“Whatever you want. There’s a bar, remember?” I pushed up from my seat too. I slid the paper he’d given me into a desk drawer and headed toward the door. “Come on, Bishop. How am I going to flirt with you if you don’t cooperate?”
He chuckled and shook his head but followed me out of my office and to the bar.
4
BISHOP
This was a bad idea. Everything about this was a bad idea but I walked with Asante to the bar anyway.
“Pick your poison.” He walked around the back of it and I shrugged.
“Surprise me.”
He nodded then turned around to survey the several liquor bottles lining the counter. I took that chance to really take him in.
He was just a little bit taller than I was but he was much bulkier compared to my lean frame. He had a full beard and a clean cut head. He was just wearing some jeans, a plain black shirt and some matching tennis but honestly, he looked good. He had a tattoo on the inside of his arm and when he turned around with his bottle of choice, a large smile on his face and some soft brown eyes.
I’d pulled paperwork on him the night we’d met so I knew he had a sister named Nadira and that his family had come from Kenya three generations ago. I knew about his military service and his marriage that had ended due to infidelity which had caused quite the scandal given how well respected his wife hadbeen at the time. He was 28 and lived alone. He didn’t have any kids on paper and he’d been in Crescent Falls for about a year now
If we were going to be conducting business in this man’s establishment we needed to know who he was and if he had any loyalties to anyone adjacent to us and our lives. I’d thrown a tail on him and thanks to someone we knew in cybersecurity, Memphis, we’d verified that he didn’t have anything suspicious on his computers or cell phone and no random deposits had been made.
I didn’t read Asante as someone who was out to get us, but I also knew my radar wasn’t a hundred percent effective and I would never bet my family’s safety on a gut feeling that I got.
Asante poured us each half glasses of brown liquor and I watched him take a sip before I took my own without even thinking about it for real.
He tapped his knuckles on the bar.
“So, do you usually flirt or get flirted with?” he asked.
“I don’t even know how to answer that question, Asante.” I took another slow drink from my glass. “The men that I…” I paused and searched for the way I wanted to word my statement. “The men that I usually hang around with-”
“Fuck?” Asante cut me off.
“What?”
“The men that you usuallyfuck,” he clarified. “Have you ever said that out loud even to yourself?”
“You a therapist now?”
“Nah. I’m just a man asking questions.”
“Right.” I tilted my head back and drank the rest of my glass down. I hissed through my teeth as the liquor burned its way down my throat. Then, I reached back for my pack of cigarettes and freed one into my mouth without uttering a word.
When I looked back at Asante his eyes were already on me and he had a smile on his face. I looked away while I lit up and took a long draft.
“We don’t really do the flirting thing,” I said. “It’s usually just sex with no real conversation involved.”
“Well that sounds fucking mechanical and a little sad honestly.” He tilted his head back to finish off his own glass of liquor then casually leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms across his chest.
“So, what? You’ve been magically in love with every man you’ve ever fucked?”
“Nah, but I’ve at least known shit about them.” He licked his lips. “Look, I’m not here to judge or try to force you further out of your glass closet or any of that shit. I’m just asking questions to get to know you, Bishop. It’s not an interrogation.”
“You sure? Because it feels like an interrogation.”
“My bad.” He chuckled. “I’m just trying to get to know you, kid.”
“You go have to stop with that kid shit,” I cut my eyes at him.
