Page 1 of Bad Like Me

1

Ray

Logan “Crow”Williams stole my heart prior to either of us ever having the knowledge of the very real and boundless significance of the cliché saying. It wasn’t one that could easily be taken in stride. It was his before I was aware someone could own the majority of someone else simply by being who they were. It didn’t matter, though. Sometimes, you didn’t have to understand things for them to have meaning. I was his. It always made sense until life and time intervened with responsibilities, pressuring us with expectations of becoming an adult.

He was mine long before he was known as “Crow”. To me, he was simply Logan. My Logan. Most of what happened might be chalked up to ignorance…or maybe it was puppy love. Really, I had absolutely no idea what it was exactly that drew the two of us together. Was it fate that brought us together or was it real love that we shared? Was it the genuine thing most people coveted only to believe that when they didn’t have it, it only happened in books? Convenience? Maybe it was just being in the right place at the right time? The only thing I was certain about, we were something special to one another back in the day. However, where and what we were to each other was more than a mystery. We quickly found out belonging to someone else could be extraordinarily messy and unbelievably complicated; and yet, we were too young to ever acknowledge the strength of the words we were saying. Regardless of how things ended, it wouldn’t have stopped us. We were both too stubborn—and I most certainly was now—to listen to someone else when it came to things I was passionate about.

Every so often, you had to amble into the past, if only to remind yourself of how to move forward again. That was what I told myself I was doing when I thought of Logan, relearning the steps that brought me to where I was today. Learning how to walk again came with ease some days, and others, well, it was more of a crawl through my memories, eventually making it back to reality.

It’d been seven years since we parted, and I moved to Kentucky to chase my dream job. Over two thousand five hundred and fifty-five days had passed since we’d agreed to go our separate ways, so why would I still care for him? I didn’t. Okay, I did, but I wasn’t sure where those emotions found meaning in the stupid constricting muscle inside my chest and the feelings buried deep within my mind. I obviously loved him and always would, but I wasn’t in love with him. We’d both decided it was for the best that I move out here to put my electrical engineering degree to good use because I was in so much debt for the schooling that I had to figure out how to pay back the student loans.

We didn’t share the same values anyway, and in the beginning, that didn’t hold much importance at all. Yet as time passed, it became clearer than anything else. I wanted him to come to college with me in Kentucky. He wanted to remain in Ohio to eventually take over his dad’s shop. I begged him to let me stay, but we both knew I would go in the end. Of course, we tried the long-distance thing, but once he joined the Royal Bastards MC and I made the dean’s list, it became harder to travel the distance and easier to make excuses. I’d never know if we made the right choice by letting each other go, but did one ever know the realness of their choices until it was much too late? Anyone who said they did was a damn liar, but for me, I still wasn’t sure of the correct answer.

From time to time, I thought of him and kept tabs on him, or rather, my best friend, Wren, kept me up to date on things since she still lived in our hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Even when I told myself I didn’t want to hear about him, on the days I knew I didn’t have the strength to walk, those moments when it would be more of a sluggish crawl kind of day, he seemed to grace the conversations between Wren and me. She knew me well, was fully aware that I wanted to know how he was even if I didn’t allow myself to bring him up. Somehow, it made it easier if I wasn’t the one asking, but relentless curiosity brewed within me, and Wren understood that.

Somedays, like today, I told myself I wouldn’t check on him, which simply meant not answering the phone when I saw Wren’s name and the goofy picture she made me take appear on the screen of my cell phone each time she called.

Wren: Don’t ignore me. I know you’re awake and probably just sitting around working on some animatronic cock pump.

I glanced at the phone as it lit up and vibrated against my desk but didn’t respond. I wouldn’t touch my phone while working on hospital equipment because even though everything was allegedly disinfected before it came to our department, it occasionally still had blood on it and who knows what else we couldn’t see. This was all true, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t thankful I couldn’t respond to her right now.

Wren: Paging Dr. Jo Harding, put Dorothy down for a minute. I need to talk to you.

I laughed and shook my head as I tightened the thin metallic bracket down onto the plastic door and popped it into place.

