Stories from the Back of His Motorcycle

I coddled the little girl as she sat on my lap, pulling funny faces at her just to see that toothy smile. She just stared up at me with those big brown eyes of her mother’s, perplexed at why I looked like I was in pain. Or perhaps worried that this lunatic was currently in charge of her care.

Vivi had left only ten minutes ago and already I was at a complete loss. I was and always had been the baby of the family, of a family that only existed in itself – no cousins or grandparents or uncles or long lost relatives. We were a unit really, a faction which had broken away ever since my parents had married in secret and stolen themselves away to make a better life for themselves. Nobody had approved. As if they knew that one day it would all end like this.

I had babysat Amber before because Vivi was a nineteen year-old trying to get back in on the dating game. She said I was good with kids. Really it was just that I was her only option. It was either me or staying in every night with a teething toddler who couldn’t carry a decent conversation for longer than a few seconds. And even then it was about butterflies or what Tommy had said to her last week in day-care. Vivi was lonely and looking after her little girl every once in a while was the least I could do for her.

I only knew a little of her previous relationship – with Amber’s real father – but I knew enough to understand it was a dead-end kind of love. Vivi would always get angry when mentioning him. Saying in passing how he hadn’t paid child support again this month. Or that he hadn’t sent Amber even a card over the weekend of her birthday. Or that he should have known better, sleeping with a minor who thought she was madly in love with him.

She deserved so much more than that – so much more than working full time in a local coffee shop. Vivi loved Amber and wouldn’t take back her mistake for the world, but she hadn’t even had a chance to live out her life yet. She was chomping at the bit. Sick of biding her time. She was speed dating and trying men out all over again after she’d been so horribly burned. I respected her for that. I knew that after Vaughn there would never be anybody else.

“Do you want to watch a film Ambs?” I cooed.

The little girl scrunched up her nose as if a bad smell had made its way up those cute nostrils. I knew what she was so disgusted about; she already knew my only films were action flicks that sent her off to sleep from boredom.

“I’m hungry,” she grumbled, rubbing a small hand over her stomach to emphasise her point.

“Didn’t Mommy already give you dinner?” I frowned. Vivi had definitely said that Amber had already been fed. She knew I was a disaster in the kitchen, that the only thing I could safely make was a ready-meal and those had their risks. I couldn’t give a five year-old spaghetti bolognaise from a microwavable box. Even if I didn’t know what to give her I definitely knew what not to.

“I wasn’t hungry then,” Amber shook her pigtails so her wispy brown hair brushed against my bare arms. “But I am now.”

A soft chuckling drew my eyes away from the angelic child in my lap over to the similarly angelic boy sprawled out on my couch. He was watching us with some unreadable expression I had never seen before. That surprised me. I knew all of Vaughn, what every movement meant, what every smile was because of, what the extra flex of his hand was for, what look he would shoot me when he wanted to kiss me. But this was new, seeing the soft look in his charcoal eyes as he cradled his cheek in his palm.

“You don’t want Auntie Alice to make you anything Amber, who knows what poison she’ll concoct,” he smirked, not taking his eyes away from me for even a second.

“Poison?” the girl screeched, outraged.

“I’m not that bad,” I lied indignantly.

He scoffed, telling both Amber and myself that I was worse than bad. She began fidgeting in my grip as if suddenly scared I really would try to poison her, and start right there with her in my arms. I let her go to watch her stumble over to Vaughn, resting a pink hand on his knee and staring up at him in awe.

“You’re really high up,” she said plainly, tilting her head right back. “Can you make me food?”

He smiled fondly down at her, taking her little fingers into his, holding them so delicately he seemed scared he might break her. I wanted to capture that moment forever – with the both of them looking so perfect under the dim lighting of my lounge’s single lamp shade. Vaughn’s carved face and Amber’s young one, how they were both smiling like they knew each others’ secrets.

“Of course princess, hasn’t Alice told you? I’m a pro in the kitchen.”

I was already rolling my eyes when Vaughn shot a wink my way. He stood, amazing Amber even more with his impressive height, and disappeared into my kitchen with her little hand still in his. I wanted to melt at how adorable it all was but then remembered that I couldn’t just leave Amber in Vaughn’s charge. Hell, I’d never seen him cook a thing in my whole life and, for some reason, I had assumed that he was just as inept as I was. I didn’t want any more accidents in that kitchen. If you searched hard enough you could probably still find the remnants of splattered lasagne.

