I checked on the medbays in the UC container. The patients were still asleep. Inside with the humans were the same cats. I didn’t like that at all, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Minutes later, I got a shower. With water.
Jagger? Didn’t show up. Asshole.
* * *
The wedding between Amos and Cupcake turned out to be the biggest thing in four states, as far as the biker clubs were concerned. Over two hundred people showed up the day before the wedding, filling the parking area and the street leading up to the drive with bikes, trucks, trikes, and a few restored nineteen-fifties motor cars.
Some of our visitors were club presidents and VPs with their Old Ladies, and they paid premium prices for sleeping quarters, showers, and laundry. Others, from national enforcers to chapter house presidents, slept under the stars or in tents or in the beds of pickup trucks.
Just on the first day, the wedding was the biggest—and most successful—drunken party in modern motorcycle history. The Junkyard would make a tidy fortune, even considering the cost of the open bar I had promised for the day of the wedding.
Jolene and I worked nonstop, slinging drinks and keeping tabs and tossing rule-breakers out on their asses. Alex (safe from Dark Riders and any hypothetical attempt to make a new queen) and their mom made a fortune in tips, and Evelyndisplayed her previously unknown talent as a line cook, making breakfast foods and sandwiches like a pro.
But I was exhausted. The days of travel, fighting, and then wedding prep had been steady, unceasing work. Exhaustion left me feeling a lot sassy by the time I went to put on my wedding clothes.
In the office, alone, I stared at myself in the one long mirror. My hair was gelled up and I was wearing a bronze colored dress, orange nail polish on toes and fingers, and bronze spike heels by somebody named Choo. I looked more like my mama than I had expected. Little Mama had always had a flair for party clothes.
My feet in the spike heels hurt so bad I wanted to cry. That was the excuse my heart used.My feet hurt. Tears filled my weird eyes. I pulled on my orange lensed glasses to cover them—eyes and tears.
But.
Jagger hadn’t shown up. Hadn’t called. Hadn’t anything.
The wedding started at two p.m. on a day that was warm for the season, and it was standing room only in the roadhouse. The AC took that moment to go out. Of course. But Jolene got it going before anyone but me broke a sweat. I was sweating so bad I wondered if I was having hot flashes or if it was just nerves. I had never put on a wedding before. I hadn’t even seen one since I was a kid and that was between Black Diamond Kowalski and his Old Lady, Maggie. It had resulted in Black Diamond getting caught cheating at cards and his summery beating by the chapter enforcer, and Maggie taking off on his Harley, and divorcing the man who was now toothless and broke. Shortest marriage in OMW history.
Jolene, who seemed to recognize I was having a meltdown, pushed the crowd apart with her black mechanical arms and informed the horde at large (and one group of drunkenbikers specifically) that they would be quiet, get into position and stay there, or be banned forever. She then pushed everyone where she wanted them, according to some archaic vid she had watched and memorized.
I moved out of the way and let Jolene be in charge. Thank all that was holy for Jolene.
Over the speakers, Jolene started the wedding march, which I vaguely remembered as a ta ta tada. Ta ta tadaaaaa song.
Cupcake appeared in the doorway and the crowd went dead silent for about two seconds before bursting into wild cheers. She looked beautiful, blond and blue eyed, a gorgeous bride, in a backless red dress (that showed off her Junkyard Roadhouse club tats) with a full skirt and matching stilettos.
She looked younger than when I first saw her, by nearly two decades, thanks to my nanobots. Her blue eyes sparkled and she had makeup on. Her hair was tall on top and curled up on the ends.
Over the cheers, one drunken horny biker yelled, “You look like Marilyn Monroe. You sure you want to waste all that on a someone who ain’t a made-man?”
Whoever Marlyn Monroe was, the compliment made Cupcake’s cheeks go pink. She was happy, so that was good. Her reply was less agreeable. “You shut up, Howard Daget,” Cupcake yelled back, “or Jolene will toss you out on that skinny ass.”
Amos, wearing a black suit make out of denim, looked like a tank, as he strode up the aisle from the bar to Howard Daget. One massive fist shot out. A fast punch. Daget never saw it coming. He fell back into the throng around him and disappeared from sight, to reappear on his back between other people’s feet.
There was a Roadhouse Rule about no fighting. I pretended to study my orange painted nails. I hadn’t seen a thing.
Amos held out his arm to his lady love and escorted her up the aisle to the bar. Amos-the-tank stood next to his pretty-in-red bride, in front of Judas the Priest.
Judas performed all the important weddings and funerals, from presidents’ services on down. No one knew what his real name was or where he lived. People just put out the word that the priest was needed and he showed up, drank a bottle of moonshine as payment, and performed the necessary ceremony. Some people said he looked like Jesus with his lean face, long hair, and beard, but he smelled like a corn mash still, and his suit, which might have once been dark gray, may have never been washed.
I stayed in the back so no one would see my tears.Bloody hell.I hadtears.
Judas said all the right words for a biker’s wedding, though the future Old Lady threatened to slap him if he tried to make her say she would obey Amos. Amos said she was smarter than he was anyway and he’d just agree to obey her, and so Cupcake settled down.
“I now pronounce you Amos and Old Lady Cupcake.”
The party started.
Jagger still hadn’t come. Hadn’t sent word.Asshole. I went to my office and stripped, pulled on a blue denim skirt that swirled when I moved, and a club T-shirt, with soft-soled shoes. I thought about checking on the multilarval phase of PopPop but decided to dance instead.