“Ray, you have a call on line one,” Matt, our lead technician, announced after he answered the office phone and swirled around in his comfy chair to face my desk.

“One sec,” I answered, propping the base of the infusion pump I was in the middle of repairing onto the handle of a Phillips screwdriver and huffed. Flipping the lever down, I ground my teeth. I’d been trying to do a performance check on this fucking pump for the past hour, and the phone was ringing nonstop with tasks I had to do.

“Is it the third floor again?” I smacked my lips together, certain they were calling to complain about one of their thermometers being on the fritz again. I already explained twice this morning that if they cleaned the lens with alcohol, the fucking things would work properly, but the first time apparently hadn’t sunk in, and it was clear now the second hadn’t either. I hoped it was them because if Wren was calling here, she had finally given up on any and all boundaries.

“No. It’s…ummm…” He held a finger up and pressed the button to remove the caller from hold. “Who did you say this was?” He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and eventually pushed them onto the top of his head amongst his thick silver hair. “I see. I’ll let her know.” His tone immediately changed from his original businesslike voice to a serious one.

My heart rapidly pounded behind my ribs with fear, and I swallowed hard in anticipation. It was rare to see Matt cross the line of professionalism on the phone, so when he did, the whole crew felt it. Walsh and I exchanged a knowing look as his blue eyes widened while I shrugged my shoulders. “No fucking clue,” I said in a voice barely above a whisper, and both of us stared at Matt for answers.

“It’s your mom,” Matt told me in a weak voice and slowly blinked his eyes.

Momentarily, my eyelids closed and reopened with new tears on their brims. Mom wouldn’t be calling me at work unless something was wrong. My parents were more than proud of me and where I had taken my career. Because of this, they refused to call during work hours even though I told them that if it was important, it didn’t matter.

“Hello?” I nervously forced from my dry throat as I placed the black receiver to my cheek and untangled the cord. “Fucking mess,” I murmured, flipping the phone outward and pulling at the curled wire.

“Excuse me?” Mom all but shouted into my ear as soon as I put it against my head, and my hand flew up to cover my mouth.

“Sorry, Mom. What’s wrong?” I probed, getting right to the point. Some families pussy-footed around things, but that wasn’t us. It had never been. We’d been through too much to worry about the pleasantries every other family had the luxury of observing. At least, it wasn’t how I handled things, my parents, on the other hand, were a completely different story.

“It’s Dad.”

“What about him?”

“The doctor said the prognosis is a good one. Fuck, I’m sorry I called. I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t know what to do.” She sobbed when the last few words left her lips. “I’m sorry, Rachel. You know how I feel about doctors and their ‘everyone is going to be okay’ bullshit. It’s just…it’s back,” she whispered. “He wasn’t going to call you. Hell, he didn’t want me to, but he doesn’t have the energy to get out of bed most days now. He doesn’t know I’m on the phone with you. I just…had to tell you. You needed to know.”

“It’ll all be okay, Mom. I promise.” I cringed as the lie slithered up my windpipe, and it constricted as I forced the deceptive words to find volume and meaning. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Every set of eyes in the shop was now on me and impatiently awaiting the next words to leave my lips. I was the type of person who didn’t get incredibly personal with anyone, but over the past few years, working alongside these guys, I’d opened up to them. They all knew my dad wasn’t in the best of health and that I would drop everything if I had to for him.

“No, Ray. I don’t want you to do that. We don’t want you to give up your career for us,” Mom sighed on the other end of the call and was, no doubt, pacing the small space in the bathroom of our three-bedroom home. It was where she made all of her calls she didn’t want Dad to overhear.

“Mom, it’s cancer. It took Grandma and Granddad. I won’t sit idly by eight hours away just to get another phone call telling me that my dad is dead. I won’t do it. I’ll be there before you know it,” I promised, sucking back the ball of regret growing by the minute in the center of my throat. I should have moved back the first time he got cancer, but the doctors promised they had caught it early enough to get rid of it, and they thought they had. Evidently, they had not.

---