“The Harley. The money. The pot. Like, are you in some kind of gang? I’ve heard of those types of men; they target college women. I don’t care who you do it to; it’s wrong. Is it that?”
“Kidnapping? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Human trafficking. Murder. Organized crime. Just tell me that much.”
He only stares at me for several long seconds and brushes a lock of hair out of my eyes. Then Crosby cups my face in his big hands. “Okay, Leela. If it makes you feel less anxious. I never have and would never hurt anyone. I’ve never abducted, nor would I ever. I’m not involved with people who do that, and I never would be. I’ve never done any violence to anyone, and I would never.”
I nod, waiting for more. Eventually, I win this game of chicken, and he caves.
“Alright. Here it is. My cousin Jason got into transporting drugs for a motorcycle gang down in Florida. He reached out because he needed help. He wanted out. But when I went down there, I realized he was actually on the run from them, and he was using my name. They knew him as Crosby. He’d stolen a bunch of money and marijuana and realized that was a big mistake. There was a price on his head. He needed a way out. So, I helped him hide in a ratty motel in Tallahassee for a few days. HE WAS GONE when I woke up one morning but left me half the cash and weed. I was pretty pissed about the whole thing, so I took the cash and the weed and went back home to North Carolina, kept my head down, and figured getting absorbed into the college scene would help insulate me from that gang. I couldn’t give half of their product back to them without knowing where Jason went. I’d always wanted to be a doctor, but I couldn’t even afford to even fill out a college application, and now I could. And I’ll tell you something else. Your friends might look down their noses at me, but they all paid handsomely what I was selling to them.”
“What? They’ve all signed codes of conduct with the fraternal organizations,” I bluster at this revelation. “They’re not supposed to…if the school found out….”
Am I just that naive?
“It’s all gone now, so don’t even sweat it, baby,” he tells me.
Don’t sweat it? I sweat everything. I tell him that I should have asked him these sorts of questions before we started anything physical, and I’m ashamed that I hadn’t.
What’s most unsettling, though, is that an actual gang of bikers could be looking for Crosby.
“Are you in danger?”
“Fuck, I don’t know.”
“I don’t know the first thing about gangs, but all of this sounds terrifying to me.”
“Don’t even worry about it. Let’s talk about something else. I told you my story. Now you tell me something about you that I didn’t know.”
I square my shoulders. “I thought you knew everything.”
“Come on.”
Sighing, I take a deep breath and spill my most insane moment from high school.
“When I was a senior, I had a major crush on Daniel Decker, who was in a musical production ofInto the Woodswith me. Holy shit, that boy could sing. My crush was one hundred percent based on his singing, which is not something you should base your attraction to someone on. I know this now. So, me being the forward gal I am, I very sweetly asked him to go to prom with me. I mean, we were friendly in drama together. I didn’t expect anything except it might be fun to go with him. And okay, maybe I had a little fantasy that he’d sing to me or something.
“He said yes. He then proceeded to tell everyone behind my back that he didn’t tell me no because he felt sorry for me. Then a week before prom, my older brother heard about what he was saying and came to me. So, what did I do? I waited until we were all in the middle of a Student Council meeting, and I told him, in front of everyone, that I had changed my mind about prom. I told him that I wanted to go alone. He, of course, tried to save face and told everyone after the meeting adjourned that he was relieved because he was about to hurt my feelings by ending our plans.”
“Please tell me no one believed him,” Crosby says.
“Of course not. Have you met me? I know how to get people on my side. Unfortunately, he had the personality of cardboard. He didn’t go to prom at all, and I had a blast of a time with my girlfriends. So, I’d say everyone got what they deserved.”
Crosby listening with rapt attention and smiling eyes is doing something to my heart. “I fucking love you,” he says, laughing.
I rear back. “Um?”
Crosby quickly recovers. “I mean…not that way. I mean like…you know. You’re awesome. I love that about you. I love that I know you, and I know that about you.”
I shake my head and back up my stool. “Alright, calm down. I know what you meant.”
But do I?
He shakes his head and tugs on the belt of my bathrobe. “You get my head all mixed up, Leela.”
I blink several times. “What do you mean?”
He tugs at the knot in the belt, and it loosens. “Do you ever get what you wish for, and it’s more than you asked for, and you start questioning everything you know?”