A Guide to Being Just Friends(96)

Taking a long drink, the bitter liquid burning his tongue and the back of his throat, he hoped the caffeine would kick in quick. He heard his brothers arguing under their breath. Might as well say it out loud. He turned, leaned against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other.

“Hailey dumped me.”

If he didn’t feel like he was going to throw up, he would have laughed at the way both of their heads swiveled in his direction.

“What?” Chris stared.

“Whoa, dude. Way to bury the lead.” Noah shook his head. He got up, went to Wes’s fridge, and pulled out a beer.

Wes looked at him, frowning. “It’s morning.”

Noah twisted off the beer cap, took Wes’s coffee, and set the beer in his hand. “No, it isn’t. And if you’re hungover, which I haven’t seen since you were about twenty, you need this first.”

Chris joined them, pulling a chair out from the table, swinging it around to straddle it. “What happened?”

The bottle was cool in his hand as he clenched his fingers around it. He didn’t want the beer but it felt good to hold on to something.

“We’ve known each other close to a year; she knows I don’t want to get married and have a family. We could have stayed together longer but she insisted that if she loves me and I don’t feel the same, it’s not worth it. Since when is having someone in your life who complements you, whose company you enjoy, a waste of time? She didn’t think it was a waste to be friends even though we weren’t throwing meaningless declarations around then.” He set the beer down too hard, making it slosh over.

“Chris?” Noah looked at his brother.

Chris nodded. “Right. Okay. Where to start. First, you’re an idiot.”

Noah pointed at him. “Excellent point. Exactly where I would have started.”

“Secondly,” Chris said, nodding again, “what do you mean you don’t want to get married and have kids? Fine if Hailey isn’t the one, but do you mean never?”

“I would have stuck on the idiot thing longer but we can totally swing back around,” Noah said, grabbing a kitchen chair so his pose mimicked Chris’s.

Wes glared at them. “Since always. Why would I do that to myself? To someone else? To children? Do you not remember how awful it was in the days leading up to the divorce? The yelling and accusations, then the way Dad tried to use us as bargaining chips? The way he threatened Mom with us if she went after any sort of settlement aside from the one he’d drawn up?”

To their credit, both of his brothers looked a little lost. That’s what he’d always wanted for them but suddenly, the burden of being the only one to know felt like it could drag him to the ground. He shoved both hands through his hair.

“It’s not like you two are ring shopping. I was self-aware enough to tell her up front that I didn’t want all that. Maybe you two got lucky, the conversation hasn’t arisen. You won’t talk about prenups at all so what do I know. But I don’t see you heading down any aisles.” He paced to the patio, pulled open the sliding door.

“I want to marry Grace. I hope we have kids.” Noah’s voice was quiet.

“I love Everly more than anything. All I want is to have her be my wife. I just don’t want to rush her.” Chris looked uncomfortable before he asked, “Is Hailey just not the one?”

The one. Everything. “No. Trust me, if ever I was going to dive off that plank into shark-infested waters, she’d be the one I’d do it with. But come on, guys, look at the statistics. Doesn’t that worry you?”

Chris shrugged. “Not more than losing Everly.”

Noah’s brows bounced. “When have I ever not beat statistics?”

“It seemed like you two really fit. Do you care about her at all?”

Wes whirled so fast he felt dizzy. “Do I care about her? Of course I do. But when I do things to show that, she gets all mad, tells me she loves me, then dumps me because I don’t say it back.”

“Can we insert the idiot thing again?”

Chris smacked Noah. “It’s okay not to want marriage and kids, Wes. But it surprises me. Is that really how you feel or is it because of how we grew up? What do you feel, Wes?”

Wes swallowed. “Right now?”

Chris shook his head. “No. When you’re with her.”

Walking back and forth across his kitchen, he tried to put the words together to describe what being with Hailey was like.

“I feel like I’ve found a secret code that unlocks a different world that only I’m allowed to be part of, that only I know how to navigate. Even the hurdles feel more manageable with her there. It feels like everything fits perfectly into place even when it doesn’t all make sense.” He sucked in a breath. “I feel happy.”

“It seems cruel to point out the idiocy now,” Noah said in a genuinely perplexed tone.

“I’m not an idiot. I’m protecting her. Protecting both of us. What do I know about love? Nothing. That’s what. Absolutely nothing. We don’t just jump in and hope for the best with business. How can you do that with love? With emotions, when they can be unstable? When they can change? This isn’t a game where I can win more lives or defeat the bad guy. There’s no prize. Just a broken heart and an inability to breathe because I’ve put too much stake in a person who isn’t me.”