“What are you doing right now?” I said.
“I’m in the break room at work. You timed your call very well.”
“So you’re not off work?”
“No, I will be in about two hours, though. Why? What are you thinking?”
That I want to see you.But I hadn’t given any thought to any detail yet. I just…
Well, shit, did details really matter? Did where or when we met up really matter as much as just seeing her and talking?
We were well past the point of needing an ideal time or location to meet up. We could have pretended those things mattered, but just like we’d cut past the bullshit about whether my presence in the Black Reapers mattered or not, we needed to get past this.
“I’m thinking I’m going to come and pick you up on the bike,” I said. “Tell the prospect at the hospital that I’m picking you up. If he gives you any shit, call me.”
“Oh?” she said, a hint of pleasant surprise in her voice. “And where will we go?”
“I don’t know, but—”
“Hey, Smartass, come do shots!”
I laughed as Justine asked if that was Garrett in the background.
“It is,” I said. “I’ll figure it out when I get there. Two hours?”
“Two hours.”
“See you then.”
I hung up without giving her the chance to argue. She’d had plenty of dates and time with me to have said no, and she never had.
I walked back inside. Garrett had lined up a shot for me and everyone else.
“Who was that?” he said.
I smiled at Garrett’s question, meant only to break the silence and not spark a deep conversation.
“The girl I’m about to turn into mine,” I said.
“Oh, shit!”
“Fucking Smartass!”
The cries from the other Reapers roared out as I took my shot with ease.
“For real, though?” Connor said.
“For real,” I said. “We’re going to have a trained medical professional in our ranks.”
“Now this is a relationship I can support,” Brock said, patting my back.
“No thanks to you, dick. You almost made her never trust us!”
The Reapers broke out in laughter. It was amazing how even though the Bandits were still out there—Eduardo especially—even though we now had a sense that the coming battle would be uglier than we ever anticipated, even though I still bore the marks of being shot in the back and the arm, we could still laugh like this. We could still jab at each other, talk shit, and have a brotherhood.
Justine, as great as she was, had gotten this one wrong—which, to be fair, most people had. The Black Reapers weren’t a bunch of assholes or something to be ignored. They weren’t even something to be compartmentalized, acknowledged as existing but pushed away.
They were to be celebrated. Without the Black Reapers, I would be an aimless kid who just happened to have a slightly above average IQ. With the Black Reapers, I was a man I was proud of, and a man that could sweep Justine off her feet.
And when the two hours had passed, I hopped on my bike and began the drive down to Albuquerque to do just that.
