“Alright. So every family who lives like we do, usually large families from old money, send over the information of their available daughters who are interested in marrying the man who is up for grabs. Our parents go through the binders together. They pick their favorites. They have interviews with their top choices. They narrow that down and do family interviews. Then, they usually choose from there. Sometimes shit happens where the marriage is more political than anything else and happiness doesn’t fucking matter but we haven’t had to deal with that in our family in a long time.”
Asante whistled and I snickered.
The chef walked back out with salads, bread and soup and set them down on the table between us.
We watched her head back to where she’d come from.
“She signed an NDA,” Asante said.
“What?”
“I know you don’t want certain shit getting out so now you have the option to take whatever you want out of here and leave whatever you want out of here.”
I scoffed and shook my head.
“Be for real, Asante. Why you single?”
“You trying to say I’m the full package or what?”
“Shit. Maybe I am, but ultimately we know I’ve been avoiding dating for real because of shit with my family and whatever. What’s your story? You don’t seem like you’d have trouble finding someone.”
“I wasn’t looking,” he said simply. “After my divorce, I just needed some time for me. Then with trying to get reacclimated with civilian life and figuring out my next move, it didn’t seem like a good time to be trying to date and shit so I didn’t.” He plucked up a piece of bread and bit into it. “And I’m not fucking perfect by a long shot.”
“Oh yeah?” I picked up my own fork to dig into my salad. “Let’s hear it then.”
“I’ve got trust issues. My pride is a motha’fucka and I’m not the best at communicating.”
“You sure? Because you seem to be communicating just fucking fine with me.”
“Nah. I hold a lot of shit in and take a lot of shit on the chin but I’ll shut down on somebody quick and that goes for everyone, friends, family and all.”
“Oh. That’s why you were giving me the silent treatment?”
“Nobody was giving your simple ass the silent treatment,” he argued.
We both chuckled and I shook my head at that.
“Yeah, alright. Well I’m not the best communicator either so we’re going to have to work on that shit.”
“We?” Asante repeated and lifted an eyebrow. “There’s a we now?”
“There could be,” I didn’t hesitate. I could hear Rook’s voice in my head telling me that if I wanted to date anyone of my choosing the time constraint on that was getting worse by the day. If I was going to do it, I needed to do that shit now. “If you wanted there to be,” I added. “What I’m trying to say is if you want to just keep hanging out and see where shit goes for the next two years, I’d be down to do that, but uh, I also understand if you don’t want to get invested in this shit.”
“Good to know.” Asante sat back in his seat and lifted his glass to his mouth slowly. “Let’s just see how it goes.”
I nodded once at that. “Let’s do it.”
5
ASANTE
“What’s up?” I dapped security up on my way inside the club, a smile on my face and a bottle of water in my hand.
“What’s up, Asante?”
I waved at the bartenders and servers who were standing together, talking and waiting for the club to actually open. I made a beeline to my office to grab their payment for the week but froze after I’d pushed the door open.
I looked briefly around my office before walking further inside, taking my time to walk over to the glass vase of roses.
