Stories from the Back of His Motorcycle

My hands were still shaking when we dismounted. From the rush of the drive and from the memories my head kept replaying. My mind seemed stuck in a cage so every recollection bounced off the bars and never got free. It hurt so badly that I could do nothing else but remember.

“Alice?” Vaughn came into view as he lifted the helmet off of my head. I stared unseeingly at the sky, focused on how empty my insides felt and how much I needed them to be whole again. “Come on Alice, don’t ignore me again. I’m here now. I took you away from everything. Just say something?”

I made myself look at him and noticed his eyes looked sad. Pitying. “I don’t need your sympathy,” I muttered.

His tense face relaxed into a small smile “just as long as you keep talking to me, you shan’t have it.” I peered morosely around at our surroundings. We were stopped in front of a massive house, larger than any I had seen anywhere near my neighbourhood before. I briefly wondered if we had been driving for that long or whether my track of time was playing tricks on me.

“Well I was thinking about skiving school anyway,” Vaughn said awkwardly. The tears came again then in a fresh wave, my face screwing up into contortions of pain as I finally felt the effects of a broken heart. Without thinking, I walked into Vaughn and wrapped two long arms around his torso. I buried my face into his chest, not even acknowledging that it was grey and would probably show every tear drop like evidence. I felt him shift uncomfortably under me.

“You don’t have to do anything,” I whispered “just don’t move for a minute.”

He smelt of earth under all those cigarettes. Like damp earth. It was hard not to nuzzle deeper into him but I resisted, just waiting for the tears to stop forming. When I felt pressure applied lightly to my back I drew away sharply in surprise.

“Sorry,” he smiled sheepishly “I lost my head a moment there.”

“You lost your head…” I repeated softly, trying to imagine where such a strange idiom had ever come from. “You didn’t lose your head.”

“You caught me off guard,” he stepped back closer to me “don’t want you thinking I don’t know how to hug a girl.” He pulled me to him and secured two tanned arms around my waist. With a loud splutter, I choked on my tears and laughed. I was laughing and crying at the same time in some strange gurgle of sound which didn’t seem to perturb Vaughn at all. It was as if he embraced crazy girls with emotional issues all the time.

I rested my head in the crook of his neck wearily after the last sniffle had died. I was cold and empty, the clouds far above mirroring my inner turmoil. Vaughn felt warm and stable in my arms and I didn’t want to let go.

“It’s starting to rain Alice, come inside.” Vaughn stepped away from me, taking the handlebars of his motorcycle and leading it further up the large brick driveway. I felt the first few drops of rain fall on my hair and watched them decorate my hand. I was scared of where I was and terrified of being alone. I bit my lip hard, evaluating the huge house before me and trying to work out whose home Vaughn was currently breaking in to.

“I don’t want to get arrested,” I called out impulsively as he fiddled with the lock on the garage. The last thing I needed was a blemish to my perfect record – the only perfect thing still currently left in tact. He gave me a quizzical look but continued anyway. The rain was falling harder, drenching me quickly and efficiently as I just stared at Vaughn’s back. It didn’t take him long to open the garage and wheel his motorcycle in, obviously aware of how the water was collecting on the leather seat.

“Where are we Vaughn?” I asked him as he strode past to the front door.

“My house.”

I stared at him incredulously. Obviously he was rich but this rich…?

“Are you coming Alice?” The inside of the house looked tantalisingly comfortable from the glimpses I caught around Vaughn’s figure standing in the doorway. He motioned with his hands for me to come closer, to get out of the rain which had already soaked me through. I felt drunk but more awake, like a veil had fallen over my vision but I was still breathing normally. My legs moved me forward and into the grips of Vaughn.

A hand carefully pulled the hair stuck to my forehead away, his fingertip running under my eyes to catch any tears or rain still dripping down. “Let’s get you warm, huh?”

“Is this really your house?” I questioned carefully.

“Afraid so.”

