Wait for It

It was a sign of how much my life had changed over the course of the last few years that “going out” now consisted of me changing into skinny jeans and a cute top. Years ago—a damn lifetime ago—back when I was younger and dumber and had very few worries in the world, “going out” consisted of taking an hour or two to put makeup on, do my hair, and get dressed in something that would have had my mom asking herself where she’d gone wrong raising me. I’d even seen her doing the sign of the cross once or twice. “Going out” meant heading to some loud bar or club with overpriced drinks to get hit on by guys who manscaped religiously. It hadn’t been every night or weekend, but it had been enough.

Now…

Now, half my adult social experiences revolved around birthday parties and baseball practices. The only time my hair was done was when I had to work and that was only because that was my work. I’d mastered doing my makeup in five minutes. Time really was more valuable than money.

Well, now, looking at my boss, Ginny, who was dressed almost identical to me in jeans and a short-sleeved blouse, priorities had obviously changed.

We had agreed days ago that we should go out to celebrate the reopening of the salon. Saturday, we had promised each other because the salon was closed every Sunday. We’ll go out on Saturday. Her kids were with their dad, and Josh and Louie were with my parents this weekend. It had seemed like the perfect time to spend some quality time together.

What we hadn’t taken into consideration was how tired we were going to be after working a full day following a week of painting and moving furniture from one location to the next.

I had taken a chair at Shear Dialogue a little more than two years ago. Ginny and I had met through a mutual hair stylist friend, who knew she needed help and knew I was looking for somewhere else to work. We’d hit it off immediately. She had three kids, was a single parent in her early forties with a boyfriend, and had this no-bullshit attitude that sang to my own take-no-shit attitude, and the next thing I knew, I was moving the boys and myself from San Antonio to Austin. The rest was history.

But now that the day was here, we’d faced each other that afternoon and said the same thing, “I’m tired.” Which meant we both would rather go home and relax but weren’t going to because we were so busy we didn’t spend enough time together. Kids and relationships—hers, at least, she was getting married in a few months on top of everything—consumed a lot of energy. It was our unspoken agreement that we’d get a couple of drinks and head home before the nightly news came on.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked her as I reapplied deodorant in the middle of the salon. We’d locked up half an hour ago, cleaned the place, and took turns changing in the bathroom. It didn’t escape me that neither one of us bothered trying to fix up our hair after a long day of work. Some days I thought that if I had to touch more hair, I would vomit. I’d settled on more lipstick, and Gin had slapped on a little more blush and ran a brush through her shoulder-length, blood-red hair that I colored for her monthly.

She had her back to me as she… yep, adjusted her boobs, and said, “Are you fine with staying close to here?”

The look I sent her through the reflection of the mirror conveyed how stupid I thought her question was.

“Let’s go to the bar down the street then. It isn’t the fanciest place, but their drinks are cheap and my uncle owns it.”

“Deal,” I told Ginny. I was no snob. Close and cheap sounded like a plan.

Her uncle also supposedly owned the new building we had moved into. Located in a high-foot traffic side of town, across the street from a real estate company, popular tattoo parlor, and a deli, she couldn’t have gotten a better space for the salon. The dog grooming business two doors down from us had got me seeing money signs; I had tons of clients with dogs. Plus, it worked out even more in my favor because my new house was a short drive away.

And that was how we found ourselves, ten minutes later, standing in front of a bar walking distance from the salon. We’d been able to leave our cars in the same lot we left them for work, next to a big mechanic shop that her uncle also supposedly owned.

To be fair, Ginny had told me the truth. It wasn’t a fancy place. What she hadn’t warned me of was the fact it was a biker bar, if the row after row of motorcycles parked along the front of the street meant anything.

All right.

If she noticed my apprehension about going inside, Gin didn’t make a comment as she waved me toward the door. Fuck it. I only partially ignored the three men standing outside smoking and watching us a little too closely, but when I opened the heavy door to go inside, the simultaneous smell of cigarettes, cigars, and weed brutally assaulted my nose. My sinuses immediately started going crazy, and I had to blink a lot as the smoke made them burn.

