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Not really.
She was just a woman I discussed old TV shows and movies and local attractions with. On a whiteboard.
It didn't get more impersonal than that.
And yet...
And yet, it felt like more of a connection than I had with most of my brothers, to be perfectly honest.
Now I had given her my number, wanting more of it, wanting to know her, wanting her to know me.
Life left me jaded by the age of ten; very little surprised me in the least.
But there was no denying that realization shocked the shit out of me.
It was almost as unsettling as the fact that I had been staring at my goddamn phone waiting for her text for over an hour.
"Are you coming out with us tonight?" Vance asked. "To Chaz's," he clarified, seeing the confusion on my face, knowing I hadn't been paying attention in the least.
Was I?
It had been a long time. Maybe a bit too long, if you asked Liv. She was always on my ass about getting out with the guys when they invited me, about building stronger connections. She worried about me, about the fact that I suddenly found myself without my usual connections, without her and Astrid around to keep me company.
A part of me knew I had to try harder, had to open up a bit.
West and Vance were the only try-hards about it. The others had their own connections. Colson was around, yet not. He had a little girl that needed him at home a good part of the time. He made connections more with the older guys, men he had more in common with since they'd all also done the father thing.
West and Vance were young, inclusive, ready to tear up the town.
Really, I was probably a little old to be hanging out with them.
But we were all in a similar place. Still single, still okay with that, no kids to tie us down, no thoughts of commitment with anyone. Just the club, brotherhood, and free time.
They liked to fill that free time with the bars and clubs, with skirt-chasing, with impromptu clubhouse partying.
I preferred heading home most of the time.
But the thought of having to get another book of a text message from Liv about getting out of my comfort zone, about living a little, yeah, it was enough to make me tuck my phone away and nod.
"Wait... no shit?" West asked, brows furrowed, clearly thinking I was fucking with him.
To that, I caved and checked my phone.
Finding nothing, I gave him a nod.
"We need to get him laid," West decided.
Once West made up his mind about something, he was pretty fucking stubborn about it.
A few hours later, we were at the bar at Chaz's.
Vance was brooding into a beer after having seen some woman come in with short-cropped hair, his eyes lighting up with hope before falling with lack of recognition.
I had no idea what it was about, who the woman was who he wanted to see. I was reminded at times that there was a whole world of situations and connections that I had never been - and likely would never be - privy to. They happened before my time. There was no way to get all of that history when I couldn't ask for it. I took whatever tidbits I could get, but so far, I knew nothing about Vance and some short-haired chick who clearly crushed a part of him.
West seemed heavy on his mission to find us all women, currently nestled in a booth in the back with what seemed to be a group of girls soaking up their last week of freedom before heading back to college.
West fit in well with women. Part of that was likely his innate charm, his complete lack of fear of rejection, the laid-back flirtation with which he approached them. But his understanding of women seemed to come in layers.
It wasn't only the surface layer where he wanted to fuck someone, and he knew how to go about doing it. Because he did other things with women he knew he had no chance of taking to bed. His brothers' girlfriends and wives. He was the one bringing them care packages when they were on their period or bringing home their favorite coffee drinks without being asked, without there being any kind of expectation placed on him. He knew their likes, their quirks, their emotions sometimes even better than their own boyfriends or husbands did.
That said, he liked to poke at them, to say the wrong shit, to get a rise out of them. Despite knowing that most of the women would hand him his ass for it.
He had a good son layer.
He had a platonic friend layer.
He had a pain-in-the-ass brother layer.
If I wasn't mistaken, that was only the surface when it came to his relationships with women. There was a complexity there I didn't quite understand, despite having an interesting relationship with women myself. Hell, even Renny, the resident mind-shrinker, couldn't quite seem to figure him out. On the woman front. And on the general personality front. It drove him absolutely nuts that he couldn't figure out what West's trigger was, why he got off so much on violence, why he had dedicated his life to taking jobs fucking people up. He knew everyone like that - save for maybe Pagan who was just a crazy fucker - had a trigger. But Renny couldn't find it. Which meant he couldn't push his button. Which meant he couldn't seem to let up on his analyzing, couldn't stop digging, trying to figure him out.
