjoyed her company immensely and we had a good time together. It helped that I was giving her that. It felt good. A good woman in a teenage girl’s life was important and it was cool as all heck she chose me.

Tabby was shopping for school clothes. I was still on my mission to dress like Brandi from Storage Wars, a show that Rush now taped for me so I didn’t miss it and caught up on episodes when I was at Tack’s. So I needed Brandi clothes. They were probably going to be one size bigger than what I normally wore but… whatever.

“Gotcha,” Tack replied.

“I’ll call her and tell her to come down the mountain and meet me at my place at ten.”

“Make it noon.”

“Malls open at ten, Tack.”

“And my woman’ll hit them after I have plenty of time to hit her.”

Oh.

Well then.

“Right,” I said into the phone through a smile. “Noon then.”

“Right. Noon,” he confirmed and I could hear his smile. “And do me a favor. Top drawer, back, in the dresser in my room in the Compound is an envelope. Go in, grab it and bring it home. I’ll need it tomorrow.”

A mysterious envelope.

Hmm.

“Got it,” I replied. “Top drawer, back.”

“Right, darlin’. You leavin’ soon?”

I looked at the bottom right corner of my computer screen to see it was ten after five. Part of being Tack’s woman, him being my boss and living the biker life with a biker, my eight to five workdays became nebulous. Weeks ago, Tack told me my responsibility was to get the work done, how I saw about doing that was up to me. It didn’t matter what the office hours said on the door, I went in when I went in, I left when I left and as long as the work got done, he didn’t care. If I didn’t happen to be there to take a call, customers would have to deal and I found they did. They knew they were dealing with bikers.

Bikers didn’t do office hours.

This I liked a lot. I didn’t take this freedom and fuck over Tack, Ride and thus Chaos. I got the job done and these days that meant actually getting it done without fucking up, finding or calling Tack to ask how I’d fucked up and then redoing it properly. Sometimes Tack rolled in with me on the back of his bike at seven, seven thirty in the morning and I’d get started then. Other times, or, say, after energetic mornings it was closer to nine (or even ten). Sometimes, we swung out of the forecourt close to six at night. I worked until I didn’t need to anymore and if Tack wasn’t ready to go or he wasn’t around and I didn’t have my car, one of the boys took me home or I hung in the store, in the office, in the Compound common area or outside it with the boys.

Life was, except for the upcoming rivers of Russian mob blood, entirely stress free.

And thus life was, except for the Russian mob, entirely good.

“Yeah,” I answered Tack. “Closing up shop now.”

“I’ll call Tug, find out where he is and either he or I’ll call you back and give you his ETA.”

“Thanks, honey.”

“Later, babe.”

“Later, Tack.”

He disconnected. I flipped my phone closed and then I shut down the office. I grabbed my phone and my purse, headed out, locked up and clicked on my high heels to the Compound.

As I moved over the tarmac of the forecourt, I noticed there was only one bike outside the Compound. This I found surprising. It didn’t take a master strategist to figure out that Dog’s text and Tack’s call stating he would be late meant Tack had given them the order to be on some mission. Their missions didn’t always require every member in attendance, this was true. But if it didn’t, there were always at least two or more bikes outside the Compound.

I’d never seen only one.

Well, whatever. It wasn’t as if I had the comings and goings of the members of the Chaos MC down pat.

I walked into the deserted common area of the Compound, an area that looked a lot like a seedy bar except seedier. Tatty or chipped mismatched furniture including chairs, tables, couches and armchairs. A pool table. A long, curved bar that started almost at the front door and curved around toward the side wall. A door at the back wall beyond which held the boys’ rooms. There were neon beer signs on the walls but not many of them. Most of the adornment were pictures of boys in the Club, past and present, all candid. There were not a few but several framed Chaos emblems. One of them was a large, white flag tacked to the back wall that had the Chaos emblem in the middle with the words “Fire” and “Wind” on one side and “Ride and “Free” on the other. This same flag, incidentally, was flying from a flagpole on the top of Ride underneath an American flag. And last, there were a number of Harley Davidson insignias here and there, framed, tacked and some were stickers randomly stuck to the wood-panelled walls.

It wasn’t clean. It was, as I mentioned, seedy. Still, for some reason, I thought it was cool.

