Her smile beamed down on me as she came over and sat across. The waitress interrupted our introduction when she came back with my porter. Her grin had ground down to business-only at the sight of my guest.
Gabi ordered a cocktail without even looking at her.
“Waiting long?” she asked.
“Feels like forever.”
She cupped my hand on the table with her slim one. “Well, I guess you must have a lot on your mind then.”
I chewed my lips thoughtfully. There was just about one thing on my mind. The question that was making my leg jitter under the table, and getting my hands damp with just a brush of her skin. It could tank this thing from the start. I decided it’d be better to get it out of the way.
“You think we got a shot at something real here?” I asked.
She didn’t answer straight away, just leaned back and studied me, like I was a fancy painting or something. In fights, I could almost see what gears turned in the other guy’s heads, but I couldn’t read a damn thing off her.
“Why do you think we don’t?” she said finally.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“Bad stuff?”
“Nothing horrible, just not up to your standards.”
“My standards aren’t what you think you are.” She leaned in like a spy. “I just thought you might be too dangerous for me.”
She had a twinkle in her eye that made me lose track of my words for a moment. “Too rough maybe.”
“I like how rough you are.” She looked thoughtful a moment, then added. “I like the way you shake me up.”
I started to explain that I wasn’t talking about my body or my fighting, but I left my own head and caught sight of her. She looked totally keyed in to the conversation, eager to part the sea to get to me.
I smiled and decided to let it go. “You date any other rough guys?”
“My last boyfriend played a mean saxophone.”
I chuckled. Girl had wit. The waitress dropped off a clear martini glass, but I paid her no attention.
“I never got into music as a kid,” I said. “Tried strumming my friend’s guitar a couple times and ended up breaking the strings.”
“I can imagine. You probably didn’t need the music to woo girls though.”
“This was back in ninth grade when I could use all the help I could get. I grew up super late.”
I shook my head at the memories of fighting in my scrawny body. Lot of beatings. Pop never did teach me to hold my own - or much of anything else.
“That’s hard to imagine.” Gabi sipped at her drink. “I was kind of the complete opposite. I grew up super early.”
“Did those things come in in third grade?” I stared pointedly at her breasts.
“Hah, no, though they did come in earlier than most. I’m talking more about the way I saw the world.”
Saw the world.
Everything outside of Detroit was still almost a distant haze to me - a complete fog of war if you took out my knowledge of MMA. Thinking about the world was a distant concept, but I wouldn’t mind learning.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“My dad really. He had a way of drilling ideas into me, like I were just another engineering design of his. My sister didn’t get it nearly as bad as I did.”
She went on about her upbringing. Her father was a manager at one of the big three car companies. They were well-off, but they’d only got there cause the man took his time charting a course for his life and building it up brick by brick.
“So yeah,” Gabi concluded. “You’re kind of the antithesis of what I was raised to believe in. I mean the opposite.”
“I know what antithesis means, Cadbury,” I said. “And I’m glad I’m a taste of the exotic for you, but our upbringings weren’t all that different.”
“Really?” Her glass paused at her lips.
“You’re your old man, plus a little risk. Well, I’m mine plus a bit extra too.”
Gabi’s dad was a negative imprint of Pop. He’d been a machinist in the same company, ok at it, but he didn’t spend the money well. When Mom had run off, he’d gone totally AWOL, letting what little structure there was in his life fall to shambles. I guess he had kept a roof over our head, but that was mostly by virtue of living on property too shitty to be worth being foreclosed on.
“The only thing that made me turn out different was discipline. I found out that I could fight, and I stuck to it.”
I’d given Gabi the sanitized version. I watched her face carefully as I finished talking. This was just a medium dose of the poison in my past.
“You have a younger sister?” was all Gabi asked.
“I do.” Her name had been all I mentioned in passing.
“You really care about her.”
I must have been smiling without really knowing. Even Sarah’s memory had that effect on me. But I didn’t feel like scoring points on account of her.
“Having her to take care of kept me sane growing up. I don’t know if I’d have the discipline to be where I am without her.”
Gabi just leaned in. “Well, you’re here. I’m here.”
I mirrored her. “And neither of us is queer, that’s for sure”
She smiled, then cracked into a laugh. “Yeah, there’s definitely that.”
A couple years back I probably would have used rougher words that would have killed the vibe. Maybe I wasn’t as out of this as I thought. We glowed at each other, helped along by the alcohol a bit, but not completely. It felt good.
“Sean? Ma man!”
Oh, shit.
I looked up and saw Silvio standing over us with a slack-jawed grin. He had on sneakers and jeans and an oversized t-shirt. If he weren’t white, he might have been bounced out of here. Unlucky for me, his Italian ass had cleared through.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“What am I doing here? What are you doing out here by yourself?”
“Oh, I got a hankering for this mixed drink they have. So freaking good. Did you get it?”
He was pointing almost directly into Gabi’s drink. To her credit, she hadn’t flinched. The Guy was clearly high out of his mind.
I sighed. “Gabi, this is my friend, Silvio.”
She shook his hand gently. “Yeah, I think we met.”
Silvio stared at where she had gripped his hand. His red eyes went wide. “Oh are you on a date?”
“Yeah, we are.”
He nodded, but made no attempt to move. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t whoop his ass and I couldn’t let him stay. I shot an apology to Gabi, but she just giggled.
“It’s fine if he joins,” she said. “I remember that he was pretty funny.”
