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“Sorry,” my brother half-ass apologized. “Thought you saw me.”
“If I chipped a tooth, I’m gonna beat your ass.”
“You can try.” Tripp straddled the stool next to me, motioning to Trigger, our club’s resident bartender, to pass him a beer.
“I beat you once,” I affirmed, running my tongue over my top teeth to make sure they were intact.
“When I was ten and you caught me off guard.”
“Still did it.”
That fight was the only time I’d ever bested my brother. Now, there was no chance for a repeat. The bastard was huge. I could probably get off one good punch before Tripp retaliated, but honestly, there wasn’t a need nowadays. He wasn’t only my older brother; he was my best friend. He had my back, as I had his.
“Here you go.” Trigger tucked a strand of gray hair behind his ear before sliding a bottle of beer toward Tripp.
“When you gonna cut your hair, ol’ man?” I teased, gulping down half my beer and distracting myself with useless banter.
“Jealous I still have hair?” he replied, flipping me off before walking toward the kitchen.
“I have hair,” I shouted after him. “I have hair,” I repeated, running my hand over the top of my head. “It’s just shorter than I normally wear it.” I mumbled the last part more to myself, but Tripp chuckled.
“Remember when Edana shaved your head?”
I swiveled on my stool toward him, resting my arm on the edge of the bar. “I haven’t thought about that in so long, I almost forgot it happened.”
I snorted at the memory, but there wasn’t anything funny about why she’d shaved my head all those years ago. I’d woken up wearing a condom. Thing was, Edana and I never used condoms. So, she shaved my head as payback for me stepping out on her… again.
At the time, I didn’t respect our relationship or her. I partied a lot and indulged in too many women. We’d gotten together young and, in a way, looking back, I’d felt trapped. But instead of ending things with Edana, something I didn’t want to do, I fucked around on her. I wasn’t proud of how I acted, and had been making it up to her for over twenty years, and would continue to do so until I took my last breath.
Over the course of our entire relationship, she’d broken it off with me a total of three times, but I’d always managed to convince her to give me another chance.
Our relationship was complicated back then.
We were passionate but volatile.
Thank goodness those times were behind us.
Not to get me wrong, Edana still had a fire in her belly, and her temper flared bright from time to time, but she was no longer throwing knives at me. Then again, I wasn’t giving her any reason to.
“What’s wrong with you?” Tripp pulled me out of my wandering thoughts, and not a second too soon. I didn’t like reliving any part of those years.
“What makes you think there’s anything wrong?”
“Because I know you.” Sometimes I wished my brother wasn’t so intuitive.
After debating on whether I had the mental energy to get into what plagued me, I swallowed a mouthful of beer and forced the air from my lungs in a hefty sigh. I needed to talk to someone, and who better than Tripp.
“There’s twelve days left until Christmas, and I still don’t have anything for Edana.” He raised his brow, waiting for me to continue, knowing that wasn’t the real issue I grappled with. “I wanna give her the ring I bought eons ago. I wanna officially make her mine but—”
“But what?”
“I don’t want her to reject me again. Twice was enough.”
A year after she’d been attacked, I proposed, but she told me no. She didn’t elaborate on why, and after making sure she wasn’t breaking it off with me, I let it go. Then I tried again a few years later. But she gave me the same answer. A resounding no. That time I pushed her for an explanation, and she told me she didn’t trust me. I believed that was only part of the reason, but again, she wouldn’t go into detail.
“But you haven’t asked her in what, like fifteen years?” Before I could answer, he said, “Goddamn, man. When I say it out loud, I can’t believe you two lasted this long.” He bumped my shoulder and winked, but I didn’t appreciate his surprise at the length of my relationship. That wasn’t to say I didn’t understand why he’d said it.
“Gettin’ back to my point,” I said, flashing him my best scowl, “it was sixteen years ago she rejected me the second time.”
