“A Snickers, please!” she shouted.
I’d get her the Snickers.
After talking a little longer with Brock and catching up.
“And wait, I thought you never ate snacks—”
The door to the station was shutting before Elizabeth could finish her sentence, accurate as it may have been.
“She’s an annoying one, huh?” Brock said when he saw me walk in, leaning forward on the counter. “I don’t know how you two get along.”
“Better than most people would think,” I said. “We just react to new things differently.”
“Apparently.”
An awkward silence fell as I wondered what would happen next.
I cleared my throat and got a Snickers and a bottle of water on the pretense I was hurrying. I put them up, let Brock scan the items, and stared at his calloused hands and muscular forearms as he handled the transaction.
“Have…have you given any thought to the name change?”
Brock chuckled, looked at me—God, he had such handsome eyes, impossible to pull away from—and resumed bagging the items.
“If I did, I’d be as smart as you think I am,” he said. “Nope. Not in the three minutes that you and your sister were talking with each other.”
“Would you like some suggestions?”
“Sure,” he said. “But if it ever gets found out I got such suggestions from you, whatever status or reputation you think I have would get shot instantly.”
And Steele probably wouldn’t take kindly to it. Or he would, seeing it as a chance…
“Well,” I said. “You probably want some alliteration, right?”
“Alliter-what?”
Just because he’s not a writer doesn’t mean he’s not smart.
“I’m just playing, I know what you mean.”
Oh.
“I guess. I don’t want to be cliché and say something stupid like Motorcycle Men or the New Mexican Men.”
“The latter might get you in a bit of trouble with some people!”
“Bah,” Brock said with a hand wave. “Do we look like people that have ever given a shit about what others think about us?”
I laughed. Brock answered his own question.
“Let’s see. Of the six of us, we’ve gotten arrested at least two dozen times total. We’ve gotten called meatheads, assholes, punks, shitheads, fools, ‘everything wrong with America,’ racists, sexists, every -ist imaginable…and yet, strangely, we also have people who call us ‘real men,’ ‘what’s right with America,’ badasses, cool, awesome, legendary. So you know what I say to it all?”
Brock threw his hands wide and raised his eyebrows.
“Fuck it, that’s what I say. I’m going to say what I want, do what I want, help this town, and not fuck up.”
“Well, you may not get hired at any NME events, but I can appreciate it.”
Actually, I can do a lot more.
