This was the first she had ever heard she was adopted. As a child, she would ask where her dark eyes came from, and her mother would answer, “There must have been somebody with dark eyes in our family trees.”
The same answer was given for her slightly darker skin, high cheekbones, height, and lithe body when the rest of the family was relatively short, stocky, and of paler skin. After her mother’s death from breast cancer, Aimee spent months building a DNA family tree recording who died of what and when. No one ever said it was not her family tree.
The fact that she was adopted would have, by itself, been shocking. But when it was combined with the phrase, “our true child, James,” Aimee’s response was white-hot anger.
There was nothing in the law that required the will state that she was adopted and not a “true child” of her mother and father. Even though the lawyer reading the will interjected, “That’s just a technicality of Colorado law... means nothing,” Aimee knew his words were bullshit. She was a lawyer working for a national firm in Illinois specializing in corporate law. There was nothing in the law that required such wording, nor was there anything that required you acknowledge your love for any of the beneficiaries of the will.
“If you have to say it, it isn’t true,” was one of her father’s favorite sayings. They had to say that they loved her. They didn’t say that she was not their true child. Nor did they say that all of them–mom, dad, and James–had lied to her all of her life.
When she got back to her office in Chicago, she found out that a re-organization had been announced in the days that she had been gone. Despite the fact that she had been doing extra work and training, and had been taking advanced courses at the local college on the promise that she would be promoted, she was informed that she must take a demotion and accept a transfer to the Cleveland office to keep her job.
Her boyfriend’s response to that news was unsympathetic to say the least. He informed her that she better be able to keep up with her share of the rent or he was going to have to find a new roommate.
Roommate!
She thought they were in love. She thought she was his significant other. He thought she was a roommate with privileges! She packed her few belongings in a suitcase and left to spend the night in a motel.
The next morning she turned in her resignation at work. They must have been expecting it, even waiting for it, because less than ten minutes later her supervisor appeared at her desk with a check for four weeks’ salary and three officers from security. They carefully watched her as she cleaned out her desk and then escorted her from the building. As she handed her building badge to the man at the main security desk, she realized it had all been carefully orchestrated so she would quit rather than be fired and the company could dispute unemployment benefits.
Her mother lied to her; her father lied to her; her brother lied to her; her boyfriend, or so she thought, lied to her; and the company to which she had given nine long years of her life lied to her.
Everyone
lied to her. Everything was a lie. Her entire life was a lie.
Standing on the sidewalk that morning in front of what used to be her office building, she decided that she was going to start her life over. And her new life was going to be based on the truth. She would wipe out her old life by starting over from the beginning. To do that, she was returning to the one place she had ever felt truly at home–Iron Creek, Colorado.
Her first night in town, she came to the Iron Angels Bar because that’s where she had spent a great deal of her childhood. It didn’t have the same name then, but it was still the Angels’ primary hangout. Mom and Dad would put her and James in a corner booth in the back, and then they would drink and dance and party with fellow members of the Iron Angels.
She was sitting at the bar wondering, “What now?” when Maddox Robinson sat next to her and ordered a Double Yu. Her dad loved the taste of Yukon Jack, but would never order it in public because it was a “pussy Canadian whisky.” He always ordered Jim Beam at the bar, even though he preferred Yu.
When she heard Maddox give his order, her first thought was, “Maybe this is an honest man.” Her second thought, after she looked over at him, was “My God!”
Maddox wasn’t the most handsome man she had ever seen, but he was the most... attractive, meaning that she was intensely attracted to him on a physical level — perhaps even on all levels. She had never felt such a strong and immediate attraction to another person before in her life. It was as if her out-of-sync life had suddenly clicked into place. Normally she would have dismissed such a weak and obvious pickup line with a witty put down, but when he asked “What’re you having?” she answered truthfully with the question that was going through her mind, “If I let you buy me a drink, does that mean I have to let you fuck me?”
Now they were walking toward a booth, each with a drink in hand, to talk. Perhaps she would tell him about the lies from her parents, from her job, from her life. Or perhaps she would keep the conversation on him. In either case, she would tell the truth. And he would tell the truth to her or he would be leaving alone.
“The corner booth in the back is empty. Let’s sit there,” she said as he led her away from the bar. Then she added, “It has special meaning to me.”
So far, truth was ruling the evening.
***
As they slid into the booth, Aimee asked, “So, Maddox Robinson, are you hoping to play me with liquor and get me to sleep with you?”
“I wouldn’t object.”
“That’s not an honest answer,” she replied shaking her head. “Honesty wins the prize. There’s no second place.”
He laughed. “Okay, then. Yes, I was hoping that I could play you with cheap liquor and get you to sleep with me.”
“I might be interested, but I have some rules.” She smiled and looked Maddox directly in the eyes. “Actually, I have one rule: total honesty. If you lie to me, even a little, it’s all over.”
The smile left her face, but her eyes continued to bore into his. “Do you think you can live by that rule?”
