LOVER COME BACK_An Unbelievable But True Love Story Read online

  We parked our motorcycles along the sidewalk that connected the bar’s front door to the patio. Before I had a chance to get off my bike, the crowd erupted in cheers and drunken applause. There were four men seated at a high-top table, however, that seemed far more concerned with the three of us than the football game.

  I glanced at the four oversized idiots and then looked at Teddy. “Let me guess,” I said flatly. “The four frat brothers.”

  Teddy was in his mid-thirties and looked more like an outdoorsman than a biker. He cut his unkempt hair once a year, and rarely trimmed his unruly beard. Instead of black boots and wife-beaters, flannel shirts and Doc Martens were his attire of choice.

  He swept his kick stand down, glanced toward the patio, and then gave me a confused look. “The what?”

  I gestured with my eyes toward the four men who were now fidgeting in their seats. “The four dip-shits with the Greek letters on their shirts.”

  He glanced in their direction and stroked his beard. After a long study, he nodded. “Yep. That’s them.”

  I climbed off my bike. With my back to the men, I looked at him and arched an eyebrow. “Which one was it?”

  “Hard sayin’.” He craned his neck and peered over my shoulder. “I just saw the finger, not who it was attached to.”

  Our MC took part in a poker run earlier in the day. Afterward, fifty or so of us went to a local bar. Then, around five o’clock, the club voted to go to a different bar.

  Chico was sweet on one of the bar’s waitresses, so we stayed behind until her shift ended. With her on the back of Chico’s bike – and us trailing an hour behind the rest of the club – we left in typical biker fashion.

  Fast and loud.

  We shot out of the bar’s parking lot full-throttle, racing toward the downtown district to meet the rest of the club. Upon coming to a stop at the first traffic light, Teddy informed me that someone had flipped us the bird and shouted something as we rode away from the bar.

  I treated everyone with respect. I expected the same in return. So, upon hearing of the disrespectful gesture, I demanded that we turn around and go back to the bar. Teaching the men in question a lesson was something I felt compelled to do.

  Chico’s arms were loosely draped over the top of his ape hanger handlebars. The bubbly blond waitress had her hands in his lap and her boobs pressed against his back.

  The Black Keys’ Sinister Kid blared from his custom Road King’s speakers.

  “Fuck ‘em,” Chico said. “I say we stab ‘em up. Disrespectful pricks.”

  Chico was half-Hispanic, muscular, and covered in tattoos. With short black hair and a neatly-trimmed goatee, he could easily pass for one of SoCal’s Chicano bikers, but he was born and raised in the Midwest.

  His answer to everything was stabbing someone. An awkward look in the coffee shop, a spilled drink, or someone giving his motorcycle a second glance were all grounds for being stabbed.

  I glared at him. “Nobody’s getting stabbed up.” I shifted my eyes to Teddy and gestured toward the rock garden at the edge of the sidewalk. “Hand me one of those rocks without any of those fuckers seeing you. A big flat one.”

  Teddy’s eyes widened. “What’s the plan?”

  “You two are going to sit here,” I said. “And, I’m going to teach them a lesson on respect.”

  With his hands hidden from their sight, Teddy handed me a four-inch round one-inch thick rock.

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  The rock was heavy in my hand. It would give me the edge I needed to face the four college football players. With my back to the men, I slipped the massive stone into the pocket of my jeans.

  “It’s perfect,” I said with a nod.

  Teddy looked at my rock-filled pocket and shook his head. “You sure you want to do this?”

  He was the club’s pacifist. In his opinion, God would sort out everything in the end. Nothing warranted violence. I disagreed with his theory wholeheartedly. If anyone knew it, he did.

  “They need to be taught a lesson,” I said dryly. “You know I’ll never be able to live with myself if I don’t do this.”

  He let out a sigh. “You’re going up there alone?”

  If three kutte-wearing tattooed bikers sauntered up to the men’s table, it would be intimidating. Intimidation was a form of bullying. I was many things, but a bully wasn’t one of them.

