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I finally got the words out. “No, sir.”
“Good. That’s what I expected to hear. Have you talked to Sean yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I expect you’d better get on that, hadn’t you? I’d be telling him to call you, but he’s so stressed with the wedding, maybe you should be the one to make the first move.”
“Yeah. I guess I should.” Before I hung up, I had to fight my emotions again to be able to say, “Thank you, Jackson. It means a lot to me that you’d call.”
He simply said. “That’s what you do when family’s hurting. And you’re family, son, where it counts.”
It took me a few minutes of wiping my eyes before I was ready to do what I needed to do.
* * *
Sean hadn’t answered his phone when I tried him, so I texted him and asked him to come to my office or meet me anywhere he preferred. I’d started to worry that he wouldn’t answer me at all, but he texted me and invited me to come to his house.
I hadn’t expected that, so I let myself get my hopes up as I knocked. Nicole answered the door with a smile. “Chris, he’s in the garage.”
I asked how she was, and she said fine but busy, so I headed to find him. Sean sat on one of two old beaten up recliners that we’d used once upon a time when we lived in Jackson’s converted garage. He motioned toward the mini fridge in the corner.
“Grab us each one.”
I pulled two bottles of beer out and popped the caps, then sat in the recliner next to his, waiting for him to explode or apologize or tell me he never wanted to see my face again.
“Nicole’s pretty pissed off,” he said, sipping his beer.
I sighed. I’d forgotten Anna had told her about seeing me and Sav in the parking lot. “I’m sorry. When we went out the truck during your party, we didn’t go out there just to—”
“Not about that, you dumbass,” Sean said, a half-smile on his face. “Though, damn, you could learn to get a room. She’s pissed at me. For being pissed at you.”
He took another sip. “You lied to me, bro. Both of you lied right to my face.”
“I know. And I’m so sorry. We were waiting until after the wedding to tell you.”
“Because . . .”
I scoffed. “Obviously, because I thought you’d go through the roof. Pretty much exactly like you did.”
He stood up and paced back and forth. “Not fair, Chris. That was as much about being lied to and her coming in looking like she’d been crying for an hour than you two being together.”
“Are you saying that youwouldn’thave been upset about me dating Sav?”
Sean sighed and dropped into the recliner again. “I would have.”
“See?”
“At first. But I would have come around. If the two of you had come to me together and explained, I think I’d have been okay with it. I love you, man. You’re my brother. If you’d have told me that this was different, that you loved her and wanted to put your bachelor days behind you, I’d have been okay. It hurts that you didn’t trust me with that. I could have been happy for you.”
I took a deep breath. “It hurts that you would think, even for a minute, that Sav could ever be only a one-night stand for me.”
“Chris, it’s not that I would think that, not really.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m just an overprotective hothead. You should know that better than anybody. I mean, clearly you do know that, or you two wouldn’t have kept it a secret.”
That was true. I sipped my beer, and finally Sean stood again. “Looks like both of us fucked up, huh?”
“Yeah. And I’m really sorry, about all of it.”
“Me too. Especially the way I talked to you outside the Sparks. I just . . . seeing her so upset, man. I just lost it.”
