Page 33 of Talon (Road Rebels MC 2)
p; “What is she doing back here?” I heard myself ask, even though it felt like my brain wasn’t really functional anymore.
“She’s become some big fancy lawyer now I hear. Big fancy Sage red-hot Campbell!” Mickey replied and took a swig of his beer.
I stood up from the bar stool with a jerk, slamming my half-drunk bottle down on the counter.
“Gotta go,” I said and dished out a handful of cash and left it on the counter.
“You serious? It’s only noon. Where the fuck are you going, man?” Dave threw his hand up in the air. With me gone, they’d have to start paying for their own drinks, which wasn’t something that either Dave nor Mickey looked forward to.
“I have to go. Sorry man,” I said and thumped Dave’s back as I started walking away from them.
“Hey, come back here, Glock, you didn’t listen to what Crazy P told me!” Dave called out, but I was already weaving through the crowd towards the bar door.
I knew I should have stayed and listened to what they had to say. I was supposed to be doing my job, but now I couldn’t. Not after I knew that Sage was back in town. If she was really here, everything was going to change.
***
Sage red-hot Campbell; was what all the guys called her. She used to be a petite young thing, with quickly growing breasts and endlessly long legs. The red was in her hair, and as a spark in her personality. Sage always spoke her mind, and she didn’t mind throwing a few punches either when any of the guys got on her nerves. She had large hazel eyes, shifting color from green to brown depending on the kind of light she was standing in. She had pale skin that refused to tan and every summer, her taste in clothes changed.
To her, throughout our childhood, I had just been one of the neighborhood boys who always got in trouble. To Sage, I was Jackson. I stole from the local stores, started drinking when I was twelve and got high with my buddies in the junkyard behind the school. I bet she would laugh now when she heard I went by Glock, my MC nickname instead.
Sage looked down on me from over her sharp pointy nose. She’d judged me all my life, just like she’d judged all the other guys I hung out with. But to me, she was the girl of my dreams. I went to school only so I could catch a glimpse of her in class. She always had a book stuck in her hands, and I had rarely ever seen her talk to the other girls. She didn’t dress like them, she didn’t speak like them, and it seemed like she didn’t share their interests either.
I used to dream about her at night. When I kissed Mary Anne Murphy in her bedroom, my first kiss, I had thought about Sage and imagined kissing her instead. I’d spent all my childhood and most of my teenage years, fantasizing about the girl who thought I was a violent good-for-nothing troublemaker. I knew I didn’t deserve her, but it didn’t stop me from dreaming about her either.
On her seventeenth birthday, I found her lugging two big bags of groceries from a store. I crossed the street and picked up the courage to say something to her. Sage looked surprised at first and had her brows crossed when she stared at me. I’d offered to help her with her bags, and she looked like she was going to refuse. I expected her to snap at me and say that she could carry the bags herself.
Instead, she handed them to me without a word, and I followed her home. Her mother wasn’t in, and she invited me for a cup of coffee, offhandedly, like she was doing me a favor. As far as I was concerned, my fantasy was coming true.
In her kitchen, we sat drinking our coffees silently, till she stood up, walked over to me and kissed me right on my lips. It was a Sage thing to do, but I wasn’t expecting it. I kissed her back, my hands quickly flying to her breasts but she jerked herself away from me.
“You can come back tomorrow, and we can watch a movie together,” she said and quickly picked up my coffee mug from the table and walked to the sink and drained it down the sink.
Our relationship lasted three weeks and even as I thought about it now, while I walked from The Brass Cock towards my apartment, those could have been the happiest three weeks of my life. Sage kept her distance, speaking very little to me, but she allowed me to hold her hand. We’d kiss in her bedroom, or on the walk back from the grocery store to her house, but that was as far as she was going to let me go and I was happy with that. No other girl had made me as happy as Sage did.
Even her mother, Mrs. Campbell, who I now knew as Tracy, was happy with the budding relationship. Spending time with me had given her some relief, it appeared to me. Tracy had worried all her life that Sage was unhappy, that she was going to be miserable all her life; but being with me made her mother believe that there was still some hope for her.
Three weeks later, Sage was gone. I arrived at the Campbell house in the evening to pick her up so we could go for a walk together. I found Tracy in the kitchen, her face in her hands and her cheeks covered in tears.
