Brawn

 

“Hey, let me take you out to dinner tonight.” I leaned over Maria’s desk. Days had passed since the night we went out with Shift, the night we slept together, and neither one of us had said anything about it. We were avoiding the elephant in the room, and I felt like it was high time to address the situation and what it meant for us now.

 

“Are you sure?” she asked me.

 

“Why do you always do that?” I asked her. “Are you just not used to guys being genuinely nice to you? Yes, I’m sure. Go out to dinner with me tonight.”

 

She smiled bashfully and started to blush. “Okay, what did you have in mind?”

 

“I know a quiet place out of the way where we can have some privacy to actually talk. Let’s knock off around seven tonight and head over there,” I told her.

 

“Okay. Sounds good to me. Should I put it on the calendar?”

 

I laughed. “Are you serious? It’s not a lunch date. It’s not work related. It’s just us, as just us, not as business partners. Just set an alarm for seven so you can come get me.”

 

“Got it.” She turned back to the screen of her laptop and started typing and clicking. I assumed she was setting a reminder for later that evening.

 

Since the night at the hotel, we hadn’t talked much except to handle business. We didn’t sit around a shoot the shit like we had done at first. We just worked. Everything was work.

 

It felt like we had grown busier since that night, and I wanted to slow us down. I had bought her flowers a couple of times and left them on her desk to let her know I had been thinking about her even if we hadn’t had a chance to talk about anything yet. I had left her little notes to make her laugh and let her know how much I appreciated her. I never got anything back.

 

The sex seemed to be pulling us apart, like we were avoiding each other now.

 

I got us a cab to the restaurant I had told her about, the quaint little diner tucked away in the art district – a very unique section of town, where old buildings were being renovated and brought back to life by a group of art students from the local university as a revitalization project. There were galleries and collectives, and there was just a lot of activity in the area. A bunch of new businesses had been surfacing, opening their doors, and offering alternatives to what the rest of downtown had to offer.

 

Instead of the almost gaudy glitzy lights of some of the five-star restaurants in the rest of the city, the critically-acclaimed diner we were visiting had a very personal, private atmosphere. We were seated in a booth near the back of the restaurant. I ordered red wine for both of us, and we looked over the menu. We didn’t say much to each other until after we ordered our food, when the waiter left us alone with just our drinks.

 

“I feel like I should apologize,” I said, starting us off.

 

“What do you have to apologize for?” Maria asked.

 

“For that night at the hotel,” I said.

 

“Don’t mention it. I’m sorry we haven’t talked much about it,” she started.

 

“We haven’t talked at all about it,” I corrected her.

 

“I know.”

 

“Why is that? It’s like we’re trying to treat it like it never happened,” I said.

 

“I don’t know. It’s just weird, I guess,” she said, fiddling with her wine glass while she talked.

 

“Weird how?” I asked, and I stopped myself from asking the big question, but it came out anyway before she had a chance to say anything. “Do you regret it?”

 

“Oh God no, Brawn. I don’t regret it at all,” she said. “I just don’t know how to process what happened. I don’t usually just sleep with people.”

 

I nodded. “Is that what it was? Just sleeping together?”

 

“I don’t know.” She took a long drink from her glass, finishing most of it. “I’m usually in a relationship for a while with someone before it gets to that point.”

 

“I see, but we’ve known each other for a while now, right?” I said.

 

“Yeah, I guess we have.”

 

About that time, our sandwiches came out. We were distracted again, and the conversation stopped, of course, as we took in our food. The plates were piled high with vegetables, meat, and bread. The sandwiches were big enough that they were served with silverware in case we couldn’t actually eat them normally.

 

Our food made talking impossible, so we sat and made faces at each other, like a couple of kids, like the inseparable friends we had become. Partners in crime, not just business.

 

When we were both finished, having tossed our napkins onto our plates and pushed them toward the center of the table, we just laughed. It felt good to laugh at each other again. We hadn’t done that in days, not really. Not like we used to.

 

Our brand of friendship had been wholly unintentional. I didn’t even know it was possible to be friends with a girl the way I was with Maria. My previous relationships with women had been based on one thing: conquest. There was something else going on here.

 

“So, what were we talking about?” Maria asked.

 

“I’ll be damned if I remember,” I told her, which was a lie; I did remember. I just didn’t want to take this moment for granted by bringing it up.

 

“Oh well, if it’s important, it’ll come back up,” she said. “Cheers.” She held her glass up to me and then drank the rest of her wine.

 

“Cheers.”

