Riding with the Beast (an MC Fairy Tale)

18 - Sonja & Beast

Sonja

The woman hit the bottom of her pack of cigarettes against her palm twice, then tilted it forward. Two cigarettes slid out. She took one, then put the other back in the box without offering it to me. “You’re not what I expected.”

“And what was that?” I regretted asking her immediately, sort of like how I did when that annoying boy in kindergarten asked me to pull his finger, or when my father told me to keep walking forward like a brave little girl when all I wanted to do was turn and run.

She leaned against the wall and took a drag. Smoke hugged her lips as she spoke. “I don’t know what I was expecting, just that it would be a little less obvious.”

Her gaze roamed up my baggy clothes to my bruised face. This time I said nothing. I didn’t need to. Her disgust was complete, uncomplicated and familiar. Alexander’s other women looked at me like that. I even foolishly encouraged it, for a time, when I still desired his attention.

“You’re used to getting guys to do what you want,” she said, “but Brian’s different from all them. He’s a nice guy. I know he doesn’t look it, but he is. What you’re doing isn’t right.”

I shut my eyes. As if I needed another reminder that the Beast was not Alexander. For one moment, allowed my guilt to overtake me. I knew he was kind. I knew this wasn’t “right.” But he’d offered himself freely, and how could a girl in my position say no to that?

Stop, Sonja. No excuses, I told myself. Then I snuffed out those feelings and glared up at her through matted bangs. “Do you often make decisions for him?”

Her hand played with the fraying pocket that contained her cigarettes. She didn’t look comfortable with that question. Interesting. “Brian means a lot to me.”

“How much?”

“I’d do anything for him.”

“Do you fuck him?”

Shock lit her eyes, but beneath that was a disgust so deep that it immediately shamed her.

She doesn’t, I realized, walking towards her, only stopping when my nose almost touched her lips. “You can’t bear the thought of him touching you, can you?”

She shivered as I raised my hand. I don’t know what came over me or her. There was no reason for her to remain still as I brushed her hair from her neck to expose her scar except, maybe, a clumsily repressed guilt that always remained close to the surface, waiting to be recognized.

I glanced at her scar, then back to her eyes. “I’d let him do anything to me. And while he did, I’d never look away.”

It was the right thing to say—I knew because it immediately made me feel horrible. She opened her mouth, then closed it.

Peppermint and smoke. It smelled youthful, like a symbolic, futile rebellion. For a second, I hated her even more than she hated me. I think that’s why I didn’t stop. “How can you claim to care about him—to protect him—when you hurt him so badly?”

A sound came from her throat like a choked sob, but her eyes remained eerily dry. “You know nothing,” she whispered.

I leaned forward. I honestly don’t know what I would have said. There were too many possibilities between us ready to combust, but he cut the fuse.

The doorknob jingled.

Her eyes went to the door and contracted. She grew still, as if she’d been caught kissing another by her lover. “I-I’m sorry.”