Page 68 of Ordinary Girl

“Chapel, I think. Why?” He takes a drag on the joint and offers it to me. I decline. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

I walk past him, into the clubhouse. The air is thick with the smell of smoke and stale beer: rock music playing at way too loud a level for this time in the morning.

“Ana?” Kit shouts after me, but I ignore him. I make my way to the back of the clubhouse, down the dimly-lit corridor to the chapel at the far end of the building, going straight inside, not bothering to knock.

“Jesus Christ, Ana, what the fuck are you doing?” Skip jumps up from his chair at the head of the table. A huge, slightly ridiculously ornate chair that’s very different from all the others that sit around this over-sized, elaborate piece of wooden furniture. “You can’t just walk in here.”

“I think I just did, though.”

He leans back against the table and crosses his arms, his eyes slightly narrowed. He’s actually a handsome guy, Skip Larsen. Older than Joel by a good few years, his salt n’ pepper, just-a-little-too-long hair and neat beard giving him a hard edge, but his dark eyes are, behind the coldness they often display, kind. The man he portrays himself as, and the man he really is, I think they may be two very different people.

“What do you want, Ana?”

“I believe you loved my mama.”

He narrows his eyes a little further. “Well, that’s good to hear. I’m sorry you ever doubted it.”

“But she would’ve wanted me to live my own life.”

“Okay. What exactly are you getting at here?”

“Joel told me, about you wanting to leave the club.”

His face clouds over slightly, his eyes darkening. “It wasn’t Joel’s place to tell anyone anything.”

“It is, when decisions involving me are being made behind my back.”

He’s trying hard to keep his expression stoic, but there are flashes of anger in those dark eyes of his. I don’t care. Joel was right to tell me. Nobody gets to decide what happens to me, not anymore.

“And what the fuck did Joel say, exactly?”

“You want to take me with you, when you leave. Is that right?”

He drops his gaze, keeps his arms crossed, but I see his shoulders tense. “Sofia wouldn’t want you to stay here, Ana. She wouldn’t want that.”

He looks at me, and I shake my head. “She isn’t here, though. Is she?”

“She’d want me to look after you.”

“And that’s a very noble thing you’re offering to do, but in reality you don’t know what she would’ve wanted.”

“She wouldn’t have wantedthisfor you, Ana!” He pulls himself away from the table, uncrossing his arms, and the anger is more evident now. But he doesn’t scare me. He’d never hurt me, I know that. I believe that.

“Maybe not.” I keep my voice steady. Calm. I keep my gaze fixed on his. “But I want to be here, now.”

“Why?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer. “Why do you suddenly want to stay when you’ve spent months threatening to walk away from this? Threatening to run?”

“You know why.”

He turns his head away for a second, running a hand along the back of his neck. “Fuck!”

“I want to be with him, Skip. He wants to be with me, and you have no right telling him to back off. I’m not a child. Don’t treat me like one.”

“I’m trying to keep you fucking safe, don’t you get that?”

“I can look after myself.”

---