He slung an arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the entrance of the bar.
“All right,” he said. “Into the lion’s den.”
A subterranean place tucked under a few above ground restaurants in an old brick building, Cleo’s was the quintessential Boston bar, full of dark wood, cheap drinks, and too many Red Sox pennants. The bar had a few faux-Egyptian posters scattered around the dark space, and it was common to hear The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” blast from the jukebox at least a few times each night, but other than that, the name of the place seemed to be completely separated from its actual vibe.
As we entered the bar, Brandon took an uncharacteristic step behind me while he let me look for my friends. He took my hand in his, and there was a slight dampness on his palm. Oh, I realized. Brandon was nervous.
I scanned the bar quickly to find Jane sitting at one of the tall, circular bar tables by herself, on top of which was a pitcher and three pint glasses. She waved at me, and I tugged on Brandon’s arm to lead him through the reasonable crowd in the place.
“You’re late,” she stated bluntly, reaching out to shake Brandon’s hand firmly. “Trivia’s over. I lost, no thanks to you rabbits, and my date left when he finally figured out I was smarter than him.” She shrugged. “But he paid for the beer first, so it’s not a total loss. Dumb guys are shit in the sack anyway. So, you must be Brandon. You clean up nice for a corporate bloodsucker.”
Brandon took a seat at the table with a raised brow at me. “Is she always like this?”
“I am,” Jane confirmed as she poured both of us a pint of whatever cheap beer was in the pitcher. “I’m also here, so you don’t need to talk about me like I’m not. Don’t worry, it’s mostly bravado.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Brandon replied as he accepted a glass. He took a very long drink until more than half of the glass was emptied. “Thanks for the drink,” he said. “Next round’s on me.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Jane said, raising her glass to clink with ours. “I hear you can afford it.”
“Jane! You said you were going to be nice,” I reprimanded her. I knew that she was only joking, but Brandon didn’t know her like I did.
“Oh, Sky, relax,” she said with a faux-shove to my shoulder. “I’m just teasing him. Big guy can take a joke, can’t you, big guy?”
Brandon smiled grimly and took another very long drink of his beer. When he finished, his glass was empty.
“This helps,” he said dryly as he set the empty glass on the table. “Why don’t I go get that round?”
He stood up to take the pitcher back to the bar to refill, and we both followed his handsome form to the bar until Jane turned to me with eager eyes.
“Oh, girl,” she said. “That’s not just a sundae. That right there is a triple-tiered chocolate cake with velvety ganache filling. He is beyond hot. No wonder you guys had a hard time getting out of the house.”
“Shh!” I hushed her, even with the massive grin on my face. “He’ll hear you!”
“Oh my god, Sky, you are such a prude,” Jane scoffed. “I promise, he’ll like it if he knows you think he’s good in bed.”
I took a sip of my beer, then turned to my friend with my very best “cat who ate the canary” face. “I’ll put it this way: so far, so good. Very good. Phenomenal, in fact. Like, best ever.”
“What’s the best ever?”
Brandon circled around the table and set the new pitcher on the table, pouring himself a drink before he sat next to me. His arm slipped comfortably around to rest his hand at the base of my seat while his thumb gently massaged my lower back. Without even thinking, I leaned into his touch, which had come to feel so natural.
Jane looked at me, then grinned at Brandon. “Skylar was just telling me more about the clinic she’s been doing.”
“Er, yes. I told you about it. Kieran’s a good boss,” I said.
Brandon raised his eyebrows in a way that told me he knew I was full of it, but turned to Jane instead.
“And you two have been roommates since you started HLS, right?” he asked. “Were you friends immediately?”
Jane and I glanced at each other, considering the question.
“Not…not really,” she replied slowly. “I mean, we got along all right, but for the first several months, Sky wasn’t really around much. Aside from the fact that the first year of law school makes you want to kill yourself, she was always in New York. We didn’t really get close until the costume party, right?” She braced herself against the table in that way that indicated a serious story was about to be told. “I convinced her to go with me to this costume party with me the weekend after spring midterms.”