I headed across the room, my heels clicking on the wood floors and made it into the back hall. I turned right and moved down it toward the end where Tack’s room was.

My timing was bad for many reasons. Me just being there was one. Me hitting the hall opposite an open door when the noise came out was another. And what the noise meant had happened at that exact moment was the last.

The noise made me stop in shock, my head turned and in the open door, for anyone walking by to see, was the brunette I saw Tack kissing that morning I started my first day at Ride. She was naked astride a naked man who I saw beyond her, his shoulders and most of his back up on the headboard, his muscled, tattooed arms spread wide and holding on, was Hopper. And the noise I heard was Hop groaning through an orgasm.

For some reason, instead of riding Hop facing him, she was riding Hop facing his feet.

And the door.

And, when her eyes hit mine while she was still bouncing on top of Hop, me.

Three things hit me, they hit me hard and they hit me all at once.

First, I didn’t like seeing her again and the reasons why didn’t need to be explained.

Second, I didn’t like seeing what I was seeing at all and it wouldn’t matter who the participants were. But it was exponentially worse that she was one of them.

And last, I didn’t like seeing her riding Hop because Hop had an old lady who I knew had been in his bed for years. Her name was Mitzi. She wasn’t exactly the warmest, fuzziest woman on the planet but our paths had crossed more than once at the store or the Compound. We’d partied together the Friday before. And although she was a little hard and definitely tough, she was also kind of nice, could be funny and it was clear she loved Hop.

I was frozen to the spot even though I really, really wanted my feet to move or, preferably, my whole body to go up in a puff of smoke and rematerialize in the forecourt, back in time one minute before where I would have remembered I needed to go back to the office for something, anything. Instead I stood there, staring into her eyes.

And when I did, slowly, she smiled. It was catty. It was knowing. It communicated something I did not get but I did get that I didn’t like it one bit.

Luckily, it also made me come unstuck and I hurried down the hall to Tack’s room. The door was closed, I opened it, entered then I closed it. Once in his room, I stood still. But inside I was shaken.

I tried to remember if anyone had told me how long Mitzi and Hop had been together and I couldn’t. Though I did know it was a long time. I also knew they weren’t married but they lived together and had two kids together. This I knew because Mitzi told me herself. And although Mitzi was a tough broad, it wasn’t only clear she loved Hop, it was super clear she loved their kids. So however long they’d been together, it had been long enough to have two children.

And, door open for anyone walking by to see, he was screwing another woman.

“Okay, this isn’t good,” I whispered to the empty room and jumped when my phone rang in my hand.

I looked at the display and sucked in a calming breath, flipped it open and put it to my ear.

“Hey, honey,” I greeted with false brightness to cover my freak out.

“What’s the matter?” Tack asked immediately.

Damn. I could never pull one over on him, not even on the phone.

“Nothing,” I lied then quickly moved on. “What’s Tug’s ETA?”

“I’ll tell you when you tell me what’s up.”

“Nothing’s up. I’m in your room about to grab the envelope. Is Tug going to be here soon?”

Silence then, softly, “What’s the matter, Red?”

“Nothing, Tack,” I lied again. “I talked with you maybe ten minutes ago. How could something be the matter in ten minutes?”

“The how is that you’re you. Something could be the matter in ten seconds.”

He wasn’t wrong about that. Our run was going well, it was fun, it was stress-free, we had easy but that didn’t mean I wasn’t me and Tack wasn’t Tack so the banter had not died.

But this wasn’t about him being a bossy biker, me being sassy and us trading slightly heated words that were mostly lighthearted.

This was something else. I just didn’t know what and I wasn’t going to explain what until I knew why I was feeling the edgy I was feeling.

So I hid behind a veil of sass and snapped, “Well something isn’t the matter now but it will be if you don’t quit asking me what’s the matter.”

This brought more silence that Tack didn’t break.

“Kane,” I called then prompted, “Tug?”

To which he said quietly, “Hop.”

Oh hell.

I supposed, being the president of a motorcycle club, having your finger on the pulse of absolutely everything and being able to read people and figure them out was a good thing.

Being that man’s woman and him having all that sometimes was not. And one of those times was now.

