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Cruz stared at Brian for a long time, and Brian found himself squirming on the mat Kimber had given him to sit on. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his wrist and swallowed another mouthful of beer.
“You OK, Brian?” Razor asked.
“Yeah, sure, Razor.” He fobbed it off as if it was nothing. “Sorry, Cruz…so how did the accident happen?” He still wasn’t letting it go.
“I’d flicked the switch for my lights on and pulled out of the well-lit parking lot and driven down the road, which was reasonably well-lit too. I hadn’t realized the lights weren’t on and a guy in an SUV had come out of a side road and gone straight into us. He didn’t even see us in the poor light. Wasn’t his fault and they didn’t charge him either.”
Brian tipped his bottle up, but it was already empty.Yeah, no one fucking paid, did they?
Eden already knew the girl had died in the accident. Cruz had told her that when they were looking at Brian’s bike the first day. “So sad,” she said.
“Yeah,” Cruz lowered his voice and told her, “That’s why I was in New Orleans when I picked you up. I was putting flowers on her grave.” He turned to Brian then and said, “Same time you were there, right?”
Cruz wasn’t completely sure it was Brian, because he’d been distracted at the time, but he decided to throw that comment out there to see whether it would stick.
Brian was startled. “Yeah, yeah… I had a family member buried there and I was going in to just check on her grave,” he said. “That was you, right? Strange coincidence.” He laughed nervously. “And here I am.”
“And there you are,” Razor said.
Do you know something?Maybe it was Brian’s imagination, but Razor sounded like he suspected something. They all seemed to be better at hiding their emotions than Brian was.
“Oh, I'm so sorry,” Eden said as she put her hand on Cruz’s thigh.
“Yeah, it was a bad time,” Cruz said. “I’d been in the hospital for a long time after the accident and by the time I’d got out they’d had her funeral. I missed it. She didn’t deserve what happened. It was fate, I guess, because who would have ever thought that something like that could happen? A series of events that led to her losing her life.”
Eden rubbed his leg and leaned her head into him.
“I guess I’m lucky I’m still alive,” he said, “but for a long time I had to overcome the grief of losing her, even though I’d only known her for a short time. I really didn't know much about her family life. She didn't talk a lot about that.” He stopped talking and everyone else remained silent.
Even Brian had gone quiet, which was a relief.
Finally, Cruz said, “She was a beautiful person. Who knows what might have come of it? We hadn’t really gotten to know each other very well by then.”
As if to lighten the conversation, Boots said, “Yeah, Cruz has always been a little slow in that department.”
“He’s like a slow boil getting to know ya,” Grayson said. He looked at Cruz and smiled, and then at Eden, who was blushing. “Maybe not now?” he added.
“Fuck you, man,” Cruz said with a laugh. “Not slow…careful.”
“Careful, Cruz…could be your new name,” Razor said.
Cruz was talking directly to Eden now when he said, “I’m one of those guys who likes to get to really know somebody first, because you never know where a relationship might go.”
That took the both of them by surprise.
She raised her eyebrows and gave him a smile. He gave her a grin and she’d leaned into him for a kiss.
“Get a room,” Boots said.
Cruz rolled Eden over on top of himself and wrapped his arms around her, as she giggled, and the others started their own conversations with one another.
Once Cruz and Eden were sitting back up on their blanket, and talking with the others, Brian was back to the same conversation:
“So how long had you been seeing this girl?” he asked Cruz.
“What?”Why the fuck does that matter?
“Sorry, man. Just wondering. You said you didn’t know much about her,” Brian said.
