His hand stirred at her back, fingers stroking lightly at her spine. “Okay.”
Eighteen
There was a real good chance this had been a terrible idea. Holly glanced down at herself, what little she could see in the shadows, second-guessing her jeans, her boots, her sweater, the $7.99 drugstore hoop earrings. Michael had been no help when she’d asked him what she ought to wear. “Whatever you want to,” he’d said, and she was uncertain now.
The innumerable rumors about the Lean Dogs that circled through the bar had left her with the impression that this would be a wild, wild night for the MC. She wanted no part of wild. She didn’t want to be around any of the alcohol-filled men she saw moving in and out of the main door of the clubhouse, smoke blooming in clouds over their shoulders as they puffed on cigarettes. She didn’t want to be some sort of cheaply-dressed laughingstock among the women. She knew nothing of them, save that Ava had been kind enough to have lunch with her. She didn’t want to be crushed among so many people.
But she wanted to be with Michael. And his arm was around her waist, as they stood at the dark outskirts of the indoor/outdoor party that raged against the night.
It was a spectacle.
The clubhouse was a low, gray building, a hybrid of home and warehouse in its aesthetics. Beneath its expansive steel portico, colored and white Christmas lights were strung in thick tangles, and the glow radiated out with the power of sunlight and the punch of Mardi Gras. Fires blazed in fifty-five gallon steel drums, crackling, filling the air with the tang of wood smoke. Plastic cloths draped the outdoor tables. There were people seated at some of them, Dogs and women drinking beer out of longnecked bottles.
Holly didn’t recognize Ava or her mother among the females outside; these women were in painted-on jeans and sleeveless tops, despite the weather, throwing back their heads to expose their throats as they laughed, tidying their hair with lacquered nails.
There were bikes, so many bikes, lined up like dominos, black paint reflecting the Christmas lights in brilliant pinpricks that turned fuel tanks and fenders to shiny, insectile shells.
“There’s out of town guys here,” Michael said, and didn’t sound happy about it.
“It looks crowded.” Holly let her weight rest against his side, shivering inside her sweater, the backs of her knees and the creases of her elbows clammy with nervous perspiration. Her pulse was a high flutter in her throat; she was lightheaded; she wished her stomach had been calm enough to handle lunch, so she wasn’t queasy now.
She felt Michael’s face against her hair as he turned his head to look down at her. “You’re nervous.”
She nodded. “Not for any specific reason. I’m…I’m just always nervous,” she admitted in a whisper. “Michael, I’m scared.” It caused her physical pain to say it. “I’m sorry that I am, and I don’t want to be, because I wanted to come with you tonight, but I’m scared.”
He held her a moment, keeping still, letting the tremors pass through her. He said, “Listen to me. They don’t like me, most of ‘em, but they’ll like you. Everyone who’s been to Bell Bar likes you, Hol. So no worries there. And if you’re scared, just stay right with me. And we can leave whenever you want.”
She let out a shaky breath and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
He kept his arm around her was they walked toward the door.
They stepped into a narrow entry hall with a linoleum floor. Two passing Dogs ducked their heads once in emotionless, silent greeting to Michael, and kept moving.
They don’t like me, most of ‘em.
Holly felt a sharp pang of sympathetic loneliness for him. He was trying to find her a friend, and the man had none of his own. Which wasn’t a bit fair; the dormant sweetness, the automatic chivalry lurking beneath the silent exterior – that warranted friends. Good, loyal friends.
The thought distracted her, and for a moment, when the hall opened up to a massive hardwood-floored space, she forgot to be nervous.
There were more lights here, strung up along the ceiling, and opaque clouds of cigarette smoke, the smell burning her nostrils on the first breath. She spotted a horseshoe-shaped bar off to the left, with overhead racks dripping wineglasses and beer mugs. She had glimpses of furniture: couches, round dining tables, chairs, rugs, conversation groupings and a wall-mounted flat screen.
The music was loud, some sort of classic rock that she hadn’t yet discovered in her self-education in all things pop culture. It had a squealing guitar line, and a deep, throbbing bass line, and it pulsed through the wide, human-packed room in a way that was almost drugging. She felt it in her temples, in her throat, trying to force the beat of her heart into submission.
On a small raised platform in the back left corner, a girl in a bikini danced above a knot of watching, admiring men in Dogs cuts. She was pretty, but not professional, her movements inexpert. She swayed back and forth in time to the music, working her hips, pitching forward now as Holly watched and shaking her shoulders so her breasts threatened to spill out of her bikini top.
Holly swallowed hard and glanced away from her. Through the smoke and incandescent light, she began to notice the other women. Halter tops, tube topes, miniskirts, leather pants; cigarettes and beers in their hands, smiles on their painted faces.
A Dog she’d never seen before sat in an easy chair, a woman on his lap. She was in jeans and mid-calf boots, and a black bra with little rhinestones sewn onto the cups. She was kissing the side of the man’s neck and he was pulling down one of her bra straps, baring her breast, covering it with his hand.
Sex. This party was nothing but sex, thinly veiled by club leather. It rushed across the boards to her, tunneled down into her lungs on the currents of acrid smoke, assaulted her eyes and ears and overwhelmed all her fragile nerves, reminding her that those old tattered ends might never heal.
What would have caused a regular woman off the street to blush was threatening to send her into a full-blown panic attack.
She turned and pressed her face into the cool leather over Michael’s shoulder, drawing in deep breaths of his personal scent, trying to blot out everything else with it.
