I didn’t know what that meant, and she seemed to read it on my face.
“Tail means girls,” she explained. “Jeez, I’m really gonna have to take you under my wing and teach you our ways, aren’t I?”
I shrugged. “Ways of what?”
Her grin was almost evil as it split her pretty face in two. “Ways of being a biker babe. Don’t worry, we’re still kids, so we got lots of time.”
“Okay,” I nodded slowly, happy because this girl seemed to want to be friends. “I can teach you about flowers if you want, I’m really good with them.”
She wrinkled up her nose, but it wasn’t mean, just funny. “I’m more into music, you know? What kind do you like? Wait, let me guess,” she looked at me appraisingly. “I’d take you for a country music girl.”
I shook my head, thinking of the music I listened to with Jonathon––Nova––and Dane when we went driving. “No, I like rock, I think.”
Harleigh Rose hooted to the sky and grabbed my hand to drag me back over to the slide and her abandoned iPod. “Nova’s right, you’re cool. Sit down, and I’ll educate you proper on all things badass and rock’n’roll!”
That was how they found us, Jonathon and Zeus, when they came out of the clubhouse an hour later. Harleigh Rose and me with our heads pressed cheek to cheek so we could both listen to the music pumping through the little music box, nodding our heads in tandem to the beat of “Good Times Roll” by The Cars.
“You ready to go, Flower Child?” Jonathon called out with a smile in his voice.
I frowned, carefully taking the earbud out and fist bumping with Harleigh Rose when she offered me her fist.
“See you soon?” I asked, nervous suddenly.
“Oh, yeah,” she agreed. “Nova’s gonna be part of the club now, so we’ll see each other a bunch. There’s not so many kids around, so you and me? We’re basically gonna be best friends.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, grinning. “I think I can manage that.”
“Yeah?” Harleigh Rose asked, eyes crinkling with the force of her smile. “Done.”
I nodded then walked over to Jonathon even though the man beside him looked mean enough to eat children for breakfast. I even flinched a little when he bent at the waist to put his big, craggy face level with mine.
“’Sup, girl?” he asked in a growly, monster-like voice. “You up for stayin’ a while more? Nova’s gonna do a project for us, and I’m thinkin’ he probably needs your feminine touch.”
I looked to Jonathon, eyes wide because this man was scary, but he also had a kind smile, so I didn’t know what to do with him.
Those familiar brown eyes sparkled as he jerked his chin at the brick wall at the front of the building they’d emerged from then hefted up the backpack I hadn’t noticed was in his left hand. “Wanna help me tag that shit up?”
My heart leapt into my throat, nearly choking on my excitement. “Seriously?” He’d never let me help him before because he said it was illegal, and I could get in trouble, but I’d always dreamed of helping him on day.
“Seriously. Zeus here wants the clubhouse tagged with the logo, and obviously, I’m the man for the job,” he responded with a grin.
“Could Harleigh Rose help?” I asked, knowing I was pushing my luck but wanting my new friend to see how absolutely cool he was.
He looked to the man named Zeus who smiled. “Have at ’er, but if it’s ugly as fuck, you’re paintin’ over it and redoin’ it.”
“Fuck you,” Jonathon said on laugh. “We both know everythin’ I produce is cool as shit.”
Zeus raised an eyebrow at me, and I giggled as I shook my head.
“One time,” I told them, “he made a spider that looked like a black blob.”
Jonathon reached out to snag me around the neck and give me noogie. I wriggled and laughed in protest, my previous melancholy such a distant sensation it was only a tinny echo in my chest.
And as we got to work on the massive green and black skull and tattered wing logo of The Fallen MC, aprons over H.R. and me, bandanas that smelled of motor oil and leather tied around our mouths, the man they called Nova that I knew as Jonathon teaching us how to spray the can properly, I let the gift that he’d given me sink into that crater in my chest and fill up the gap.
Because no matter how long Dane was gone for, no matter where he went, Jonathon was showing me that he’d always be my family. And more, that whatever he had in spades was inherently mine too.
And there was no greater gift I’d ever received in my whole life than that.
LILA
There were a handful of impactful moments, potent memories, that founded the basis of my relationship with Jonathon ‘Nova’ Booth like vertebrae in a spine, holding it––us––together.