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The shrimp are long gone, but there are bottles collecting on the table. Neither of them seem in any rush to leave, and the sun has started sinking toward the horizon in a reddening blaze. Brian can see the rear fender of the Supra from where he leans on the table, and he grins faintly, intensely proud. He feels like Christmas. He feels like the first time he had sex. It all drifts away when he’s behind the wheel.
“You scare the shit out of me,” Dom says, as casually as if they’re talking about who’s buying the next round.
Brian doesn’t freeze, because that’s the first sign of a liar. Instead, he comes out swinging. “Jesus, is this still about the cop thing?”
Dom doesn’t blink. He just sits there, one hand on his nearly empty Corona, the other resting easily near Brian’s elbow, eyes still playing over Brian’s face. “Vince is an idiot,” he says, and Brian scowls. Guilty conscience is another sign of a liar, and he drags himself fully back to the table, trying to read Dom’s face, his body language. He’s lost the faint smile he had when he was watching Brian watch his car. “I love him like a brother, but he’s still an idiot. I mean your driving.”
Brian laughs, relaxing, because that’s safer territory for Spilner or O’Connor. The smile returns to play again around Dom’s mouth. “My driving? Aren’t you the king of illegal street racing?”
Dom scoffs. “And here I thought I was teaching you something. I’m in control when I’m behind that wheel. Precision driving,” he intones, and Brian has to work very hard to keep the easy smile on his face, the image of eighteen-wheelers and shotguns out of mind. “You drive like…” he trails off.
“Like what?” Brian challenges him. He’s curious, almost breathless, suddenly, to know what Dom will say. What Dom sees when he watches Brian.
“Like you got nothing to lose,” Dom admits. Brian just breathes. He feels like there’s a lot to lose, lately. But if he stops to ask himself what, exactly, he’d grab, should his life slide over the cliff, he’s not sure he knows the answer. Better to keep running. The coyote only ran into trouble when he looked down.
“What are you thinking about when you’re out there, up over a hundred?” Brian presses. “When you hit the NOS? You telling me you’re holding back out there?”
Dom doesn’t rise to the bait. He just cocks his head, like he’s still figuring Brian out. Brian fights the urge to shift in his seat. He realizes, not for the first time, that being pinned under Dom’s gaze is a far from unpleasant feeling. He realizes only when his knees bump the table leg how far forward he’s leaned.
“I don’t hold back.” Dom’s face is close across the table. “But I’ve always got Mia, my team… I had nothing in Lompoc,” he says, voice low and scraping, and Brian’s breath squeezes out through his nose. He doesn’t know what to do with these pieces of Dom he keeps finding in his hands, freely given. He doesn’t know what he has to give back, except a truth he can’t offer about a badge and a mission. “When I race, I don’t think about Mia, or Letty, or Jesse, or the store or garage. But I carry them all.” He gestures, but Brian already knew. Not in his mind. His heart. “You need some traction, Brian.”
Brian looks back out the window. “I don’t think I’m gonna find it in a shrimp shack,” he says, keeping his eyes on the Supra’s reassuringly green spoiler.
Dom shifts in his seat and pulls out a few folded bills, tossing them down on the table. “You’d be surprised,” he says, voice milder than before. Brian, unpinned at last from underneath Dom’s gaze, stands as quickly as he dares, taking refuge in the clatter and scrape of moving his chair.
Still shaking off the conversation, Brian pushes quickly through the crowd of people. He’s at the Supra’s fender before he realizes that Dom had paid for his food after all, and he spins, face hard.
Dom is right behind him, and he grins at Brian’s jerk of surprise. “Told you I got you,” he says, and Brian doesn’t know what to do with the grin on Dom’s face. He’s totally flummoxed when Dom raises a hand to pat Brian’s cheek, sliding it down to squeeze Brian’s neck before he slides into the passenger seat.
Brian stands for a beat too long, and has to hope he’s sunburned enough from the drive and long days in the yard that Dom can’t tell he’s flushed when he finally lowers himself into the driver’s seat.