“I am,” Silvio said, pulling up a chair. “Speaking of funny, did I tell you about that squirrel I saw the other day doing that thing with its nuts?”
He launched into one of the dumbest stories I had ever heard in my lifetime. I would have laughed if we were alone or with the boys, but I felt a shame I hadn’t felt since middle school hearing it now. Gabi smiled politely through it.
“That’s crazy,” she said, then turned to me. “Hey you mind if I call my friend Jada to join us?”
“Sure, why not.” I wanted her to myself, but apparently fate wasn’t keen on us. Things had been going so damn good too.
Silvio at least had the courtesy to keep talking, and move on to less dirty stories. The lounge door whipped open not long after and a tall black woman came in and beelined it to our table. She moved like a fighter almost, her long braids whipping behind her like lashes.
Gabi yelped and jumped up into her with a hug. I took the chance to punch Silvio in the arm.
“Ow, man,” he said. “I hope I remember that.”
Jada shook my hand firmly. “Nice to meet you finally.”
She shoved a chair in between Gabi and Silvio and sat.
“So,” she said. “Tell me about this squirrel.”
Silvio needed no other words to launch back into his story. Apparently her friend wasn’t here to rescue her. It was to rescue us from my friend.
I nudged over next to Gabi and whispered apologies to her, but was interrupted by a peal of laughter from Jada. I took a closer look at her eyes and saw them tinged red.
“Is she high?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Gabi said. “Girl loves to smoke way more than I do.”
My friend and hers started debating the merits of various strains. Gabi rested her head on my shoulder and we talked about them two in turn. It was nice, like watching animals in nature.
Maybe our worlds weren’t so far apart.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gabrielle
“The zoo?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Seriously?”
I still wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. The shower thundered and misted all around me. I was still vaguely dizzy from being pressed against the frosted glass and taken from behind. Now, Sean’s blurry body was facing me on the other side of the glass.
“You don’t want to go?” His voice rang in the bathroom.
“I mean…no, it’s fine. It’s just kind of unexpected.”
“Figured it would be a sweet sort of afternoon. Girls like you like that right?”
I giggled. “You know I like things that ain’t that sweet too.”
His tall body pressed deeper into the glass, the hard edges of his face forming ghostly on the other side. “Well, we can’t do that all afternoon.”
“Not every afternoon, anyway.”
The memories of the lazy day in bed before warmed me right back up, but I was sated enough to see that he was right. Besides, he was actually pretty fun to hang out with. That night before, hee and me and Jada and Silvio had left that place and gone to a more lively one to drink and dance for hours. Even on the dance floor, his strength at my side set me free in a way I had never felt.
This would be different. He was treating it like some other test for our relationship. I couldn’t help but feel bad thinking it, but he wasn’t wrong. Did we work in the daylight? Part of me still had a bit of anxiety about the idea, even with all the good he’d given.
I finished cleaning up and pranced out into the bedroom naked. Sean already had jeans and a t-shirt on, but he gathered my damp body in his arms and ladled out a deep kiss. It left me feeling dizzy and a little guilty at my shower thoughts, but the window was open and the day was too beautiful for the moment to linger.
I put on a blue and white striped summer dress I’d gotten from home the other day. My mind immediately flipped the guilt the other way, when I remembered the look I’d gotten from my family on my brief visit. None of us had mentioned Sean since that dinner talk, but my parents weren’t dummies. They knew where I was spending nights.
Well, I’d deal with that once I was sure I knew what I was dealing with here.
Sean draped his arm around me and checked us in the full length bathroom mirror. We looked like a fine pair: a damsel with her big rough protector. Sean gave me a kiss on the cheek, and we set off.
The day was bright but cloudy, which would be nice for spending the whole afternoon outside. Sean blasted some classic Motown - for my benefit, I think - and we made light chit chat about animals for a while.
“What made you think of the zoo today anyway?” I asked when we had gotten pretty close.
Sean shrugged. “Well I’m not going to take you to a symphony or anything. This seemed like the sort of culture I can bear.”
“Symphony? You’re messing right. I’m not Martha Wayne rich here.”
He grinned. “Well, that’s a relief. Anyway, isn’t zoology close enough to science for you?”
“It’s not a bad pick,” I admitted. “You know what zoology is?”
“I used the word didn’t I?”
“Just making sure those blows to the head haven’t hurt your memory.”
“Not yet. Though earning high marks on these quizzes of yours is as good a reason as any to keep dodging them.”
He had me there, but I still punched his knee playfully.
We had left Detroit city limits and were cutting through the choice parts of Royal Oaks. A few more turns passed and the gates to the zoo loomed ahead.
Sean parked and the two of us walked hand in hand to the entrance. Packs of kids chirped excitedly around us, with their parents frantically trying to keep a handle on the little monkeys. I saw another mixed couple and couldn’t help but think how cute our kid would end up.
Easy girl.
My heart was way ahead of my mind.
Sean stalled a bit by the entrance.
“What?” I asked.
“They charge you to go in?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I didn’t pay last time.”
“I got money,” I said, though I knew he did too.
He pulled me towards the ticketing booth. “Na, it’s fine, just confusing.”
As he paid, I put it together in my head. His dad would have never brought him here.
“Did you go with your school?” I asked, as the attendant took our tickets and stamped hands.
“Yeah, of course.” He took a deep breath. “Ah, I see.”
He threw me a sheepish look that was the exact opposite of the wolf I’d seen in the ring, but he still looked damn cute. I tiptoed up and pecked him on the cheek.