Page 72 of Guitars and Cages

“Yeah, a turkey club sounds good right now.”

“Cool—come on, let’s go.”

I stood up and followed him, surprised at myself for a moment. I hadn’t talked to him since we’d decided to take a stab at being friends, and yet I’d just sat there unloading on him and now we were going to lunch. It struck me as odd, or maybe it wasn’t. I seemed to be having a pretty easy time opening up to strangers these days.

We went to the sandwich shop down the block where the sandwiches ooze meat and cheese, and the sides are amazing, too. I ordered a turkey club with bacon, lettuce, tomato, and honey mustard, and a side of potato salad that reminded me of the one my grandma used to make when I was a kid. They had pineapple soda, which I love, so I ordered a large, and they had lemon meringue pie, my favorite, so I ordered a slice of that, too. I discovered that Conner was a chocolate lover, opting for chocolate milk and chocolate silk pie. I chuckled. “Sure you don’t want chocolate on your sandwich, too?”

He looked at me and laughed, and I was glad he turned away to ask where the restroom was, because as soon as I’d seen the way his face lit up and his eyes sparkled when he was laughing, I’d wanted to get close enough to look deep into those eyes. I frowned at the thoughts. He disappeared into the bathroom, and I was supposed to go get us a table, but I was frozen where I stood, debating whether or not to cancel my order and flee.

“Sir, you can have a seat, we bring the food out to you,” the waitress prompted after she’d taken the next person’s order and I still hadn’t moved.

I glanced at the door, ready to bolt, when it opened and a large group of people filed in, talking with animated gestures and laughing at something one of them had said. I was left with no choice but to sit down or use my size to push my way through them, so I found a table and sat. Conner joined me a few minutes later, and it dawned on me that for as much as he knew about me and my dysfunctional family, I knew very little about him.

But before I could ask him anything, he was already talking. “Hey, so you never said why Cole showed up out of the blue.”

“It wasn’t so out of the blue, at least not for him. He, uhh, got himself hooked up with someone else’s old lady while the guy was in jail, and then the guy got out and started looking for him.”

Conner threw his head back and laughed. “Guess he decided coming back to the States was safer.”

“Yup. He was tossing around the idea of opening a gym, teaching boxing and stuff like that, but who knows.”

“He was a boxer?”

“Former Golden Gloves champion. Then he got into the underground stuff, which is how I got into it, too. There’s money there, if you’re good enough, which he is. Good enough to have come back with the cash and capital to start his own business.”

“Man, if you guys make that much money fighting, what the hell were you doing in that crappy building?”

I frowned and shook my head. “I saidhewas good enough. I never claimed to be. I’m big, strong, and I know enough tricks to get me past the less-experienced and untrained fighters, but I don’t have a solid-enough background to handle someone with a good ground game. Toe to toe I can slug it out with anyone, but the really good guys have some sort of wrestling or martial-arts background, and I’ve got neither. I know how to pull someone to the ground and beat on ’em; I’ve even learned a couple submissions along the way, but I don’t have all the technical training to do counters and stuff.”

“Then why bother?”

“Because the cash is still good enough to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. Look, I’m not in the mood to talk about fighting right now. How’s the job going?”

“It’s a great job, for what it is. I don’t have a problem doing it, but it’s not what I’d want to make a career out of.”

“I thought you went to school and studied photography. Why go through all those classes if you didn’t want to be a photographer?”

He laughed. It crinkled his nose, and I realized that he had a small splash of freckles there. “I love being a photographer. It’s just I’m not big on taking pictures of weddings and birthdays and people with screaming kids.”

I cringed at the thought. “Ugh, I wouldn’t want to do that, either. So, what kind of pictures do you like to take?”

“Events, those are the best—like football and hockey and rodeo, anything with tons of action where you can really get the determination of the player and the excitement of the crowd. Car races, boat races, supermoto, monster truck, anything like that I love taking pictures of. Skateboarding, extreme games—give me something with speed, where I can challenge myself and my timing to get the perfect shot, and I’d be all over it. I hate having to sit around and pose people and direct them where to stand.”

Holy shit, I was picturing the things he was mentioning and thinking about how much I enjoyed those exact same events too. Not with a camera, but to watch it all and get caught up in the excitement. “I took Rory to the demolition derby when he first got here. It will be here until the end of November; you should check it out. And the monster trucks are coming back in two weeks—I saw a poster up at the bar this morning.”

“I saw one downtown. I plan on getting a ticket.”

“I was planning to get a couple, too; figured Cole and I could take Rory. He’d love it.”

“I bet he would. I didn’t know about the derbies, though. How do you get tickets for those?”

“You don’t; you buy them at the gate before the show. They run ’em twice a month. I think the next one is this Saturday night.”

“Are you going?”

“I hadn’t thought about it, with all the moving and the drama.”

The waitress set our lunches down in front of us and he grinned. “So, give it some thought while we eat.”

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