In my life I’d seen many a player, rocker, club rat, cowboy, jock, biker, businessman.
And with all I’d seen, all I’d met, all I’d had…
It was him.
A man in faded jeans and a white tee at a chain link fence in a biker bar in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, sucking back a beer, laughing with his bud.
And I didn’t know his name.
What I knew was that I wanted him to take me wherever it was he lived his life, plant me in it so deep I could never pull at the roots, flourish in the life we built together, and wither to dust by his side.
I also knew this would never happen. No way in hell.
That man would not touch me with a ten-foot pole. He’d find out who I was and cut me so quickly, I wouldn’t feel the bleed until after he was long gone.
As I realized I’d stopped dead to stare at him, and I didn’t want him (or anyone) catching me staring at him, I tore my eyes away, casting them to my feet, and moved quickly to the vacant table, around it, putting my ass on a stool with my back to the corner. I tossed my purse on the table and set my drink there.
And I felt the bleed.
He’d never speak to me.
I’d never know his name.
It was him. Only him. But even if there was another him in the miracle of life, I couldn’t have that him either.
I’d never have that him.
I was what I was, who I was, and finally having that knowledge that the less I was thinking I wanted actually was more, much more, and I’d never have it…
Yeah, I felt the bleed.
I sipped my Jack and Coke and then did the only thing I knew how to do to staunch the flow when it all got too much. When what my dad called “the curse of the Lonesome” reared its head, making me think things like I thought about that man, just at a glance. Making me feel deeper than was healthy.
Making me bleed for no reason that was every reason.
I pulled out the tiny notebook in my purse, sucked back more Jack and Coke so it was nothing but ice, tugged the band from around the embossed leather covering the notebook and opened it to a fresh page. The page where I always kept my pencil at the ready for times like these.
I bent my head and began.
Wither to dust
Crumble like rust
Do it at your side
Fresh air
Cold beer
Root myself in you
Together kiss the morning dew
Breathless to bring on the night
Memorizing you, the only thing that’s right.
Wither to dust
Crumble like rust
Do it at your side
You, the only thing I need when I have everything
You, the breath I breathe I only get when you’re laughing
Chain links
Worn jeans
Wither to dust
Crumble like rust
Do it at your side
It didn’t flow this time. I had to work at it.
Sometimes it did. This time, it didn’t.
There were strikeouts. Written over words. Lines blackened, a new one added at the side.
For this, it had to be perfect.
On that thought, my head shot up when a plastic cup with an iced beverage that looked like Jack and Coke was slid across the table toward my notebook.
I looked sideways. My gaze hit a white-T-shirt-covered wall of chest, my back went straight, my head turned fully that way, and I looked up, up and up.
And then I was mired in somber hazel eyes.
The man at the fence.
I forgot how to breathe.
A deep, coarse voice assaulted my ears.
“Pretty woman like you shouldn’t be suckin’ the dregs of a drink.”
I said nothing. I couldn’t. I was frozen in time, never wanting to be thawed.
Those hazel eyes dropped to my notebook then came back up to lock on mine.
“Pretty woman like you shouldn’t be sittin’ in a bar alone in a corner writin’ in her diary, either.”
“It’s not a diary,” my mouth blurted, fortunately working since nothing else on or in my body was.
“Then what is it?”
I had no reply to that because I knew it wasn’t a diary but my brain had quit functioning so I forgot what it was.
His gaze stayed locked to mine.
I remained silent.
His brows shot together over narrowed eyes.
My heart skipped once, luckily pushing blood through my veins, but then it halted again.
“You in there?” he asked.
God, I was being an idiot!
“I…uh, write thoughts in it,” I told him.
“Like a diary,” he returned.
“Not those kinds of thoughts. I mean, they are, but they’re not. If you know what I mean.”
“I don’t,” he shared brusquely.
“Lyrics,” I admitted, it came out soft because I didn’t give that to anyone and I had no clue why I gave it to him. The only ones who knew I still did that were Dad, Lacey and Bianca. “Kinda poetry, I guess,” I finished.
His brow stayed knit over narrowed eyes. “You’re sittin’ in a biker bar writing poetry?”
That was so ridiculous, my mouth remembered how to form a smile.
This it did and it continued to do so, except frozen, when those hazel eyes dropped to it.
I had to force my lips to move with, “It’s just, I learned, when the spirit moves me, to get it out.”
He looked back into my eyes. “Even in a biker bar at one in the morning?”
“Even in a biker bar at one in the morning,” I confirmed.
“Good you’re pretty, babe,” he stated, leaning toward the table, putting his strapping forearms to it, making the breathing I’d managed to begin doing again start to be difficult. “’Cause that shit’s whacked.”
This was insulting.