Lungs

The early morning sunlight slanted under the overhang outside of the clubhouse, bathing the picnic table where I sat in a pleasantly warm glow. I discarded the green wax crayon in my hand and reached across the table for the blue. My nephew, Abel, had been amusing himself with colouring for the past half hour, and I had eventually given in and joined him. Focusing on filling in the outlined areas as perfectly as I could was a much needed distraction from the nerves that had been attacking me since I’d woken up.

Abel suddenly grew tired of his half of the colouring book and began scribbling all over the picture of a princess that I had been working on. I gathered the small child up into my lap so that he could reach more of the paper.

“I sure am glad you decided to help me with my colouring, Abel,” I told him with a smile. “It looks much better now.”

He smiled at me, exposing all of the teeth he had sprouted over the past months. He didn’t speak much yet, but he could run damn near as fast as I could. I had spent a lot of time with him lately, as well as with his baby brother Thomas. Their mother, Tara, had needed a little extra help while their father was locked up. That was likely going to change today.

“Who’s this picture for?” I asked Abel as we continued to massacre the paper with crayon scribbles.

“Daddy,” he answered, still smiling brightly.

“Have you made one for Grandpa yet? Or maybe one for Uncle Juice?”

“Juice?” Abel perked up at the word. He reached across the table, stretching out his tiny hand for his sippy cup. I laughed as I grabbed the cup for him and set it within his grasp.

“I didn’t mean that kind of juice,” I muttered to myself as I finished colouring in the princess’ dress.

Abel didn’t notice that I had contradicted him. He simply sipped on his drink and continued to scribble all over the pages in front of him. My mother sat down next to me, keeping her back to the actual table and staring out at the lot behind my back. She looked happy, which was hardly surprising, given what was about to happen.

“Are you ready?” she asked softly.

I turned to her with a small nod of my head. “I’ve been ready for the past fourteen months.”

Mom let out a breath through her nose in a tiny, silent laugh. “I hear that. It’ll take some getting used to, though. I was starting to be okay with having that bed all to myself.”

“Not me. I’ve been counting down the days until I didn’t have to sleep alone.”

“I’m sure he has, too.”

There was a low rumbling sound in the distance. I gathered up the child in my lap and set him down on the pavement before I stood up in anticipation. Abel reached up and grabbed my hand, sensing that something important was about to happen.

The motorcycles all pulled onto the lot together, mixing the club members that had been incarcerated in Stockton with those who had gone to retrieve them. As soon as my brother Jax was off of his bike, Abel took off running. Jax caught his son and clutched him to his chest. We had all seen each other every week for the past fourteen months, but the knowledge that they were finally free made everything seem so much better than it had been in over a year.

I glanced around as the other men abandoned their machines and took off their helmets. I caught sight of a head of slicked-back black hair, and I started off towards it. I reached him just as he turned in my direction. A pair of warm brown eyes settled upon me and lit up as a wide, white smile stood stark against tan skin.

Juice grabbed hold of me and pulled me close, wrapping his arms around me almost painfully tightly. I clutched him back just as hard.

“Welcome home,” I murmured into his shoulder. I began to pat down his back, as if looking for something hidden beneath his clothing.

“What are you doing?” he asked. He didn’t sound concerned or put off, simply curious.

“Making sure you didn’t get stabbed this time,” I replied lightly, thinking back to the last time that he’d been released from prison. I’d had to go and greet him in the hospital instead of here at the clubhouse. “Everything seems okay.”

“It wasn’t me this time around,” Juice muttered into my hair.

I looked over his shoulder toward my brother, who had been jumped and stabbed in the ribs. At least he’d gotten to come home on time, unlike Juice who’d had to spend several days in the Stockton hospital when it had happened to him. “I’m glad it wasn’t you,” I whispered, feeling almost like I was betraying Jax as I said it.

He pulled back just enough that he could crash his lips against mine. There was desperation in his touch, but not enough to make it obvious. “I am really mad that I have to go to church right now,” he muttered, still grinning. “All I want to do is go home with you.”

I stepped back, smacking his ass in a playful attempt to usher him toward the clubhouse. “Be patient. We’ll get there soon enough.”

“I’ve been patient for fourteen months,” he grumbled.

“See? You’re experienced. You can handle another hour or two.” I dodged his thinly-veiled accusation as easily as I’d done each week for the past year. He had attempted to convince me to arrange for a conjugal visit repeatedly, but the idea had simply freaked me out too much. I knew that it probably hadn't been fair to him, but since it had been a relatively short time span, I'd made him suffer through it.

