“I don’t know that I’d call her job funny,” Elizabeth said tersely. “She took care of Cole, remember. She’s probably had a shit week.”
“Well, Elizabeth, why don’t we let Justine speak for herself? Maybe she’ll be different than the other hundred times we’ve asked her and she says not much.”
She smiled at me as she said it. Little did she know…
“Well, actually, this week, one of the bikers started hitting on me.”
“Wait, what?” Katie said. “OK, hold up, nothing else matters. Tell us more. Which one? Mason? Zack? One of the prospects? Maybe a Bandit?”
“Please don’t let it be a Bandit,” Tara said.
“No, no, relax, I know the reputation of the Bandits, no it’s…he’s a smart guy, compared—”
“Zack.”
All three of the girls said his name at once. They all instantly knew. Zack may not have had a Ph.D. or gone to law school, but among the girls—and, I presumed, around the Black Reapers—Zack was known as the smart one. I hadn’t seen it yet, but I couldn’t exactly pretend that he’d struck me as an idiot. We just hadn’t had much interaction to definitively say either way.
“And?” Katie said. “So he started hitting on you. Are you going to be boring and stay away? Or are you going to spice up your life and hang out with him?”
“I’m…”
Why even hide it? Katie’s just going to drag it out of you if you don’t say everything.
“I’m going out with him.”
“Oh, shit!”
“No way!”
“Tell us more!”
The words came from everywhere. I laughed, put my hands up defensively, and asked for silence. But the questionsstillkept coming.
Finally, a small silence came.
“Tell us the story,” Katie said. “Spare no detail.”
It was kind of fun and flattering to be asked so much. And so I said as much as I could remember, describing how Zack had first snuck into the break room and asked me out and I’d turned him down. I then mentioned the encounter with Brock and how Zack had seemed understanding.
As I recounted it, I wondered just how much Zack might have been playing the good cop to Brock’s bad cop. But as a doctor, I usually had a good sense for when patients were bullshitting me. I didn’t think Zack had manipulated the situation—taken advantage of it, sure, but I doubt he’d set it up, smart or not.
“Interesting,” Katie said.
“Curious timing on his part,” Tara said.
“What do you mean?”
“The founder of the club here is in a coma, and Zack still wants to ask you out?” Elizabeth said. “I dunno. That seems a little…like he’s trying to relieve some stress, not so much ask you out, no?”
“Well…”
I bit my lip about our encounter from several months ago, the one right after Brock. One, I didn’t know if Tara knew Brock and I had hooked up, and even if she did, I wasn’t sure that she wanted to take that particular walk down memory lane. Some parts of our past were best saved for the subconscious recesses of our minds.
“I guess we’ll just wait and see,” I said. “I think that I can handle it on my own, but obviously, time will tell.”
Katie looked intrigued as could be, like she wanted to know where our dates would be so she could follow us. Elizabeth looked suspicious and stress. Tara looked somewhere in the middle, a little concerned but not so much that she was going to get in the way of us. As best as I could tell, she just wanted what was best for me.
But that was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? Was this really what was best for me, or was this going to turn out to be another heartbreak? Was Zack truly just Zack, or had he now become Zack plus being a Black Reaper?
