Love Hard Read online

  The production of “Our Town” was so good, the local newspaper actually ran a feature on it. The local news station—the same one that had produced that shameful promo for the Savage Saints—also produced a segment on it. We sold out the auditorium our second and third nights, something that had never been done before.

  I felt on top of the world. And much of it was due to the work of Alyssa Newhouse. She was so good, and I looked very much forward to having her in my productions for the next three years; she had a way of making a mediocre drama teacher look pretty good.

  I kept looking to see if her father had come as well. I wouldn’t ever admit that out loud, but her father was very handsome and charming; even if it was nothing more than innocent flirting, I wished he had come. She ended up just going home with friends after those nights.

  The best part, though, was that I had avoided going back to the bottle once more. My streak was currently only at three days—four if you counted this Monday morning—but it was a streak, and it was a streak that spanned a weekend. It was hard to find a better situation to start a streak under, as everything else that would follow would be much easier to handle.

  When I parked my car that Monday, I was a little bit late, but only in comparison to my normal schedule. My body went through a little bit of the shakes and a chill, making it more difficult to sleep, but when I showed up around seven in the morning, I still had a full hour to prepare for my first English class.

  And then, just as I got to the front door, before I opened it and headed inside, I heard the worst sound of all: a sound that reminded me of Nathaniel every time I heard it.

  A motorcycle engine.

  I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t witnessed Nathaniel’s death—thank God for that, I probably would have lost my mind entirely—but I still associated the sound with his death because of how he had died. And the worst part was, they were everywhere in town. You couldn’t drive down the highway without seeing some asshole on two wheels, probably wearing some ugly ass jacket with some douchey logo. I swore that bikers in California had more rights than anywhere else, and it was aggravating as all hell.

  I couldn’t just walk in now. I was too triggered and too bothered by the sound. I had to see who the asshole was driving a bike this goddamn early in the morning, disturbing the peace for the rest of us normal citizens who just wanted to get work done.

  I turned and saw a man in a black shirt and jeans, with a younger girl with her arms around him. I knew that it was probably just a student with her father, but I had always thought girls on bikes as the desperate, whorish types; I knew that was a terrible judgment on my part, and at the school, it was clearly not true, but I couldn’t help the initial reaction to that.

  The girl got off and turned her back to me. She removed her helmet, letting her long brown hair fall as her father also hoped off and took her helmet from her. I couldn’t see who the man was, but I did see her give her father a kiss on the cheek and a hug before turning around.

  Imagine my shock and horror when I saw Alyssa Newhouse walking into the building.

  She waved to me, and I gently waved back, but I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Alyssa Newhouse… the darling of my drama department, and one of the humblest ones in the group despite her talent… was the daughter of a motorcyclist.

  To be frank, at that moment, I wondered if her father, Vance, was one of the Savage Saints. It just would’ve been so damn appropriate to have flirted with a man for nearly the first time since Nathaniel died and to have enjoyed it, only for him to have been a member of the Saints. How sickening would that have been? How cruel could the world get?

  However, Vance—I assumed it was Vance, at least—didn’t have on the jacket of the Saints or of any motorcycle gang, really. I was still annoyed as hell by the event and what it meant for me, but it wasn’t as bad as I had thought that it would be.

  Still, Alyssa, who was in my first-period class, had my sufficient concern. I tried to make it through teaching that first period, and while I succeeded, I definitely noticed more than a few of the students looking my way. I found an excuse to have Alyssa stay behind, and after reminding her about some work that I wanted to see to her, I got to the point.

  “By the way, was that your father who came in on a motorcycle this morning?”

  “Yep,” Alyssa said, with absolutely no concern in her voice. It was the sort of thing that left me wondering if I had just been overplaying the concern in my head; it wasn’t unreasonable to think that the world wasn’t nearly as disgusted by the bikes as I was. “He doesn’t usually drive me, I take the bus, but he’s wanting to become more involved in my day to day life, so he offered to take me.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling dumber by the moment.

  “Have you ever ridden a bike?”

  “No,” I said, trying not to hide my disgust with the question. “And I don’t really have any plans to. I just… I was a little thrown off this morning. I thought some boy might have driven you to school, and just wanted to make sure you were OK.”

  That was a lie, of course. The moment she had gotten off the bike, I could tell this wasn’t some punk twenty-year-old creepy boyfriend dating the high school freshman. At worst, it was some brother or some cousin I didn’t know about.

  But I couldn’t help myself.

  “Of course,” Alyssa said. “I’ve told Dad that it might’ve been a little embarrassing if he showed up in front of all my friends on a bike, so I had him drop me off early. Didn’t think that it would bother the teachers since they would all be there, but I’ll make sure to not have him drop me off. Sorry.”

  “No, no!” I said, now realizing I had just made things worse than they were before. “I didn’t, just, I’m sorry. I just wanted to make sure you were fine.”

  “OK,” Alyssa said with a reassuring smile, although knowing high school freshmen, word was now bound to spread that the English and drama teacher Ms. Ross was even crazier than normal. “Thanks, Ms. Ross.”

  “No problem,” I said, ushering her out of my classroom and wishing her well on the rest of the day.

