“Bri. Hit the gym with me, dude.”

He halted in his tracks. “You can’t be serious.”

“Come on. You need it.”

“Not at midnight.” Brian slapped a cap on his head with one hand and twirled his keys around his finger with the other. Candace had taken off, since she had an exam in the morning and the constant activity in the parlor wasn’t conducive to studying. “I’m hitting the sack.”

“Are you twenty-nine or sixty-nine?”

The devilish dimples appeared. “Twenty-nine with a sixty-nine waiting at home.” The others whooped and laughed.

“Lucky f**k. I’m definitely hiding in your bushes tonight. Hey, but see, you can come with me and get all pumped up for her. She’ll work it off for you.”

“You’re insane.”

“What did we join the all-hours f**king gym for? Because we work crazy hours. Stop being a pu**y, and let’s go.”

And so they found themselves on the way to the gym after Brian grumbled an explanation to Candace over the phone.

“Is it like having a probation officer or what?” he asked after Brian tossed his phone on the seat beside him.

“Huh? No. Not at all.”

“So tell me where you see this thing going.”

“What?”

“Don’t play ignorant. It’s been almost a year for you two, and she seems like a permanent fixture at the parlor.”

Brian shot him a glance. “Have you got a problem with that?”

“Would it matter if I did?”

“As far as us being together? No. As far as her being a permanent fixture at the parlor, I value your input.”

“Really.”

“This ain’t a dictatorship, man. I never intended it to be.”

“So if I said the word, she’d be gone?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as gone.” Brian reached over to turn down Soulfly’s “Prophecy”. Then he sighed. “Look, I just don’t want her identity all tangled up with mine. I don’t want that for her. I keep telling her she should, you know, explore other options. She’s a big help, but what the hell has she worked so hard for? I was too much of a f**k-up to go to college. But she did it, and she did it magna cum laude. I’m so damn proud of her and I don’t want to hold her back.”

Ghost grabbed Brian’s half-a-foot-thick CD case and began idly flipping through it. “So that’s what it was about. When Evan said what he did about her being an on-site counselor.”

“Yeah, I know he was joking but there’s…been some tension.”

“You’re being an insecure little bitch. You’re still thinking you’re not good enough for her.”

“Hey, f**k you.”

“That’s all it is, dude. What you’re saying is your life—our life, really, since I do what you do—isn’t good enough for her.” Or someone like Macy. “Admit it.”

“That’s not it. I barely keep her parents off my ass as it is. They’re just now getting to where they’ll look me in the eye. I wouldn’t give a shit, but it matters to her, I don’t care what she says.”

“Then maybe you not caring what she says is the problem.”

Brian drew a long breath in through his nose. Blew it out. Ah. He’d hit a nerve. “Her f**kin’ mother, man. After Candace and I got together, Sylvia pulled me aside and was all ‘Just promise me, Brian, that you’ll see to it she finishes school’.” He shook his finger in the air, taking on a high-pitched, scolding tone. “‘And don’t make me a grandmother yet!’ Like I’m hell-bent on making her drop out and knocking her up. Shit. I need a cigarette.”

“Still? It’s been months.”

“It really hasn’t.”

“Damn. You fell off the wagon.”

“Just a couple times.”

“Well, I’m back now, and I’m telling you straight. Cut it. The f**k. Out.”

“I know. The gym was probably a really good idea tonight.”

“I’m tuned in to you, dude. But despite how perfect you and I seem together, I could never be with anyone who has no Acid Bath in his collection.” He closed the CD case and put it aside. “All joking aside. You gonna marry her? This is the one out of seven billion?”

“It is. And I am. I’ve got to. It’s like…sometimes…”

“Speak.”

“Sometimes I think I’m not going to make it another day without getting a ring on that girl’s finger and changing her f**king last name from theirs to mine. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with her, and I want it to start yesterday.”

“Then do it already. I knew something was eating you up. You’re like a friggin’ caged beast—it’s all over you, and you’re smoking again, for f**k’s sake.”

“I already sent her running once. It’s not right for her yet. It has to be right.”

“Yeah, but you’re solid now. Look, stop stressing out. Candace is cool with me. She’s a big help and I can’t see her stirring up any drama. The girls like her. If she wants to hang around us that much then God bless her. And please, go ahead and ask her to marry you before your head explodes.”

Just a few nights ago, he’d been singing the complete opposite tune to Macy. What sunshine and rainbows had she injected into him since then?

“All she’s thinking about right now is getting through graduation. I don’t want to sabotage her with my alpha bullshit.”

“I do have one beef with her. She spooked all your groupies. I kinda do miss them.” Brian laughed as he turned into the gym’s parking lot. Ghost grinned to himself. That was more like it. He sounded like his old self. Brian was a volcano sometimes; he had to blow his top to someone before he could settle back down. “And I’d love to stand up for you, but don’t expect to get me in no tux. Unless I can rip off the sleeves, add some chains or something.”

“Don’t worry about that. I think elopement would be our only option. Between my family and hers, can you imagine the circus any wedding of ours would be? My mom’s ready to put a hit out on Candace’s mom as it is.”

“No way, man. This wedding has to happen if only to see your moms scrap with each other. I’d pay good money for that. Hell, I’d wear a tux for that.”

“Any more problems out of Raina?”

Well, there was a good-mood killer. Raina had texted him five times today. He’d bet money that Mark, that son of a bitch, had given her his number. Why those two didn’t just f**k each other and forget about him, he didn’t know.

She’d wanted him to know how immature he was being for resisting her return to the band. How it must mean there were still feelings he wouldn’t admit to. Ha.

“Aside from driving me nuts? No.”

“You don’t think she’s going to scare Macy away?”

Ghost scoffed. “Macy would wrestle that girl down, tie her in a half hitch and throw her hands in the air. Raina’s all talk.”

Brian killed the engine. “I’m thinking you might be right, if what Candace says is true. The exterior is deceptive.”