Page 125 of Fearless

“Hey.” Tango’s elbow in his ribs drew Aidan’s attention. “Ava.”

Through the open glass door that led out onto the patio, he saw his sister sitting across from her little wimp-ass boyfriend.

“We’ll make it fast,” Aidan said. The last thing he needed was some country club shithead getting too curious about this meeting.

“Top of the morning, Gregory,” he said, just a hair too loud, as he slid in across from the Carpathian.

Greg jumped like he’d been electrocuted.

“How you been, man?” Aidan asked.

Tango spun a spare chair away from the wall, and straddled it at the edge of the table, effectively blocking Greg in place. He folded his arms over the chair back and cracked his gum, looking bored with the whole situation. “S’up?”

Greg glanced between the two of them, rattled, unsure of how to handle things.

Aidan leaned back against the booth, braced his hands in a casual way on the table, and said, “We’re old friends with Julian and Stella. No one’s gonna bug us in here. We can talk.”

“Just us,” Tango said, and plucked at his blue check flannel shirt, highlighting his lack of a cut. “No colors.”

Greg twitched, but he didn’t shed his cut. He dampened his lips, a movement that made him look extra ferret-faced. “My president knows I’m here.”

Aidan grinned – nice and big, lots of teeth showing – and glanced over at Tango to get a matching one in return. They’d played this scenario out so many times over the years – he might not be his father’s go-to guy, no, but he and Tango could circle like boxers with the best of them. Maybe, one of these days, Ghost would take note of that.

“So does mine,” he told Greg. “He says ‘hi’ by the way. Wants to know if you want to come to Sunday dinner. His old lady makes a mean pot roast.”

Greg coughed on a swift inhale. He didn’t like this jocular approach; he’d been all geared up for a fight.

“And the mashed potatoes,” Tango added. “Shit, if she wasn’t married to your old man, I’d get down on one knee over those potatoes.”

“Hey, that’s my stepmom you’re talking about.” Aidan kicked the side of his boot and earned a chuckle.

Greg had had enough. “What the hell do you guys want?”

Bingo. Thanks for joining the game, Greggy.

“A few things,” Aidan said, evasively, as a waitress appeared behind Tango. She was a redhead, about his sister’s age and she was taking note; her eyes skipped all over him and he thought she might have turned a little pink beneath the cute scattering of freckles on her nose. Oh, yeah, she saw him. “Coffee, cream and two sugars, sweetheart,” he said. “Him too.” Nod to Tango. “And, like, all the fresh muffins Stella’s got back there.”

She blushed and dimpled and walked away with one last glance.

Aidan let his grin linger as he faced Greg again.See how relaxed I am? I’m at home here. This is my place, my people. You don’t have any friends here. “First thing. Back in high school, you remember how we had Bio together?”

Greg’s face blanked a moment, some of the heated color bleeding away. Disarmed for the moment. “Yeah. You sat by the window and tapped on it and…”

“Told Ms. Schneider it was a bird,” they finished in unison.

Greg looked like he almost smiled. “That one day, right at the end of the semester…”

“The pigeon with the broken wing?” Aidan said.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, you didn’t have that class with me,” Aidan said to Tango. He explained the story, with all the embellishments and the old teenage excitement, of the afternoon when he’d clapped his palm against the window and exclaimed that a pigeon had flown into the glass, and lay injured on the sidewalk. Ms. Schneider had bolted out the side door, and shouting through the window, Aidan had directed her after the hobbling, crippled bird. She’d chased a non-existent pigeon around the green for thirty minutes, to the applause of his classmates who weren’t prepared for their pop quiz, and the days of detention had been worth it.

Greg was truly smiling by the time he finished the story, charmed again, like back in the day, and then the waitress was setting down thick ceramic mugs and heaping plates of steaming muffins: blueberry, cinnamon raisin, oatmeal, banana nut.

“It’s too early for anything pumpkin,” Tango lamented, reaching for a blueberry. “I could OD on pumpkin.”

Aidan was chewing a bite of chocolate chip muffin and reaching for his coffee when he said, “Greg, dude, you were a nice guy. How’d you end up with these losers?” He gestured to the Carpathians cut with his mug before he took a slug of coffee.

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