The place was exactly what I’d picture a biker bar to look like. I’d been to a lot of bars in my life pre-Josh-and-Louie, and some had been way sketchier than this. From behind, Ginny pointed in the direction of rows of liquor along the wall, and I headed over, taking in the loose crowd of men and women in leather and T-shirts alike. They were all ages, all looks. Despite the heavy smell of smoke that I knew was illegal indoors… well, it didn’t seem so bad. Most people were talking to one another.

Snagging two chairs in the middle of the counter, Ginny slipped in to the chair beside me. I leaned forward and looked up and down the bar for the bartender, waving when the older man caught my eye. He simply tipped his chin up for our order.

I’d gone out with Ginny enough over the years to know we started off our evenings with Coronas or Guinness, and this place didn’t seem like the type to carry my favorite nectar from the mother country. “Two Guinness, please,” I mouthed to him.

I wasn’t sure he understood what I said, but he nodded and filled two glasses from one of the taps, sliding both over to us, yelling the amount we owed. Before Ginny could get it, I slid two bills across the bar.

“Woo,” Ginny cheered, clinking her glass against mine.

I nodded in agreement, taking the first sip.

I’d barely finished swallowing when two forearms came from behind to cage my boss in, a blond head of hair making an appearance right by her ear. Who the hell was this?

As if wondering the same thing, she started to say, “Who…?” before glancing over her shoulder, her body tight and reeling back. It was her laugh a moment later that told me everything was okay. “You son of a bitch! I was wondering who the hell was coming up to me!” She reached up with the arm furthest away from me to pat the strange man, who was wearing a leather vest over a white T-shirt.

“What a fuckin’ mouth,” the man’s low voice claimed just loud enough for me to hear. He pulled back, his attention casually sliding in my direction. The grin that had been on his face as he spoke to my friend brightened a little more as he took me in.

God help me, he was hot.

The dark blond of his longish hair matched the same color crossing his mouth and cheeks in a rough five o’clock shadow. Mostly though it was his easy smile that electrified his handsome face. He had to be a few years older than me at least. All I could do was sit there and smile at the man who was more than likely a biker based on the fact he had a vest on… and that we were at a biker bar. A biker bar on a Saturday. You really never knew where life would take you, did you?

The longer I looked at the blond’s face… I realized I recognized those blue eyes of his. That particular shade was pointed in my direction from another face, a face I knew well. That blue was Ginny’s blue.

“Trip, this is my friend Diana. She works with me at the salon. She’s the one I told you about who has the boy who plays baseball. Di, this is my cousin Trip,” Ginny explained as my gaze trailed back over to my friend, shaking off the fuzz that had come over my brain from looking at him.

Trip. Baseball. She had mentioned her cousin who had a son around Josh’s age who played competitive baseball a couple of times. I remembered now.

“Nice to meet you,” I greeted, one hand curled around my stout, the other extending out in his direction.

“Hey,” the grinning blond said as he took my hand in a shake.

“He works at the garage by the parking lot,” Ginny explained.

I nodded, watching as the guy named Trip turned back toward his cousin and elbowed her. “Where’s your man at?”

“He’s at home,” she explained, referring to her fiancé.

He gave her a funny look and shrugged. “The old man is back there if you wanna drop by and say hi,” he said to her, his gaze straying back to me for a moment as a small, sly smile crossed his mouth.

She nodded, turning to look over his shoulder briefly, as if searching for whoever “the old man” was. Her uncle?

“Go say hi,” I offered when she continued looking around the floor of the half-full bar.

Her nose scrunched for a moment as she hesitated. “You sure?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, as long as you don’t leave me here all night.”

With that, she grinned. “Okay, it’s my uncle. It’d be rude of me to not go say hi. Want to come?”

If there was one thing I understood and was all too well acquainted with, it was the politics that went behind big, close families. In mine, you had to tell everyone hi. There was no such thing as a group wave unless you wanted your mom hissing in your ear about how much of an embarrassment you were.

“Nah,” I answered and tipped my head toward the back. “Go say hi. I’ll be here.”

My boss smiled and stood up, patting her cousin on the cheek. “Show me where he is,” she stated… which was kind of weird. The bar was a good size but not that big. It wouldn’t have taken her longer than a couple of minutes to find her uncle, but whatever. The blond man nodded and led her through the small group directly behind us. She carried her stout with her.