 

After a few minutes of staring into each other’s eyes, she sighed.

 

“You look like something’s bothering you again,” she said.

 

“Man, nothing gets by you does it?”

 

“Nothing at all. That’s why you love me so much,” she teased.

 

“It’s not the only reason,” I said.

 

“What?”

 

“I didn’t say anything.”

 

“I could have sworn…” she started.

 

“You shouldn’t swear,” I reminded her, holding up a cautious finger.

 

She smiled and chuckled.

 

“No, I do have a few things on my mind,” I told her.

 

“Like what?”

 

“Well, for one, that night at the hotel, when Shift took me outside to talk,” I started.

 

“Oh, goodie. I’ve been wondering what the hell that was about,” she said, getting comfortable in her seat.

 

“Yeah, I know you have. He told me the guys were starting to get worried about my involvement with the MC. They were saying I wasn’t active enough, and there were concerns over it.” I put emphasis on the concerns so she would hopefully understand how serious their worries were.

 

“Like what kind of concerns? Membership concerns?”

 

“That’s how he made it sound, but I’ve never been that active in the MC. They just want a cut of the business or something,” I said, shaking my head.

 

“Then, hire some of the guys to work for you. Start apprenticing some of the younger members, or grab some little brothers, sons, whatever,” Maria suggested.

 

I thought about it a moment. “That’s not a bad idea, actually. You know, that’s what Mark did. He has his own construction company, and he saw I had some natural talent, so he took me on as his apprentice.”

 

“Whatever happened to that?”

 

“I just don’t do well with authority, I think. I’ve never gotten along well with anyone above me,” I explained.

 

“I see. I guess that means it’s good you’re the boss, then, huh?” She laughed.

 

“Yeah, I guess.”

 

“Well, boss man, apprentice someone from the MC, and I bet once you show that they can be involved in what you’re doing, they’ll cool down a little bit.”

 

“You’re pretty smart, you know that?” I said to her, winking.

 

“You don’t have to tell me, baby. I know.” She nodded and gave me a confident smirk.

 

She was pretty damn brilliant. She was definitely the brains here. If it hadn’t been for her, I still would have been stuck working for her dad. I wouldn’t have been forced to finally take the leap of faith and work for myself.

 

I opened my mouth to say something about the night we fucked, but I stopped myself, thinking it still wasn’t the right time to bring it back up. If our friendship and partnership had a chance to heal without bringing it up, then I felt like I owed it to her to let it heal on its own. I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize what we had.

 

I knew part of what had been bothering her was that she still wanted to go to nursing school. It had been long enough. It was time for me to make that happen for her. I needed to figure out how to help her manage school, work, and me.

 

Our waiter came back and poured us more wine before taking our plates. After he left, I raised my glass.

 

“To us,” I said.

 

“Yes, to us.”

 

We drank together, and as she pulled her glass away from her ruby red lips, she blushed. “Does this mean you’re going to take me somewhere and sleep with me again?” she asked me.

 

“I haven’t thought about doing that yet,” I admitted.

 

“But you have been thinking about the other night, haven’t you?” she asked.

 

“Yeah, a lot,” I said.

 

“Don’t worry, Brawn. Everything’s fine. I just have a lot of my mind right now.”

 

“Care to unload any of it?” I asked.

 

She shook her head. “Not right now. Give me some time to make sense of everything, and I’ll probably bring it up. Of course, by then, it’s also likely to have resolved itself, in which case, there will be no need to bring it up, huh?”

 

I narrowed my eyes. I didn’t like the idea that she could play the not now card, and I couldn’t. Basically, I had to divulge any and all information she requested, regardless of how trivial, but she got out of it, and I couldn’t say shit about it.

 

“We’ll see how well that works out,” I told her.

 

We finished our wine and hailed a cab at the curb to take us back to my house. We stumbled in through the front door and fell on the couches in the living room.

 

“Is there where you want to sleep tonight?” I asked her.

 

“No, I want to sleep in your bed,” she answered.

 

“Not in the guestroom?”

 

“Not tonight, Brawn,” she mumbled.

 

Well, that’s progress, I thought. “Come on,” I said as I stood up and took her by the hand, leading her to my room for the night. I hoped it would be the start of a new era in our relationship. It would have been nice to share the bed with her every night. It would force us to be close to each other, to talk, and even to be intimate more often.

 

The wine and heavy food weighed us both down considerably, and we undressed for bed clumsily, both of us falling into the covers and falling asleep lying across the bed.