“She’ll be joining you here in Dallas?”
“Soon,” he said. He held my eyes. “I just call her my wife out of habit. We’re not married yet. But I plan to handle that as soon as I bring her home.”
I picked up my water glass.
“She must be excited,” I said. “New city, new home.”
“She doesn’t know everything yet,” he said. “But she will.”
Brendon was nodding along, completely inside his own excitement about the deal, about the cash buyer, about Q4. He was talking about square footage and neighborhoods and schooldistricts for future reference and I sat there in my black dress looking at a man I had been trying to call for ten days who had been completely unreachable, sitting across from my fiancé in a suit, buying a house that he had told me was for his wife. Who the fuck was this bitch getting his time, attention and money?
The dinner went on.
Griz was smooth across that table. He knew exactly how to talk to a man like Brendon, matched his energy without performing it, asked the right questions, made the right comments. Brendon was practically glowing by the time they got to the second course. I watched him work the table and felt simultaneously impressed and completely unhinged.
When Brendon excused himself to take a call outside, I looked at Griz.
“A wife? That’s where you been? Who is this bitch?” I said. Mad as hell, I was damn near shaking.
“You,” he said simply.
“I’ve been calling you for ten days.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“I know that too.”
I leaned forward slightly and kept my voice low. “So what was that? You just disappeared? And what the fuck are you doing here? Leave this man alone please! This is too far Griz. You’ve crossed a big line.”
“I needed you to feel what it felt like to not be able to find me,” he said. “Now you know. You wanna feel that shit for the rest of your life? If not, stop fuckin playing with me!”
I stared at him.
“The roses,” he said. “The hotel. Showing up at your job. You kept telling me it was nothing. I needed you to figure out whether it was nothing or not.” He said, coldly.
“That’s manipulative,” I said.
“Did it work?”
I didn’t answer.
He smiled and picked up his glass.
Brendon came back to the table and the dinner finished and by the end of it they had agreed to move forward and scheduled a follow-up for the following week. Brendon was in the best mood I had seen him in months. He shook Griz’s hand at the door and told him he was looking forward to it and Griz told him likewise and looked at me one more time before he walked to his car.
I watched the valet bring Brendon’s car around and when Brendon went to tip the attendant I turned and looked at the parking lot and found Griz’s car and made a decision.
I walked over fast, tracker already in my hand from my clutch where I had been carrying it for a week and a half on the chance that this moment arrived. I bent down like I had dropped something and pressed it up under the rear bumper and felt the magnetic click and stood back up and walked back to the entrance before Brendon turned around and before Griz could make it outside. He’d going back inside to grab his wallet off the table. Tonight Griz paid for the entire dinner, and unbeknownstto my fiancé, that was Griz playing him like a hoe. The whole time Brendon was smiling like a fool.
He put his arm around me on the way to the car. “I really like him,” he said. “Good energy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He seems like someone who always gets exactly what he wants.”
My phone buzzed in my clutch.
Unknown number.