“Is that you Vaughn sweetie?” A voice pierced what silence I had assumed lay over the house. I hastily ran a hand through my dripping hair and blinked a few times to make sure my emotions were in check, always one concerned with first impressions. A woman appeared in a doorway, bringing the strong scent of perfume with her. Maybe it was a repellent to Vaughn’s cigarette fumes; it was overpowering enough to block them out all together. “Oh Vaughn… who’s this?”

I plastered a great big fake smile onto my face, preparing myself for the introductions which would inevitably follow that question. “That’s Alice, Mom,” Vaughn was already passing the woman and walking up the grand staircase. I lingered there in confusion for a split second. Where were all the usual doting remarks, or even the anger about why Vaughn wasn’t in school? Was he even untouchable in his own home?

“You should follow him dear,” her fingernails were slightly longer than necessary on the hand that she offered me. It obviously bothered her how her son would just brush past without so much as an explanation, you could clearly read it in how her lips thinned into a line and her eyes dulled. “It was nice to meet you anyway.” I shook her hand briefly, my fake smile never wavering, and traced Vaughn’s steps.

There was no longer emptiness in my stomach but a rage which had hit me quite suddenly. I clenched my jaw firmly, grinding the teeth together as I made it to the final step on what was a very long staircase. Vaughn had everything that I seemed to be lacking – he had that spotlight forever burning into him and a Mom who clearly cared. When my family was falling apart he chose to shun his as if it were unimportant. As if family meant nothing.

“Here,” he threw a towel at me, stalking into a room with various markings on the door. I narrowed my eyes at where he had been before dabbing the dripping ends to my hair. Just what was I doing here anyway? I should be at school, learning, not bunking off with some hoodlum who clearly paid his own mother no mind. What more could I possibly expect for myself?

But curiosity overran common sense and I peered into Vaughn’s room.

I had sometimes dreamt of what Vaughn Hart’s room would look like. Whether there would be pictures of brutal scenes painted by the boy himself who had too many tortured, beautiful thoughts in his head that he had to find a way to express. Or if the blinds would be permanently down even in the face of sunshine so nothing inside ever felt its warmth or light. Or if there would be heaps of dark novels piled high beside his bed which would, of course, be a black wood and have ominously printed sheets.

It was actually surprisingly light and airy and normal. The only book I could see was one battered copy of ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ on top of the neat bed. The walls were clear, the floor was uncluttered, and the drawers were tidy. A tingle of something shot up my spine - unease perhaps at the fact that this room looked like a stranger’s, someone just passing through.

I stepped further in to quell these horrible thoughts but it felt even emptier inside. The towel in my hand was weightless as my mind wandered; the sporadic drips from my wet hair barely noticeable on my skin.

Finding my voice and remembering my anger, I turned to the corner Vaughn had retreated into only to whip back around. An embarrassed blush replaced the angry one spread across my cheeks. A shirtless Vaughn tossed the soaked top around me so it fell into an open clothes basket. Never in all my years of living with four older brothers had any of them been clean enough to put their dirty clothes anywhere but under their beds, let alone a regulated laundry hamper.

“Have some decency,” I said angrily “there’s a girl in this room you know?”

“Really? Where?” I turned again, prepared for the sight of Vaughn’s exposed upper-half this time. Still, he was beautiful and I caught my breath. He wasn’t traditionally well-built with rock hard abs or particularly thick arms, in fact his chest showed signs of muscle depletion, but he was sculpted perfectly. Sculpted as if by some clock-maker - every piece intricately striking and detailed.

“Right here asshole,” my voice managed to keep the extra stutter from it. “Now put it away,” I disguised my awe with disgust.

The towel was carefully arched across his shoulders and spread out as he rested a hand on his hip. I was angry again, relishing the emotion as it blocked out the desire Vaughn was currently stirring up within me. Focus on the red and leave everything else behind.

“You know sometimes Vaughn I see why everyone is afraid of you, or rather why you believe that everyone is afraid of you.”

