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“What part of it?”
“I don’t know, exactly—just … marriage, man.” His gaze is still on the bar.
“Is it the commitment thing? The timing?” It’s been a whirlwind. I think that would be the thing I’d be questioning. But then again, I’ve never been impulsive like Shane. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to do something spur of the moment.
“I think it’s just all of it,” he says, the right-side corner of his lip doing a little twitching thing.
I study his face. I’ve known it for a long time. It almost feels like his words don’t match his mannerisms.
“Are you actually having second thoughts?” I ask after a few seconds of silence.
Now he’s puckering his lips, an attempt to keep himself from smiling. “Totally,” he says, his voice sounding sort of strained.
I close my eyes and shake my head. “There are no second thoughts, are there?”
He lets out the laugh he’d clearly been holding in as he grabs my shoulder and squeezes it. “Sorry, man.”
I look to the ceiling, my head leaning back. “I’m an idiot.”
“I needed a good reason for you to meet me,” he says. “Don’t deny that you needed a break.”
I run a hand through my still slightly damp hair. “You realize I’m not going to trust you the next time, when you might have a real emergency, right? You’re the boy who cried wedding.”
“Nah,” Shane says, shaking his head back and forth. “You’re one of the good guys, Manning.”
“I’m not really,” I say. “I kind of want to punch you right now.”
He laughs, loudly. “But aren’t you glad you got out?”
I take in a breath and look around the room, the bottles of liquor lining the wall behind the bar, the soft chatter of people. I’ve been sitting in my apartment all weekend staring at a computer screen. I’d almost forgotten what the real world looks like.
“Yeah, I guess,” I say. “I’ve just got a lot hanging over my head right now.”
The bartender, a man in a black T-shirt and dark-colored jeans, approaches and takes my order. I go for a craft pale ale, the only drink I’ll be having tonight. Now that I know I don’t have to talk my friend off a ledge, I need to get back to work sooner rather than later.
“To the good guy.” Shane raises his glass at me.
“And to the not-so-great one,” I say, giving him a half-hearted disdainful look. I should be mad at Shane, but it feels pretty good to be here right now, and I really did need a break. I won’t be telling him this, though.
“You still beating yourself up for everything?” he asks.
I lean back in my chair, folding my arms. We haven’t talked about this in a while. Mostly because we haven’t seen each other very frequently, but also because I don’t like talking about it and usually shut it down.
“Yes, until I fix things,” I say.
“Most people would have walked away by now, or borrowed money from their BFF,” he replies, eyebrows lifted.
“Did you seriously just sayBFF?”
He nods, unapologetically. “I did, BFF.”
“Are we thirteen?”
“I’m perpetually fourteen, so not far off.”
“That tracks.”
The bartender sets my drink down in front of me, and I give him a quick lift of my chin in thanks.
