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“A ‘thing’ is the best way to put it,” I said. “Kind of an agreement.”
“You’re into her, dude,” said Will with a smile. “Like, really into her.”
“Yep,” said Will. “Faster you admit that shit, the better.”
I wanted to protest, to say the same thing to the guys that I’d said to Shania, that it was a fun distraction that didn’t really mean anything. But it was like what I’d thought at the dinner had been pushed out of my head and was coming back with a vengeance.
“Shit,” I said. “No. I…love her.”
The guy’s faces lit up, and Will reached across the table to smack my arm like I’d drained a game-winning three-pointer in a game of pickup.
“There you go!” said Will. “Feels better to say it out loud like that, right?”
“Damned if you’re not right,” I said.
“So,” said Noah. “You told us what’s going on, and if you don’t mind, bud, I’m going to take the tale you spun and say it back to you without any of the bullshit we tend to say when we’re trying to justify our dumb decisions.”
I chuckled and nodded. “Sure,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”
“OK,” said Noah. “You met Shania back in college, back when you were…let’s say a little more of an asshat. You guys hooked up, and instead of her joining the rest of the girls in some vague collection of one-night stands, she stayed in your brain.”
“Right,” I said.
“And then when you—totally improbably, I might add—saw her again after all these years, that all came rushing back. Knowing you, dude, you did everything you could to pretend like that wasn’t the case.”
I shrugged, conceding the point.
“Then things got serious,” said Will, joining in. “More than you were expecting. And, true to form, you kept pretending like it wasn’t, that it was some fun that didn’t mean anything. But then you realized that it was something serious, maybe so serious that it kind of scared you. So far so good?”
“So far so good,” I said.
“Bad news for you, dude,” said Theo with a grin. “You might be able to bullshit yourself, but you can’t bullshit your friends.”
He had a point.
“But say you guys are right,” I said.
“We are,” said Noah, total confidence in his voice.
“She still hooked up with James behind my back,” I said. “What can I do about that? Make a PowerPoint presentation about why I’m the right choice? Love doesn’t work like that. She made her decision.”
Theo went on, as if he’d expected me to say that.
“And it finally got to be too much, and you chickened the fuck out.”
“Wait,” I said. “What?”
“Dude,” said Noah. “You broke it off with her at the slightest hint that something was wrong and didn’t even give her a chance to explain herself.”
“That James guy,” said Will, shaking his head. “Total dick. Showing up throwing his money around trying to impress everyone. Big vibes of a guy who was a loser back in the day and is majorly overcompensating.”
“Probably trying to impress one woman in particular,” said Theo.
“But you got some potentially bad news and broke it off like that,” said Will.
“I’m hardly an expert on this kind of shit,” said Noah. “But I’ve learned some important stuff during my time with Pepper. And one of the biggest is the fact that you gotta, and I mean gotta, talk. It’s the only way you work things out.”
I sat back, shaking my head. The guys had me dead-on. They were right—I could BS myself, but not them.
“OK,” I said. “So I fucked up. What am I supposed to do now, tell her that I got scared, that I believed James at his word that they were screwing around?”
“That’s exactly what you do,” said Noah. “Sounds hard, right?”
“Sure as hell does,” I said.
“Well,” said Noah. “Got some good news and bad, buddy—the way you know the right thing to do is you figure out the hard thing, because that’s usually it.”
“Right,” said Will. “Because who knows? Maybe you’re right, maybe James was telling the truth, and they’ve been seeing each other. Or maybe you’re wrong, and Shania decides she doesn’t want to be with a guy who has no trust in her.”
“But it’s not your call to make,” said Noah. “It’s hers.”
“But let me tell you this,” said Will. “Me and this guy”—He nodded toward Noah—“We’ve been through our fair share of shit like this.”
“Right,” said Noah. “Had our trust tested with the women we loved in the most serious way. And if either of us had given up, broken it off and been done with it, the four of us might be sitting here tonight wondering why the hell we were still single.”
“It’s hard to come back from something like that,” said Will. “I get it. But if you’ve got something here, really got something, then you can’t be a coward. You have to fight for it.”
