Stories from the Back of His Motorcycle

As I lay in my bed that Saturday morning Vaughn’s words played out in my ears.

“I’m only saying that maybe you don’t get the most out of life. Every day is precious and all that crap.”

I scoffed again at the memory of his impressive ‘way with words’ but knew the indentation of them was clear enough. I didn’t have a life – not really. Delia had her boyfriend already accepted into every college known to man; she had her perfect family and her long blonde hair. All I had was a ton of homework and split ends that just refused to form together. God I was pathetic.

And now I was bitter.

Light slipped into my room from the cracks in the blinds. I stared at the patterns they cast onto my white walls – even the shade of my room was boring – and shifted deeper into the mattress. I didn’t want to get up and face the mirror. Or face the homework. Or face World War 3.

When had life become so monotonous? Perhaps, it wasn’t when it had started but rather when I had finally noticed. Vaughn had just waltzed into my life and kindly pointed out the obvious that I hadn’t seen. Stupid boy was making everything so much more complicated. I preferred it when I had been similar to a walking zombie – never understanding that this life was black and white when it could be coloured.

I had a long history of settling but had never truly acknowledged just how far that had been pushed. I’d settled with John Fareham at the tenth grade dance. I’d settled with a crappy second-hand car when my parents could easily have gotten me a better version. I’d settled with getting pushed aside for years, always in the background, just out of reach of any spotlight. I’d even settled with one half-assed phone call every year from my brothers who’d run as soon as they were old enough. I was so irrevocably sick of settling. In fact I despised the word. It was loathsome. Everything that life shouldn’t include.

The band tee-shirt I wore had ridden up during the night. I glanced down at it from under the covers – remembering when Delia had bought it for me as a souvenir from a gig that I didn’t even go to. It was almost funny how much of an idiot I had been and all it took was one arrogant boy to point it out. Somebody should have shaken me earlier.

“Are you getting up any time soon Alice?” the sharp rapping at the door wasn’t as alarming as it should have been.

“Yeah Mom, just give me a minute.”

“You’re seventeen years old now Alice. I should not have to be telling you to get up anymore.”

My mother was, by nature, a kind and loving woman who would rather die then let any guest go hungry or any pocket change remain in her pocket and not in a charity’s collection. She was the mother every girl dreamt of having. She knew when to leave a subject alone. She knew exactly when I wanted tea. She even knew, before I did, how most bad things would turn out.

But – and there was always a but – that was my Mom when there was nothing but the aftermath. During intense battle with Dad she was snappy and irritable. She’d spend long periods of the week in bed nursing mysterious injuries. I would barely see her for days and when I did she was red eyed or fuming. I could always tell if an argument was particularly bad by how Mom dressed. Pale, pastel clothes meant safe. Tight, bright colours meant caution. She was like a bullfighter waving red in front of the horns of a particularly enraged animal.

I was up and dressed in a time most soldiers would be proud of. It wasn’t that I was super eager just aware that I had a job which required me to be at the coffee shop in half an hour.

Stupid Delia for setting me up with this job when she only went and quit after a few weeks. I remembered the way she just flicked her blonde hair and shrugged “it’s interfering with study time,” she’d said. Yeah, Josh time was more like it.

So when I tied the apron around my waist, trying to ignore how the colours of my green top clashed with the blue cotton, it was with great reluctance. It wasn’t a particularly bad job per say but I could have been doing other more exciting things. Like drinking or smoking or living life in Vaughn’s perspective. What a joke.

“Hey sweetheart,” Vivi smiled beatifically. I managed a weak smile of my own before walking round the counter over to the machine-of-death. The cash machine was evil – it worked really well when times were slow and yet in the middle of the coffee rush around mid-day it forgot how to operate. There had been plenty of suffocating times where I’d had to pull change from my own pocket just to acquit angry customers.

“You have a good week at school?” Vivi ran a tanned hand through chocolate brown hair. To say I was jealous of her and her beauty would be an understatement. She was everything that I wasn’t and everything that I wanted to be. Not that I could ever hate her – she was too damn nice.

“Define good,” I grumbled. Sleepy dust had my eyes sticking together unpleasantly.

“Definition of good: superior to the average; satisfactory,” she beamed at me and perched herself casually on the counter. Vivi was also extremely intelligent.

“Smart ass,” I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle before a customer entered. He ordered a plain black coffee, not exactly original, but easy enough to punch into the machine-of-death. $2.50. “I guess it was ‘good’ then. How’s little Amber doing?”

Even though Vivi had only just celebrated her nineteenth birthday she had a toddler – the cutest little girl with her mother’s dark hair and sparkly eyes. It was a sad story though. How Vivi had dropped out of school at sixteen to give birth and look after Amber. Now she was stuck working in this coffee shop with a sullen colleague every Saturday.