So I dragged myself after them, propping myself up onto a counter to keep a close eye on the two.

I knew Vaughn was an only child but I also knew that Keisha was practically his baby sister. He looked at her like my brothers used to look at me; with such reverent love that she could do no wrong. I had once been the apple of my brothers’ eyes too, and they’d loved protecting me from danger and boys who would possibly break my heart. I wondered what they would have done if Vaughn had swept me off my feet years ago when they still cared. I wondered if they’d have tracked him down and given him the threatening talk.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I was too far gone, and no overprotective Ross or even newly protective Nick could change that.

“You want to help us out?” Vaughn asked, throwing me a smirk over his shoulder. “I’ll give you the easy jobs, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” I shrugged in nonchalance “and if you think I’m that bad I better just stay out of your way. Especially since you’re such a pro.”

He laughed which made Amber giggle even if she didn’t really understand our exchange. He was addictive like that. He was impossible to be angry at, impossible to do anything but love. I wondered how long I had been lying to myself – if it was from the very beginning when he’d told me I’d misspelt ‘harmony’. I wondered if that was the moment I fell in love with him.

“Oh sweetheart,” he sidled up to me, resting his hands just outside where my legs lay. “You should already know I’m a pro.”

Suppressing a blush, I pushed him away lightly so he’d have to return to Amber’s grumbling stomach. I didn’t need those thoughts running riot in my mind, especially with a minor in our presence. He should have known it was hard enough already not to just grab him by his flannel shirt and press my lips right to his, giving him no room for escape.

“I want a potato,” Amber stated while smiling up at Vaughn as if he was her saviour.

“A jacket potato? With cheese too?” he asked, bending down to her level and giving her his best Vaughn Hart grin. If she was only a few years older she’d have swooned right over. As it was, I had to grab onto the countertop hard just to stable myself before I toppled to the ground in my sudden need to touch him. Only he made me crazy like this – only he made me into some bumbling, blushing pubescent girl, something I had never been even when I was a young teenager.

Ever since this morning when had I woken up to his snoozing figure wrapped up in mine, we hadn’t been able to keep our hands to ourselves. It was as if a dam had finally broken, as if with the sex it was finally admitted that we were so in love that just a few seconds without him next to me was painful. God, I was so pathetic but at least he was pathetic with me. We were a pathetic couple and I didn’t even care.

We had eaten a strangely nice breakfast with Nick before he left for work and even though my older brother kept shooting us warning glances, Vaughn’s hot palm still rested on my thigh under the table. It was surreal saying goodbye to my brother afterwards, with him telling us he wouldn’t be home until tomorrow and he didn’t want to see another boy in my bed when he returned. We were back, just as quickly as it had taken for him to apologise. We snapped into the old family routine we had once known only with him taking on more roles than before. He was both parents and my brother even if I was no longer a child.

Amber nodded her head enthusiastically at Vaughn’s proposition “lots of cheese!”

I couldn’t help but smile at the scene even though nobody was looking, I couldn’t help but want to cry because it was me and my father what seemed like a hundred years ago. It was my little face grinning up at the man I thought would be there for forever, or at least for my forever. It was my Dad giving me his best fatherly look, telling me I was his little girl no matter what.

It wasn’t though, because Amber was nothing like me and Vaughn was nothing like my father. Thank God he was nothing like my father. He wouldn’t scarper off at the first sign of trouble, and he wouldn’t avoid my calls in case I had something not-so-nice to tell him. And he’d never leave me – not like my father had left us.

I caught Vaughn’s eye as he set to work on the food, seeing the look in those greying pools, wondering how many guys would love to steal that very glance. Because I was left breathless once again, defenceless. I should have hated that. It should have sent every alarm bell off in my body. Instead, I just blushed and turned my attention back to Amber who was struggling up into a kitchen chair. It didn’t need to be said out loud because the way he looked at me made it more than clear that he loved me. My toes were curling up in my thick socks, and my heart ached at how much it was racing.

“How did I get so lucky, Amber?” I asked softly “finding a boy who can actually cook.”

“Are you two married?” she gaped, misunderstanding. Horrified, I felt my face burn scarlet but Vaughn was already there, running a hand carefully over Amber’s baby hair and laughing like he did only when he found something truly hilarious.

“We’re not married,” he said, slowly sobering “but I love her very much.”

“Then why don’t you marry her?”

My mouth choked on a laugh and a gasp so I was left spluttering on the counter. I was forgotten, though, as Vaughn knelt down again in front of the curious little girl.