I rolled my eyes and groaned, leaning my head into my hands at the memory. “Oh my god, not that. More like you blackmailed me.”
Brandon said nothing, just watched our interactions with plain interest over the rim of his pint glass. After a few drinks, I was well aware that Jane and I morphed into a female version of Laurel and Hardy. I was curious what he’d think; our particular brand of mind-reading humor wasn’t for everyone.
“I wasn’t going to go,” I continued. “I was heartbroken, you know, because of Patrick—” Jane’s raised eyebrows at the casual drop of that name didn’t go by me unnoticed, but I kept talking: “—but Jane got me shit-faced the night before the party so she could bet I couldn’t recite the Preamble without any mistakes.” I point a finger down on the table for emphasis. “Which, by the way, I know cold. Top of my class in con law, by the way.”
“I don’t know if you know this yet, Brandon, but Raggedy Ann here can’t say no to a bet,” Jane added. “I think it’s a genetic trait.”
Brandon’s eyes flickered over to me at the mention of gambling, but didn’t say anything. He looked back at Jane and gave her his trademark half-smile.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed something like that,” he said as he rubbed my leg sympathetically. “To her misfortune sometimes.”
I stuck my tongue out in response. He had challenged me to a few more runs since our first, and while my legs didn’t cramp up quite as badly as they did that first time, I still had yet to win any wagers.
“Well, this was definitely one of those times,” Jane continued before tossing back the rest of her beer. She raised a hand to signal to the waitress for another round before continuing.
“So, let me guess. You guys dressed up as…Playboy Bunnies. With ears and tails and the whole nine yards? Am I close?” Since Brandon was well into his third beer, “yards” came out sounding like “yahds”, and I couldn’t help but grin. He sounded both adorable and sexy when his accent came out.
“God, men are such amateurs,” Jane scoffed. “No, that’s only embarrassing because it’s objectifying, and I, my Ken-Doll-looking friend, am way better than that. You see, this was a Dylan party. As in, you had to come dressed up as your favorite Dylan song. Now, did you also happen to know that our favorite red-headed Horowitz can’t stand Bob Dylan?”
“His chord structures are all exactly the same, and he sounds like a tone-deaf asthmatic,” I protested with a slam of my hand on the table. I had had this debate with Jane, a die-hard Dylan fanatic, many a time over the last three years; she knew exactly how to push my buttons. “Sure, he writes some decent verses, but I swear to god, I could play every single one of his early songs at the same exact time, and it would sound like one track.” I turned to Brandon. “Please tell me you’re not a fan. I don’t think I could take it if you were.”
He shrugged. “I’m more of Springsteen guy myself.”
I breathed out an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Whew! I don’t know what I would have done.”
“So because she lost the bet,” Jane continued as she topped off everyone’s glasses, “not only did she have to attend this party that would only feature the musical stylings of a one Mr. Zimmerman, but she also had to dress up with me as a song of my choosing.”
“So which one did you choose?
” Brandon asked as he polished off his beer and poured himself new one.
“The worst, most overrated song he ever wrote,” I stated. “Not to mention the worst costume in the world.”
Jane grinned with satisfaction over her beer. “Tambourine Man.”
“What’s wrong with that one?” Brandon asked me. “I think it’s kind of catchy.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “Ugh, where do I begin? First of all, it’s about six…verses…too…long. It has no variance in phrasing. The Byrds did a decent cover, but Dylan’s own changes are terrible. I could go on.”
“She really could,” Jane chimed in.
“So don’t tell me,” Brandon said. “You were the man,” he said, pointing at Jane, “and you had to be the…”
“Tambourine,” I concluded with a groan.
He chuckled, then leaned back to examine me. “How do you even dress up as a tambourine?”
