Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh…huh.
I was not good at this socializing shit. I had my boys and my ways, and it was readily apparent I would be the one gawking at society as much as it did at me if I felt like I had to accommodate it.
Good fucking thing I didn’t.
“So, like, how does the club thing work?”
“Is this an interview?”
“No, I’m just asking as a person. I’m just curious how you, you know, make money and what you do and such.”
I took a sip of my beer. She was cute, but she was asking an awful lot of questions.And what the fuck else is she supposed to do, you dipshit? Not like she knows club business is club business. Not like Tamara did.
“We run a mechanic shop that’s open on weekdays, normal hours, and then on Saturday from noon to four. We got a damn good reputation in that field, and I’m fucking proud of it.”
“Yeah, I remember looking up the reviews before in case we did more. Have I think a four-point-nine average on Google.”
“Yippee,” I said, causing her to laugh. “Dear, I just know that we don’t get people coming back with the same problems, and that’s the whole damn point. You want repeat customers with booze, food, and strippers. You get repeat customers with repairs, you fucked something up.”
“Or you just have an old car that is constantly breaking down.”
“In that case, get a bike. Easier to maintain and more fucking fun to ride.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever been on one.”
Oh, honey. Just you wait. Just you fucking wait.
I took another sip of my drink as the bartender came by. Hailey ordered a Cosmopolitan, and I would have teased her for it if not for the fact that, well, what the fuck was she supposed to order, a Miller Lite?
This whole “being a gentleman” bullshit was far more work than I’d anticipated.
“And besides the repair shop? What do you all do otherwise?”
“Whatever the hell we want.”
I shrugged. Hailey didn’t stop looking at me.
“The whole point of the Devil’s Patriots is exactly what I told you at the clubhouse. We just want to live our lives and be left the fuck alone. I don’t know if you picked up on this, but we’re not exactly the kings of society. We ain’t out here making international bullshit deals or running governments. We’re a self-governing group of fuckups that wants to fuck, drink, and live. We don’t ask for much, if anything, and in return, we tell people to not ask anything of us.”
“I think you have a little more to offer than you’re saying you can right now.”
I brushed it off. She was actually right. But I didn’t like the idea of forcing the club to do more than it needed to. The whole pitch to prospects and existing members was that we could be whoever we wanted whenever we wanted, so long as we didn’t fuck up the mechanic business—the thing that gave us cash flow so we didn’t have to rely on trust funds or any other bullshit.
“Maybe, but shit comes with a whole lot of other baggage.”
But still, I could tell her words were going to annoyingly wiggle their way into my brain and leave a thought.What if we did more than what we’re doing right now?
It was a stupid-ass thought.
But Hailey was already having effects on me that made me think stupid-ass thoughts. Just like the old wife.
“And what about you?”
I looked at Hailey with a cold look that I’d practiced and used many times before. But this time, it wasn’t to intimidate. It was to mask.
“What about me?”
“Tell me about yourself.”
