Page 35 of Love is Blind

Even at three, I knew that girl was lying. After all, my mama said those same words and she never returned. Scared and not sure what to do, I went outside. That’s when I saw the man on the motorcycle. He didn’t notice me right away, but as soon as he did, he took his big burly body across the grounds and held out his hand to me. His fingers were tan and more wrinkly than my dad’s, and he wore a bunch of thick silver rings. But I looked past all that because Mister Roger’s said when things get scary look for the helpers and the biker with an outstretched hand didn’t look so scary to me.

He took me into his trailer and made me a grilled cheese sandwich.

I swore it was the best thing I ever ate.

When my dad came home from work, Leftie told me stay put and went outside to talk to him. To this day, I don’t know what they spoke about but any time my dad had to work the night shift, he brought me to Leftie’s trailer.

Years passed and eventually we moved out of the trailer park. Dad met a nice woman and got married, and he and his wife, Linda, bought a house in Raleigh. A sprawling ranch with lots of room to expand the family. A dream that died two years later when Linda died of cancer. I was thirteen years old, an age when a boy really needs his father, but mine was too busy grieving to realize that.

So I did what every child desperate for attention does, I ran amuck. Bad attention is still attention. I skipped school and started stealing. It started with a candy bar at the grocery store, but it wasn’t long before I was robbing quads and lawn mowers out of people’s sheds. I got brazen one day when I spotted a rusty motorcycle in someone’s backyard. The house was unkept. The windows were boarded up and there were weeds all over the place. I figured whoever lived there had either died or abandoned the place. No one would miss the decrepit Harley.

I was wrong.

The next day a fleet of motorcycles showed up to my house and the biker who had watched me all the nights my dad worked, marched to my front door. He didn’t bother with the bell, he just pounded those tattooed knuckles against the wood until dad opened the door. Then he fisted his shirt and lifted him right off the ground, pressing him against the wall.

Dad sobered real quick and I just stood there. Leftie’s eyes finally found mine and for the first time since I met him, I was afraid of him.

Apparently, it was his bike that I stole.

How’s that for irony?

You see Leftie had a life before the trailer park. A nice house, a pretty wife, and a young son. He let the house go when his wife and son were murdered right in front of his eyes, something I didn’t know until that day.

“It’s supposed to get easier,” I say as I lift my head and my eyes connect with his. “Isn’t that what they say?”

“The people who say that are assholes,” he grunts. “It doesn’t get easier and that hole in your heart will never disappear.”

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

“But it will get smaller if you let it.”

I bring my eyes back to his and he sighs.

“After your dad moved you out of the trailer park, I met a woman. A pretty little waitress at the coffee shop right across the road,” he says, jutting his thumb over his shoulder. “I’d come here every Sunday, visit with Bea and Liam then I’d go across the road and have myself a Cheese Danish.”

Some men drown their sorrows in sweets, others do it with pills, whiskey, and women.

To each his own I suppose.

“We didn’t say much to one another. Then one day, I saw her on the side of the road. Flat tire.”

“Let me guess, you stopped and fixed it for her.”

“Fuck no,” he says. “I called a tow truck, slipped the guy a twenty to make up some story about her rim being bent. Woman didn’t have rims, didn’t even know what one was. Burst right into tears and I played the hero. Told her I had a friend who had a shop, that I’d have the hunk of junk towed there and first thing in the morning I’d get it repaired for her. In the meantime, I’d give her a ride home.” He grins at the memory. “She asked me in for a cup of coffee and I spent the night.”

A faint smile flashes across my lips.

“You dirty old dog.”

“One would think, but she made me sleep on the couch. Woke up to the smell of bacon frying.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“You must’ve came right then and there.”

He chuckles, but the humor fades quickly.

“Actually, I got spooked. Went into the kitchen, found her singing to herself as she went about making breakfast and for a fleeting second it felt like all the weight I had been carrying had left me.”

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