Today & Tomorrow by Susan Fanetti

Havoc. But Nolan hadn’t known much of Bart at all until he’d come to SoCal, so he’d never be more than a brother. And Show and Badger still saw him as a boy. He knew what they would say. Come home. Get away from the question completely. Come back home.
     
    He couldn’t. Not until he had an answer.
     
    Staring at his phone, he wondered whether a man who couldn’t answer that question was the kind of man who should be accompanying a dying girl through the end of her life.
     
    Or maybe, because she was dying, it didn’t matter. He could pretend to be what he wanted to be. Who he was didn’t need to touch her in the short time she had. She needed a friend. He needed to be a good man. Their needs seemed to mesh.
     
    So he listened to her voice mail. And then he called her back.
     
     
    ~oOo~
     
     
    “Your father is going to kill me. He’ll pull out his Dix Turner moves, and they’ll be finding my pieces all up and down the coast. Or he’ll just send that tank he calls a bodyguard after me.”
     
    Analisa laughed and handed Nolan her helmet. “Dix Turner is pretend, and those were dumb movies. You’re a big bad biker. This is a big bad biker bar. It’s your element, right?”
     
    “Sure. And also the very place he told me never to take you.”
     
    They were standing outside an unassuming building across the Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu Beach. The front of the building and the sides of the road for some distance were full of parked motorcycles. This bar was well known and popular. Several movies had been shot here, in fact. The exterior, anyway.
     
    They were here because Analisa wanted to cross something off her list. She wouldn’t tell him what, only that she needed to do it here. He hoped it was ‘sit quietly, have a drink, and cause no trouble,’ but somehow he didn’t think so. Her secret list was still mainly a mystery to him, but it seemed to be her ‘rebel’ list. At this point, he was just along for the ride.
     
    “Okay. Let’s go in and get you a drink. Then maybe you’ll tell me what it is you want here.”
     
    It was still fairly early; the sun hadn’t sunk into the ocean yet, though it was big and pink and ready to go under. He had some hope that the crowd here would still be mostly tourists and wannabes, who’d be behaving themselves, drinking their beers and taking their selfies.
     
    Speaking of selfies, Analisa was carefully documenting their evening at the biker bar. When he noticed some unfriendly looks, he put his hand over the lens and pulled the phone down.
     
    “Careful, Ani. A lot of these guys aren’t into having their picture taken. You’re better off doing it like you did your piercing—just some before and after shots. Okay?”
     
    He still hadn’t seen her piercing, he still didn’t even know where it was, but he’d asked whether she’d filmed the whole thing. No, she hadn’t.
     
    “You are a buzzkill. Just so you know.”
     
    “I prefer to think I’m a lifeguard. What is it you want from this? I can’t help if I don’t know.”
     
    Her only answer was a coy grin. Then she leaned on the bar, and the bartender, a round, older guy covered in ink, leaned on the other side. “Getcha somethin’, sweetness?”
     
    “We want shots. Lots of shots. What’s good here?”
     
    The bartender looked at Nolan, his eyebrows high on his wrinkled head.
     
    Nolan ordered, since Analisa obviously had no clue what she was doing. “Couple shots of tequila—top shelf.”
     
    She wasn’t drinking age, but this bar wasn’t going to card a girl who’d come in with a guy wearing a patch on his back.
     
    They got their shots, and Analisa lifted hers up high. “To a long and healthy life!” She tossed it right back—but then didn’t swallow. Her cheeks puffed out with expensive tequila, she made a bizarre face, and then finally forced it down.
     
    “That was disgusting.” She gasped and slammed her empty shot glass on the bar. “I want another.