“Huh?” he cocked his head to a side as the cast iron grey bathed half his face in light carrying from the window.

“You’re so wrapped up in yourself that you can’t see how much everyone wants to love you. It’s like there’s this enticing trait about you which simultaneously manages to keep others away; they aren’t scared of you, they’re scared of being pushed away by you.”

Vaughn was watching me intently as I spoke but I managed to avoid his burning eyes. I knew, just one look would send me over the edge into an abyss I didn’t quite know where would end.

“And how can you treat your Mom with such distain? I know people fall out but it’s obvious she cares about you. You don’t understand – can’t understand – what it’s like to just have something one day and then be at a complete loss without it the next.” My voice broke on the last word. Tears were already forming, fighting against my flutter of eyelids and winning.

I watched from under my blanket of damp hair as Vaughn stepped closer. “I can understand Alice. You have no idea how much I can understand.”

“No, Vaughn you can’t.”

He scoffed harshly and sat himself down on the bed. I looked up slowly to watch him clench then re-clench his fists against the covers. “You don’t know everything Alice, as much as it pains you.”

“I know enough. You push everyone away by choice whereas I have people tripping over themselves to get away from me.” I bit my trembling lip with so much force that the salty sting of the tears was replaced by a choking metallic liquid.

There was a long pause. I swallowed down the blood but didn’t look up from a particular square of the carpet, as if entranced by its colour. I couldn’t believe how much I’d said and how easy it had come.

“Come here,” Vaughn sighed out the words. I remained unmoving, partly in shock and partly in defiance, but the sobs were fast approaching. It had been years since anybody had listened to me and the offered space next to Vaughn looked like a small step in the right direction.

As soon as my body was close enough, Vaughn reached out and wrapped a brightly patterned blanket around me like a child. I didn’t fight though; I was too exhausted to fight. I took in a deep breath of the musky aroma, my body resting against the bed with my head propped up on Vaughn’s shoulder. My arms curled around my chest, trying to suffocate the sobs which broke free.

“He just left. He just left like I meant nothing to him, as if I really had stopped existing altogether,” my voice shook. I felt Vaughn’s sweet breath, void of any cigarettes, hit my neck as he watched me.

“What kind of a fucking father leaves like that without even a note saying goodbye? If they cared they would have stopped fighting years ago instead of making it so bad that one of them just had to get out. And why was that person never me? I’m so sick of being taken for granted and leant on, and I’m sick of being everyone’s Mom and not having one of my own. I miss her. She’s right there and I miss her,” I cried my pathetic heart out.

It didn’t matter that my tears trickled down Vaughn’s bare chest or that his fingers were carefully brushing through my hair. I was barely aware of anything, too caught up in my own words and really realising that they were all true.

Two arms shifted me into Vaughn’s lap where they wrapped me up tighter. He didn’t say anything, just held me until the tears and misery finally died out. I hiccupped then sighed. I rested my head further into his neck.

“I’m sorry about what I said,” I whispered. It seemed wrong to speak any louder after so much sound, as if the atmosphere would break with even the smallest of noises. Feelings of numbness and anger were gone. I was calm leaning into Vaughn’s body, like a baby finally soothed from teething.

“Don’t be sorry,” he closed his eyes. “You were right about everything just as you always are, except for one thing – I do understand. Now, I have both my parents still and the only arguing going on is always caused by me, but I know what it’s like to lose something important. I’m selfish and stupid and push people away – that’s true – just know that I’ll never depend on you to be anything. You’re Alice, the girl who doesn’t like me because I’m a jerk who smokes too much. That’s refreshing really.”

I shifted slightly so I could look him directly in his dark eyes, pinpointing the exact flecks of grey circling the irises. “Actually, I don’t like you because you smoke and drive a motorcycle,” a weak smile accompanied these words. Vaughn laughed softly and rubbed tanned hands up and down my arms.

“You warm yet?”

“Yeah,” the weak smile dissolved into something more substantial “I’m pretty warm now.”