  “You know, he is single.”

  “What?”

  The words had come out so fast that I could barely believe what was said. Now I began to think that I would be even more embarrassed by the students; I had this idea in my head of Alyssa telling all the theater folks about me being single and being flirted with by her father, and…

  “Sorry, I just saw you two talking after Friday’s show, thought you should know.”

  The smile she had on suggested that what she had said was not an accident. In fact, she seemed to have planned to say this very thing the whole time. I’m not sure if she had had her father ride the motorcycle in specifically to get a reaction out of me—the very fact that I considered the idea even plausible probably said a lot about my mental state when I was sober—but I definitely had spent a lot of the weekend thinking about Vance Newhouse.

  “Well, that’s thoughtful of you, Alyssa, but that wouldn’t be professional on my end.”

  Alyssa’s smile never faded, even when I tried to convince myself with my words that I was going to do exactly that. She was too smart and too intuitive to think that my feelings on Vance were anything but professional.

  “OK, just thought you should know,” she said.

  She’s good. She’s too good.

  With that, she finally left, heading down the hall to her next class as the next batch of students started pouring into my classroom. Thankfully, they all came long enough after my conversation with Alyssa that I didn’t think any of them had heard, but…

  With a few minutes to spare, I found myself wandering over to my calendar to look at the schedule. Parent-teacher conferences were scheduled just three days from then, on Thursday, with more sessions on Friday. It would be my best—perhaps my only—chance to see Vance again. I would be surrounded by teachers and other parents eager for a chance to talk to me, of course, but…

  Vance
had been good enough to flirt under the guise of thanking me at the performance on Friday. I had a feeling he’d have no problems finding a way to flirt with me at the conference.

  I just couldn’t believe that I was about to find myself interested in someone who drove a goddamn motorcycle.

  Chapter 5: Sensei

  Nearly five days had gone by since I had told Trace that I was resigning as an officer, and I had to say—I felt great.

  I missed the brotherhood, sure, and I missed being around the guys, but I didn’t miss the risks of being attacked. I didn’t miss having to make hard decisions. I didn’t miss being around a lifestyle that, in retrospect, I never really did fit in with.

  I loved bikes, but other than that, there wasn’t a whole lot that I felt like I had in common with the rest of the club. The club loved to drink; in general, I preferred to be the sober one, taking caution not to go too crazy and to make smart choices. The club loved to spend its money upgrading their bikes or on other frivolous things; I was an almost obsessive saver—it was how I had managed to buy a house north of Green Hills despite never making more than about fifty grand in a year. The club loved to sleep with women at every opportunity it could; admittedly, I had indulged in this more than I had drinking and spending, but even this was something that wasn’t done to a great extent. I met Olivia pretty young, anyway, so my days of sleeping around were not that long.

  And once she died, well, let’s just say the appeal of getting laid frequently was not very high. I had had emotional, compassionate, loving sex; the idea of just empty sex was about as appealing as empty calories. Sometimes, I indulged, but for the most part, I just stayed away from it all.

  It made me wonder how I had ever even gotten into the club in the first place, but the answer wasn’t that complicated. I had grown up in Green Hills, joined the club because I didn’t have a lot of other options, and stayed in the club because I didn’t have a lot of other options. My brothers in the club were truly my brothers, but it wasn’t something that I would have done in the presence of options.

  That was what I told myself right now, at least. Maybe I was trying to compensate and justify my departure from being an officer. I hadn’t even gone back since I had removed my officer patch that particular day; I never got the chance to make amends with Splitter. I didn’t care much about it, though. Splitter was emotionally volatile, and when he came back, he was just as likely to give me a hug as he was to flip me off.

  The one thing I couldn’t deny was that I missed my brothers. Alyssa was great company… but only to an extent. She was, after all, a teenager who had school. She let me drive her to school the first couple of days in the week, but she never let me pick her up, and she definitely didn’t want me hanging out—not that I would have done that. I did figure picking her up from school would be a nice gesture, but as a teenager was want to do, she didn’t think having her dad pick her up would look cool.

  It was mighty tempting to make some lame dad jokes and see her roll her eyes, but I thought better of it.

  In any case, though, I felt much more in my element being a stay-at-home father. Paul Peters had always joked that I was the angel on the shoulder of all of the devils in the club, a joke that became less funny as the Devil’s Mercenaries became a greater and greater threat. Nevertheless, if the club was full of devils, then that must have meant that it was hell, and hell was no place for an angel.

  Even if the club wasn’t exactly hell—far from it, really.

  It was now time, though, to engage in one of the most… normal things a father could do—attend a parent-teacher conference so I could learn how Alyssa was doing in all of her classes.

  I had little doubt that Alyssa was doing marvelously in all her classes. My attending this was more about showing Alyssa that I was taking fatherhood more seriously and showing my commitment to being here for her. I got plenty of looks when I showed up on my bike, but given that I was not wearing my cut, I think I avoided the most annoying of glares.

  Besides, by this point, I almost enjoyed getting judgmental looks for riding a bike, only to talk to the very people who had judged me and slowly see their expressions turned from annoyed and unamused to pleasantly surprised.

