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“Lauren was born to be a mother,” Tyler says, nodding.
“She’d make a good one,” Shepherd says. “Despite her wily ways.”
We all snort at that one.
“Yeah, but she’s got a good heart,” Tyler says.
“The best,” Andrew agrees. “That’s why I know something is wrong. She’s become argumentative and sullen, and her usual smart wit has been replaced by bitchy snarkiness.”
My heart clenches in my chest because I hear the pain in his voice, and I see the hurt in my best friend’s eyes. I know that I have the power to alleviate the pain and the suspicions that he has and reassure him that his wife is faithful to him.
But if I do that, I replace the pain with another one and betray Lauren.
“Before you do anything as drastic as asking for a divorce, why don’t you try to get counseling?” I suggest guiltily.
“If I can’t fucking work things out with my own wife, why would I ever think that someone else can help us? Why would I want them to? That means I fucking failed at my job,” he snaps, slanting an angry glance my way.
“You haven’t failed, friend. Life is hard. Relationships are hard. Marriage? The shit ain’t for the faint of heart,” Shepherd shakes his head.
“You would know,” I mutter under my breath, catching a glare from my brother.
“I don’t know. Whenever I bring up kids and a family, she gets angry at me, and I don’t know why. I thought it was what we both wanted, what we used to talk about when we were kids and in college...before she knew that she’d marry me.”
“You mean before you knew that you’d marry each other?” I ask.
Andrew shakes his head. “No, I always knew she was it for me. Never wanted anyone but her.”
Fuck me over a whiskey barrel while I’m drunk!
4 – YESENIA
We’ve showered andchanged, and everyone has gone to their bedroom for a nap. My phone vibrates with an alert. I turned it on vibrate when we went skiing today.
A ball of dread filled my stomach when everyone announced we were skiing this morning. I couldn’t imagine having so much fun doing something I didn’t know how to do. I could tell by the conversation that everyone had been skiing at least a few times before. They were all experts except my stepsister, Stacey, who never had an interest in it until she’d started dating Shepherd. But even she is at an intermediate level now.
Even though she hadn’t grown up on ski slopes with annual vacations to Aspen, Vail, Telluride, Lake Tahoe and the like, she still had more experience than I did. It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford those types of vacations; our interests were just different.
