Birthday Girl

“Look, man.” He raises his eyes to me. “You had fun with her. I’m not saying you did anything wrong. If the sex is good, then enjoy each other. But you have to think about the future, and you know it won’t always feel like this.” He pauses, knitting his brow. “She’ll wake up in ten years and see a picture of a high school friend online who’s trekking through Nepal or some shit, and she’ll look around at her own life and think about how she’s saddled with two kids in this small town and married to a man nearly fifty years old whose life is more than halfway over.”

I remain silent, the weight of his words sitting in my gut like bricks.

“You think she won’t regret choosing you, knowing that her best years are almost gone?” he asks.

But I don’t have to answer. He knows he’s right.

In ten years, she’ll still be young and beautiful, and I’ll deserve her even less than I do now. I can’t give her everything she wants no matter how much my ego thinks otherwise.

She was built for big things. She’s smart and strong, and she deserves the world. She deserves a life that passed me by a long time ago.

Another man will be to her everything I’m not and never will be, and even though that idea is like acid in my mouth, she’ll be happier for it. And above everything else, that’s what I want. She’ll grow with someone else, and that’s the life she deserves.

Dutch leaves, and I close up the garage, heading into the house and immediately up the stairs. I stop at Jordan’s bedroom, the door open and the light breeze outside her window blowing the leaves on the tree in the backyard.

Her faint smell lingers, and the dent her body made is still etched into the pillow propped up in her chair.

I don’t go in, though. It’s not my room, not my girl anymore, and she’s out there somewhere, moving on with her life, and I need to do the same.

Enough. Do the right thing.

Reaching for the knob, I inhale her perfume one last time.

And I pull the door closed.

Pike

Two Months Later

Threading the thin, white rope around the wheel, I yank on it, seeing it move toward me on the pulley. I move over to the other wooden post I’ve cemented into the backyard and pull on that rope, as well, testing it.

I have no idea why I’m putting in clotheslines.

All I know is I’m running out of ideas. I already built a wooden picnic table with a built-in beer tub in the middle, stained it, and added benches. I’ve also put in a fire pit, a stone pathway leading from the back gate to the back door, mulch in the flower beds, torches around the pool, a pergola, a hammock, and a small pond with a rock garden. I keep moving from one project to another, so I don’t have time to think about how I’m not using any of it. I’ll enjoy it when I’m done, I guess.

“Looks different back there,” I hear someone call out.

I look up, seeing Kyle Cramer standing on his bedroom balcony and looking down into my backyard.

Does this guy have a hard-on for me or something? Why’s he always trying to talk to me?

“Got some time on your hands, huh?” he gauges. “I noticed it’s been a lot quieter here the past several weeks.”

I cast him another look, giving him a curt smile. Maybe if I acknowledge him, he’ll leave me alone.

And yes, it’s been quiet. Until now.

“So, um,” he starts, and I silently groan. “I saw you and Jordan one night.”

I stop and shoot my eyes up again, glaring at him. Heat rises to my neck at hearing her name. I haven’t talked about her with anyone for months now.

“My kitchen faces yours,” he explains, “it was late, and you two were at the sink.”

My body warms, remembering that. The sight of her walking naked to the kitchen one night, and how I wouldn’t let her get a midnight snack until I got mine. She was so beautiful.

I straighten, clenching my teeth. “You watched?”

“No,” he blurts out like he would never. And then he shrugs. “I mean, I might have if you two hadn’t eventually taken it to the floor and out of my line of sight.”