Page 7 of Service and Sacrifice
“Hey, Monk. Want your usual?” He nodded, andit struck him then that hehada usual. He’d been here oftenenough to be recognized and known, his preferences marked and notedby the staff. He grinned when a line from an old sitcom theme songran through his head. “Here you go.” The full glass thumped ontothe bar in front of him.
Monk grinned wider and lifted it, tippingthe rim towards the bartender. “Cheers.”
“Cheers, Monk.” The man grabbed a bar ragand walked away, swiping at rings of condensation left wherepatrons had missed the coasters.
Transaction completed, he brought the glassof beer to his mouth and sipped, savoring the bite and chill aftera long day working. Then he settled deeper into the seat andthumbed over to the social media app. Amanda’s profile looked thesame, but he found himself trolling her info, just in case.Nothing new, he thought, clicking into her friends list,cruising past portraits and avatars, images of kids, dogs, houses,cars, pausing on the rare motorcycle.
Nothing that would help him connect with herany more than he had.
This kernel of want had lodged in his chest.Lodged, found a place to take root, and was growing.
Something he didn’t know what to dowith.
So Monk did what he’d sworn to himself hewouldn’t do anymore. He navigated to her limited pictures, pausingfor long minutes over each, taking in Amanda’s expressions, thosesmiles that didn’t reach her eyes. He drained the beer, giving thebartender a nod for another. It didn’t help the burn, that ember ofpain deep in his gut.
He tried to ignore it, trusting hissubconscious to keep picking at the problem until the solutionwould appear.
He’d only known about her for a year; sheshouldn’t be so important.One year, eight months, thirteendays. He shook his head.
Fingers flicked at the screen as henavigated to the private group the club maintained and responded toquestions from members, then back to his public profile to engagewith family, and back to his timeline to see what else was goingon. Under a wash of notifications for his account was one he nearlymissed. There, buried between various tags by his brothers andmemes shared by his family, was a single line that said AmandaReynolds Stewart had liked and commented on an image he’d postedyesterday.
Monk clicked on the picture, a closeup ofhim taken by Neptune’s flavor of the day. He hadn’t known she wastaking pictures, so he hadn’t ducked away from the camera, wasn’tlooking directly at it, either. His focus was farther out,somewhere out of frame, probably on something Blade was saying.
There were dozens of comments, mostlyragging on him in the way brothers did, or statements of fondnessby family. Added in the mix was a single line of text by Amanda,saying simply, “Thank you for your service.”
He liked her comment.
A moment later he came back and studied itagain, finally touching the application to select a differentresponse, one more fitting. He stared at the screen, the steadyglow of the heart seeming to mock him.
Still, he left it.
Nine
Monk
The club was doing well. They’d grown innumbers,andNeptune had finally talked Monkinto sponsoring a prospect, his first. The process had taken upmore of Monk’s time than he’d expected but felt good. He liked therole of mentor, passing on his wisdom to a baby biker, just as he’ddone for the newbies in the service. He’d changed apartments, goingsmaller, just a single efficiency thistime,because all he did there was shit, shower, and sleep. The rest ofhis days were either spent at work or with the club.
Monk took his duties as road captainseriously, wrenching side by side with members to get their bikesready for a run. He’d personally knifed more tires in the firsthalf of the year than he’dexpected,becauseso many of the members just didn’t pay attention to the conditionof their own bikes. Wolf had gotten him a deal with a local racer,and the club had a stock of take-offs in the shed out back now.Tires too slick to race on but with plenty oftreadto last at least a season for most of the men inthe club.
So workandthe clubwere both doing well, and if his personal life wasn’t anything towrite home about, he wasn’t going to cry because his nights werespent alone.
Two days before the anniversary, he openedthe social media app, prepared to stalk Amanda’s profile as normal.He’d already planned what he wouldn’t do thisyearand had quietly arranged to be working on the day.Nothing good would come of feeding his obsession with this woman,not when she was still tied so tightly to a dead man.
When he navigated to her page, instead ofthe three pictures, he found dozens.A wealthof images of her. Old and new, they tracked back to high school,andhe smiled to see her as a teen standingawkwardly on a stage stuck inside a period costume that looked amile too big. Her wedding picture was there, and the sight of itcaught at his chest, leaving him aching inside to see her standingin white next to a man he assumed was Martin, her face shining withhappiness.
Documentation of the kind of graduationceremony he well remembered was there, Amanda tucked in besideMartin, the man standing ramrod stiff in his dress uniform, a shinysingle bar on the epaulets of his jacket.Butterbar. Monk smirked. He’d always hated that name.Another picture of just the man at some station overseas, hisposture as casual as it ever got when surrounded by enemies, themixed tans of the desert stretching for miles behind him, thosedamn dark mountains on the horizon.
He blinked them away.
She’d accepted.
After a year, she’d finally accepted hisfriend request.
He clicked through to read her posts, notoverly surprised to find them sparse on real information. More asurface glossiness to keep family and friends at bay. A way to keeploved ones from asking too many questions, to satisfy theircuriosity and dampen any inklings of concern. He recognized thetactic, because it was what he did, too.
Day manager is way better.Winky face emoji.She’d tagged a local hotelandhe grunted in shocked recognition. He’d stayed therea few years ago when his bike broke down in anearbytown. It had been the only American-owned placewithin a reasonable distance. At the time, he hadn’t been living inthe area verylongand didn’t feel comfortableasking his brothers for assistance. Suck it up and make do had beenhis motto back then.
He frowned, following the thought of himthen to his responsibilities in the present day. If his prospecthad done the same, Monk would be pissed as hell, because it wouldshow a lack of faith in his brothers.Dammit. He’d need todo a better job of modeling the behavior he wanted to see.Lesson learned.
