He didn’t seem surprised or angry. I expected him to be pissed off—but instead, he only looked at me with a curious frown. “I thought dinner went well,” he said. “Aside from those drunk assholes.”
“It did,” I said, “but how’s one dinner going to fix all the awkwardness between us?”
He screwed up his face for a second, like he was lost in thought. I’d seen that look a thousand times, and I almost smiled. It was the old Bret, the one I knew from back in the day. He gave me that look whenever he came to me with some stupid idea, like this one time he wanted to fill a Snapple bottle with gasoline and use some newspaper as a wick, and I told him we’d burn down half the woods if we did something so insane, and he gave me that look then, trying to see how my logic worked. He gave me that same look once when I told him that if he left me behind, he’d break my heart.
“I guess you’re right,” he said. “But I’m also guessing Fluke refused to get rid of me.”
“You gave her more money, didn’t you?” It wasn’t really a question, since I knew the answer already, but a smart person once said you never ask a question unless you know how it’s going to go.
“It’s a good investment,” he said, and he seemed genuine, although I didn’t believe that was why he did it.
We kept walking in silence. I didn’t know where I was going—it didn’t really matter. The act of moving kept my mind from spinning in circles.
“If we’re going to do this, then we need some ground rules,” I said.
He laughed and gestured at me. “All right, Jude. What rules do you want?”
“First rule, no more talking about our past.”
He pulled his hands from his pockets and put them in the air. “I’m pretty sure you’re the one that keeps bringing up what happened.”
I gave him an annoyed look and pushed forward. “Second rule, we keep it professional between us. No more acting like we have a history. As far as I’m concerned, we’re strangers.”
He stroked his chin and stopped walking in the shadow of a long brick wall that skirted along the side of a rowhome, blocking its back yard from the sidewalk. He leaned against it, toe pushing into a crack in the sidewalk, moving around some dirt and crushing a small green weed. His arms crossed over his chest and he sighed then ran a hand through his hair.
“I can do that,” he said. “Even though I don’t want to.”
“How else are we supposed to do this?” I asked him, genuinely curious about how he seemed totally fine with this situation, while I was a constant mess of emotions.
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I’m not a good actor. I don’t think I can pretend you’re a stranger.”
I clenched my jaw and tried not to shout at him. “We haven’t known each other for almost ten years,” I said softly. “As far as you’re concerned, I am a stranger, do you get it?”
His face fell slightly, and I saw something dark pass across his expression as he turned his chin toward the traffic. A young girl with a big red backpack walked past, headphones in her ears, hair up in a cute bun. Cars slowly rolled down the street, and sunlight glinted off their windows.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll try to play along, but I want to make a rule, too.”
I tugged at the hem of my shirt and tried not to fidget. I didn’t want him making any rules—I didn’t think he deserved any, but if this was what it would take, then I’d hear him out at least.
“Fine,” I said. “What do you want?”
“Stop trying to cut me out,” he said. “No more going to Fluke behind my back. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it as a team. No more bullshit.”
I chewed my lip hard enough to hurt, but I nodded once. “All right,” I said. “That’s fair.”
“Good.” He pushed off the wall then thrust his hand toward me. “We have a deal? Keep things professional, do this together.”
I stared his hands, at the calluses on his fingertips, and I wondered just how much of him I was missing, how many fights and heartbreaks and triumphs, and I imagined I didn’t know a lot, as much about him as he didn’t know about me, but even that ten-year gap, that decade of my life, seemed to pale in comparison to what we shared.
“Deal,” I said and shook. He held me a little too long, like I knew he would, but when he released, I felt a strange sense of lightness.
I’d finally accepted what I couldn’t change, even if I hated it.
“I have a contractor coming into the factory tomorrow,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Wants to start taking measurements, maybe get an idea of what sort of tooling we’ll need.”