“She had her bags packed when I came down for breakfast,” Tracy cried, as I sat with her and tried to console her. I needed comforting too, but I was a man or at least I was trying to be. It felt like someone had pushed a knife straight into my heart, and that someone was Sage.
“Did she leave me a note or a message? Is she coming back?” I asked Tracy, and she must have heard the desperation in my voice. She reached over and squeezed my hand, wiping away the tears from her cheeks.
“No, honey, she said nothing about you…I wish it were different, I wish she had. I know how good you’ve been for her, Jackson. You’re a good boy,” Tracy said in a whimper, and I clenched my jaws and tried to smile.
“So, she had it all planned out?” I managed to say, and Tracy nodded her head.
“Yes, but she didn’t tell me anything, she didn’t tell you anything! I hope she’s happy and safe, that’s all I can hope for her, Jackson, my little baby girl,” Tracy was crying in pain again, and I patted her hand.
“Yes, I wish the same for her too,” I said.
Since that day, three weeks after Sage’ seventeenth birthday, nothing was the same again. I could have gone after her, I could have gone to San Francisco and begged her to let me be a part of her life, but Sage wouldn’t have wanted that. Still, all these years later, I was just glad I had those three weeks with her.
Chapter 4
Sage
Ever since my mom spoke about Jackson, well I guess Glock now, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Would he even recognize me now? The last time I saw him, we were both seventeen, and he was sitting beside me at the docks, just staring out at the dark waters. The next day I was gone, and I hadn’t left him a note.
My first phone call to my mom had been a week later when I lied and told her that I had found a lovely place to stay near Nob Hill and had a part-time job bagging groceries at a local store. She’d tried to talk about Glock, urging me to write to him or call but I’d quickly changed the subject. She got the hint and hadn’t mentioned him since.
Over the past ten years, I was under the impression that I had forgotten him. After all, I had only really known him for three weeks. We had grown up around each other, in the same neighborhood, but our paths had never directly collided before that day he offered to carry my mom’s groceries.
Before that, he had always just been the guy I had a crush on. He had shaggy brown hair and green eyes. He was tall, already taller than the other guys and his hair fell over his eyes while he smoked his stolen cigarettes. I used to try my best to not stare at him when I walked past, but he was just so hot. He was my teenage crush, the guy I wrote in my diary about, and it was never supposed to be anything else.
Especially since I was planning to run away. My plan of going to San Francisco had started taking shape when I was fifteen. I started collecting money for it, making plans and researching ideas for the move. It had taken me two years to come up with the final plan. I didn’t want to turn into one of those teenage horror stories of running away from home and ending up in a ditch somewhere. I wanted to be organized and have my shit together before I actually made a run for it.
So, Glock’s appearanc
e in my life seemed to have thrown all of that into chaos. The date of my departure was fast approaching, and here he was, holding my hand and kissing me and listening to me complain about our neighborhood and his friends.
Glock wasn’t like the other boys I knew. He was sweet and polite to my mother, and smarter than he realized. He was funny too, and he was the only other person, other than my dad who had died when I was ten, who could make me laugh. In those three weeks, my crush on him had turned into something more.
I stayed up most nights thinking about a future with Glock, imagining leaving Long Beach together and starting a family somewhere else. But that couldn’t happen. Glock had his family and his friends here. He was getting more seriously involved with the gangs here, and as much as I hated that aspect of his life, I knew it was where he belonged. I couldn’t stay though. I had seen too much that frightened me, and I knew that I had to get out. I had a plan, and I had to execute it. So, I left.
I didn’t leave him a note because I didn’t want him to have any hope for us, I had none. Once I was gone, I was going to be gone forever, and he needed to know that.
So, I had spent the past ten years in San Francisco, searching for the guy who might make me feel the way Glock had, but he didn’t exist. Nobody else could replace how Glock had made me feel.
***
I was outside the same store where Glock had first offered to carry my groceries. I had two big bags full of stuff just like I did the last time, and I was getting ready to make my way back to my mom’s house just like that day.
It was late evening now, and the streetlights were all coming on along the road, and I stepped onto the pavement with a sigh. I could picture the scene from ten years ago like it was happening right now. I had stopped in my tracks when I saw Glock crossing the street. He was making his way straight towards me, and I felt like all my limbs had frozen. When he spoke to me, I couldn’t say anything back. I didn’t need him to carry my groceries, but for Glock, I would have agreed to anything.