  As I went through her first few teachers, the conversations were a bit rambling, boring, and nondescript—but in the best way possible. They confirmed to me what I already knew—that Alyssa was a bright and wonderful student, that sometimes she could be almost too sharp and too witty for her own good, but on the whole, she was someone who made Green Hills High a better place.

  I had, however, saved the best for last.

  Courtney Ross.

  I still wasn’t sure what approach I was going to take when it came to talking to her. I had said that our first time was just practice for when I put myself out there, but… well, it wasn’t really practice if the butterflies in my stomach were real, was it? It wasn’t really practice if I had seen Courtney from afar the first day that I dropped Alyssa off, standing at the entrance of the school, watching us and feeling a certain sense of excitement that she was staring at me, was it?

  Maybe, instead of just lying to others, I was lying to myself now as well. The last fourteen years had been kind of lonely, and while my conscious mind might have worked to avoid relationships, my subconscious mind probably was yearning to get the hell out and meet new people.

  Right now, all I knew about Courtney was that she was very attractive, very sweet, and, by Alyssa’s accounts, someone single whom I should hang out with. I didn’t know anything of her background, nor how she felt about blue-collar folks like myself. Everything I had been thinking in my head could have wound up biting me in the ass, but I at least wanted to continue the playful banter.

  When my turn came, I sat down in front of Courtney Ross and noticed a nervous smile crossing my face.

  “Remember me?” I said, offering my hand.

  “Oh yes, Mr. Newhouse, how could I not?” Courtney said, taking my handshake back.

  There was something more vibrant about her today that I couldn’t quite peg. I had no idea what it was, but it was almost like her skin itself was glowing more and had a more luscious look to it. That didn’t make much sense since Courtney and I had last met all of a little under a week ago, but I couldn’t help but shake the feeling.

  “I dunno, a woman like you, I’m sure you have lots of fathers come up and want to chat.”

  She gave a short giggle, putting her hand over her mouth as she did so. It was so adorable, like she was trying not to give away how she was feeling at the moment.

  “Anyway, Mr. Newhouse—”

  “Call me Vance,” I said.

  I wanted to take care not to give away my club name right now. One, I didn’t want to be known as “the Savage Saint who had a kid here.” I just wanted to be an anonymous father so that the focus could be on Alyssa.

  Second, if I was serious about taking a step back from the club, that had to entail more than just me physically removing myself. I really did have to go from Sensei to Vance Newhouse.

  “OK, Vance,” she said. “Shall we talk about Alyssa?”

  “I would love to talk about her,” I said. “I can’t talk enough about her and how proud I am.”

  Courtney’s eyelashes lifted at that, almost… batting at me?

  “That’s very nice of you to say,” she said. Wouldn’t any parent say that? “But yes, Alyssa is doing marvelously well in my class. She has my first period, which is right in the morning, a time when most students struggle to stay awake. I don’t know how she does it, but she has so much energy in the morning it’s surreal.”

  “That bike ride helps out a lot,” I joked, although for the first time since I saw her, Courtney didn’t seem as particularly excited about what I had said as before.

  “Anyway, she gives very pointed class discussions. We were discussing Romeo & Juliet in class the other day, and she drew parallels to other works that I couldn’t believe. I wasn’t sure that I w
anted elements of Game of Thrones in my classroom full of teenagers who can’t drive, but they are teenagers, so what do you expect?”

  I wasn’t one to keep up with pop culture much—if I had come to the club with such discussions, I would’ve gotten laughed out as a nerd and told to go to my fucking Comic-Con conventions—but I knew enough to know what Courtney was saying and laughed at it.

  “And that girl can write, let me tell you. She has a writing skill unlike almost any fourteen-year-old I’ve ever seen.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned forward.

  “It’s obvious that her parents have done a good job of raising her.”

  I was almost certain that what she had said was a test to see what I would say about my wife or presumed wife. How would I word it? I didn’t feel like admitting in such a public forum here that my wife had died—and it definitely wasn’t the place to admit that the accident that killed my wife was my fault.

  But I knew what Alyssa had said about putting myself out there. Even if I wasn’t ready in the sense that some people would put up online profiles and the like, maybe I ought to fake it. Maybe I ought to push myself a bit. I could always pull the plug at any point if I came to realize that I still wasn’t ready for love or romance.

  “I try,” I said.

  It was just short and vague enough that Courtney was curious, but not so arrogant or rude as to sound like Mom and I were divorced and fighting.

  “Anything else I should know about Alyssa?” I asked.

  Courtney shrugged and shook her head, but she was now practically locking eyes with me, as if we were at a bar, sharing an intimate conversation that no one else could hear. I looked down and noticed her hands wanting to come out to me.

  Or maybe that was just me overthinking things. I hadn’t been in the dating world for several years; what was I supposed to know?

  “Not that I can think of. I…”

  Her voice trailed off, and I think both of us were in the same spot then.

  If I had to take an educated guess, I think both of us recognized the attraction between the two of us, but neither of us wanted to be the one to pull the trigger. Neither of us wanted to be overheard, and neither of us wanted to take the gamble and the risk.