“Yes, Hop,” I confirmed because if I didn’t, he wouldn’t let it go which was something else I decided in that moment I wasn’t all fired up about. “Or, more precisely Hop, who has an old lady and two kids. Added to that is Hopper’s old lady, Mitzi, who isn’t my bestest bud but she is in the sisterhood, considering she has a vagina. So, clearly, seeing Hop doing what Hop was just doing, something I’m guessing you knew he was in the middle of doing and that’s why he’s not on his way to you, didn’t make me want to do cartwheels since we sisters need to band together no matter if we’re not best buds. And, incidentally, seeing what I saw at all wasn’t much fun. Hop has his own brand of hot but I don’t want to see a brunette riding it. And last and mostly what’s the matter is that brunette was your brunette.”

“She’s not mine, baby,” Tack replied quickly and gently.

“No, apparently she belongs to Chaos. What? Do you pass her around?” I clipped back.

“We don’t but she does.”

Ohmigod!

I might need to learn the ways of the biker world but that, that was something I didn’t need to know. At least not now, alone, in the Compound, two doors down from a skank and a cheater and nowhere near a bottle of wine or, better yet, one of tequila.

He might know all, see all and figure it all out but he also had to learn when to shut up and let it go.

“Okay, handsome, before I didn’t want to talk about this. Now I really don’t want to talk about this,” I warned.

“This is another way of our world, Red, and if you keep control on that attitude long enough, when I have time, I’ll explain it to you,” Tack replied.

I’d heard that before.

Way, way, way too often.

And just then, with that brunette’s catty, knowing smile burned on my brain, I’d had enough.

“Would that time be later?” I asked sarcastically.

“Uh… yeah.”

“Seems you’re going to explain a lot of things later and it seems you avoiding doing that, that means those things are like that brunette. Shit you aren’t explaining because you don’t actually want me to know.”

“Tyra –”

“Ignorance is not bliss, Tack.”

“Red –”

“Sometimes it’s lies in the form of keeping something from someone with bullshit promises of ‘later’,” I kept ranting.

“Darlin’ –”

“And in the end, any lie is a hurt that burns and sometimes that burn can kill.”

Tack was silent.

I was not.

“Call Tug. Tell him I’m getting a taxi. And as for you, you need to send someone else to get that envelope. I’m thinking I need a little time so I’d prefer to wake up alone tomorrow. When I’m ready to talk, I’ll call you. But you need to know, whenever I’m ready, it’ll be later.”

“Goddamn it, Tyra –” I heard him ground out but I flipped my phone closed.

This time we would talk my later.

I yanked open the door and stomped down the hall. I didn’t look into Hop’s room and I avoided it so studiously, I didn’t even know if the door was open.

I would discover Hop was done when I walked out of the Compound, my phone open in preparation to make a call to the taxi company, and I saw him on his bike.

When he saw me, he lifted his chin and called, “Cherry! Yo!”

I didn’t know if, when I saw him in his room, he was so in the throes of what was happening he didn’t see me. Or if he didn’t care. Or if he expected me to get the way of their world and not care because he didn’t look embarrassed or, indeed, anything except Hop.

I gave him a chin lift as his bike roared then he roared off with another flick of the wrist to me.

I glared after his bike, spared some time thinking about poor, cheated on Mitzi while I called a cab then I stood outside the Compound knowing exactly what that edgy meant.

Chaos, fuck, most MCs, women don’t factor.

What? Do you pass her around?

We don’t but she does.

Crap.

Truth be told, it hurt when I fell in love with Tack over tequila and he kicked me out of bed. But until that moment, I didn’t realize the hurt that burned deeper was seeing him with the brunette only a day later. He’d explained it. I hadn’t made an impression on him and clearly that had changed since.

But every girl, or at least the ones I knew, hoped like everything that when they met the one, they’d make an impression. And thus they wouldn’t ever be replaced and certainly not the very next night.

And as ridiculous as it was, as inflated an expectation, as admittedly unrealistic and even stupid, that didn’t mean it wasn’t downright true.

I didn’t know how Mitzi felt about Hopper. Maybe she understood this. Seeing the hard in her face, the tough in her manner, I suspected she did.

But I didn’t.

And I might not watch TV and I might have lived in black and white but I wasn’t literally unconscious all my life. I might not be savvy to the ways of the world like Tack but I wasn’t an idiot.