“Oh you know, kept me up most of the night and threw up on my favourite dress but whatever. Amber’s just fine,” she practically yelled over the gurgle of the coffee blender.

I smiled to myself as Vivi turned to give the customer his coffee. It was nice – this brief time in the coffee shop with her when it was quiet. She was sisterly to say the least and motherly to say the most. We sat around gossiping most of the time and ignored rude customers who felt that they needed to make sarcastic comments to make everyone’s lives better.

It was the afternoon rush before I’d even fully woken myself up. My hands were moving in a whirl of money exchanges and note taking. The machine-of-death wouldn’t open for anything so – ever the organised person – I’d had to delve into the pot of small change to its left. Notes were stuffed into jars and the queue of angry customers just got longer as I rummaged around for the odd pound lingering near the bottom of the pot. I was stressed but stress I could deal with, it was familiar territory. I was stressed out of my head most days and had a coping system which could beat almost any other. I was sure if stress were a race I would be across the finish line way before the gun had even gone off.

“Don’t you just look divine in that apron Alice?” I looked up from the note pad I was about to scrawl ‘cappuchino, skinny, lots of cream’ into. Vaughn had his elbows propped up on the counter and was leaning forward, evidently as comfortable as if he were in his own home.

An annoyed buzz from the rest of the growing queue grew steadily louder as I just stared dumbfounded at Vaughn. I could see grey flecks in those black eyes. Some strands of his hair were curly while others straight making it look like he’d just run a sexy hand through it. I impulsively wanted to reach out and touch it but remained gripping the notepad.

“Alice?” Vivi shot me a concerned glance from where she was pumping out the last order. I re-focused on the room. The line behind Vaughn’s head were quickly passing from annoyed to down-right pissed and if I didn’t do something soon we would have a coffee revolution on our hands.

“What would you like sir?” I couldn’t help but sneer, pleased that at least my voice sounded professional.

“Sir eh? I like that. You should call me that more often,” he smirked.

“This is a coffee shop, if you don’t want to order anything then kindly get the hell out of the line,” I hissed quietly considering his face was only centimetres from my own.

“But I want to order something Alice. And shouldn’t you be a bit nicer to me – after all I am the customer?”

I closed my eyes tightly before re-opening them. Nope. Hadn’t worked. Vaughn was still there, grinning at me. “Vaughn,” I hissed, all professionalism gone.

“Yes sweetheart?”

“Order something. Now.”

“Okay, God,” he turned to address the practically fuming business man standing behind him “some employees nowadays are just plain rude. It shouldn’t matter that we’re in the middle of a credit crunch, shops should still have high standards when it comes to employing.”

The man said something I didn’t quite catch but sounded remarkably like a swear word before he stalked out of the door. Vaughn turned back to me and shrugged. I was about to use every known blasphemous, cruel, frowned-upon word under the sun but he cut me off.

“I’ll just have a hot chocolate with extra cream and chocolate sprinkles.”

“Chocolate sprinkles?” I mirrored. How was it that he kept surprising me? Normally I had someone figured out in a few hours but Vaughn was still a mystery after a whole week. Not that I wanted to figure him out anyway. I just wanted him to get the hell out of this shop and then the hell out of my English class.

“Chocolate sprinkles,” he confirmed and shoved a $10 bill on the counter. When I saw it, all amusement drained from my body to be hastily replaced by a thick dread. The small change pot definitely did not hold the $6.99 that he needed in change. I swear he was out to just make my life harder – forget trying to actually live it.

To avoid the inevitable, I jotted down his order and practically threw it at Vivi. “Viv,” I whisper yelled “I don’t have enough change for this… customer!”

“Will the machine-of-death still not open?” she was already making his drink. I suppose her innate calmness came from overcoming so many unbelievable obstacles in life. A woman didn’t raise a child at sixteen years old and not acquire some skills.

“No,” I wailed. I may enjoy the blanket stress pulled over me but I certainly didn’t appreciate the bucket of stark cold water it threw with it.

“Is there a problem?” Vaughn quirked an eye-brow. The picture of nonchalance.

“Oh for God’s sake,” a woman in a long gray suit deserted the line – loudly complaining about how the youth of today’s society were out to get her. She was followed by a good proportion of the queue.

“Fuck,” I cursed under my breath but he caught it. In a second his expression morphed from indifference to unease.

“You’ve never cursed before. Do you need some help with something?” he straightened up to his full 6,2 ft height.

“Yeah I need a new cash register and possibly a new life too.”

