Page 137 of Wreckage and Rain

I drink the bourbon to give myself a second.

"Yeah."

"I'm not trying to lecture you, Bennet."

"You aren't lecturing me. You're telling me the truth. I needed to hear it. Greg said something at the diner and you're saying it differently. They're the same sentence."

"They would be. Greg has been figuring out men his whole life. I've been doing it for a couple."

"You're good at it."

"Comes with the bar."

He picks up the glass. Resumes polishing.

I sit at his bar with the bourbon and watch him work and think about the new vocabulary I have to learn. Want her, don't need her. The grammar of a marriage you build instead of inherit.

"Sam."

"Yeah."

"Autumn."

He goes still for half a second. Then keeps polishing. Doesn't look up.

"What about her?"

"She told Summer she's going to try to move to Chicago in January. Did you know?"

"She has been hinting."

"How are you feeling about that?"

He thinks. Sam takes a long time with important questions and he's doing it now.

"I'm feeling like a man whose life is about to get less quiet."

"Ha, with Autumn that is completely accurate."

"I don't move fast, Colt. Autumn knows that. We have had two coffees and one walk along the lake and she hasn't asked me for anything I'm not ready to give. She's the most patient woman I have ever met. The slow part is something we have agreed on."

"Good."

"You ask because?"

"Because she's family. I'm keeping track."

He looks up. The smallest curve of a smile.

"Welcome to the bar, Bennet."

"Thank you, Sam."

We drink in silence. He pours me a second one. The room starts to fill up. Sam goes to take other orders. I don't move. I sit at the bar and watch his club come alive around me. It'll keep coming alive, with my wife in the corner at her stool, my best friend in the front row in front of his future, and Lucia at her mother's hip naming all of us as we walk through the door.

I'm going to be one of those people now. The named ones.

The corner-lady's husband. Uncle Cowboy if I'm unlucky. Whatever Lucia decides.