  I needed to act alone.

  I nodded. “Yep.”

  I glanced at Chico. The ditzy blonde’s delicate nineteen-year-old hands were resting in his lap while her head bobbed to the music.

  I shook my head at the sight. “If things go to hell in a handbasket, you two can join in. Only if they go to shit, though.” I gestured toward the waitress. “Leave her ass here if you come up there.”

  Chico pulled out his phone. “I’m recording this shit.”

  I shot him a glare. “No, you’re not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. It’s intimidating,” I explained. “You know how I am about that shit.”

  “You’re six-foot-two, covered in prison tats, and have a permanent scowl on your face.” He chuckled. “It doesn’t matter if you go over there alone or if we go with you. It’s going to intimidate them, either way.”

  “I need to convince them that I’m right and that they were wrong. If you’re recording it, it’s going to make them nervous, and they might agree with me even if they don’t agree with me. I need to make sure their apology is sincere. Put the phone up,” I said.

  He shoved the phone into the pocket of his kutte. “Whatever, you weird fucker.”

  I inhaled a deep breath and turned toward the patio. “Wish me luck.”

  Prepared to beat any – or all – of them into seeing things from my perspective, I strode toward the four men with purpose in my walk. It was the same bravado gait I’d used many times in prison to warn the other inmates that I wasn’t an easy mark.

  With each step, I kept my eyes focused on the men. I wondered how receptive they’d be to my request. I fully realized teaching people life lessons wasn’t my place on earth, nor was it God’s will, but I’d spent a lifetime doing it, nonetheless.

  I stretched my legs over the waist-high wooden fence that separated the patio from the parking lot and walked up to the edge of the men’s table.

  While the four of them stared at me wide-eyed, I pulled out a spare stool and sat down at the end of their table. Two of the men were seated on my left, and two were on my right.

  I made eye contact with each of them, and then gave a nod. “How you fellas doing?”

  Three of them stared at me in sheer disbelief. The fourth, the biggest of the group, took a long drink of his beer and then pushed the mug to the side. “Trying to watch the game,” he said. “What’s up?”

  I locked eyes with him and leaned forward, resting my forearms on the edge of the table. “Well, one of the fellas I was riding with gave me some troubling news.”

  He glanced toward Teddy and Chico, looked at me, and chuckled. “What’s that got to do with us?”

  He was obviously the leader of the group and wanted to play the part in front of his friends. I had minimal patience for smart-asses, less for liars, and none for people who treated others with disrespect.

  He had crossed all three boundaries.

  I sized up his three friends and then looked him up and down. At six-foot-two and just shy of two hundred pounds, I wasn’t small by any means. He easily had fifty pounds on me, as did each of his friends.

  But, he was the one with the mouth. Therefore, he was the one I needed to talk to.

  Hidden from his view by the table, I slipped my hand into the right pocket of my jeans and gripped the rock.

  “It’s got everything to do with you,” I explained in a dry tone. “You see, one of you flipped us off when we were leaving a few minutes ago. I’m sure you’re aware that the gesture is a universal sign for fuck you. I don’t know about the four of you, but when some
one tells me to fuck off, I see it as a sign of disrespect. I’m weird about people treating others disrespectfully, so here’s how I’m going to handle this.”

  I paused and looked at each of the men. “Whichever one of you did it has one chance to apologize. Just one. If no one admits to it, I’m going to start beating on you.” I gestured toward Big Boy with a nod. “And, I’ll beat you like you’ve never been beaten before.”

  His Adam’s apple rose, and then fell.

  “I’m pretty sure your buddies will get me off you at some point. But, I can guarantee you this.” I stood, clenched my jaw, and gripped the rock firmly in my hand. “Tomorrow, at some point, you’ll look in the mirror at your missing teeth and the cuts I left on your face, and you’ll say to yourself, damn, I wish I would have apologized to that guy yesterday.”