I quickly greeted the rest of the newly-freed inmates before they filed into the clubhouse. Once they’d disappeared, I sat back down on the picnic table next to Mom and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She gave me a judgmental stare as I lit one and took a drag.

“I thought you were going to quit,” she said.

I shrugged my shoulders, blowing out the toxic smoke through my nose. “I’m working on it. Very slowly,” I added with a smirk. “Besides, you’re not exactly a wonderful role model on that front.”

She ignored my pointed comment. “Aren’t you going to be late for work?”

“No, they let me have the day off. I’m pretty sure that they figured out I’d be no use to them when I knew Juice was at home after all that time apart.”

Mom nodded knowledgeably. “Yeah, they’re probably right. Maybe you’re not working for complete morons after all.”

I snorted. Mom had made it very clear that she wished I would come back to work for the club, but I had found that I was actually enjoying my separation from it. Once the guys had gotten locked up, I found that I really hadn’t wanted to stick around the clubhouse. Though I would never have really been alone, it just felt wrong to be there with Juice and Jax behind bars and Kip dead. The crow eaters and the new prospects had been able to keep the place up and running without my help, and I’d gotten a new job at the tattoo parlour on Main Street. I’d originally been hired as a receptionist, but soon I’d taken all of the necessary safety courses and had begun apprenticing as a body piercer. I still worked reception when they needed me to, and I got a great discount on all the tattoos I wanted. In the year that I’d been employed there, I’d gotten two new tattoos and a new piercing in each ear. I knew why Mom was averse to my new profession, but even before the latest pieces of artwork I had hardly had the look of a professional in any other field. Half the reason I’d been given the job as a receptionist was because I already fit the atmosphere in the shop.

As I finished the last of my cigarette and stomped out the butt on the concrete, Abel clambered up onto the bench beside me and began gathering up his colouring supplies. I helped him to tuck the crayons back inside of the flimsy cardboard box and zip everything up in his green and blue checkered backpack.

“Good job,” Tara congratulated him as he handed her the knapsack. “Let’s get your brother home for a nap before he gets cranky. We’ll make some macaroni for lunch.”

Abel hurried back to give Mom and I each a hug in farewell. I wondered if I would get to babysit him as much now that everyone was back and all of our lives were set to go back to normal.

“They’re going to be awhile. We might as well head home, too,” Mom suggested, though she seemed to be in no rush to leave.

I sighed heavily. “Yeah, I guess there’s still a lot to be done before tonight.”

“I thought you’d already finished what you were supposed to do. You don’t owe Lyla anything, you know,” she chided me. “You’ve got your own life to get back to. She hasn’t been without Opie for fourteen months like you’ve been without Juice. It’s not really fair to you, baby.” Opie hadn’t been taken to Stockton with most of the rest of the club, and he’d spent the past year or so making plans to marry his girlfriend on the day that his brothers returned. Lyla was a local porn star, and she’d been with Opie for awhile now. She’d helped him with his kids after his first wife, Donna, had died.

“Oh, I’m not helping Lyla anymore,” I laughed. “I’ve done my part. Now it’s all up to her and Tara. I meant that I still have to steam my dress and figure out what I’m going to do with my hair.”

Mom looked surprised. “You’re wearing a dress?”

“Hey, I can be feminine!”

“I never said that you couldn’t. I’m just a little surprised, that’s all.”

I stood up from the picnic table. “I guess I should have kept it a secret. I would have loved to have seen the look on your face when I showed up tonight. Anyways, I’m going to head out.” I gave her a small wave as I headed back over to my car. That was another change I’d made in Juice’s absence. I’d gotten rid of my old beater of a car and had invested my paychecks from the tattoo parlour in a new matte black Challenger. It wasn’t that my old car had been unreliable, or that I didn’t have practically unlimited access to a garage to keep it in good running condition, it was simply that I’d felt I’d needed a change. I’d needed to use my car an awful lot when I was babysitting the boys, so my bike had spent a lot of time parked in Juice’s garage over the past year or so. And when his share of the club’s income was more than enough to keep the bills paid, my own wages were purely disposable. I decided that putting it toward a new car was a better alternative than blowing it all on useless crap. I’d talked it over with Juice over the course of a couple of our visits, and he’d agreed with my decision.

I let myself inside of the house a few minutes later, my sense of smell immediately assaulted by the smell of cleaning products. I had ensured that everything was spotless top to bottom in anticipation of Juice’s arrival home. If I was being honest, it was mostly just because I needed to cover up the fact that I’d let my dog, Casey, inside a lot more than usual while Juice had been gone.

