Page 54 of Rebel

After a brief pause her girlfriend admitted, “You’re right about her not wearing his property cut. I don’t know what to think about that. He’s not put her in his cut, and he allows her to hang all over him, but he also doesn’t sleep with any of us anymore. It’s a weird situation.”

“True. I remember all the girls saying he was insatiable.”

“Yeah, he was. Those were the good old days.”

“I think if he had the hots for this Lucy bitch, he’d put her in his cut. The other girls say Rebel always played the field and was an equal opportunity bed partner when he was a prospect.”

It pissed me off that she couldn’t even get my name right but had a buttload of insults she felt comfortable spewing.

“Yeah,” her friend said in a wistful voice. “I remember the times when he’d carry one of us under each arm to show how strong he was and then cart us off to bed.”

“Yeah, I remember the others talking about that too,” Tonya lamented. “Damn, if I’d only come a month or two earlier, I could have gotten a piece of that action.”

“You would have liked him and he for sure would have loved having you in his bed. You’re beautiful and open minded. That was the magical combination for Rebel, if I remember correctly.”

Tonya’s voice turned snarky, “I bet she only does missionary, and I don’t see how one woman could really satisfy a man like Rebel. He’s too much. Once I heard about his voracious sexualappetite, I thought he’d just settle down with a couple of us club girls eventually and forgo marriage altogether. I was planning to be one of those girls too.”

Damn, were these two ever going to leave their stalls? I was getting sick of hearing them talk about Rebel that way.

“That would have been wild,” her friend responded. “I could actually see him laying claim to two women in my mind’s eye.”

My heart hurt to hear them talking about how he used to fuck all of them stupid. I clutched my clothing to keep my jeans from dropping to the floor.

The first club girl said morosely, “I don’t think he’s all that enamored with her. He likes her because she’s Zoe and Alison’s friend and it means he’s rubbing elbows with the club officers when he’s with her. It’s a huge status upgrade from a prospect, to running with club officers.”

By this time both of them finally decided to leave their stalls and were washing their hands while moving on to talking about which prospect they thought was going to get patched in next.

I took care of my personal business and stepped out of the stall to wash my hands. As the warm water flowed and I pumped soap into my hands, I thought about their words. A memory floated through my mind of him talking about getting in the shower to keep from having several rounds of morning sex after a full night of sex. Those two club girls were right, I wasn’t a sex machine. If he had the kind of sex drive they talked about, there was no way he could find being only with me satisfying. Knowing that cut deep.

I dried my hands and went back to sit with my friends, the mellowness that I’d had when I’d gone into the restroom had evaporated and I felt stone-cold sober. Although I plastered a smile on my face, I was anything but happy. Still, being with Zoe and Alison made me feel temporarily better about my situation. I should have talked to them about the things the club girls were saying but I was too humiliated to bring it up, especially about Rebel using me to get in with the club officers.

I couldn’t seem to shake off the idea that maybe, for all his sincerity and how he seemed to be falling in love with me, Rebel might have ulterior motives for taking a liking to me. Maybe he liked me and was leveraging his relationship with me to propel himself to a higher status in the club. Anything was possible, but I wasn’t stupid.

I knew most of the club girls were objectively beautiful in a way that I wasn’t. I had never had particularly low self-esteem when it came to looks because I’d always been described as cute in an innocent kind of way, pretty and attractive. Men didn’t exactly flock to me, and I’d had my heart broken more than once, but I’d never had a hard time getting dates. But Rebel had been feasting on beautiful women, sometimes taking a couple to his bed at the same time. How could I possibly compare to that? The cold hard truth was that I couldn’t compete with beautiful women throwing themselves at him every night. The only thing I had to offer that he really wanted was my contacts with Zoe and Alison, which he could use to fast-track himself to the officers of the club he loved and so desperately wanted to fit in with.

Ugh, thinking about this made my head hurt. Zoe and Alison were arguing about whether the old ladies should start their own companion club. When they turned to look for my input, I just shrugged. “There doesn’t seem to be enough old ladiesinterested in riding their own motorcycles to make something like that viable.

Zoe gestured to me, but spoke to her sister, “See, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Before Alison could continue the debate, I told them, “I’ve got a splitting headache. I think I’m going to head to Rebel’s room and grab some sleep.” It was a good ruse because I was pretty sure they wouldn’t want me leaving the clubhouse drunk.

Alison’s eyes shot over to her sister and then back to me, “I hope our debate didn’t contribute to your headache?”

I shook my head. “Of course not. It’s a tension headache that’s been slowly building all day. I just need some rest and I’ll probably be all better in the morning.”

Zoe leaned over and asked, “Do you need me to get you some pain killers?”

Holding up my purse, I shook it, “I’ve got a bottle of ibuprofen since I was pretty sure I’d need it at some point.”

“Alright, we’ll let you rest and one of us will check on you in the morning.”

“Thanks for understanding,” I told them. After I walked off, I glanced over my shoulder to see Zoe watching me leave. When she saw me looking, she smiled and waved and then started debating with her sister again. I could tell because she was waving one hand in the air as if she was trying to accentuate some point she was trying to make.

I was really tired of stressing about all the crazy shit going on in my life right now. I needed to hunker down somewhere I feltsafe and try to get some sleep. I’d told Zoe I was going to Rebel’s room, but to be honest I didn’t want to have to talk to him when he got back. Hearing what those club girls said had really shaken my confidence. Once Zoe’s attention was no longer on me, I went straight to the prospect that was the most involved in the cleanup at my office. Eric saw me coming and began looking around behind me for Rebel.

When I approached him, he jerked his chin at me. “What do you need, Miss Lacey?” It was cute how his tone of voice was gruff and all business.

“I was hoping to get a ride home.” I didn’t really need to explain more because he immediately realized why I was asking for a ride. The police had finished with my parents’ house, it was still a mess, but it was no longer a crime scene, and I didn’t think it was likely that whoever had trashed the place would return.

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