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“Probably because you pissed her off,” he chuckles. “You do have that rare ability to get under people’s skins.”
“Great. Thanks for that,” I say and take another bite of my sandwich.
“If she didn’t care for you, why would she have even agreed to marry you?”
“Because we were both drunk and stupid,” I inform him.
“Bullshit,” he declares, his voice firm. “What’s that old saying? A drunk man’s words reveal a sober man’s thoughts or something like that?”
“Something like that.”
Nick points his fork at me for emphasis. “If there wasn’t something like love in her heart for you, drunk or not, she never would have married you, Aaron. And if there wasn’t love in your heart for her, you never would have done it either,” he tells me. “You are one of the most stubborn people I know, and if you don’t want to do something, you don’t do it.”
“Think so, huh?”
“I know so,” Nick goes on. “Something else I know is that you are so tightly controlled and self-contained that there is no amount of booze on this planet that can make you do something so – crazy. Something that ridiculous wouldn’t have gone down unless you wanted it to happen.”
I let out a long breath then drain the last of my drink. I catch the eye of our waitress and hold up my empty glass, letting her know I want a refill. She nods and finishes what she’s doing at the other table, then scurries away toward the bar.
Right now, I’m overcome by the urge to get drunk enough that I pass out and go to sleep for a while. At least then, the noise in my brain would go quiet and I don’t have to think anymore, about the craziness going on in my life. And there really is a lot of it at the moment – a wife, a child. It’s pure madness.
“You know me, Nick. Better than anybody,” I start. “You know I’m not great at improvisation and that I’m at my best when I have a chance to study something and get a lay of the land before committing.”
He flashes me a grin. “I know you well enough to know that you tend to make things more complicated than they have to be when something makes you uncomfortable,” he says. “When you’re dealing with things like emotions, it makes you so uncomfortable that you will always overthink things to death.”
“Okay, so what’s the answer to this great riddle of mine then?” I ponder. “I mean, since you are obviously seeing things more clearly than I am.”
“The answer is that you love Emily. Plain and simple.”
“Nothing is ever that plain and simple,” I shoot back.
“You’ve been in love with her since college, Aaron. I saw it back then. And I saw you talking yourself out of it,” he goes on. “You always kept her at an arm’s distance because letting her all the way in was too uncomfortable for you.”
I chuckle. “That’s bullshit. I told her how I felt about her back then.”
“Did you?”
I think back on it and remember all the feelings I carried for her back then – the same feelings that are coursing through me now. Certainly, I cared a lot about her. She reached me in ways no other woman had before or has since. But love? I – I don’t know that I’d go that far. As far as how I felt – or at least, how much I was willing to let myself feel – I perhaps, never expressly said the words, but things between us were understood. Or so I always thought.
“She knew,” I reply.
“Sometimes what’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to others,” he says gently. “From what I remember, Emily is a lot like you in that emotions are her Achilles’ heel. She doesn’t deal with them any better than you do.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that anymore,” I chuckle. “She seems pretty in tune with her emotions right now.”
“Maybe. Being an expectant mother changes some things. Maybe opens her up to emotions she typically seals off,” he explains. “It’s a bit outside my wheelhouse, but my understanding is that pregnancy releases hormones that can change the way a person relates to the world. And to themselves.”
“That’s fair,” I nod. “She’s definitely a lot more emotional lately.”
“And part of that is because you’re being such an asshole and she’s hurting,” Nick states.
“How am I being an asshole?”
Finished with his salad, Nick pushes his plate away. The waitress comes by, clears both of our dishes and brings another round of drinks for us. I look out to the ocean again, then back at Nick. This is not how I saw this lunch going down. I figured we’d have a few laughs and loosen up, but he’d ultimately understand where I was coming from in all of this and offer me some advice. When I’d walked in here, I wasn’t expecting to be lectured about all of my failings and shortcomings.
“Because by continuing to deny your feelings for her and kicking the can down the road as far as you can, you’re, in essence, rejecting her,” Nick explains. “Because you can’t admit your feelings for her, she sees it as you trying to put as much distance between the two – excuse me, three – of you that you possibly can.”
“That’s not fair, man,” I protest.
