Wife by Design

“I know. It’s nighttime. I’m going to sleep.”

“No, you’re not. You’re sitting up.”

Grant was tired. Exhausted, really. And wasn’t sure if he was facing man or boy as his brother stood there.

“I’m on my way to sleep.”

“You can’t sleep with a bottle in your hand.”

He wasn’t putting it down yet. Not even to prove a point.

“I have to talk to you,” Darin said, not moving from his stance by the door.

“Can’t it wait until morning?”

“No.”

The unequivocal answer got his attention. “Okay, what’s up?”

“I would like you to turn on the light.”

With an inward grumble, he reached up to the bedside lamp and did as his brother requested, blinking against the brightness the low voltage bulb shot into the room.

He’d preferred the darkness, and the thoughts of having sex with Lynn while he poured beer down his throat.

But life wasn’t about what he wanted. It was about maintaining control of what was.

“What’s up?” he asked Darin, hearing another date request coming on. One he was planning to sidestep until after diving the next morning. At which time, if the fates smiled at him, the date request would be pushed to the back of Darin’s mind. And then slide, unnoticed, into the ether that had taken over the better part of his brother’s brain.

Walking farther into the room, Darin stopped at the bedside, standing over Grant. His expression was serious, alert, and Grant had to swallow. Hard. Had to fight a memory of Darin coming into his room to tell him that the court had placed him in Darin’s custody. To let him know how much he was loved and wanted. And to ask Grant to treat his wife with the same respect with which he treated him.

He had. Always. A day didn’t go by that he still didn’t miss his sister-in-law.

“I want to get married.”

The bottle of beer slid down his hand to rest in his lap, his hand atop the mouthpiece. He picked it up again. Put it to his mouth. Emptied it.

“Drinking is not the answer, Grant.”

More words from the past—and he didn’t have an answer. He’d give Darin the world if he could. Give him anything and everything he asked.

But he couldn’t let his brother be a husband.

“It’s a little early to be thinking about marriage,” he said, his tired mind scrambling and coming up empty. “You’ve only known her a few weeks.”

“We’re together every day but one, which is Sunday, and that’s enough time to know I want to marry her. Mom said she knew the night she met Dad that she was going to marry him.”

Reaching for his robe at the end of the bed, Grant slid from beneath the sheet and covered himself, then grabbed a pair of basketball shorts hanging on a hook on his bathroom door.

When he turned around, Darin was seated on the edge of Grant’s unmade bed, toying with a loose thread on his pant leg.

Grant had no plan. He wasn’t prepared for this. There was no literature written—not that he’d found at any rate and he’d been through pretty much everything out there—on how to tell your big brother that he was too damaged to have a wife.

“Can we talk about this in the morning, bro?”

When Darin looked up, Grant’s heart sank. His eyes were filled with tears and determination. Passion and fear. “No, Grant, I want to talk about this now.”

Something else hit him. “Have you already asked her?”

“No. I’m not stupid, Grant. I know I can’t just propose. Maddie and I can’t live alone.”

Grant took a seat next to his brother. “But you’ve talked to her about it, haven’t you?” He’d softened his voice, feeling his brother’s pain more than his own frustration in that moment.

“We’ve talked about being together every day, making dinner and eating together like we do at Lynn’s. And about sleeping in the same bed and talking that way instead of in different beds and being on the phone.”

He and Lynn had skipped the talking-in-bed part of the plan and gone straight to talking about sex.

But this wasn’t about him and Lynn.

“She needs me, Grant.”