Page 13 of Letting Go at 40

How will I ever let go of him?

Chapter 6

2 Years, 8 Months Ago

December

Before Christmas

[Mason]

Logan moved to Lakeside. He bought a house about half a mile from Lakeside Cottage. I couldn’t be happier to have another friend nearby. I’m also thrilled because Logan was the last point in our compass to make the decision to start Four Points Construction.

The four of us will officially own our own business in the new year.

Ben’s been a driving force in the push to move forward and resurrect this ancient plan.

With Logan’s architectural skill and my construction knowledge, plus Ben’s landscaping genius and Zack’s real estate law expertise, we have all the areas covered. Ben might be our weakest link, but Kulis Landscaping has a local manager who is taking on the role Ben would play in our business.

Because of Ben’s current state.

He’s sick. Vomit. Diarrhea. It’s literally shit everywhere. And seeing him so sick is killing me. I don’t have the words to make him feel better or the strength to right the wrong of illness taking over his body.

“I’m sorry, man,” Ben groans. He officially moved out of his bedroom with Anna. His argument was she wasn’t getting proper sleep when she was working every day. Anna works as a substitute teacher and she wanted to quit rather than give up sleeping with Ben.

When Ben told me the excuse, in front of Anna, she and I traded glances. Anna might not have been sleeping well, but she didn’t want Ben separated from her. Ben insisted, though.

With my arms around his back, I’m escorting him to his bed on the second floor. He collapses to the mattress, and I lift his thinning legs for him.

He mutters an apology again.

“Stop it,” I order. “How many times have you helped my sorry ass when I’ve been drunk?” I laugh at the rhetorical question. Drinking was the name of the game in college. Drunk was my status most nights, but not drunk enough to not perform. To please a girl and have her please me. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll might be a theme. For me, it was scotch, females, and any surface will do.

“You still drink too much,” Ben mumbles, rolling to his side, tugging his knees to his chest. I draw a blanket over him and press down the sides, essentially tucking him in. His body grows frailer by the day.

Occasionally, I take a night off from nursemaid duty, giving Ben and Anna the privacy they need. A few months ago, I’d find the first available woman in town celebrating a girls’ night out or maybe passing through on a fall weekend away. Lately, I don’t have the energy to seek someone random. I hardly have the stamina to get myself off, but as my dick still works and I am a man, my hand is a steady companion.

“I’m still holding out for you to get some medicinal stuff for us.” Ben and I haven’t gotten high together since college. He wasn’t much for pot when we were younger. He’d almost be comical in his current condition. Then again, the shit is legal in Michigan now, and I could easily get him a supply. “I bet you’d be cute if you were stoned.”

“You got a crush on me?” Ben weakly smiles. His lips are cracked, and I reach for some balm, spreading the thick gel over his mouth. He’s dehydrated.

“You know I crush on your wife,” I tease. “She might have picked me.”

This brings a larger smile to Ben’s lips. Over the years the argument has changed from the cocksure college guy certain Anna would have chosen me to the hesitant belief she might have, but probably not.

“Lucky man I am that she didn’t.” Ben’s eyes close while his smile fades. His cheeks are ruddy, as if he is feverish.

I pull up a chair and sit beside the bed. He hates feeling like people are watching him wither away.

Sometimes, I can’t help myself, though. I stare at him, still questioning our friendship while there is nothing more solid in my life. My ego was inflated balls when I was young, but I wasn’t so arrogant to dismiss the fact that Ben extended an olive branch first. When I had no one because my father dumped me in this small lake town, citing my need for an attitude adjustment and a lesson in humility, I didn’t know a soul. Ben was one of the youngest workers at Kulis Landscaping where my father signed me up for a summer of manual labor, and that lesson he deemed I needed.

Ben was the one who asked me if I wanted to hang out with his friends. He didn’t do it for any gain. Not the parties I had thrown back home. Not for the wealth I flashed with the car I had. Dear Daddy took that away that summer. Ben simply asked me to hang.

When Anna came into his life, we met Zack. Then we went to college and picked up Logan. Ben brought Logan into the fold as easily as he included me. Back in the early days, the four of us were inseparable. Ben was the glue. I stuck tight to him, forever grateful for his acceptance of me. He was the first person to see me as something more than a spoiled rich kid. He was a soulmate in friendship, or some shit like that.

The years passed. He married Anna, moved to Chicago, had children, and started a business. We still saw each other for important events but the events seemed to spread further and further apart. Logan and Zack’s respective weddings. The birth of Logan’s Lorna, and Zack’s twins. The funeral for Ben’s father and Anna’s parents.

Three years ago, my daughter Lynlee was born. Ben is her godfather. Lynlee’s mother, Samantha, picked some random friend-at-the-time to be Lynlee’s godmother. Needless to say, Samantha and I are not together.