Wheels of Steel, Book 3 (8 page)

“You are a curious girl.” Shawn said when it was all finished and taped up with plastic. She was given instructions for the care of the tattoo and then she and Shawn climbed onto his bike and they headed to unknown destinations not previously discussed.

When he drove the bike back to its original location, Robin figured this is where he lived. It wasn’t a bad looking house, just one that looked like every other home in the neighborhood. Shawn didn’t turn on any lights but led her through the darkened house and up a flight of stairs. They ended up in a small but neat bedroom.

“Is this okay?” He asked.

“Is there a condom in here?” She replied.

“More than one.”

“Then it’s fine.”

Shawn undid his pants and slipped them off. Robin watched him. He had a very big dick and it wasn’t even completely hard. She slipped off her clothes and climbed into his bed. It smelled of fresh cotton. Shawn reached for a condom and then joined her in bed. He kissed her softly on each eyelid and then her nose and then he kissed her lips.

Robin trembled and reached up and clutched at the curls of his head, pulling him down onto her. Shawn’s tongue slipped between her lips and she parted them and allowed it. This is the second man that I’ve kissed, she thought. Then his sheathed cock was entering her and Robin thought, this is the second man that I’ve fucked. And then when the tears slipped down her temples and wet her curls, he kissed them away and she thought, this is a man that I will never forget.

Afterwards, Shawn drove her back to the ship. He watched her as she boarded it. He had never even asked her name.

Mama wasn’t in the room and Robin showered and slipped on pajamas. She lay curled up in a ball staring at nothing as the ships fireworks went off and the melody of Auld Lang Syne drifted faintly from the Captain’s deck.

Chapter 6

***FOUR MONTHS LATER***

“Three. And that's a magic number…”

The crowd always went wild when they played that song. They would go into hysterics when Robin would spit out the multiplication tables as they tried to sing along with her. It was a great song to end by. She walked off the stage when the applause died down. It was just a small club but her band played there every Thursday during open mic night. They were good, but not trying to break into the music business. It was just something to do to pass the time and have fun.

Sometimes she stayed to have a drink with Becca and Tracey; the other two girls that made up her group ORANGE CRUSH. It was the name they had chosen before she had joined. Robin herself did not particularly care for the name but she did like the two members of the group. They were both 21, fun and they each had the same voracious love of music that she had. The band played a hodge podge of different genres from Top 40, Alternative, classic rock and R&B to whatever played on the radio that interested them, then either Becca or Tracey would pull out their guitars and try to play it.

Robin stepped down from the stage and several people moved forward to tell her how good they had played. She thanked them and began dancing alone to the Progressive music that was now blasting over the speakers. Soon the other two girls moved to join her and the three gyrated until Robin was too thirsty to go any longer. She gestured to the bar indicating that she needed a break but then abruptly stopped before she could manage one word. Robin’s breath froze in her chest as she stared at the body that limped out the door. It was the willowy figure of a dark haired girl with a slightly crooked posture. Robin strained to get a better look at the familiar figure but the girl was swallowed by the throng of dancing bodies.

Robin shuddered, a bad taste suddenly flooding her mouth. Tracy tugged her arm until her attention was back on the subject at hand; a well needed drink. She forced a smile and joined her friends at the bar. Robin drank the first gin and tonic quickly, barely realizing that she had just tossed it back. Her mind fought to push back thoughts and memories that were not wanted in her new life. But soon the liquor warmed her and she relaxed again.

A man offered to buy their second round but Robin declined even though the others were happy to accept. She got up and went back out on to the dance floor without them. Sometimes men thought that just because you said hi, accepted a drink or danced with them that you wanted their stinking hands on you. But this was not the case for her anymore.

A few hours later she was in the bathroom stall puking. She spit one last time into the toilet. There was no blood in it, but it was time to stop drinking for the night. She flushed and then left the stall to wash her hands. Two girls looked at her with concern.

“You alright hun?” One spoke. “You were vomiting pretty good.”

“I’m good.” Robin said while looking at herself in the mirror. She thought that she still looked okay despite dancing until the sweat plastered the clothes to her body and drinking until she puked. Over the months, she had made subtle changes to her look. However, she decided to keep her hair cut short—only, she now went to a hair salon where they expertly tamed it to showcase the big pretty curls that had been hidden within the kink and frizz of her previously unprocessed hair. Robin grabbed a paper towel and dabbed at the sweat that was threatening to melt her makeup. Her nylon shirt was plastered to her body but it didn’t matter since it was designed to stretch and mode over her toned, athletic torso. After touching up her lipstick Robin went back out on the dance floor with her friends.

Becca was holding another drink for her and Robin took it forgetting that she had just told herself that she wouldn’t drink anymore. She carried it onto the dance floor where she danced with it before deciding to finish it off so as not to spill it. A man began dancing close to the three of them. Soon his body began to move closer to Robin’s.

“Hello,” he finally yelled to her.

Tracey watched the exchange with amused curiosity, knowing what was going to happen. Robin blinked a few times, pulling herself from the pleasant alcohol buzz as she realized that he had purposely invaded her personal space. She gave him a look of displeasure.

“Hi.” She moved away from him so that they were no longer in jeopardy of touching. But he was already interested in her and began to close the space that she had created between their dancing bodies. Tracey and Becca both smirked.

“What’s your name?” He asked, yelling over the loud music. He was very attractive; college aged, tight jeans that outlined an above average body.

“Not interested,” was her response. She turned her back to him and Robin’s friends cackled. Robin shot down more guys than anyone they knew. Tracey was convinced that she was a lesbian but Becca didn’t think so and had advised her friend not to even try to hit on her. Tracey would not mind getting to know Robin more intimately but she honestly liked the girl; too much to get shot down like the rest.

