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Since I’ve traveled only once, to Washington DC for a high school trip that lasted two days, I never owned a suitcase. Besides a garbage bag, I can’t think of anything that’ll fit my clothes and toiletries.
I’d rather bring whatever I can fit into my briefcase.
Starting with underwear.
I approach the dresser and notice the photo of Gordon and Jesse stuck on the mirror above. They enlisted together, and Mom took this photo right outside the building. Oh! My brother is holding a green duffel bag.
I open his closet, and the smell of leather hits me immediately. I run my palm down his old leather jacket and lift it to my nose, sniffing. Gordon’s smell is long gone from it, but the memories of him wearing it remain. This was his motorcycle club cut. He was going to make president one day.
My brother is no saint.
But he’s no murderer of innocents either.
The vice president of Gordon’s club drugged me, then locked me in his room in the biker’s clubhouse the way he’d done with many other women. Nobody ever stopped him, and if Gordon hadn’t broken in before the man got a chance to hurt me… Well, it would’ve changed my life for sure.
Nobody cared that my brother was protecting me. The lawmakers saw his six-foot-seven tattooed body and his irreverent attitude and salivated at the prospect of getting Gordon for attempted murder. They packed on all kinds of other charges too, and got him on those as well.
His club brothers turned on him. Jesse couldn’t do anything about it even if he wanted to. Gordon forbade him from risking his life and betraying their club president.
It was a mess that ended in our ruin. All because of me. Could’ve stayed at home that night, but didn’t.
Under Gordon’s hanging clothes, I move the pair of his custom-order boots and several boxes. Crouching, I search in the back and find the duffel in the corner.
Yaaaas!
I snatch it and lift it victoriously, like I’m holding a trophy, and carry it into the bathroom, where I clean it with a wet cloth before placing it on the bed. As I’m selecting the sexiest underwear I own, which is basically the black cotton ones and not pale pink or blue or the ones with ice cream cones (what the hell was I thinking buying those?), my phone rings.
It’s Jesse.
I open the line. “Hey, Jesse.”
“Hey, pumpkin,” my mom says. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. What’s up?” Where’s her phone?
“Oh, nothing much. Jesse made me call because I fell down the stairs.”
“Oh no. Where are you now?” I grab my purse and walk out of the bedroom.
“It’s not too bad. I didn't break anything.”
“Thank God. Where are you?”
“At the laundromat by the Tournament.”
“That’s far. Is there something wrong with the one in the complex?”
“Karen was there.”
Karen and Mom can’t stand each other. Karen touched my brother where she shouldn’t have when he was fifteen. Because he thought an older woman getting him off was cool, he bragged about it, which is how my mom found out, and that was the end of her friendship with Karen.
“Okay, Mom, I’m coming.”
“You don’t have to do that. I don’t want you to leave work.”
She keeps forgetting I don’t have a job. It’s like she slips in and out of her life, as if alcohol is eating her brain. “I’ll be right there. Please wait for me.”
Duffel in hand, I take the steps two at a time and jump down the last three, happy to see Corrado’s beautiful car is still where I parked it at the curb. Some kids are gathered around it, but since it’s not as cool as, say, a sleek black Lamborghini, which he probably owns at one of his twenty residences around the world, the kids quickly move on.
