Page 10 of Odin
Up and on to a new crazy adventure that I never in a million years would have seen coming.
Chapter 5
Odin
Ican’t say that I’ve lived my life as a good man, but over the past decade, I’ve done a lot of work to try and change that. I used to be a drinker, which led to inevitably being a brawler. I grew up as the unwanted kid and fought when I had to. I didn’t realize that I was developing a taste for violence until it was all I craved. I was so angry. I didn’t know how to take myfuck the systemattitude and turn it into something productive.
I drifted around the country, taking odd jobs here and there. I followed a girl to LA, stayed for a while, met Preston’s mom one night, and nine months later, I had a kid. Except, I really didn’t. I knew I couldn’t take care of one. I wasn’t the kind of influence that anyone should have in their lives. I didn’t know how to turn my life around, even if I wanted to.
The one thing Ididwant was for that child to be loved, and it was clear that Honey wanted the baby. When she called me, she detailed all her plans to find a new job, because working at the club when she started showing wasn’t going to be an option. She promised to stop drinking and said she’d never done drugs. She wanted to make something stable for the baby as badly as I wanted that child to have it.
I offered her money, right from the start, even though some months I didn’t have fuck all to my name.
Making a child—I won’t say becoming a dad—was the first step in me trying to get my shit together. I startedstaying in places longer, just to ensure that I could make enough money to send Honey’s way. I was never good at anything besides stealing, drinking, and fighting, so I turned what I knew into jobs of sorts.
There’s never a shortage of places looking for entertainment, and underground fighting can be quite lucrative. I didn’t even have to do it all that often. I just had to win.
I stole cars when I was a teenager, and I knew a little about them. I went legit to keep myself out of prison, buying junk, fixing it, and flipping it for a profit. I figured out early that junkers were all well and good and there was always going to be a market for them, but once I had some cash, classics was the way to go. There was crazy profit to be made in restorations. People are nostalgic. They love old shit. They don’t want to let go of the past and there’s nothing better than getting to relive it.
I was renting a shitty house in a bad neighborhood, but being a rough guy myself, people knew not to fuck with my dilapidated double car garage and what was inside of it. It was a good thing too, because I never had anything insured. You need to exist to the outside world for that, which was something I didn’t do. I had virtually no ID past a fake license, and not even a good one at that. I paid no taxes. I didn’t even have a goddamn birth certificate. No one cares to really look that hard for a kid who disappeared out of foster care at thirteen and ceased to be.
I’d spent a bunch of time restoring an old sixty-eight Mustang Fastback. It was nothing special, and when I was done with it, it still wasn’t hot shit, but I took it to some amateur Milwaukee car show anyway. I was proud of it and whatever. It wasn’t the big leagues. Just a bunch of people meeting who hadcommon interests. I thought, at the very least, it would be a good way to make some business for myself.
I never could have anticipated the way my life changed. We all knew the second that group of bikers roared into that arena parking lot. Their chrome horses were loud, gorgeous, and somewhat intimidating. A lot of guys there shrank away from the big leather clad men, but not me. It was me who had all the questions when they came to have a look at my car.
Two and a half decades later, it’s wild to look back and sketch out the trajectory of my life in my mind, but that’s exactly what I do as I sit in the corner of Crow’s private room at his studio, my arms crossed over my chest, as stoic as the granite angel on the back of my leather jacket.
Once I brought Willow upstairs, I had her wait with Jonathan in the back hall while I went to find Crow. I broached the idea to him, and within two fucking seconds, the whole club was buzzing about it. In the end he agreed to do the tattoo. Tarynn wanted to come, even if she had to just hang out on the couches in the front of the studio. I made the introductions, Willow was shy, but okay with everything, and thirty minutes and a ride in Tarynn’s car later, we were at the shop and Crow had everything set up.
He did say it went against his principles to tattoo anyone who was drunk, but Willow insisted she was sober. It had been a couple of hours since she’d had the whiskey, and Crow was satisfied she wasn’t intoxicated.
Two hours later, he’s almost done the sleek black panther and two traditional roses that she wanted. He’s fast as fuck at what he does. I now see how he can knock out an entire back piece in just a few sessions and do a killer job of it.
Tarynn’s been hanging out in the other chair in the large room, and she got Willow talking about just about anything and everything as a distraction. Tarynn used to be so damn quiet and shy, but it’s remarkable how she can talk to anyone at all. She’s open and doesn’t hide, which in turn inspires the same confidence in sharing. I guess what they say about hairdressers doubling as therapists is true.
I’ve been more than content to sit here and listen to Willow talk about her life in LA. Her dad owned a business that his parents started. His mom died young, and his dad passed when she was just a kid. He inherited the business, and she and her parents were doing well until he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at an insanely young age. He’d tried to make preparations, but it all happened so fast, that there was only so much he could do. The company had just undergone an ambitious expansion, and there wasn’t much money left when he sold it. His health insurance declined to cover any of the testing, procedures, medications, and the hospital stay at the end. They cited what they usually do. The pre-existing condition bullshit. That left the family with a crazy amount of debt. Her parents lived within their means, but the house was mortgaged and both cars were on payments. It was that kind of means. Just because you live a certain lifestyle, doesn’t mean you have money in the bank at the end of the day.
They sold what she could, and in the end, they covered the debt, but barely. They were forced to move. Instead of letting life being a real bitch crush her, Willow worked her ass off. Her mother seems virtually useless to me, but maybe I’m being harsh knowing what I know about how things went down a few days ago.
She even told Tarynn about how she and Preston dated in high school, how she was the one to break it off when her dad died, and how five years later, they reconnected at Berkeley. She refused to be embarrassed that they were no longer in the same income bracket, and he confessed that he’d never really got over her.
It makes me doubly furious that my son acted like the fucktard of the century, making demands about her not working and not continuing her schooling when she threw so much of her time and energy into it in the first place.
After all of two hot minutes knowing her, I can see that she and my son were mismatched. I can’t help but think that this woman deserves someone epic to love her. A match for her unbroken spirit, her wry sense of humor, her bravery, her obvious intelligence, and her enthralling beauty.
And fuck does that ever make me feel like a total shithead about that boner that I popped earlier in the basement.
Yes, it was reflex, but I haven’t stopped cursing myself since. I’m far from being an old man yet, but I’m nearly twice her age and that’s justwrong, never mind her relationship to my biological son.
“What are you going to do now, do you think?” Tarynn asks softly. She crosses her legs, rearranging herself in the black chair in the corner. They’re not made for sitting hours in, and even she’s feeling the discomfort. I barely fit in the thing, so my ass was numb over an hour ago, but I can be a stubborn motherfucker when I want to be.
Willow twists a strand of her long, platinum blonde hair between her slender fingers. Her nails are perfectly manicured, a pretty pink with a white tip at the end.
“I’m not sure yet. Probably just find somewhere to stay for a bit. Get a small apartment and a job. Work for this year and hopefully reapply to a veterinary program wherever I am and doubly hope that my credits transfer over.”
Crow is already done the panther and one rose. He’s coloring the last one red, then he’ll do some shading like he did to the first, and that’ll be that. Probably not more than half an hour and we’ll be out of here.
And that’ll be it.
