AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She opened it that inch again. “Will you hurry? I have places to be.”
He wished he were shoveling up this woman’s guts off the floor of the barn.
“Sorry. Just about done.”
He finished up, got her to sign his card reader, put the pump away. She drove off while his hand was still on the pump. More than anything, he wanted to at least send up a couple of birds at her back, but the last time he’d done that, the woman had seen him in her rearview, spun her car—that one had been a Benz—around, and stomped in to rat him out.
Eight had fined him for it. By now, the money he’d paid in fines would probably pay off his truck.
Anyway, one of his hands was wrapped in a dirty shop towel now. And the Mazda was out of sight.
Jay slumped back to the shop. He needed to wash his hands and put a band-aid on.
––––––––
~oOo~
––––––––
Awhile later, towardthe end of his shift, Jay opened the ice cream freezer and pulled out a Snickers. “You want one?” he asked Monty, who was sitting on a stool, leaning against the smokes case behind the counter. The station was quiet: the shop empty, nobody at the pumps, the bays closed for the day. The other Bulls were over at the clubhouse, priming to party.
Usually Jay felt especially restless at just this time, when he was the only patch still on the clock, doing bullshit grunt work. But this evening, still swimming in incredibly vivid recollections of the night before, he wasn’t really in the mood to party. And he for sure wasn’t interested in a sweetbutt.
It was bad that he knew where Petra lived and worked. Really bad, as it turned out.
The idea of going back to Gertrude’s tonight—she would surely be there—had hooked into his mind, and, knowing how colossally stupid, how needy and pathetic and juststupidthat would be, he was trying with all he had to ignore it.
Last night was an excellent fuck. Period. One time, very nice. End of story. She was still completely out of his league. Too smart, too pretty, too rich, too successful, too everything for him. Also she was bisexual, so she had basically the entire human race to compare him to and find him wanting.
Monty laughed. “Eight just had a fit last week about patches eating all the snack stock. I’ll pass.”
Jay grabbed the caramel drumstick he knew was Monty’s favorite. They’d been friends since long before either of them wore a kutte. “You’re not a patch yet, though. He wasn’t yelling at you.”
“Right. I’m a prospect. So I’ll just get shitcanned. You can put it back.”
“I’ll take the heat for ya. And Eight’s out playing nature man with his kid this weekend. He won’t know. C’mon, prospect. Live a little.” He tossed the drumstick over.
With a wry, defeated chuckle, Monty caught the ice cream. “Thanks. Asshole.”
Jay grinned. It felt natural, yet also forced. “I’m just trying to give you a treat, bruh.”
“Riiiight.”
Jumping up to sit on the counter, Jay ate his Snickers while Monty ate his drumstick. They didn’t talk. One thing Jay liked about having friends for a long time: being okay just hanging together, without having todosomething orsayanything. He liked having people to talk to and do shit with, of course, but just being in the same space, comfortable together, seemed like where the real friendship was.
It was probably dumb of him to think that way.
An old pickup pulled onto the station lot and came right up to the door before it stopped. Monty shoved the last half of his ice cream into his mouth at once, practically choking on it.
Jay laughed. “Chill, bruh. It’s just Sam.” He jumped down.
“Oh,” Monty mumbled around his wad of cone and cream. “Scared me.”
“Pussy.”
Sam came in. He was Simon’s oldest son, only a couple years younger than Jay. He was also the first son of a Bull who hadn’t wanted to be a Bull himself. He hadn’t gone to college or anything like that. He worked the family farm with his mom and younger brother, and he seemed totally fine with that.
That life would bore Jay straight into the ground.
