Chapter 8

Alycen went straight home after her confrontation with Dan, more than a little shaken or flustered. It wasn’t just his words or anything like that. It was the fact that, as frustrating as Dan was, he was always dangerously attractive to her. Now he was even more so. Something about his cold, even hostile response appealed to Alycen on a visceral level.

A man not under her thumb or spell for even a second? A man who could and would think for himself and openly reject society’s prevailing norms? A man who took delight in flouting the muddled message of mainstream morality? Alycen’s only previous lovers had been Dan’s own brother, David Leland, her estranged husband, a man by all accounts very old-school, very standard-fare Texan on the one hand, and Jeremy Ward, an easygoing, gregarious butcher who seemed to lack ambition for more from life.

Jeremy was interested in just three things outside of work: girls, football, and booze. Neither man was the stuff of which intellectual giants were made, nor was Alycen for that matter. Dan, however, had the dangerous air of a self-educated, self-willed philosopher of sorts. He was a rugged individualist. He was clearly not just some reclusive pothead, though that was part of the picture for sure. He was extremely antisocial, categorically rejecting not only society’s morals, but its etiquette as well.

There was a disturbing, even alarming revolutionary undertone with Dan Leland, a radicalism that was more pronounced the more one encountered the guy. Quite frankly, it both scared and aroused Alycen more than a little. She was drawn to a sense of danger ... and there was certainly a sense of understated risk inherent to Dan. Beneath his laidback, calm, lethargic, reefer-addict exterior, there was an undercurrent of contempt or disdain for conventional society, its values, and everything that it represented. Somehow, that was a lot more attractive than the slackers of the world like Jeremy or the conformists like David.

That was when Joanna called and Alycen rushed to answer her cell, “Hey, girlfriend, what’s new?”

“Yeah ... I’ve met and forgiven Les,” Joanna told Alycen with a surprisingly upbeat tone of voice.

“Really? He cheated on you with your own sister, Brandy. Six times, as I recall! Does that mean that you’re forgiving her, too?” Alycen expressed some surprise now, though she wanted to support her friend.

“Hey, he’s a cheater, you’re a cheater, I’d think that you’d be more in his corner, hon,” Joanna’s Okie accent came out a little stronger now.

“Yeah, everyone really likes throwing that in my face. At least whenever I judge Les and others for what they do. Yes, I get it, I cheated on David with Jeremy! I was there, I remember! No one’s quite so harsh on Jeremy. He was there, too!” Alycen complained.