He smiled and leaped – literally leaped – over the counter to stand directly beside me. With one swift knock from fists-probably-used-to-hitting-things the register flew open with a strangled ‘ding’ sound. If it was anyone else I probably would have hugged them.

“Ugh,” I stammered to find the right words. “Thanks, I guess.”

“You guess?” he smirked and stared at me closely. We were in a fairly confined space, the counter pressing into my side and the wall into my back. Having him at such close proximity was making me nervous. Or scared. Or both.

“Can I have some service here?” a balding customer almost shouted from in front of the counter. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d lost some more hair in the stress of waiting for his lunchtime coffee.

“I’m so sorry sir,” I turned to him. Vaughn groaned in discomfort when my hip jutted into him. I didn’t need to look where because there was already a satisfied smirk lining my lips. How sadistic I seemed to be becoming.

After Vaughn had finally retreated back to the sitting area with his hot chocolate - extra cream and sprinkles – and the queue had died down to just a handful of people, I let my body sag. Glancing at the clock told me I only had one more hour in caffeine hell. Vivi was collected as ever. When there were no more people to listen to I turned and just watched her finish up too.

She smiled at me, a mixture of relief and affection. Vivi was like a brunette angel sent down from heaven to make my job easier. “You going to go and see your boyfriend over there?” she asked loudly. Obviously up in heaven they didn’t teach about subtlety or tact. I turned to survey Vaughn still sitting – mug empty and twiddling an unlit cigarette between his fingers.

“That is not my boyfriend. Hell that isn’t even my friend. Did you see him hold up the line earlier? I was scared we’d be witnesses to murder or something.”

“He also saved your ass by making the machine-of-death work properly. Let’s just hope he pops in again next Saturday at peak time,” she beamed.

“Let’s hope not,” I grumbled.

“Just go over there; I’ll take whatever customers come in.”

I bit my lip, riddled with indecision. I didn’t want to go over there but that would be the polite thing to do. He had, after all, saved my ass. I owed him 5 minutes… maybe less. Defeated by my dang courtesy I walked out to where he sat in the chair closest to the window. I stopped a few feet from him. He looked so peaceful there just staring at passers by. It was as if he were studying them, desperate to know what that man was shouting about or why that child was bawling.

“Vaughn?” I had meant for it to sound harsh and cold but the malice died in my throat.

“Huh?” he looked up at me before relaxing again into a calm smirk. “Come to thank me again for helping out a damsel in distress?” That was exactly what I had been going to do but his pointing it out made me feel stupidly self-conscious.

“Actually I was going to tell you to get out. You’re unnerving potential customers.” I took in his same old worn leather jacket and the helmet sitting proudly on the table. The dark visor stared at me as if a hidden head was examining me for the truth.

“Sure Alice,” he smirked wider. The chair across from him scraped back – pushed out by his manoeuvring feet under the table. He didn’t ask but I sat anyway. The seat was a hell of a lot more comfortable than standing on exhausted feet. “You’re very welcome by the way. It’s always an honour to help out a particularly stubborn and beautiful classmate of mine.”

“We’re only in the same class because you got kicked out of yours,” I quipped before his words had even sunk in. When they did an ugly blush crept upon my entire face. “And please don’t mock me.”

“Mock you? However did I do that?”

“Beautiful?” I scoffed “what are you – my mother?” Not that she ever said that anyway. Nobody ever called me beautiful.

“The fact that you’re getting so defensive over this word is interesting. Is it that you honestly don’t know how pretty you are? Or is it that this word unveils painful memories of a past lover?” It was wrong just how good a smirk looked on Vaughn. It was made worse by the notion that Vaughn Hart was talking to me in a non-forced environment. If I had been any other pansy girl I would probably have been a puddle on the floor long ago.

“Don’t analyse me.”

“No past lover then?”

“Shut up,” I stood up and swept up his empty mug. “Don’t you have some drugs to be smoking or girls to be kissing.” It wasn’t a question, rather a statement of my very own.

“Drugs are Friday night Alice and girls in this town are boring. Except you obviously. They kiss like fish and expect me to marry them afterwards.” There was something strange flickering across his face when he said the last part. Sad maybe? Pain? But it was gone in another second.

“Just get out of here Vaughn,” I rolled my eyes. Vivi raised an intrigued eye-brow at me when I started aggressively washing up his mug and the others congregated by the sink.

“Boys are all the same sweetheart,” she mistook my anger for something else. She didn’t realise that I honestly disliked him; she thought he had rejected me or broken up with me or something. Like I’d ever let him get anywhere near close enough to do any of those things!

“Not that one Vivi,” I fumed. “That one’s something else entirely.”