“God says if a boy loves a girl then he should marry her,” she cocked a head to a side.

“God says a lot of clever things,” he nodded. “But the truth is, Amber, I can’t marry Alice.”

“Why?” she pouted “is it because she can’t cook?”

He chuckled but the humour wasn’t there. “No, even though thinking now that might be a problem a little way down the line. No, it’s because I wouldn’t be a very good husband.”

I blinked at him yet he wouldn’t move his direct stare from Amber. And suddenly I found my heart aching for a whole different reason entirely.

“Vaughn,” I murmured, hoping to draw him away from the thoughts I could almost see running through his head. I wanted, no needed, to bring him back to the now, to making dinner for Amber, to how much I was in love with him. But tomorrow was always there.

“I think you’d be a good husband,” Amber grinned a toothy smile – she could sense too how the boy in front of her was suffering.

“Thank you, but really I’d be awful. See after a little while I’d have to leave Alice all on her own, and I fear that it would break her heart and make her hate me. I can’t have her hate me, Amber, not now and not ever.”

“Why will you have to leave? Mommy says men only leave when they’re good for nothing. I don’t think you’re good for nothing.”

“Your mother’s right, and if your Aunt Alice had any sense she’d kick me out right now for being good for nothing,” he smiled sadly.

“Don’t listen to him Amber, Vaughn’s just being silly,” I interjected quickly, slipping off the counter as if it had burned me. As if anything but his words had burned me.

“You’re being silly,” she relayed. “You’ll get married one day and be the best husband in the whole wide world.”

Her grin was infectious and it was soon plastered on Vaughn’s smooth face. “Maybe one day.”

“God,” I groaned “can we please stop talking about marriage? I know if Nick or Ross were here they would have had a stroke by now.”

Straightening up, Vaughn came to look me right in the eye, an arm of his already entwining around my waist. It was automatic. It was instant. There was this need to be close to each other, and having my side pressed up to his chest felt like the most natural thing in the world.

“It looks like Aunt Alice doesn’t want to get married,” he teased into my hair.

“I swear if you say that word one more time,” I shoved his arm lightly.

Amber just giggled at us as if I wouldn’t carry out on my unsaid threat. I probably wouldn’t either, even if speaking about such a serious thing as marriage was causing my skin to flush and my insides to fall into turmoil. I needed us to get away from this, but not before I cleared up a niggling thought which had wormed its way in with his words.

“You do know that I could never hate you, Vaughn,” I murmured softly, peering at him carefully through my eyelashes.

“I hope you don’t sweetheart.”

“No Vaughn,” I turned right round in his arms so we were face-to-face. “You have to understand. I could never hate you.”

His eyes were intense and I knew mine were too. I had to get him to realise this, to erase that stupid theory. No guilt was going to be felt on my behalf. He was never to think that if he died I would resent him for leaving me behind. I would be heartbroken and I would never love someone as I did him, but I would never hate him. I don’t think it was even possible for me to.

There was the familiar stab of pain at the thought of him dying, and there was the reassurance that I loved him like I never had anybody else.

He looked just as pained as he gazed at me; softly placed fingers tickled my chin and moved my head further upwards. Gone was the hair from my eyes. He was right there, and I was falling into those grey eyes of his, hoping that somehow if he didn’t hear me he would at least see what I was trying to tell him.

“Can I be the bridesmaid at your wedding?” Amber asked, startling us both out of the trench we had managed to envelop ourselves in.

“You can be the maid of honour,” Vaughn’s sweet breath fanned over my face as he spoke.

“Seriously guys, enough of this, it’s enough that Ross is getting married in a few weeks. You can get dressed up for that, Amber, and you can see the pretty dress the bride wears. We’re too young to even be thinking about those things,” I directed my accusing stare at Vaughn, but really there was nothing hard to it.

My little ward giggled like the cute pink-loving girl she was and my boyfriend planted a soft kiss on the corner of my mouth. I felt the area curl up into something like a smile before his lips were on mine again, properly, full on. I kissed him back with my arms curling around his neck. We were wild for a moment. We were abandoned, completely lost, found all over again in each other.

Amber’s groaning stomach and noises of disgust broke us apart, but only for a second. In almost a blur, Vaughn was rushing around the kitchen to get her dinner back on track.

“The sooner this gets done, the sooner she goes to bed, the sooner I can kiss you like that again,” he whispered into my ear as he rushed past, the hot potato burning into his hand.