Bikers chose their lifestyles for a reason. And men became members of motorcycle clubs for deeper reasons. And it wasn’t a secret sect of society that lived quiet and kept clandestine.

Fire and Wind. Riding free. That was their motto.

Free.

Free.

Tack was avoiding all the “laters” because rivers of blood and the Russian mob freaked me out. But also because he knew this wasn’t my world and he wanted me mired in it before he lowered the boom.

Unfortunately, shit happened and he couldn’t control when the boom lowered.

And, damn it all to hell, that boom fucking hurt.

And unfortunately, that boom wasn’t near done with me.

“You got your place with the Club, I got mine.”

I jumped, twisted at the waist, tearing my eyes from their angry contemplation of the forecourt to see the brunette standing two feet outside the door to the Compound. She was dressed, fortunately, though she didn’t wear a lot of clothes. Unfortunately, seeing her and processing all that was her, not only was she gorgeous in her skanky, slutty way, she also had a great body. Making matters worse, she was standing, one hand on her hitched hip which every woman knew meant she was prepared for our upcoming verbal smackdown. And last, she was also wearing her catty, knowing smile.

I didn’t reply and turned back to the forecourt. Weirdly, my mind conjured up the image of us, two exact opposites standing in front of an MC’s compound, me in my tight skirt, cute but smart blouse and sex kitten heels and her in her cutoff, ragged-edged, very short jean skirt, barely-there, skintight top and platform slut sandals.

And it wasn’t lost on me which one of us didn’t fit.

I heard her heels clicking to me and I kept my eyes glued to the tarmac but I felt and heard her stop close.

“Had ‘em all, ‘cept the recruits. Don’t fuck recruits. They get their cut, that’s when I break ‘em in.”

Something for Roscoe, Tug and Shy to look forward to.

I pulled in breath and kept my eyes on the forecourt.

“Tack’s my favorite,” she whispered and that was when I turned to her.

“He’s also mine.”

Her catty, knowing smile got bigger, cattier and more knowing.

“As you can tell, girl, I don’t mind sharing.”

My hand itched to slap her. No, actually, my hand itched to slap someone else. Her, I wanted to know why she did what she did to the sisterhood but worse, what she did to herself. But instead of asking, I again turned my gaze to the tarmac, willing the cab to show the fuck up already.

“You’re up for it, we can share together. Tack likes it like that. Won’t be the first time I gave it to him like that so I know.”

I took that blow and while I did it took everything else not to react visibly to it.

But inside it burned deep.

He wasn’t a choirboy. He was a biker. But I didn’t need some skanky brunette reminding me of that.

What I needed was a man who knew I didn’t need it and shielding me from it. Not setting me up by sending me into a Compound that contained it to get a mysterious envelope.

My eyes went back to her just in time for her to keep talking.

“You’re his old lady so I’ll let you have his dick. I’ll sit on his face,” she offered her take on our plan of attack to pleasure my man together.

“Maybe it would be a good idea for you to quit talking,” I suggested quietly.

“Right, he’s good with his mouth. I get you want that. I’ll take his dick.”

I held her eyes. She kept smiling at me.

This went on a long time.

Finally, her eyes slid to the side and she murmured, “Cab’s here.”

“FYI,” I started, “that party you invited me to. I’ll take a pass.”

She shrugged then delivered her next blow. “That’s okay. He wants it like that, he knows where to find it.”

I had no retort. None at all. It wasn’t my place to tell her to get gone. It wasn’t my place to tell her I better not see her again. She belonged to Chaos in her way and I did in mine. We accepted our places and the boys called the shots.

Damn.

I had that box Tack talked about over me, closing me in, I couldn’t see clear and Tack was the one who put it there.

No, it was me.

I put it there.

God.

I tore my eyes free of hers and walked to the cab.

Then I got in and gave him my address.

The driver had pulled out on Broadway when my phone rang and I saw it was Tack.

Over it, way, way over it, when I put the phone to my ear, I asked as greeting, “Do you not understand the concept of me needing some time?”

To this, my heart stopped beating when he replied on a growl, “You call Mitzi and share, you answer to me. And if you answer to me, when you do, I won’t go gentle.”

Then I heard the disconnect.

Unseeing, unfeeling, not hearing a thing, not thinking a thing, I flipped my phone shut.

I didn’t cry until I closed my front door and I was home.