Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 94897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 474(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 474(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
He looked to his side, saw a turntable with a record spinning, then up on the wall above it, a Plexiglas shelf on which was the Catch a Fire album sleeve with the Zippo lighter on it.
“Can I pick the next album?” he requested.
She twisted her neck and tipped her head back again, and he saw her lips turned up.
“Sure.”
“Can I have a cherry Coke?”
The lip curve turned into a big smile.
“Sure,” she repeated.
Jag bent and kissed her before he hopped off the counter and headed to the album section.
* * * *
“So, there was a lot of baggage there,” Archie was saying.
They were both sitting on stools at the bar to her kitchen, their dirty dishes shoved away, and there were a bunch of those old square photographs scattered in front of them.
“And it never left,” she went on. “Mom was never tight with her grandparents. It wasn’t just Grandma’s white parents, it was also Granddad’s Black ones. No one ever came to terms with them being together. Sign of the times, I guess. It still was fucked up.”
He didn’t have to agree to the indisputable.
Because it was totally fucked up.
Jag took in the handsome Black man and the pretty white woman—Archie’s grandparents on her mother’s side—and he saw hints of both in Archie.
But it was the more recent photos that were mingled with the rest where he saw a lot of his girl.
In the pictures of her mother.
“And making this weirder still, Granddad was not a big fan of Dad,” she continued. “He saw Mom being with a white guy as her rejection of him as a Black man. Though, eventually, he got over it.”
“They didn’t kick in when your mom passed?” Jag asked.
She shrugged. “We were all rocked, obviously. But Mom was an only child. I remember thinking they seemed to age twenty years from the last time I saw them before she died, to the time after.” She turned her head and looked at Jagger. “They never recovered. Neither of them were old-old when they died. After she was gone, I think they just gave up and did their time until they were gone too.”
This info made Jag both pissed and sad.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured. “It would have been good one adult in your life took your back.”
Slowly, she turned her attention back to the photos, reaching out a hand and scooting them around.
“I’ve taken some time with this, and I don’t blame them. I don’t hold any anger,” she said softly.
She shifted her gaze to him again and kept talking.
“They fell in love. That’s one of the simplest, most beautiful things people can do. Of course, life makes it complicated, but the emotion isn’t complicated. It’s effortless, pure. But they couldn’t have that. They had to fight for their love. They had to explain it. They had to defend it. They couldn’t go out together without getting looks, assholes saying shit. But your family is supposed to be about no conditions, and they couldn’t even be in love and be around the people who were supposed to love them. That’s gotta wear a soul down. They were together fifty years. That’s a success story. Something to celebrate. But they were forced to lose important things to gain each other. Then they lost their only baby. So no,” she shook her head, glancing again at the photographs, “I don’t blame them. Enough does tend to be enough.”
Jag reached out, caught her at the back of the neck, and squeezed.
She turned to him and started, “Sometimes, bikers have a reputation—”
He knew what she was saying.
There were MCs that were racist, some implicitly, others explicitly.
“Chaos is not about that. I can’t say we’re poster children for diversity, because I think my mom’s Apache blood is the only diversity we got. But you will not feel shit like that with my family.”
She nodded and then asked, “I’m living, breathing proof it works, Jag. Why don’t people get that?”
“If I had that answer, baby, I’d win a Nobel Prize.”
“One of the issues, and they are numerous, is that it’s a Black thing with Elijah. Along with other garbage, he’s putting that between him and Dad.”
Well, fuck.
“Maybe because there’s nothing else to put there and he’s reaching?” Jagger suggested.
“Dad’s new wife is white.”
“Well, fuck,” Jag muttered out loud this time.
“Unh-hunh,” she agreed.
Jagger didn’t let her go when he looked down at one of the photos, then back to Archie.
“She was gorgeous, Arch,” he said.
“I know,” she whispered.
“I was too young to remember my dad,” he told her.
Her eyes brightened with interest.
And again…
Fuck.
He quickly carried on, and not about that.
“But I know for certain I’d lose my shit if something happened to my mom. Honest to God, I don’t know if I’d survive that.”
“You would,” she said quietly.
“Maybe day to day, but an important part of me would be jacked until the day I died.”