I made my way into the bedroom, grabbing my dress from the closet and hanging it over the open door. I set to work using the steamer that I’d borrowed from Tara. The whole process went rather quickly, and I was finished long before I had thought I would be. It was still too early to get ready, and Juice wasn’t home yet. It was far more frustrating to have him so near and not actually home than it was to have him in prison.

The morning dragged on into the afternoon, and finally, as I was halfway through some daytime talk show, I heard the door open. Excitedly, I leapt to my feet and made a mad dash for the door. Juice was halfway through pulling off his cut when I attacked him.

“Jesus,” he muttered as he caught me. “Now that’s a welcome.”

“Oh, I haven’t even begun to welcome you home yet,” I grinned. I grabbed his hand and started pulling him back toward the bedroom.

“I could get used to being greeted like this.”

I looked back at him over my shoulder. “I’ve waited patiently through two prison sentences. If you leave again, I might have to find someone else to occupy my time.”

He gripped me suddenly by the hips, lifting me like I weighed next to nothing and carrying me over to the bed. He planted sweet yet urgent kisses down my throat as he lowered me onto the mattress. The need that we’d both suppressed for over a year suddenly seemed to boil over. I pulled at his clothing just as he did the same to me. The whole thing was a frenzied mess, and it was over so quickly that I had hardly realized it had begun. As I rested my head on his bare chest, I started to laugh.

“Maybe we can try this again when we get home tonight,” I proposed.

“What’s wrong with right now?”

I leaned over, looking past him to see the time on the digital display of the alarm clock. “One of your best friends kind of expects us to be at his wedding in less than two hours. I’ve got to get ready.”

Juice kissed me, letting his lips linger against mine. “Come on, Lex, you’re beautiful already. Why do you have to do anything special?”

I looked into his warm brown eyes and wished more than anything that I could stay in this bed with him forever. I nuzzled my face into the crook of his neck and sighed contentedly.

“Do we really have to go at all? I mean, I’d be okay with just staying here all night. I don’t really want to let you go, if I can avoid it,” I admitted.

He stiffened in sudden hesitation. “We’ve kind of got some business to take care of.”

I sat up, scowling down at him where he lay. “Seriously? We couldn’t have one night? One? You’re conducting club business at a brother’s wedding?”

“Relax,” he reached out and stroked my arm lightly. “I’ll be coming home tonight, I promise.”

I pointed a threatening finger toward him. “If you don’t, I quit. I just plain give up on this whole relationship.”

Juice snorted. “Right, after everything else that’s happened, this it all it’ll take to get you to leave me.”

“It might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

He propped himself up on his elbows, bringing his face a bit closer to mine. “If getting thrown in Stockton has taught me one thing, it’s that you’ll forgive me for club stuff. I’m not saying I’ll start taking that fact for granted, I’m just saying you would still be here if I didn’t show up until the morning.”

“Well I guess I would look pretty stupid if I left you over that. I mean, I’d have to get my tattoo removed.”

Juice sat up straight, giving me a curious look. “What tattoo?”

I pulled back the blanket that was covering my lap and showed him the latest addition to my body. I had gotten drunk with a couple of the tattoo artists from work, and one thing had led to another. In the end, I’d wound up with a very cartoonish dragon on my thigh sipping from a juice box. “Get it?” I said with a childish grin. “I think it’s kind of trashy to get names tattooed on you that aren’t your kids, so I got literal juice put on me!”

“Classy,” he said, stifling a laugh. “Is that one of the characters from Dragon Tales?”

“No. Trust me, I know. Abel watches that show a lot.”

“You know my real name isn’t Juice, right?” he checked, still trying not to laugh at my terrible drunken decision.

“Well yeah, but I only call you Juan Carlos when I’m mad. And I wasn’t pissed off when I got this done. I just missed you a lot,” I explained.

I couldn’t help it. I started to giggle. I had actually agreed to let my coworker tattoo me without ever seeing the sketch first, so I had been lucky that this was all I had gotten stuck with. The juice box element had at least given me an excuse for the finished product. I slipped out of bed and headed into the bathroom.

“Here I thought you would be flattered. Anyways, I really do need to get ready for the wedding. Come and talk to me while I have a shower. We haven’t had the chance to talk much.”

Juice rolled his eyes as he pushed back the blankets and got out of bed. “All we’ve done for fourteen months is talk.”

I shook my head, pulling back the shower curtain and turning on the water. “No, I meant about today. What did you guys have to go out and do already?”

He entered the bathroom behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing my neck. “Can’t we talk later?”

I grinned to myself, knowing that there was a pretty simple way to kill two birds with one stone. “Alright, fine. Come shower with me, then. We can get really dirty before we get clean.”