Page 2 of Bullet
I rolled my eyes. “He didn’t set me up with her so much as he forced my hand.”
“Yeah, but you went.”
We checked out of the gun range, I paid for the targets we’d shot, and then we walked out into the fresh fall morning and over to where our bikes were parked. “You took her home, too,” he laughed, “because you walked into the club the next day like you had springs in your shoes.”
With lightning speed, I reached over and smacked him across the back of the head. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Fine!” Avery yelped, rubbing his head. “Fuck, you try and joke with your best friend a little and look what it gets me.”
We each climbed on our bikes and a moment later, the rumble of them starting up pierced the quiet air. Birds and squirrels scattered from nearby as I twisted my handle to rev a couple of times, then with a screech, I spun my wheel to kick a little dust up at Avery, and then fired off, out of the parking lot and onto the main road.
Nothing in Hoppa was too far from the next thing over. Anyone who lived here long enough could draw the entire town map from memory, and it made it easy to get from A to B. Of course, this was bittersweet for motorcycle riders. By the time we really got going, we were already arriving at our destination. Back in the day, I might have spent a little time taking the long way around, maybe even ditching Avery and taking a ride down the highway and back before the meeting, but history had taught me that keeping a trusted ally by your side was a good idea and that, sometimes, long rides lead to trouble.
I was first into the parking lot at Hoppa’s Taphouse, the meeting grounds of the Steel Knights Motorcycle club. Apart from being Hoppa’s premiere drinking spot, it was no mystery that we ran our operations there. A large Steel Knights banner hung from the roof down the side of the building, overlooking the parking spots that were painted with the same sigil to symbolize that they were designated for club members only. Only two of the spots were occupied when Avery and I pulled in, so I parked in the next one over and then Avery next to me.
The rumble of our idling bikes filled the air for a few brief seconds until we powered down, leaving us in a deafening silence.
“It’s weird isn’t it?” Avery said. “Just four officers. I’m not paranoid like Nick, but evenIknow this isn’t good.”
A few different thoughts crossed my brain, but I opted to keep them to myself. After everything I’d been through with the former Vice President and Nick’s daughter, Tess, and our brief, President-forced Secretary, Colin, my feelings on their sudden absconding together were complicated, to say the least.
“How many spots does it leave open?” Avery asked.
“Three, including Grim’s spot. We’re out a VP, a Sergeant, and a Secretary.”
Avery sputtered out a chuckle as he climbed off his bike. “I didn’t even know Secretary was a position.”
“Quite a useful one,” I said as I unmounted my bike and tucked my helmet away in the back compartment. “Though I can admit, it wasn’t until Nick suddenly nominated CJ to that spot that it even occurred to me that we didn’t have one.”
“How come?” Avery asked.
“That I don’t know.” With a tap on Avery’s shoulder, I started for the front door. “But I intend to ask.”
The front door to Hoppa’s jingled as we walked through it, and as expected, only two other people were inside. It’d been a few weeks since everything had gone down with our rival gang, the Unchained Dogs, and Tess, Colin, and Taylor came to blows which ultimately ended Taylor’s life, but we’d been sort of ignoring and skirting the issue. Today was the first official meeting our President, Nick, had called since then, and I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was that it was a strange feeling not seeing Taylor, Nick’s late son, throwing me a psychotic gaze from the back corner, while I attempted to keep my own hateful glare from settling too long on his sister, Tess. Despite my thoughts about the former Vice President and Sergeant at Arms, there was no denying that their departures had left a couple of wide, deep crevices in the Steel Knights battalion, and Nick had done little to close them yet.
“Hey, y’all,” Bernard “Bucky” LePall called over from the pool table that sat in the back-left corner of the bar. He was hunched over, aiming his stick at the white pool ball. “I’mjustabout done kicking Nick’s ass, then we can get started.”
I looked to Nick, expecting a colorful jeer or counterstrike, but he looked more like a ghost sitting on a stool against the wall with a pool stick balanced between his legs. He was staring at the table, but it likely wasn’t what he was seeing. His short brown hair had, in the span of just a few weeks, started to sprout patches of gray, and though he normally kept his face shaven, he’d grown a budding goatee, which also had gray hairs poking through.
Nodding my head in his direction, I called out, “Hey, Nick.”
It was almost as if he didn’t hear us enter or hear Bucky address us. “Oh, hey.” He looked around the empty bar with sunken-in eyes and pursed lips. “I guess this is it, huh?”
“For officers,” Avery said as he walked around the bar and pulled a couple of bottles of water from the small cooler that sat against the back wall. He tossed one to me before leaning over the bar and opening his own. “How ya holding up there, Nicky?”
He shrugged. “I’m still here, ain’t I?”
“Eight ball, corner pocket.” Bucky finally took his shot on the pool table, smacking the white pool ball, knocking it into the eight ball, which flew into the pocket he’d called. He chuckled with satisfaction. “That’s how it’s done, Squared.”
Nick hardly seemed fazed. He set a few bills on the pool table, then hung up his stick and walked over to the bar. He sat down on one of the bar stools and I sat on one a few down from him. “Get me a whisky, Bullseye. Neat,” he said.
Avery side-eyed me quickly, no doubt because Nick was requesting a drink, but I just shook my head, and Avery shrugged before pulling a bottle of whisky out from below the bar, along with a glass to pour it into. He filled the glass up about halfway and slid it over, but Nick didn’t drink it, rather just pulled it up to his nose and smelled it a bit, before setting the glass back down on the counter and just staring into the liquid.
After a few seconds of silence, he took a deep breath and stood up off the stool with the glass in hand. “All right. Let’s head back.”
No one protested as Nick walked around the bar and Avery waited for him to pass through the door to the kitchen first, before following after him. I stepped just ahead of Bucky behind the bar, but he was right on my heels, and we filed through the kitchen and followed Nick through the heavy, swinging metal door in the back of the kitchen into the warehouse in the back, in the center of which was our round meeting table. There were still several chairs situated around the table, but no one made mention of that as Nick sat in his regular chair and the rest of us situated ourselves at equal intervals around the table to not make it feel so empty.
“First of all, gentlemen,” Nick started, “I need to apologize. Not just for these past few weeks of uncertainty, but for the way I behaved after Colin first arrived. I could try and make excuses for what happened, but the truth is, I let the fact that I’m a father overshadow the fact that I’m your President. I was nervous about things with the Unchained Dogs, yes, but I embarked on a course of action that was in direct conflict to our bylaws and dwarfed your jobs as members, simply because I liked Colin and wanted him to be close at hand.” He snickered. “I’m not gonna lie to you guys, Istillfucking like him. He loves my daughter and I know he’s gonna take care of her, wherever the hell they are. I wish things had worked out differently. This all may be a different story.”
