Cowboy Baby Daddy

I realized how out of it I was about 30 minutes into the walkthrough when Carl shook my shoulder.

“Alex, you all right, bro?”

I blinked and looked over at him. “I-I’m fine.”

“You just seem out of it.”

“Tired is all,” I said.

Maybe I should have learned my lesson about honesty after everything that had happened between me and Aspyn, but I wasn’t ready to spill my guts to Carl yet. Besides, if I kept thinking about what we’d done the night before, I was going to have to go hide in a bathroom and take care of myself with own hand.

I needed a distraction, something more interesting than writing down how many blinds I needed to buy.

“So, what’s up with you and Perri?” I said.

Carl blinked. “Huh? Where did that come from?”

“Just wondering.” I shrugged. “I mean, I know I’m not exactly a guy who should talk, considering all the crap that’s happened between Aspyn and me, but you and Perri seem like more a regular thing.”

“Regular thing?”

“I guess.” I knelt and realized the baseboards in the room were more damaged than I’d seen before. They’d need to be replaced. I wrote that down. “Except for all this on-off crap.”

“Some of that was your fault, you know. Well, that and Aspyn’s”

I stood, frowning. “What?”

“I got caught up in all the lies about your kid, and Perri thought I was taking your side or whatever.”

Guilt washed over me. The last thing I wanted to do was screw up my friend’s chance at happiness. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

Carl grinned and waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it, though. It’s all good now, bro. The real problem is Perri.”

“What do you mean? You’ve been into her since high school.” I looked him up and down. “You even date anyone else?”

“A few, here and there.” He shrugged. “Not for years, though. But you know how it is. I’m into her, bro.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve wanted to marry her for a while.”

I almost dropped my pencil.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.” Carl grinned. “What can I say? Why shop around when I already found the perfect woman for me?”

“You never mentioned this to me before.” I nodded toward the next room and started walking that way.

“It’s not something I wanted to drop in an email, you know? Look, Alex, you’ve been gone, and you’ve kept your distance.”

I grimaced and offered him a nod over my shoulder. “Yeah, I guess I have.”

“I know you had your reasons, but it’s hard to talk about this kind of thing with someone if they aren’t here and seeing everything.”

“Fair enough.” I looked up at the ceiling and around the walls. Peeling paint but nothing that a little repainting couldn’t handle. I wrote it down in my notepad. “So what’s the problem, then? Too chickenshit to ask her to marry you?”

“She wants to keep it casual.” Carl shrugs. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then shut it.