“Oh, it wasn’t actually that hard,” Jane told him, standing up to pantomime the costume with both hand. “I’d been planning it for weeks, you see, and I had the costume ready to go. We cut out two five-foot circles out of cardboard boxes and painted them white. Then we grabbed the spare cymbals I had from my old drum kit in storage.” She stopped, to inform Brandon quickly, “I tried to be in a band once. It didn’t really take.”
“Sorry to hear that,” he said with a nod, drinking his beer a little more slowly while he waited for the story to continue. “Then what?”
I grinned in spite of myself. Now that the ice had been broken and Jane had stopped heckling him, Brandon was playing the new boyfriend part really well. He was attentive and patient with my friend, asking the right questions at the right times. Maybe it was just the beer, but I didn’t think he was so nervous any more.
“It wasn’t really that hard from there,” Jane said. “A combination of chopsticks and duct tape pretty much took care of the basic engineering. Sky actually followed through on the bet, even though she complained the literally the entire time.”
“Um, you weren’t the one who had to wear it,” I retorted. “I basically couldn’t wear anything besides spandex underneath so I could fit in between the pieces, and then you had to tape it around me. It had a diameter of five feet. I could barely walk in it.” I laid my hands flat on the table, as if it would help me remember.
Brandon chuckled at the image, looking back and forth between us in amusement.
“It wasn’t that bad, you big baby,” Jane said with a pat on my shoulder. “The hardest part was really getting you through the doorways. You did get stuck a few times.”
Brandon snorted. “Really?”
“I also had to hold my pee the entire night because I couldn’t get out of the costume to use the bathroom,” I added with a swig of my beer.
“And had to turn your entire body around to talk to people,” said Jane. “You knocked a lot of things over.”
“And got whacked in the belly every time someone wanted to ‘play’ me. One guy actually tried to grab my tits that way.”
“Oh, plus you got bowled over by people four times!” Jane crowed. “Every time you crashed, the cymbals just made the loudest, most god-awful sound, and everyone would stop and stare. I think the first time someone even turned off the music because everyone thought you were trying to do some kind of performance art.”
By this point, Brandon was laughing so hard he was practically wheezing and tears were starting to shine in the corner of his eyes.
“Shit!” he cried, holding his stomach. “I can’t take it.” But every time he caught his breath, he looked at me and started shaking all over again as he imagined me being knocked over again and again in my tambourine costume.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, get it out,” I said, taking the opportunity to gulp down the rest of my beer. I couldn’t be mad, though. I was actually thrilled my best friend and my boyfriend were getting along so well.
“But in the end, as mad as she was at me, we were friends forever after,” Jane said. She slung a thin arm over my shoulders and hugged me to her. “There’s a certain loyalty that arises when you have to help your roommate peel off her beer-soaked cardboard outfit and then shield her with said costume so she can pee in a bush in the middle of Harvard Yard because she can’t hold it until you get her home.”
I laid my head on her shoulder affectionately. “There certainly is.”
Brandon sipped his beer as he surveyed us with a reflective smile, blinking meditatively back and forth between our faces. I thought I saw a flash of envy there, but mostly he just chuckled as he recalled the story.
“And on that note,” I said as I pushed myself up from the chair. “The ladies’ room calls, no Jane required. Back in a moment.”
After I made my way to the other side of the bar, I glanced back at our table before turning down the hallway to the bathrooms. Jane and Brandon were leaned over the small round table, her dark head bent towards his cap in deep conversation. I smiled. The night couldn’t be going better if I’d scripted it myself.
~
“So Jane’s…a character.”
After having a few more drinks with us, Jane had begged off to make herself available at the bar. She wasn’t shy about how sexually open she was, and I could tell that Brandon was entertained, if slightly shocked, by her general candor. We had watched with some amusement while she hit on several members of the Harvard crew team before Brandon had leaned down and whispered a few things in my ear that suddenly make me equally ready to escape on our own.