Becca had said that Robin was a man-hater, which meant that if she really wasn’t a lesbian, than some guy had done something pretty bad to her at some point in her mysterious past. But there was no point in asking her. Robin never spoke about a life prior to Brown Mackie College where she had met her two friends. Robin was cool, she liked to dance, party and sing. But you could only get just so close to her before she began turning away from you.

As it got closer to midnight, Robin decided that it was time to go home. She thought about the girl that had looked like Amberly and just thinking the name brought a familiar pang through her body that was part anger and part sadness. Her mind reluctantly sifted through the unwanted memories.

After returning from the Bahamas, she had never gone back to Pinnacle and had immediately enrolled in Brown Mackie College. When she thought about what she wanted to do for a living, the answer now came to her easily; she wanted to be a physical therapist. Specifically she wanted to work with disabled children. Brown Mackie offered a fast paced program in which she could become a Rehabilitation Assistant in a short time.

She enrolled to the winter semester and once the decision had been made she had to work fast in order to minimize the number of missed classes. Mama gladly gave her the college fund and she used it to move into a place near her campus. Within two weeks of returning home, she was settled into a new home enrolled in school…and that had been the easy part.

College made partying and drinking much too easy. And there was no shortage of gorgeous men that found her equally as interesting. Robin thought that you could wipe out old dick with new dick. But she soon found that this was not true. In fact, she discovered that being groped by random guys was a big turn off. Despite her best efforts to fuck away her pain, she discovered that every time she got naked and felt a man’s hands and lips on her body it disgusted her. A mouth became something that was filled with spit, bad breath and questionable teeth. Dicks were blood engorged, mucus dripping instruments of destruction. She couldn’t stand to have a man’s sweaty balls near her or feel their clutching hands grasping at her body parts. Sometimes it made her physically ill and she had to jump up and be sick. Shawn’s was the last dick that Robin had experienced.

Anymore, sex was frequent masturbation to computer porn. Sometimes when an unwanted memory of freckled skin and a huge cock came to mind the resulting orgasm would be quick and powerful. But only during masturbation would she allow herself to entertain scant memories such as those. She never thought about ‘him’, not even his name. Robin was successful in burying her past and shielding her soft underbelly with a hardened shell that didn’t allow for close personal relationships—even from a random sex partner, especially from a random sex partner.

Robin no longer thought of her life in terms of happiness or sadness. But she found ways to get through. Drinking would only eat a hole through her stomach…but marijuana wouldn’t and neither would her favorite drug; music. But her chest still felt like there was a black hole in it. And one day, feeling nostalgic, Robin opened up Miss Lucille’s jewelry box. There were some memories that didn’t hurt and Miss Lucille was one of them. It seemed that everything was so mixed up now that she had no even footing on her life. She missed her Mama. She and Mr. Benali had really hit it off and upon returning to Cincinnati their relationship had continued long distance. But before too long Mr. Benali invited her to Atlanta and she had accepted his invitation, closed her business and relocated.

Robin ran her fingers over the jewelry, having a strange sense that the pretty baubles had been sitting there for a long time—waiting for the perfect time to be worn. What a shame that people took for granted what was right before their eyes. She slowly picked up the card that she had tucked away within the treasures. It was Bently Babb’s business card. She had been thinking about something for a long time and as she stared at Bentley’s number Robin allowed the thought to take root; and that idea was that she would die if she continued living as she was; she would either die because of her ulcer or at the hands of some random man that she’d rejected. She dialed the number before she could think of an excuse not to.

“Dr…Um, Bently. This is Robin.”

“Robin, so good to hear from you. How are you?”

For some reason, his kind words brought tears to her eyes. “Um…Can you help me?” And then she had broken down and cried.

“Robin, what’s wrong?!”

“I was wondering if you could refer me to a psychiatrist or something? I think I need help…”

Bently had talked to her for nearly an hour, and then he had indeed referred her to a colleague that was top in the psychiatric field. He wasn’t seeing new patients but had willingly seen her due to his association with Bentley. It was very expensive but Robin saw the psychiatrist at least once every other week and sometimes once every week and took the hit to her pocketbook as a necessary expense. Bentley helped by paying for her first 12 visits. He offered to pay for more but she wouldn’t allow it. He had already given her much more then she thought she deserved.

It wasn’t immediate, and sometimes it even seemed frivolous, but she was eventually able to talk about her mother and her father and even the things that caused her to panic. But one thing that she never ever talked about was Jason. It helped; the talking. She certainly did not think that she was healed. And she still didn’t think in terms of happy or sad, but at least she knew that she had to drink in moderation and she had to live in the moment and not in the past. And in that way, Robin assumed that she had healed herself.

She wore Miss Lucille’s pretty jewels, she lit the candles that most people just put out for show. She danced by herself to Daft Punk, she saw a sign that said ‘Singer Wanted’ and she snatched it up and joined a band and at night she plunged her fingers into her body while her heart raced and fantasized about the light brushing of red hair along her thighs.

***

When Robin returned home after the performance, she stripped out of her clothes and turned on the radio. She then powered on her laptop. It was midnight but she had finals which would mark the end of her first semester of school, and then she could go down to Atlanta and finally visit her mother and Mr. Benali. Unconsciously she hummed and tapped her feet to the music. Studying wasn’t easy for her, she struggled but having music playing helped her to concentrate. Paramore’s; The only Exception began to stream through the speakers and Robin’s heart almost seemed to freeze in her chest. She nearly knocked the laptop to the floor leaping up to quickly snap off the radio.