I'd shot guns before. It had been part of my training, courtesy of Gabe who was the most skilled with them of K's colleagues. I couldn't claim to be good, but I usually managed to hit the chest cavity even on moving targets.
We drove thirty minutes out of town until we hit a more rural area, pulling off and parking in an abandoned field. "Here? In city limits?" I asked as I pulled off my helmet, my hair sweaty from the heat, watching a bit of heat lightening flash across the storm-dark sky.
"Nothing around for a good five miles. This is private property. No one will hear shit," he explained, moving off his bike and ambling off toward the tree line. I took a deep breath and followed behind, still a little off-put by his oddly distant behavior. I mean... we had made out the night before. He had fingered me the night before. We would have done a lot more had we not been interrupted.
Augh.
I was thinking like a girl.
K taught me better.
Even if we fucked in new and inventive ways, chances were a man was going to treat me no different the next day than he did before we fucked. That was just how men were. I needed to stop putting my thoughts and feelings on him.
"Alright," Repo said a long, hot, disgusting twenty-minute walk later, coming to a halt in a clearing where there were targets already set up, human shaped ones, the cliched bottles and tin cans on a downed tree limb, actual point targets. You named it, he had it there.
"Come here often?" I asked, slinging my sweaty hair out of my face.
"Some of the men practice at the compound, but you can't get the distance there," he said with a shrug.
"The distance?" I repeated, tilting my head to watch him load bullets from his pocket into his gun.
"I'm a good shot," he said simply, no real pride behind the words, just a relaying of facts. "What about you?" he asked, looking over at me for the first time since we left the compound.
"I'm fair. I'm better with..."
"Hand to hand," he finished for me, surprising me. How the heck could he have known that?
"Saw you fucking around with Renny. And then you were quick, practiced breaking up the fight between him and Duke. People without training don't move like you move. Where'd you learn?"
"I had a, ah, team of instructors. Boxing, Krav Maga, street fighting, you name it."
"It shows."
"Is that... actually a... compliment?" I asked, giving him a teasing smile.
"Oh fuck off, Maze. You know you're a good probate. You have your own unique set of skills. You don't need me stroking your ego left and right."
"Need it? No. But it's still nice to hear. Especially seeing as everyone else is really fond of pointing out my flaws."
"If you were looking for cheerleaders, you tried out for the wrong team, honey."
"Cheerleaders? No. But maybe I was hoping for some teammates. But whatever. I get it."
"You get it?"
I felt my lips turn up slightly. "Repo, this is nothing new. This sexism shit? It's old and familiar. It's the sneers from the boys on the playground when I wanted to play cops and robbers with them instead of hopscotch with the other girls. It's the middle school bra snapping. It's the high school pressure to be both a virgin and a slut somehow at the same time. It's the men who tried to take the jumper cables from me when I stopped to help them on the side of the road because they thought that, while I had the common sense to actually buy and keep cables in my car, that I was somehow too stupid to know how to use them properly. Believe me when I say I am familiar with all of this crap. If anything, I think it is worse now that women are becoming stronger and more independent. It's like it makes men even more aggressive and violent toward us. But they're all just going to have to buck up and deal with it because now that we all have a taste of power, we aren't going back to the fucking kitchen. The Henchmen are just going to have to adjust because I am not going any-fucking-where."
"I believe you," he said, nodding a little. "And I respect the determination, Maze. But I'm not sure it will be enough to get you a patch."
"Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see. So are we going to gab like chicks all day, or are we shooting?"
"Gab like chicks?" he repeated, lips twitching.
"You seem awfully interested in my thoughts and motivations for a guy," I said, shrugging, trying to be casual.
"You're a fucking piece of work," he said, shaking his head and turning toward the targets. "You'll go first," he said, taking my gun and replacing it with his since it was loaded.