  Each of the men stared back at me with open mouths and wide eyes.

  “I’m going to count to three,” I explained. “By the time I get there, someone better be apologizing.”

  I raised my left index finger in the air. “One…”

  “I did it,” Big Boy blurted.

  I shook my head. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Your motorcycles were really loud, and we were trying to watch the game.”

  I gestured toward the sign in the parking lot behind him and chuckled. It was one of a dozen that read, MOTORCYCLE PARKING ONLY, and reserved the front twelve parking spots for bikers.

  “In case you didn’t know it, you’re in a biker bar. It’s neither here nor there, though. Disrespect is disrespect. If you treat the wrong man with disrespect, you’ll get your ass kicked – or killed. You’re lucky it’s me talking to you, and not that ugly Mexican over there.” I raised my eyebrows. “Now, I’m going to need you to apologize.”

  Big Boy let out a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

  “Fair enough.” I glanced at each of the men. “Look at it as a lesson learned. Give respect, and you’ll get it in return. Remember that, it just might get you out of a jam sometime.”

  I reached into my left pocket, pulled out my money clip, and tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Next round is on me, fellas.”

  “I appreciate it,” the man on my left said.

  “I appreciate the fact your buddy had enough common sense to apologize.” I pulled the rock from my pocket and slapped it down on top of the bill with a thud. “Have a nice evening, fellas.”

  Chapter Eight

  I’d worked for more than twenty years in the construction management industry. With my focus being large commercial buildings, I designed, bid, and managed construction projects from concept to completion. Over the years, I’d established quite a reputation for developing cost-reduction options without sacrificing a building’s quality or performance.

  The day I was released from prison, I had multiple job offers waiting. I accepted the most challenging one. Then, two years later, I walked away from the commercial construction industry entirely.

  I felt I needed a change in my life, I simply didn’t know what that change was. After a few months of blindly searching for the answer, I agreed to accept a job doing the same thing – on a smaller scale – with Teddy.

  He was a General Contractor by trade and owned his own business. He preferred projects that fell in the half-a-million-dollar range or less. I had spent two decades thumbing my nose at such jobs, preferring the complexity and reward that came with work priced in the tens of millions.

  I quickly found that working on smaller projects produced less headaches. Less headaches allowed me to live with much less tension in my life. It appeared – at least on the surface – that I’d found the answer to my problem.

  Working with Teddy and his indecisive nature, however, ground on my every nerve.

  “What if we move that island to the center of the room and put the display case on the south wall?” he asked.

  “What if we leave the son-of-a-bitch where it is and save two grand?” I growled.

  He gazed blankly at the proposed location. “It will flow better in here if we move it.”

  “It’ll flow fine if we leave it. Kids buying frozen yogurt won’t give two shits where that island is.”

  He stroked his beard with the web of his hand. “I think I’d like it better if we moved it.”

  “Did the owner complain about where it is?”

  Without facing me, he shook his head lightly. “No.”

  “Then were leaving it.”

  “I was just thinking—”

  “Look, dumbass. Every dollar we spend on this job is a dollar out of our pockets. Fifty cents out of mine, and fifty cents out of yours. It’ll cost two grand to move it, re-wire everything, and fix the floor. He isn’t going to sell any more yogurt if it’s over there. I’m not willing to pay a grand to satisfy your anal-retentive nature.”

  He looked at me. “I’m not anal-retentive.”

  “Maybe that’s a bad choice of words, but you’re weird, and you know it.”

  He looked me up and down. “Not as weird as you.”

  “There’s nothing weird about me, Brother,” I said dryly.

  He chuckled a dry laugh. “You weigh yourself ten times a day. You exercise at two in the morning. You sleep two or three hours a night. You’re so full of pride that it gets you in trouble. You—”

  I’d heard enough. I shot him a glare and interrupted him mid-sentence. “Hold on a fucking minute. So full of pride it gets me in trouble? I might have a boatload of self-esteem, but I don’t think I’m an excessively prideful person. I take exception to that comment.”

