Page 62 of Broken Brothers

And what would Layla say?

Christ, really, Chance?

I shook my head again and downed by gin and soda. The waiter came by and I immediately asked for another as soon as I made eye contact. No, two drinks was more than I wanted, but yes, I needed it at the moment.

The fuck was Layla still on my mind for? For what she did to me?

It’s just natural. Not enough time has passed. You need to let some weeks go by before you can move on.

Just… focus on Claire if you have to.

No fucking way, dude, get—

“Sorry about that,” Claire said as she sat down, this time without touching me. She did, however, actually smile when she sat down. “In any case, I would like to learn some negotiation skills from you, Chance. Do you think you can provide that?”

“Sure,” I said, shrugging as if the request didn’t bother me in the slightest.

At that moment, three drinks came over—the gin and soda I had requested, plus another gin and soda and a vodka tonic.

“You ordered yourself one, I see,” Claire said. “I was going to be polite and get you the second one.”

“Well, that’s kind of you,” I said, trying to find the most formal words that I could. “I’ll call this my last drink of the night. Just to be safe.”

Safe in many ways.

This was the second sign that Claire was up to something. Again, maybe I was misreading it. Claire had the odd dichotomy of being incredibly sweet with her behavior but also being so quick and so direct that it didn’t leave time for interpretation. I had a feeling Claire was the type of gal you could take both to your parents’ home and before a judge in the court of law.

But she would not have bought a second drink for me unless she wanted something out of me. And I was too alert for me to get fucked over on another business deal—even if she didn’t explicitly acknowledge that part, she had to have known. Morgan would have at least hinted at the idea, it was too overt and too obvious.

Claire, to her credit, didn’t push back, or at least she was smart enough to keep her distance. She simply nodded, said “Let me know if you’ll need me to call an Uber,” and left it at that.

For the rest of the evening, our conversation and our interaction remained fairly neutral. I probably read a little toodeep into a couple of actions she made, but could you blame me? For what I was just getting over, I had to be hyper-vigilant in the face of all possibilities—including the one that Claire intended to flirt her way into something beyond just two attractive people in their 20’s were.

Which even acknowledging that was a problem. I now began to see Claire as an attractive woman—not that I ever saw her as unattractive, but she was relatively plain in comparison to the fiery appearance of Layla. But that very plainness was what made her so beautiful. It didn’t come with the strings attached.

When I finished my last drink, Claire gave her card to the waiter and ignored my protests to pay.

“It’s the least I could do for someone like you, Chance Hunt.”

Oh no. She’s saying my last name like Layla would. Houston, we have a problem.

“Thanks,” I said, not trying to be cold but not trying to show that I had any interest beyond general appreciation. “So, it’s getting late, I’m going to head out.”

“OK,” Claire said, seemingly unfazed by my sudden need to leave. “Thank you for meeting me. I’ll be in touch.”

I’m not sure if she was making a point or she simply moved on quickly, but given that the waiter came back with the receipt as she spoke, she had signed and walked out before I had even begun to move out of my seat. Maybe it was her way of saying she wasn’t going to let me just walk out on her. Or, maybe, realistically, she just moved quickly from point A to point B, even if those two points were social interactions and not business transactions.

Yet, I couldn’t dismiss anything. After Layla Taylor, anything seemed possible.

Time would tell if that was a blessing or a curse.

27

Claire never texted me the rest of the weekend, a fact which put me profoundly at ease. Perhaps the alcohol had simply made her a little more flirtatious and aggressive than normal, but she probably didn’t actually have feelings or that kind of attraction to me. If she had, she would have said more than what she had.

Layla, on the other hand, kept it up. It was never quite to the point that it was stalkerish and annoying, and I probably didn’t help my cause by responding to her every so often. I told myself that it was because I didn’t want to be rude, but that was a lie that I hadn’t confronted. The most polite thing, if I really wanted to cut her out, was to do just that so I didn’t string her alone.

I knew the truth to some extent, but I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself, even in my own head.