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“I don’t know. I mean, you can’t judge people by how they look.”
“I mean… sometimes you can, though,” I said, shrugging. “If all the people in and out seemed shady, they were probably shady.”
“By that standard, Kylo looks shady,” she said, glancing over at me. “He has a lot of tattoos, and a kind of… I don’t know. He seems like someone who might easily be involved in some… shady things.”
I made a mental note to look up this Kylo guy. It wasn’t exactly a popular name, so I figured that if I put some feelers out, I could figure out what his deal was.
Seeley usually kept his finger on the pulse of all the local criminals. Even if we weren’t located in Miami like they were back in the day. It was always good for us to know who was making waves, upsetting the status quo.
“But he’s a good guy,” Siana insisted.
“Didn’t say he wasn’t,” I said. “Lotta people look at me and my brothers and think we’re shady because of our lifestyle. Doesn’t mean we’re bad guys.”
“You mean… bikers?” she asked.
“A certain kind of bikers, yeah,” I agreed.
Her brows scrunched at that, but she didn’t ask. And some part of me didn’t want to tell her.
She’d already had a rough night. She didn’t need to know she had an arms-dealing biker in her home.
“I like your place,” I said as the silence stretched long enough to start getting awkward. “Just bought my own place. I’ve got no fucking idea what to do with it.”
“I guess you should just… start with what you like,” she said as she poured boiling water into her teacup. “My mom loves all things beige. There was never any color in our lives.”
“So, you went the complete opposite way.”
“Exactly,” she said, nodding.
“My family was poor as fuck,” I admitted. “Everything was too small and packed with shit. Didn’t love that. So, by that logic, I should like all things expensive and open.”
“Was it, like, a hoarding thing?” she asked. “Sorry, is that invasive?”
“No,” I said. “No to it being invasive.” For fuck’s sake, I’d tracked her address down, and she thought asking about my past might be inappropriate? “The issue with my family was that there were eight kids. And not enough money to go around to have enough space for all of us.”
“Eight?” Siana asked, lips falling open.
“Eight kids. Five dads. A mom who was too busy chasing men to work enough to feed or clothe us.”
I didn’t think about my childhood much. There was just so much lack, so much uncertainty.
And I hadn’t even been one of the older kids, one of the ones who the weight of childrearing fell on. Like my sister Saskia, who worked two jobs to take her paychecks to Goodwill or the dollar stores to buy us clothes and food. I couldn’t imagine what they’d gone through, being forced into parentification.
But I did know that all of us struggled.
Relying on school to feed us. Then soup kitchens in the summer when the school couldn’t provide anymore. Never having new toys, new clothes, not going to movies or bowling.
With my first week of income from stripping, I’d bought myself a steak dinner, went to a movie, and bought an entire new wardrobe. That no one else had ever worn before me.
“I can’t imagine how crazy that must have been. I’m an only child,” Siana admitted. “Are you close with your siblings?”
“Some of ‘em,” I said, nodding. “The oldest two were outta the house before I really knew them well. And I’ve never really connected with them. Saskia, my sister, she and I are tight. She married one of my club brothers. The other two older than me are still around, and we catch up sometimes. One’s a doctor. The other, a social worker. The youngest two moved away and never came back.”
I figured maybe if we had a better parental figure in our lives, our relationships with one another might have been different. But everything growing up had been about survival. About rushing through meals because if you weren’t fast enough, no one left any food for you. About hiding anything you prized because someone else would take it. Maybe even pawn it.
As it is, it seemed like everyone kind of went on to build their lives the way they envisioned them, wanting to separate from the past. And therefore one another.
“Did having so many siblings make younotwant kids?” she asked. “I only say that because… being an only child… I would never want to have one kid.”
