Page 219 of Devil’s Disciples

I chuckled at the thought of her hunting rattlesnakes in sneakers and a dress that came to mid-thigh. “You’re going to hunt rattlesnakes bare-legged?” I asked, stifling a laugh. “That’s a good way to get bitten.”

“We’re all going to die sooner or later,” she said. “I’d rather it happened while I was having fun than when I was asleep.”

One week earlier, I was at a strip joint in Oceanside without a care in the world. Now, I was mentally planning my death and preparing to go rattlesnake hunting with a fearless Covergirl makeup model.

I’d always wondered what life would be like if I could truly throw caution to the wind.

Without warning, she lifted my hand and looked at my watch.

“Crap,” she said as she released my wrist. “I’ve got to get this meeting started.”

She stood and brushed the wrinkles from her dress. “Hi, I’m Abby, and I’m a survivor.”

“Hi, Abby,” everyone chimed.

Everyone but me.

I wondered what being a survivor meant.

If the doctor’s diagnosis was accurate, I’d have twelve months to find out.

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Abby

I had two major concerns if I chose to exclude hunting for a live rattlesnake from the equation.

My first worry was the motorcycle ride.

Riding on the back of Porter’s motorcycle was eye-opening. The trip to Borrego Springs was not at all what I expected. I anticipated being thrilled, scared, and excited. Those feelings were present during the two-hour journey but summarizing the experience could only be done with one word.

Liberating.

I had no idea I lived with constraints until I felt the freedom riding offered. We’d been parked for thirty minutes, and I yearned to get back on and go somewhere.

Anywhere.

It was going to be an issue of epic proportion if he wouldn’t give me a ride at least once a week. My mind was reeling with the notion of finding another real-life biker – in the event Porter chose to tell me to get lost after the rattlesnake hunting adventure.

The thought of Porter permanently ridding himself of me brought me face-to-face with concern number two.

Porter.

I was thirty years old and didn’t look a day over twenty-four. By my own admission, I was attractive. According to the masses, I was drop-dead gorgeous. I sided more with my belief that I was simply good-looking, choosing to dismiss the social media outbursts from frat boys with a hard-on for anyone with pouty lips and blood pumping through her veins. Nonetheless, my self-esteem cup was half-full, and it allowed me to see myself as mildly attractive.

I’d been single since I was really twenty-four. It wasn’t a conscious decision I made. It was a direct result of my inability to find someone that was attracted to me for all the right reasons.

My lack of interest in men could have been a result of the volume of dick pictures that filled my inbox daily. If that was not enough of an eye roll moment, the chiseled ab pictures (that generally followed the dick pictures) caused me to skate through life attached to the belief that my righteously-minded male counterpart simply didn’t exist.

Dicks were ugly and only served one purpose as far as I was concerned. Using them as a greeting card was a surefire way for the sender to end up stacked in the ever-growing pile of men I graciously labeled as pigs.

I told myself when the day arrived that I truly found interest in someone, I’d open my eyes, close my mouth, and pay attention.

Without announcement, warning, or my permission, that day may have arrived. And, it brought an intriguing two-hundred-pound hunk of motorcycle riding man with it as proof.

The man of interest was standing at my side with his eyes locked on the base of a Crucifixion Thorn because he saw something. His left hand dangled loosely at his side and his right held a three-foot-long stick he’d picked up from the desert floor.

Porter walked – strutted was more like it – as if San Diego County owed him something and he was on a mission to get it. I was convinced if I sliced open his wrist that blood would not drip from his veins.