  “They go hand-in-hand.”

  I gave him a look. “What does?”

  “Pride and self-esteem.”

  “Excessive pride makes a man conceited. Are you saying I’m arrogant?”

  “No. You’re not arrogant.”

  “I’m confident. There’s a difference,” I explained. “My Pop and I talked about this. I don’t know if I told you or not, but at trial, the judge said I possessed a certain arrogance, and he suggested I find a way to lose it. When my Pop read the manuscript of the trial, he tossed it across the living room and started yelling when he reached that part. He said the judge needed to recognize the difference between arrogance and confidence.”

  His eyes thinned. “What’s the difference?”

  “Confidence is inwardly knowing your abilities. Arrogance is outwardly expressing your belief of the same.”

  He stroked his beard for a moment and then gave a nod. “I’d agree with your Pops.”

  “Checking my weight isn’t weird,” I added. “It’s maintenance.”

  He barked out a laugh. “You weigh yourself in the morning. Then, again, before you eat breakfast. Then, after breakfast. And, before we go for a ride. As soon as we get back to the house. Before you exercise. After you exercise. Then, again, before you go to bed. I’d call that weird.”

  “Fuck you,” I snapped back.

  “I forgot something. If that chick from the donut shop is so hot, why aren’t you throwing her some dick? That’s weird, too.”

  “Same reason you’re not screwing that little chick at the coffee shop who’s ga-ga over you. I don’t trust women. Now that you’ve mentioned it, she’s coming here for lunch.”

  “Who?”

  “Jess.”

  His eyes went wide. “She’s coming here?”

  “Yep.”

  He glanced left, and then right. “Today?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  He didn’t have to tell me that her expected arrival made him feel uneasy. Teddy couldn’t accept outsiders into his life without going through a painstaking process of questioning their intentions. In fact, he trusted only two of the men in the MC enough to allow them into his home. Despite his claim of not being weird, he was the strangest man I’d ever met.

  “You’ll be fine,” I said.

  He glanced around the room. “We’ll need to get these tools put up. And, all those light fixtures will
need to be hidden.”

  “She’s not going to steal the tools,” I said with a laugh. “And, the light fixtures are fine right where they are.”

  “They were a hundred bucks a piece. She could hock ‘em for fifty. We need to—”

  “They’re fine right where they are. You can trust this chick.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know.”

  “If any of this stuff comes up missing…”

  “If it comes up missing it won’t have anything to do with her, I can assure you of that.”

  Teddy had been remodeling his house for the past year. The interior of the home was stripped down to the bare studs and subfloor. Without sheetrock on the walls, one could peer from one end all the way to the other, seeing through each room, including the bathrooms.

  As a result of the home’s condition, he often slept in my spare room, sometimes for three or four days before returning to his dilapidated house.

  Six months prior, when he returned home after a two or three-day hiatus, he found out he’d been robbed. There wasn’t much stolen, because there wasn’t much to take. Everything of value, however, was gone.

  The police told him they doubted they’d catch the guy. No fingerprints were left, there was no security footage, and the neighbors saw no one come or go. It was the work of a true professional, according to the police.

  A few weeks later, by happenstance, they caught the guy. He was attempting to sell something he’d stolen from Teddy on eBay. The problem was that there was only one of these particular items on earth. The detective on the case had been checking eBay for the stolen item, hoping the criminal might use it as an avenue for ridding himself of the merchandise.

  After the criminal’s arrest, Teddy learned who he was.

  He was an unpatched member of our Motorcycle club. A hang-around. A friend. Someone who was with us day and night. He rode where we rode, ate where we ate, and attended club functions – less the meetings reserved for patched members only.

  The arrest didn’t cause Teddy to develop his lack of trust toward mankind, it simply confirmed the suspicions he already harbored. It was a huge step in the wrong direction for someone that was slowly beginning to learn how to trust.