I sat there and took a couple of sips, looking up and down the counter at the people sitting there. Really, they almost looked like normal, everyday people, except for all the leather and Harley T-shirts. I had just pulled my phone out of my pocket to check my e-mail—not that there was anything important in there—when I caught sight of a familiar-looking buzz cut and brown hair at the far edge of the bar. It wasn’t until the man turned to face forward that I realized it was my neighbor.

Dallas with the asshole brother. Dallas who may or may not be in a marriage with a woman in a red car. Dallas with a giant tattoo across his body. Dallas who was chuckling as he said something to the person who had been sitting beside him.

What were the fucking chances he would be here?

I hadn’t seen a motorcycle at his place in the days since I’d first started paying attention to his house after his brother got beat up. I’d only seen his pickup truck. Was he a biker too?

Taking him in, sitting there with his elbows on the counter, a smile lingering on his sharp face, his attention focused on the television mounted on the wall… I couldn’t really picture him in this kind of place. With the way his hair was cut short and from his posture, all straight back and strong shoulders, I would have thought military, not motorcycle club.

Really?

For one shameful moment, I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into by moving to my neighborhood and living across from someone like him. Him with his marital problems that took place outside and his brother who got the shit beat out of him for who knows what. Him who hung out at a biker bar of all places.

Just as quickly as that thought filled my head, I accepted how dumb and hypocritical I was being. What mattered was what was on the inside, right?

One of the people in my line of view moved and I noticed he wasn’t wearing a vest like so many of the men were. Maybe he wasn’t in the motorcycle club, or was he?

It doesn’t matter. At least, it shouldn’t.

He had brought back my plastic container and thanked me for helping his brother. There was no reason to think he was a bad guy now, was there? He had dirt smudged on his neck like Louie sometimes did, and something about that reassured me.

No one was sitting next to my neighbor at that point, and as I looked around, I debated for a minute whether to pretend not to see him or just go ahead and wave to get it over with the lazy way. Then those deeply engraved manners my mom had practically beat into me overrode anything and everything else, like usual. Plus, I hated when people pretended not to see me, even if I really didn’t want to say hi, and he’d been polite when he didn’t need to be. I wasn’t going to count the first day we’d met; no one was ever in a good mood when they’d gotten rudely woken up, especially with some bullshit like his brother had pulled.

After another minute of telling myself that it would be fine to not say anything, I accepted that I couldn’t do that. With a grumble, I finally pushed my chair back and got up, grabbing my stout along the way.

One day I would grow into my own person who didn’t care about doing the right thing.

One day when hell froze over.

The closer I got to him sitting at the other end of the bar staring at the television mounted high on the wall, the more relaxed I became. He was watching a baseball game. It was Josh’s favorite major league team—the Texas Rebels. I only hesitated a little bit as I came up behind him and then tapped him on the shoulder with my free hand.

He didn’t turn around, so I did it again. That second time, he finally turned his head to look over his shoulder, a slight frown creasing the space between his full eyebrows. Pale eyelids lowered over those hazel irises, blinking once, then twice and a third time.

Great. He didn’t recognize me.

“Hi.” I flashed him a smile that was about 98 percent “why did I do this?” “I’m Diana, your neighbor,” I explained, because though we’d met twice, apparently he still didn’t remember me. If that didn’t make a girl feel good, I didn’t know what would.

Dallas blinked once more and slowly gave me a hesitant, wary look as he nodded. “Diana, yeah.”

I blinked at the most unenthusiastic greeting I’d ever been welcomed with.

And then to make it worse, his frown made a reappearance at the same time his gaze flicked around the bar. “This is a surprise,” he said slowly, his forehead still lined with confusion or discomfort, or both. I didn’t know why. My boobs weren’t hanging out and in his face, and I was standing a reasonable distance away from him.

“I’m here with my friend,” I explained slowly, watching as he turned his head enough to glance around me… to look for my friend? Or see where his friend was to get me out of his face? Who knew? Whatever the reason, it made me narrow my eyes at him. I didn’t want to be here either, thank you very much. “Well, I wanted to say hi since I saw you here….” I trailed off as his gaze switched back to my direction, that almost familiar crease making its presence known one more time between his thick eyebrows. Had I done something wrong by coming up to him? I didn’t think so. But there was something in his gaze that made me feel so unwelcome, I couldn’t help but feel awkward. Really awkward.

I could tell where I was wanted and where I wasn’t.

