She scoffs.“Your brothers haven’t warmed your bed for the last five years.Your brothers didn’t make you dinner and clean your toilets.”
“Domestic martyr doesn’t suit you, Trina.Don’t worry.You can have the damn house.”
“No,” she says, mouth curving.“I don’t want your shit.”
She paces the narrow strip between toolboxes, eyes on the bike like she might scratch it just to watch me bleed.Doesn’t.We both remember the last time she tried to hurt what I love.
“We’re still married, Jack.”
“And…”
“I didn’t come to beg,” she says finally.“I came to say I’m done.”
“You were done two Christmases ago.”
“I’m done fighting.This time I’m sober when I say it.”
That actually pulls a laugh out of me, small and ugly.“You want a medal?”
“You want a divorce?”She fishes a folded paper from her pocket and taps it on the tank.“I say no.I’ll drag it out.Make you dance.”
“Why?”I ask.“So, we can pay lawyers to tell us what we already know?”
Her chin lifts.“So, you’ll have to admit what you are.Out loud.In front of someone who gets paid to care.”
“I’m a bastard,” I say.“Satisfied?”
“No.”She steps closer, breath smoke-sweet.“Tell me about the new girl.”
“There isn’t one,” I say automatically.
Trina smiles without teeth.“Then why do you look like there is?You’ve got that old shine in your eyes.You only get that when you give a damn about something...Because just last week you were talking about coming home.”
The words hit like a slow bullet.I had been.Call it cold feet after sending divorce papers.But not now.Now, I’m not going back like I always do.I pick up the wrench again, because men like me need something to hold when the room tilts.
“Maybe I’ll sign… I get my name back,” she says.“You get to crawl into whatever fresh hell you found last night and call it love.”
“Don’t use that word.”
“What, love?You act like it’s a plague.”
“It is.”
Chapter 8
Humbug
We stand there, the bike between us, an altar to all our worst prayers.Trina looks at me a long time, and for once there’s something like pity in it.“On Christmas, Jack?… How can you do this to me… She’s young?”she says like someone told her.“She’ll learn.”
Of course, someone told her.“Learn what?”
“That bikers like you don’t change.But you do get old.You burn hot, but then you burn out.”
Trina’s not going to guilt me into coming home to her this time.“Young?Who?You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Go ahead and play dumb.”She tucks the paper back in her pocket, zips the parka, smears the red of her mouth with her thumb until it looks like blood.“If you’re not coming home, I’ll have my sister bring the rest of your shit.Don’t break your hand punching the walls to impress yourself.”
“I don’t punch walls,” I say.