“I’ll try my best,” he answered. And then he added with a smile, “And that was totally honest.”
“So, tell me about yourself. Why are you in here tonight downing double Yukon Jacks?”
“I would rather you told me your story first,” he replied.
“Honest answer. You’re getting the hang of it, but I asked first, so you talk first.”
“Short answer to a long story,” he began, “is that I was plotting to overthrow the president of the Iron Angels and take over the club and his woman... especially his woman.”
He took a long sip of his whiskey. “But his woman is better at the game. She was playing me and is evidently grooming a different man for the Presidency and for her bed. That’s them bouncing around upstairs sealing the deal.” Aimee looked slightly confused. “You can hear them from the alley, especially if you’re right at the foot of the stairs to her apartment.”
“So what are you planning to do now?” she asked.
“Stay alive,” he answered with a laugh. The expression on his face and the hollowness of his laugh indicated that he was not joking.
Then his
face brightened as he raised his glass toward Aimee and said, “And try to get in bed with the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen.”
“Still honest?” she asked.
“Damn straight,” he replied. “Now I’m asking. What brings you back to Iron Creek? I can tell you aren’t part of the club, even if your parents were life-long members.”
“Maybe it’s because they weren’t my parents,” she answered. “I always thought they were. I always thought they loved me. Then last week, I heard my father’s will.”
“Yeah,” Maddox replied. “I heard that Jake finally drank himself to death a few months back.”
“Very honest,” she said. Her voice had gone cool and all expression had left her face. “Unlike my mother and father who very carefully wrote in their will, ‘We acknowledge our love for our adopted daughter, Aimee, and declare her to be a full and complete heir and equal to our true child, James, for the purposes of this will.’”
“Ouch!” said Maddox. “And that was the first time you knew that you were adopted?”
“And the first time that I knew that I was equal to their ‘true child’... but only for the purposes of the will.”
“That sucks,” he said.
“Being adopted isn’t the problem,” she continued. “A lot of people are adopted and loved very much by their adoptive families. The problem is that I was lied to... and not just about the adoption. Mom lied to me about her cancer. Dad lied to me about his drinking. James lied to me about everything. Everything that anyone has ever told me my whole life was a lie.”
She took a long, slow sip of her whiskey and coke and then said emphatically, “But no more. From now on, everyone tells me the truth or they’re out of my life.”
“You’re beautiful,” Maddox said softly. Then he added, “Truth.”
***
They stopped by the motel only long enough to pick up her suitcase. She held it between them as they rode to his apartment on the edge of town. She could come back to the bar for her car later.
Aimee wasn’t sure why she insisted that they pick up her belongings. Maybe it was part of her requirement for honesty. If she was going to give herself totally to Maddox, then that should be totally, not just for a few hours. Total giving would include living together. Anything less wasn’t honest.
Maddox’s apartment was a typical single male’s place. It was somewhat clean and things were more or less picked up from here and there. He hadn’t been expecting to bring anyone home. “Would you rather make love in the living room on the couch or in the bedroom on the bed?” he asked as he carried her suitcase inside.
She looked at him somewhat coldly, and he added, “Just trying to tell the truth.”
“Then tell the truth,” she snapped back. “We aren’t here to make love. We’re here to fuck. Love has nothing to do with it.”
“I wouldn’t be totally sure of that,” he replied.
Her response was to grab him around the chest and pull herself into him. Her lips crashed against his. Their tongues probed each other’s mouths as her hands tugged at his shirt, pulling it free of his jeans so she could reach underneath it and slide her hands up and down his muscular back.
He reached over her back and began lifting her blouse. “Slow down, cowboy,” she said brusquely. “A girl prefers you work up to stripping her.”
“I can’t reach up under your blouse like you can my shirt while we’re standing up. I’d have waited with the bra until you were ready.” He kissed her on the cheek and said softly in her ear, “Honest as I can be.”
She laughed and pulled her blouse over her head. Then she buried her face against his shoulder and returned to rubbing her hands over the muscles of his back. She tilted her head up towards him and their mouths once again found each other. It wasn’t until her hands were working on the buttons on the front of his shirt that she felt his hands fumble with the clip on the back of her bra.
“Why is it that men are such klutzes when it comes to a woman’s bra?” she asked in a breathy laugh.
“Because I don’t wear one,” he answered. He pulled back slightly from her and smiled and added, “That is
definitely
the truth.”
He ran his hand lightly across her face and added, “And I truthfully think that it’s time for us to move into the bedroom.”
“If you have to say it, it isn’t true,” she answered. “Just let it be true, don’t say it is.”
He nodded and picked her up in one easy motion and carried her back into the bedroom. Both Aimee and Maddox would later reflect on the fact that this night was the most honest sexual experience either of them had ever had. Aimee told him to slow down or to speed up or to move his fingers slightly or press harder or softer. And when he asked if she liked something, she didn’t always immediately say, “Yes.” This wasn’t love-making, but it wasn’t just fucking either. It was honest sex.