“All right, I just wanted to say a friendly ‘hello.’ I’ll see you later, neighbor.” I finished in one breath, regretting making the decision to come over more than I had regretted anything in recent history.

That furrow between my neighbor’s eyebrows deepened as his gaze swept over me briefly before moving back to the television as he shifted forward in his seat, dismissing me. The action was so fucking rude, my stomach churned from how insulted I was. “’Kay. See you around,” he said.

Thank God I had said I was leaving first.

I didn’t know him well enough to decide whether he was being unfriendly because he didn’t want to have anything to do with me in public or if today was just not the day for small talk. Then again, once he realized who I was, his expression had just turned guarded. Why, who the hell knew?

Slightly more embarrassed than I had been minutes before—I should have just pretended not to see him, damn it—with my drink in hand, I made the walk along the edge of the bar toward my original seat. I’d barely sat down when I faintly heard Ginny’s voice over the loud music. A moment later, the seat next to me was pulled out and so was the one on the other side of her.

“Sorry, sorry,” she apologized, scooting the stool forward as the blond man she’d called her cousin did the same at the stool beside her.

I shrugged, shoving the moment with my neighbor to the back of my mind. I wasn’t going to let it bother me. There wasn’t anything worth bothering me about the situation. Good for him not being a giant whore, I guess, if that was why he hadn’t been friendly. “It’s okay.”

And then, of course, the blond named Trip leaned forward and tipped his chin up at me. “You know Dallas?”

“The guy over there or the city?” I asked, gesturing toward the end of the bar with a quick and not-so-inconspicuous head jerk.

He nodded with a grin. “The man, not the city.”

“Uh-huh. We’re neighbors.”

That had Ginny turning her red head to look in the direction we’d both gestured to. I could tell her eyes narrowed.

“No shit?” Trip asked, bringing his mug of beer to his mouth.

“He’s two houses down, across the street.”

“You’re across from Miss Pearl?”

How the hell he knew who Miss Pearl was, I didn’t understand. “Yep.”

“I remember seeing a for sale sign up in front of that house. How ‘bout that.”

Someone knew my neighbor well.

Meanwhile, I noticed that Ginny was still trying to look over at the other side of the bar to search whom we’d been originally talking about. I touched her elbow and, with my palm flat to the surface of the bar, pointed right at my neighbor pretty damn discreetly if I did say so myself. “The guy in the white shirt.”

Then she turned to look at me over her shoulder, her eyes a little too shrewd. “You live across the street from him?”

“You know him too?”

“I didn’t…” She flubbed her words before shaking her head and using her thumb to gesture to the blond beside her. “He’s our cousin.”

That man was Ginny’s cousin? Really? She had never, ever mentioned him before. I’d pegged him to be about forty, right around her age. The same age as I figured the cute blond on her other side might be also.

“So, you cut hair too?” Trip asked, ending Ginny’s explanation of the man at the end of the bar, damn it. I could always ask her about it later… maybe. After the way he’d just been, I wasn’t exactly interested in hearing his life story. Plus, he was married. Married. I wouldn’t roll down that hill even if he’d been interested. Which he hadn’t. It was fine. I wasn’t interested either.

“Yes,” I answered, focusing on the blond’s question, even as Ginny snorted into her beer. “I prefer hair artiste, but yeah.” Doing hair color was my favorite and what I made more than half my money off, but who needed to be specific?

“You wanna cut mine?” the flirt just went ahead and asked.

I scrunched up my nose and smiled. “No.”

The big laugh that bubbled out of him made me grin.

“It’s nothing personal, I promise,” I explained, smiling at him and Ginny, feeling a little like a jerk for how that had come out.

Ginny’s cousin shook his head as he continued cracking up, his handsome face getting that much more good-looking. “Nah. I get it. I’ll go cry in the bathroom.”

My boss groaned as she put her beer mug up to her face, rolling her eyes. “Don’t believe anything that comes out of his mouth.”

“I wasn’t going to.” I winked at her, earning us another laugh from the only man talking to us.

“Fuck, you two are brutal.”

We didn’t even have to say “thank you.” Ginny and I grinned at each other over his compliment that wasn’t supposed to be one. I had just sat back into my stool when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted my neighbor’s face. He was looking right at us.

Before I could process that, Trip leaned his forearm onto the counter, catching my attention once more, and asked, “What did you say your name was again?”