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Chapter 28
Tate
The wedding proposal didn’t come quite out of the blue.
Over Christmas, when most people spend time with their families, I went off snowboarding with two college buddies. Summer went to LA to visit Star and I flew to Canada to a remote location where Matt, Joe and I had regularly gathered since we’d been in college. We aimed for once a year, but sometimes life got in the way. So, it wasn’t unusual that we’d skipped the year before and I was looking forward to catching up with them and hitting some serious snow.
But things didn’t go quite as planned.
The past two years seemed to have taken their toll on the guys. A property developer, Matt had picked up at least thirty pounds as well as a lot of debt, due to some problems with a bad investment. Joe, on the other hand, was gaunt and almost skeletal. He worked in finance, loved spending money and the high life. He had a hedonistic, no-strings-attached philosophy about everything in life. He lived in the moment, he liked to say, nobody to depend on or who depended on you. I’d always related to this world viewbut I found I didn’t anymore. Falling in love had changed everything about me.
I wasn’t keen to tell the guys this but one evening, after a particularly grueling day out on the mountain, we started drinking whiskey and opened up a bit more than usual. Matt had bailed on us, not being in the shape he used to be, he’d struggled to keep up with Joe and I. But I also had the feeling Joe was pushing himself too much, trying to pull moves and do tricks like he was trying to prove something.
After a few drinks, Matt told us he’d stopped drinking and smoking. “Lucy was going on about how unhealthy it was. The next minute, I had this,” he patted his stomach and pulled a face, “Much worse, if you ask me.”
“What’s that, like five burgers a day?” Joe asked and Matt shook his head, “Fuck you, man. We can’t all live off cocaine and energy drinks.”
Joe glowered at him. “At least I don’t have to listen to a wife telling me to sit and roll over and be a good boy any time I want to get laid.”
Matt groaned. “Oh man, you still want to go at it every day? What’re you, a teenager?”
Joe grabbed his groin, “Listen, this puppy has to play every day, know what I mean?”
They were talking like kids, high on hormones and bad self-esteem.
“What about you, Sagarro?” Joe asked.
I didn’t want to talk about Evie like that and got up to get more booze.
“I’m actually thinking of getting married again,” I said and waited for the avalanche of ridicule to begin. There was a moment of silence and then it began.
“No way! Why would you do that to yourself again?” Joe asked.
“God, really?” Matt said. He’d married his college sweetheart Lucy and had always seemed happy to me. But the kids and the mortgages, the holidays and the ballet lessons, music classes and private school tuition was finally getting to him. “I don’t even have money to buy beer,” he complained.
“I love her,” I said and shrugged, almost embarrassed to admit it.
Then I saw their faces. Both of them, had envy written all over their faces. They wanted what I had. Not the money or the success. But the love, they didn’t have that, or not anymore.
The next morning, when Joe and I got up early to try a new rockface, we left Matt to lie in. We set out on a back road, carrying our boards, walking up through the snow. We reached the top of the mountain and looked out over the snow-covered trees and valley. It was beautiful. An isolated, untouched wilderness and we were going to plough through it with our boards. I couldn’t wait to get to it but then Joe said, quietly, “I get it you know. You should go for it.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but then he said.
“The girl. If it’s love, go for it.”
I nodded.
Without looking at me, he told me how he had been in an accident over a year ago. A car knocked him over and he had a bad fall, induced by doctors into a coma. But he had listed some girlfriend from years ago as his emergency contact and she’d changed her number, so they couldn’t get hold of anyone. “My bosses thought I’d gone off on a bender,” he said. “They basically fired me, I lost a whole lot of deals, cost the company millions. By the time I woke up, I had basically lost my life. And I was close to no-one. Couldn’t exactly list my dealer as my nearest and dearest.”
It was a lot to take in.
“What I’m saying is, real love is rare. If that is what you have, grab it with both hands and don’t let anyone change your mind.”
I came back from that trip, and on a whim, decided to surprise Evie at her parents’ house. She’d decided to stay on after Christmas and Summer was still with Star. I knew there were a lot of people at the home and booked into a place at Lake Tahoe. But I figured it was a good time to meet her family. I knew I wanted to commit to Evie, I wanted her in my life for good and that meant knowing her family and somehow, having them in my life too.
I got there the day after Christmas, during the afternoon.
I knocked on the door and heard the sound of the TV and a game being watched and men commenting loudly on what was happening on the screen.
