All We Ever Wanted(56)

“Why didn’t it matter enough?”

“Because she didn’t matter enough,” I said with a shrug. “I was over it. Her. Right then and there.”

   “So you broke up that night?”

“Yup,” I said, not admitting that we’d actually had sex a few other times before I decided, once and for all, that I didn’t want to be the guy she slummed with.

It didn’t take Bonnie long to give me her full hypothesis. She didn’t use the words chip on your shoulder, but more or less that’s what she said. Basically, she concluded that I’d felt used by Delaney, my self-esteem damaged by both her and the whole Belle Meade Country Club experience. Somewhere deep within myself, she believed, I believed that I didn’t measure up—and afterward sought out people and situations where I’d feel less vulnerable to rejection. The irony, of course, was that I ended up with Beatriz, who ultimately left me, too, hence reinforcing my fears and sense of isolation. Bonnie’s words, not mine.

Her theory made good sense, but for the fact that I didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the past. Nor did I think much about my present lack of friendships. In fact, the only time I really thought about my social life at all was when Lyla pointed it out, sometimes in the form of concern (“You should go out more, Dad”) and sometimes in the form of an accusation when I would tell her she couldn’t do something (“You want me to be like you and have no friends?”).

But then all this happened with Finch, and suddenly I did feel a little lonely. Lost. It kept striking me as pretty pathetic that I had nobody to discuss the situation with.

Which is how I remembered that I actually did have someone to talk to. So I drove over to Bonnie’s.

“You think it’s weird how few friends I have?” I asked her pretty much out of the gate, as we stood in her kitchen and she fired up her stove to make us tea. Tea was the starting point of all of our visits.

   “Weird? No. I wouldn’t use that word. You’re an introvert. Not everyone needs a posse,” Bonnie said, stressing the word posse. She loved to sprinkle in what she considered to be current slang—although she was usually about a decade off.

“But I had a posse as a kid. Before Beatriz,” I said.

Bonnie nodded. “Yes. I remember you mentioning that. One of the fellows was the guy who got you the golf course job?”

“Yes. John. Also Steve and Gerard,” I said, giving her a rundown on our foursome, how we had grown up together, roaming around the woods near our neighborhood as boys, then coming of age with a backdrop of beer, pot, and heavy metal music. When I think back to high school, I think of that group of guys, plus John’s longtime girlfriend, Karen, as cool as any dude, sitting around and just shooting the shit, talking about everything and nothing. Our favorite topic was how much we hated Nashville, at least our part of town—and how much we wanted to get the hell out of there and have lives different than those of the grown-ups grinding it out in low-paying jobs around us. With the most book smarts and drive among us, only John actually succeeded in doing that. He went to Miami of Ohio for undergrad, Northwestern for business school, then landed on Wall Street, trading bonds, smoking expensive cigars, and wearing his hair all slicked back like Michael Douglas playing Gordon Gekko. Meanwhile, I went to junior college for three semesters before running out of money and going into carpentry, and Steve and Gerard went into their respective family trades, becoming an insurance salesman and an electrician. The only real twist in the story is that when John and Karen broke up, she ended up dating Steve, then breaking up with Steve to marry Gerard. It was a wonder we’d survived those breaches of the man code at all.

“So who do you now consider your closest friend?” Bonnie asked as her kettle began to whistle, then screech. She grabbed the handle with an oven mitt, moving it to a back burner, instantly silencing it.

   I smiled and said, “Other than the lady who stiffed me for the tree house?”

Bonnie laughed and said, “Yes. Other than that old bat.”

I shrugged, explaining that the four of us, sans Karen, still tried to meet up when John came back to town to visit his folks every other Thanksgiving or so, but the dynamic felt a little forced.

“So are you lonely? Or is this about something else?” Bonnie said.

I looked at her, thinking that she was kind of brilliant. “Something else,” I said. “But I might need something stronger than tea.”

Bonnie smiled, turned off the stove, and poured us both a glass of clear liquor, neat.

“What’s this?” I said, swirling it in my glass.

“Gin,” she said. “It’s all I have.”

I nodded, then took the glass and followed her to her back porch, where we sat on wicker chairs and gazed up in the tree at my handiwork. As we sipped, I told her the whole story. Everything. Ending with Nina and Finch’s visit, and Finch asking for my permission to ask Lyla out.

Bonnie whistled and shook her head. “What did you tell him? Wait. Let me guess. Over your dead body?”

“Not exactly, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Why so surprised? I thought you believed in forgiveness?” I said. “Letting go of bitterness and all that stuff?”

“I do,” she said. “But you don’t.”