Chapter Fifteen
Ian
“Tell me that you’ve at least spoken to your father since the meeting?” Chris was saying to me at the shop.
It was a particularly quiet day, and we’d gotten through our work very quickly. Now we were just messing around and I was telling Chris all about the club meeting on Sunday. He didn’t seem nearly as surprised as I had been, which surprised me even more. But then again, it wasn’t always easy to tell what Chris was thinking. Sometimes he was easygoing to a fault.
“No, not yet. I don’t know what to say.” It was true. I’d thought about speaking to him several times, but then every time I thought of what I was going to say, I clammed up. Anyway, he hadn’t spoken to me, either.
“Wasn’t the meeting on Sunday?” he asked.
“Yeah. So?”
“Well, today is Wednesday already. And the day is almost over. How can you not have spoken to your father? Poor guy must be going out of his mind wondering what’s going through your head. You at least owe him a conversation. You really just walked out of the meeting?”
“What was I supposed to say?”
“How about thank you?”
“But is that what I want? If I say thank you, then it’s like saying that I want to take on the job.”
“So, you’d rather say nothing at all? Wow, sometimes I think you’re worse than me. Have you not at least considered the fact that your father did something nice for you?”
“Is it though?”
“Dude, I think you should go and speak to him. At least talk it over with him. You don’t have to say yes, but you can at least talk to him about it.”
I sighed. I hated it when Chris was right. “You know, sometimes I think I would rather just not tell you anything. It would be easier that way.”
“Why? So you can ignore your problems?”
“Exactly!”
“What are you doing?” he asked as he watched me.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m putting away these tools.”
“They’re already in place. I know what you’re doing. You’re stalling so that you don’t have to go and talk to your dad. You’re probably waiting for him to pack up and go and then you’ll say that it wasn’t your fault.”
“And you’re a pain in the ass!” I said. “You know, sometimes I think you like my father more than you like me.”
“You’re an idiot at times. Come on, Gunner. Just talk to him. Keep the peace and all that.”
“Fine, I’ll go. But that doesn’t make you less of an idiot.”
“Whatever. I know you love me.”
He chuckled as I walked toward my dad’s office. For someone that wasn’t a part of the club, he sure was getting too involved. I reminded myself to tell him that.
I knocked on the door, and my father looked up, surprised to see me.
“Ian, come in. Come in. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Hi, Dad. Listen, I’m sorry about walking out on you like that. I know it was rude. And I know you’re always going on at me for being rude. It’s a bad habit. It’s easier to run away sometimes. I just don’t know how to respond like a normal person at times.”
“It’s okay. Normal is overrated, anyway. I was surprised that you responded that way, though. I mean, I wasn’t surprised that you walked out like that, but I definitely thought you’d be happier. Is that not what you wanted? I thought you loved being a part of the club.”
“I do love being a part of the club. I was the one that was surprised. I thought you’d ask Patriot.”
“Grant? Why would I ask him? You’re the one that’s the most involved. You’re hardworking and everyone loves you.”
“No, they don’t!”
“Ian, they do. And it’s about time you realized that.”
I didn’t like the way this conversation was going. Again it was my father telling me something about myself that he believed to be true.
“And it’s about time you realized that I’m not like you, and I never will be. This is who I am, and if you don’t like it, then I don’t care.”
“So this is how you repay me? After I chose you out of everyone in that club to take over from me? Seriously? You know, Ian, sometimes I give you too much credit. You’re very disrespectful.”
“Dad, it’s just—” I started.
“Get out,” he interrupted.
“What?”
“I said get out!” he stood up to show that he was serious.
I’d never seen that look from my father before, and even though we disagreed on many things, he’d never once ordered me out his office. I gulped, nodded, and walked out. Fine, I thought, I don’t want to be in your fucking office, anyway.
I ignored Chris’s look as I back into the shop. Instead, I just grabbed my jacket and headed out. I climbed straight onto my bike and started driving around. I needed to keep moving. I needed to clear my head.
After about forty minutes of driving around, I started to feel a bit better. I wondered what other people did when they needed to clear their head. I supposed they went to the gym, or drowned their sorrows in alcohol. I was glad that I had the bike. But I stopped short the moment I got home when I saw that Patriot was waiting for me outside my house.
“Patriot? What are you doing here?” I asked.
“What? Can’t I come and visit my brother? Why the hostility?”
I was just so used to being hostile with my brothers that I sometimes forgot that it wasn’t always necessary. Patriot hadn’t done anything to me. Yet. I was sure it was coming, but for now, I had no reason to be upset with him. “Sorry. It’s been a long day. Come in; I have beer.”
“Beer sounds great.”
