Page 4 of The Vows We Keep
Anything to burn some energy.
If I stay here, I’m gonna pick a fight or say some shit I shouldn’t. Instead, I decide to go home. I glance around for King to tell him I’m leaving, but I don’t see him.
The night air is cool and the hit of nicotine potent as I stand in the club’s yard and look up at the clear night sky. There are a billion stars.
I roll my neck from side to side.
I’m hopeful we’ll get back into real action soon. The Righteous Brotherhood deserves to be buried. While it’s great that Vex is fighting them from afar ... a one-man electronic war ... I prefer to meet my enemies head-on. Mano-a-mano.
Truth is, I’m bored. Always have been. Hyper focused on something one minute, ten thousand things flying through my brain at the speed of light the next. Sudden urges that demand I learn how to do something new, then I’m bored rigid by it five days later.
I remember the summer I became aTitanicexpert. The following year, it was snow camping. I found I was good with my hands. Art. Carpentry. Building things.
I touch where my scar crosses my lip. A permanent reminder of what can happen when I’m distracted.
Only two things stuck: Drawing became my outlet, and then led to my career as a tattoo artist. And baking. Yeah, unexpected, I know. But nothing rights the tilt my brain sometimes goes on than sifting flour.
The bottle of Jack sloshing around in me provides a bearable alcohol blanket, given I left my cut lying on my bed. It gets colder as I walk. Jersey in July is the best place in the world. I love the sweltering heat. Jersey in February is hell month.
I wonder what the temperature is right now. And if it’s this cold here, I wonder how hot it must be on the opposite side of the world. Which makes me wonder where the actual opposite side of the world is to Asbury Park, New Jersey. Is it somewhere in Australia? Or the middle of the ocean?
I’ve got the urge to bake. Chocolate chip cookies. Don’t even know if I have flour, but it suddenly feels imperative that I make cookies tonight.
I’m still imagining the taste of chocolatey sugar when a bag is pulled over my head and I’m knocked out cold to the sound of a woman’s voice.
2
CATALINA
I’m mad.
No. Scratch that. I’m pissed.
I look at the man currently tied to a chair and debate slapping his face to wake him up.
“Hey, Cat. You want a sub?” Neva, my best friend and literal partner in crime, never lets anything get in the way of food—even something as inconsequential as having the president of a motorcycle club tied up in the kitchen of this grim, abandoned house. The splintering white cabinets, one hanging off its hinges, the water running down an interior wall, and sticky tile floor are probably the reasons no one lives here. It being isolated and having a deep burgundy carpet in the living room that won’t show blood are all bonuses.
I was five when I met Neva. Barstow, California, seemed so intimidating after moving from Tonalá, Jalisco. Even my young eyes saw the wide stares on white faces when we moved into our new home.
But Neva, a year older than me, took one look and decided we were going to be best friends. We’ve never deviated from this path.
When allowed, we’ve hung out at theunofficialLos Reyes clubhouse as Los Reyes is officially a Mexican bike club and isn’t supposed to exist north of the border. So, the Barstow chapter of Los Reyes isn’t officially a sanctioned club, but it runs like one, smoothing the supply of drugs into the US and providing aid to brothers from the Mexican chapters if they need assistance. It’s where club members now living around Barstow congregate.
My father, who worked his way to vice-president, called us El Dúo.
Always together.
We worked out together, learned to shoot together. Realized I was good with knives while Neva is good with drugs—the growing and dispensing, not the using.
And as we grew into adults, we became Los Reyes’ dirty little secret.
Because for a club that proclaims only men can be members, they don’t mind leaning on the two of us when it comes to subterfuge, disguises, honey traps, and anything else a man in a cut can’t do. As the chapter’s president, Perrito, said, with tits like mine, I should put them to good use.
I told him with a road name that meantlittle dog, he should stop acting like a bitch.
Dad stepped in. Told me to stop mouthing off at Perrito and told Perrito to watch how he spoke about his daughter.
I don’t really want the sub Neva is offering. I’d give anything for my mamá’s tostadas instead of a thick lump of bread, but I take it because I’m hungry. “Sure thing. What am I eating?” I ask as I pick it up and sniff it.
