Page 38 of Callow

“It’ll… wash off,” Sully said, sounding unsure.

“I would suggest showing it to Fallon and Brooks then cutting the lawn before he sees it,” I said, thinking of the absolute shit-fit Perish had one day when he’d realized Sully had orchestrated a water balloon fight in the yard, leaving tiny bits of multicolored balloons all through the grass. And that shit could be easily picked up.

“Good plan,” Sully said as he made his way out the back door.

“So no more stalking from a certain young girl?” Nave asked.

“Think the shootout scared her off,” I said. I was only partially lying. It scared her off for herself. But it somehow made her want to set me up with her mother.

“Probably good since you eye-fuck her mother when she’s not looking.”

Maybe I should have objected to that. But he was right. And what did it matter if he knew that?

“Ran into her at She’s Bean Around the other night,” I told him, finding that I actually wanted to talk about it. That wasn’t exactly like me. But then again, neither was this newfound interest I had in a woman.

“Yeah? How’d that go?”

“Good,” I said.

“Yet you haven’t seen her again?”

“She has work and a kid.”

“She has work and a nearly grown kid so she can’t see you for coffee or dinner again?” Nave asked, dubious. “Sounds more like your ass is too chickenshit to initiate,” he said, slapping my shoulder as he moved past me. “Nut-up, Callow. Can’t get shit in life if you don’t shoot your shots when they come up.”

I didn’t expect to get life advice from someone young enough to be my kid brother.

That said, Nave was a bit of a mystery. At least to me. He was a legacy kid, with his old man having been a really important member of the club in his day. Yet when he was old enough, he grabbed his bike and a backpack and hit the road.

For fucking years.

Even though he knew he could have easily just come back at any point to prospect and become a patched member of the club.

I didn’t know many specifics of his time on the road. Save for him meeting Voss on his travels when Voss had saved his life. And that the two had been best friends ever since.

Since he came back, he was an ever-present member of the club, but just about as bit of a mystery to me as the newer prospects.

Maybe he’d had a lot more experiences with women in his years away than I’d had. Anything was possible.

And, fuck, he was right.

I had no right to sit around pining for the woman when she was one text or phone call away. I was being a chickenshit by waiting for her to come to me.

Besides, if she’d found out that her kid was who had set up the encounter, she might be too embarrassed to reach out first.

I checked my phone to make sure she hadn’t texted before making my way outside to look for Sully. Because if there was one man I knew who could give me advice on womenkind as a whole, it was the Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, rom-com-watching, girls-night-tagger-alonger, ex-military biker with a hot tub obsession.

“I think a partial wall would be a nice addition to the hot tub,” he declared as I approached.

“No one is going to be okay with you fucking chicks in the hot tub, man,” I shot back.

“It’s full of chemicals,” he said, shrugging it off. “What’s up? You’re all furrowed,” he said, glancing at me.

“I have a question.”

“Regarding a certain raven-haired beauty?” he asked as he leaned down to create even more lines on the ground around the square that already represented the hot tub.

“Yeah.”

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