We walked in and I fetched us both a cold beer from the fridge. I threw one to him, and he caught it with one hand.
I grinned. “Nice catch. You haven’t lost your touch.”
“Good throw. You see, we’re a good team,” he said.
I felt the hair on my arms stand at his comment. A good team? Since when we were a good team? There might have been a time where we were close, but it had been so long since I’d considered him as anything else but a distant brother. A distant brother who didn’t live all that far from me.
“So, you still working out?” I asked for conversation. I didn’t want to talk about what sort of team we were or weren’t good at. And if there was one thing that I had learned over the years, it was that gym was one of the safest topics to turn to.
“Oh yeah. You know me. I still go to the gym. I don’t think I’d feel myself if I didn’t go.”
“How often do you go then?”
“Roughly six times a week. I have a trainer now. He’s this crazy guy who refuses to let me take a break. He’s amazing, but I hate him at the same time.”
“Ha! Sounds like a lot of your relationships. Six times a week, though? That’s crazy.”
His green eyes shone as he spoke about his love for working out, and I wondered if he’d always been so into building muscle. I tried to remember back to a time when he didn’t work out, but I couldn’t. He’d always enjoyed pushing himself far beyond where his limits should be.
“I thought you’d be more of a swimmer, to be honest,” I said.
He looked at me in surprise. “A swimmer? Why on earth would I be a swimmer?”
“You know, because you were a SEAL.”
“You do know that it stands for sea, air, and land, don’t you?”
I laughed. “I’m kidding. Anyway, I thought it was funny.”
“Wacked out sense of humor, if you ask me.”
“At least I have one,” I retorted.
“Hmm, sounds like something Pop would say.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Does it? I don’t think so. Although, maybe to you. Dad and I don’t exactly swap jokes.”
“So, speaking of which, what’s the deal with you and Pop? You just walked out of that meeting the other day. Not that I was surprised by that. You’re not very good with things like that, are you? I could see how much you hated everyone looking at you. Maybe he should’ve given you a heads up or something.”
“No, I’m not good at things like that. And I’m glad you noticed. I agree he should’ve given me a heads up. Anyway, I was so sure that Dad was going to offer it to you. I guess I was more surprised than anything else. I was staring at you the whole time that when he said my name, it didn’t even register.”
“Are you kidding me? There’s no way that I would’ve gotten it. You should totally get that spot. I think you should take it. But that’s only my opinion of course. I doubt you want to hear it. No wonder you looked like a deer caught in the headlights, though.”
“You think I should take it?” That was a surprise to me. “And since when do you care about what happens at the club, anyway?”
I could feel myself getting angrier the longer the conversation went on. Why should I listen to him? He knew nothing about the club. And why could we never have a conversation without it turning nasty?
“Whoa,” he said and held up his hand in protest. “Why are you being so hostile? You know, people always say that I’m the one that’s quick to anger, but I’m not so sure about that. I think you get your anger problems from Pop. You see, you’re even more like him than you think.”
“I’m nothing like him.” It wasn’t the first time that someone had said that I was just like my father. Every single time I would wonder what on earth people saw in me that I didn’t see in myself. I looked a bit like him, but that was it. That’s where the resemblance ended. That, and our mutual love for motorcycles. But that was it.
“You are, though. Both the good and the bad. Anyway, he only gets angry when he has a reason to be angry. You get angry for no reason at all. Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe you are different. Come on, Gunner, don’t be an idiot. Take the job. It’s a cool opportunity. And it was a pretty sweet thing for Pop to do, don’t you think?”
I took a big gulp of my beer and then looked at him. “What I think is that you have no right telling me what to do. And to be honest, Patriot, I’ve had a very long day. And I was really looking forward to a nice night in with just myself and my beers. And now, I’m one beer down.”
“You’re the one that offered it to me.”
“Well, I regret that now.”
“Oh come on, man. Don’t be like that,” he said.
But it was already too late. The damage had been done, and the two of us knew it. “I think it’s better if you just go.”
“What? But I only just got here. And I’m your brother. I’m family. You can’t kick me out.”
I stood up. Family? Chris was more my family than he would ever be. Family was more than just blood. If there was one thing that I hated, it was someone telling me what I could or couldn’t do. I nodded. “Oh, yes I can.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously!”
He stood up and shook his head as walked toward the door. He opened the door and then turned around one more time to look at me. He looked like he was about to say something else, but then he shook his head again and changed his mind. I waited until I heard his bike start and ride away. Only then did I take a deep breath. I looked over to where he was sitting and saw that he’d left his beer behind. I walked over and downed the rest of it in a few gulps. Why had he come over, anyway?