Page 41 of Single Mom's Bikers

“Speaking of stories…” I settle across from her. “Tell me one.”

“About?”

“You. Before Wolf Pike. Before us.”

She’s quiet so long I think she won’t answer. Then: “I grew up in Seattle. Middle-class family, nothing special. Art school dropout because real life got in the way. Met the girls’ father young and thought I knew everything. Turns out I knew nothing.”

It’s the story from her resume. No more, no less.

“And now?” I gesture to her bare feet on my chair, comfortable in my space.

“Now I’m here. With three impossible men who drive me crazy in completely different ways.”

“Good crazy?”

“The best kind.” She studies her glass. “Rick with his protectiveness. Zane with his playfulness. You with your artist’s soul.”

“That how you see us?”

“That’s how you are. Different pieces that somehow fit.”

“Like you fit with all of us?”

Pink touches her cheeks. “Maybe.”

“I noticed the way Mrs. Wilson hugged you before she left. That woman adores you.”

“She reminds me of my grandmother. Always baking cookies, telling stories about the old days.”

“Tell me about her—your grandmother.”

“She taught me to bake.” Evie’s smile turns nostalgic. “Every Sunday, we’d make these horrible attempts at pie. The kitchen would be covered in flour, but she never got mad.”

“Is that where you learned patience?”

“God, no. That came from art school.” She sips her whiskey. “Two years at Seattle Art Institute before real life got in the way. The first time I kissed a boy was in the sculpture garden there.”

“Yeah?” I lean forward, caught by the soft look in her eyes. “How’d that go?”

“Terrible. He tasted like cheap coffee and tried using tongue immediately.” She wrinkles her nose. “Yours?”

“Sandra Mitchell, behind the high school bleachers. She bit my lip so hard it bled.”

Her laugh echoes through my studio. “No wonder you became a tattoo artist. Already used to pain.”

“What about your first time?”

She goes red. “Promise not to laugh?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Senior prom. Back of his dad’s Volvo. Most uncomfortable twenty minutes of my life.”

“Only twenty minutes?”

“Including the awkward apology after.”

We trade stories like secrets—her college adventures, my first tattoo apprenticeship. She tells me about meeting the girls’ father, thinking she knew everything about love.

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