Now in the car on our way back to the apartment, we were forced to behave in the presence of David, though it was hard not to guide the hand currently massaging my leg a bit higher than was completely decent.
I flipped my gaze toward Brandon, trying to ignore the meditative rhythm of his fingers massaging my inner thigh muscle. “What’d she say?”
He grinned. “Nothing much. Only that she’d castrate me and make kimchi out of my balls if I hurt you.”
I giggled. “Sounds about right. Don’t worry. Like she said, it’s mostly bravado.”
“She sounds like she cares about you.”
I paused for a moment, considering. “Well, I care about her too. She’s…been there, you know?” I sighed. “I’m really going to miss her when she’s gone.”
Brandon took his hand off my thigh and hugged me to his side. “You’re lucky to have a friend like her. That won’t fade when she’s in Chicago.”
I wasn’t so sure. I hoped not. Living at home through college, I hadn’t made a lot of friends at NYU, and the few people I’d kept in touch with from high school weren’t in New York any more. Jane was definitely the closest friend I’d made as an adult, and her quirky presence in my life would be sorely missed once she left to start her job as an ASA back in Illinois.
I almost asked if we should invite Kieran for drinks sometime too. But aside from the fact that it would be incredibly awkward to hang out with my boss and my boyfriend, I couldn’t really imagine Kieran, with her cutthroat personality and sharp exterior, throwing back PBR at Cleo’s.
“What happened with you and your friends?” I wondered softly, deciding on a different direction for the conversation. I was lucky to have Jane around to talk with, not to mention my dad and Bubbe when I needed some solace at home. Brandon had his big house…and not much else.
He looked down at me, suddenly very tired. “Why do you want to know?”
I frowned, a little taken aback. He was usually so open with me; he’d already shown me various aspects of his life that had to be painful, and he’d answered any question I had for him, in person or over the phone. He’d been an open book, but now he looked extremely uncomfortable.
“I’m just curious,” I asked. “You seem to avoid the topic, is all.”
He sighed reluctantly. “It’s fine. We got into some trouble when I was younger, like a lot of guys do in that neighborhood. There was a fight, the cops got involved, and my friends took the rap for it while I
and another guy got off, in part because I was a minor. They never really got over it. It was so long ago, and, well…we didn’t exactly keep in touch, okay? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be interested in hearing from me, and to be honest, I don’t really have time for it anyway.”
My heart sank at the dejection in his voice. I was sad for him not because he had lost his childhood buddies—that happened to most people as they matured—but because in his haste to establish a career for himself, it seemed that he’d never really found adult peers to replace them. It must have been incredibly isolating when he was first starting out, taking jobs next to people at least ten years older than him. Now, he clearly surrounded himself with employees, brought his co-workers into his house to make deals, allowed himself to be cared for by housekeepers and drivers. But he obviously didn’t know how to translate any of those connections into meaningful relationships.
I opened my mouth to say something else, but before I could, I was turned to face him. Holding me still with both hands firmly on my shoulders so I had to look at him directly. He had tipped the bill of his cap up so his eyes were out of its shadow.
“Stop,” he said plainly.
I frowned again, confused. “What? I didn’t—”
“I know what you’re trying to do, Skylar. And what did I already tell you?”
I swallowed.
Brandon waited.
“You don’t need to be fixed,” I whispered at last. I couldn’t believe it less.
He exhaled, obviously somewhat relieved that I remembered. Oh, I remembered all right. I remembered every, single thing that happened after that too.
His hands dropped from my shoulders down my arms until they reached my hands, which he took into his. Brandon looked down at our entwined fingers, and pressed delicately into the padded lines of my palms.
“Look at my life,” he said softly. “I went from being a punk kid on a fast track to prison to the man I am now. I want for nothing. Especially now. Especially now that I have you.” He looked up again, and the raw vulnerability in his eyes made my breath catch in the back of my throat. “Do I have you, Skylar?”
Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1) Page 31
