Birthday Girl(119)

“Pike, you can’t marry her,” Dutch states like he knows where my head is at. “You know that, right?”

I keep my back to him, rehanging discarded tools on the workbench and slowly clearing off the table.

Nine days ago I would’ve agreed with him. I would’ve said he was right.

People will talk. They’re probably already talking. They’ll make it dirty and wrong, and her friends from high school will joke about her, and no one would take us seriously. All they would see is her age and how she moved from son to father, and it would be the talk of the town.

But now I’m not so sure. Who cares what they think? We’d get through it, and Jordan’s circle of friends is as small as mine. She won’t give a damn what strangers have to say about it.

We’d be fucking happy, and eventually people would move on.

She wanted me. She wanted to love me.

She was ready for us.

I shake my head, arguing, “She’s different.”

“No, she’s not,” Dutch retorts. “She’s young and full of hope. Like we used to be.”

I turn slowly and look at him. It’s not like him to stand against me.

But I listen as he goes on.

“Everything is new and fresh to her,” he says. “She’s excited about life, and she makes you remember what that felt like. Before we grew up and realized we weren’t going to be fighter pilots saving the world or kings of Wall Street riding around in stretched limos.” He laughs under his breath, sitting back in the chair. “Before there were bills to pay and responsibilities piling higher as the years went on.”

His eyes fall, and I can see everything I’m feeling on his face. He doesn’t hate his life, and he adores his wife and kids, but if we could go back and do at least one thing differently, I know we both would.

Here we sit, and we’re not sure what we have to look forward to anymore.

“Look, man.” He raises his eyes to me. “You had fun with her. I’m not saying you did anything wrong. If the sex is good, then enjoy each other. But you have to think about the future, and you know it won’t always feel like this.” He pauses, knitting his brow. “She’ll wake up in ten years and see a picture of a high school friend online who’s trekking through Nepal or some shit, and she’ll look around at her own life and think about how she’s saddled with two kids in this small town and married to a man nearly fifty years old whose life is more than halfway over.”

I remain silent, the weight of his words sitting in my gut like bricks.

“You think she won’t regret choosing you, knowing that her best years are almost gone?” he asks.

But I don’t have to answer. He knows he’s right.

In ten years, she’ll still be young and beautiful, and I’ll deserve her even less than I do now. I can’t give her everything she wants no matter how much my ego thinks otherwise.

She was built for big things. She’s smart and strong, and she deserves the world. She deserves a life that passed me by a long time ago.

Another man will be to her everything I’m not and never will be, and even though that idea is like acid in my mouth, she’ll be happier for it. And above everything else, that’s what I want. She’ll grow with someone else, and that’s the life she deserves.

Dutch leaves, and I close up the garage, heading into the house and immediately up the stairs. I stop at Jordan’s bedroom, the door open and the light breeze outside her window blowing the leaves on the tree in the backyard.

Her faint smell lingers, and the dent her body made is still etched into the pillow propped up in her chair.

I don’t go in, though. It’s not my room, not my girl anymore, and she’s out there somewhere, moving on with her life, and I need to do the same.

Enough. Do the right thing.

Reaching for the knob, I inhale her perfume one last time.

And I pull the door closed.





Pike

Two Months Later



Threading the thin, white rope around the wheel, I yank on it, seeing it move toward me on the pulley. I move over to the other wooden post I’ve cemented into the backyard and pull on that rope, as well, testing it.

I have no idea why I’m putting in clotheslines.

All I know is I’m running out of ideas. I already built a wooden picnic table with a built-in beer tub in the middle, stained it, and added benches. I’ve also put in a fire pit, a stone pathway leading from the back gate to the back door, mulch in the flower beds, torches around the pool, a pergola, a hammock, and a small pond with a rock garden. I keep moving from one project to another, so I don’t have time to think about how I’m not using any of it. I’ll enjoy it when I’m done, I guess.

“Looks different back there,” I hear someone call out.

I look up, seeing Kyle Cramer standing on his bedroom balcony and looking down into my backyard.

Does this guy have a hard-on for me or something? Why’s he always trying to talk to me?

“Got some time on your hands, huh?” he gauges. “I noticed it’s been a lot quieter here the past several weeks.”

I cast him another look, giving him a curt smile. Maybe if I acknowledge him, he’ll leave me alone.

And yes, it’s been quiet. Until now.

“So, um,” he starts, and I silently groan. “I saw you and Jordan one night.”