A Stranger in Familiar Land

Chapter 5

It was six in the evening on Saturday and Ella was debating on whether she should go to the party at the clubhouse.

None of the guys from the MC had been in the diner the day before. Maria had been very happy. Ella had missed them terribly. She hadn't realized how much fun work had been with them until they weren't there. Within a week, they managed to weasel their way into her heart, and her life. And then they just vanished.

Was she even still invited to the party? She didn't want to show up when she wasn't invited anymore.

Ella was already dressed to go; her long brown hair was in a high ponytail and she was wearing a loose navy-blue blouse, jeans, and her dad's leather jacket. Her motorcycle boots were sitting by the door waiting for her.

Currently she was sitting on her couch, having the crisis over a mug of tea.

She could just not show up, but then they might be offended. Jax already knew where she lived, so they could definitely hunt her down. She could show up, but then embarrass herself if she wasn't in fact invited. And she had no way to contact the club and ask since she didn't have any of their phone numbers or know the number of the auto-repair shop she'd heard the clubhouse was next to.

She only knew where the clubhouse was because she occasionally walked past Teller-Morrow when she went for walks, back when the weather was warmer. She'd overheard that the clubhouse was in the same place as the shop, and she hoped that information was correct.

Sometimes gossip could be wrong.

Her prepaid rang on the counter where she left it. Ella didn't recognize the number calling. Her heart jumped into her throat for a second before she shoved the panic down and picked up the phone.

"Hello?" She answered.

"Hey, darling," Jax's Californian drawl filled her ear and her anxiety subsided, "Just calling to make sure you were still coming tonight." He sounded slightly slurred, like he'd already been drinking.

"Oh, hey Jax," Ella smiled, "Yeah, as long as I'm still invited, I'll be there."

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

"Why wouldn't you be invited?" Jax asked.

"Well, you know, since no one was in the diner yesterday I didn't really know if..." Ella trailed off, not knowing how to put her feelings into words.

"You're obviously still invited," Jax assured her, "And we'll talk about yesterday when you get to the club."

"Okay, seven, right?" Ella said, nodding even though Jax couldn't see her. It felt like the right thing to do.

"Yep, seven. See you then, Ella." Jax ended the call.

Ella pulled her phone from her ear and looked at it. It surprised her that Jax had seemed genuinely concerned. While she'd developed an appreciation for having the club at the diner, she didn't expect them to have the same appreciation for her.

She sighed and sank back onto the couch, holding the phone between her palms. The sinking feeling she'd had the night before, that something had changed, returned to her stomach. Maybe this party was a bad idea. The kind of bad idea that had led to the 2am call to Bradley from a payphone on the Oklahoma-Colorado border.

Ella downed the rest of her tea in one gulp, pushing away the spiral her thoughts were bringing her towards. She needed to do something to distract herself. She got up from the couch and put the radio on. Meatloaf's Making Love Out Of Nothing At All began playing.

Sitting on the coffee table was her dad's old FXRP Harley manual, the one for the bike she currently had sitting in the garage collecting dust. She'd kept it with her for the last five years and had been flipping through it since the bike broke. She was using it as her guide for what needed to be replaced.