Strong Enough

Worse than that, why did I care so much?

After a silent car ride to the bar, I’d dropped him off and drove in fucking circles for an hour, trying to get my head on straight. When that didn’t work, I parked at the mall and went into a few stores, telling myself to pick out a birthday present for Ellen but grabbing a bunch of things for Maxim instead. Maybe it was seeing him in my clothes that was the problem. Maybe if I took away that strange and possessive sense of closeness, I wouldn’t be so confused. On my way home, I called Gage and asked if I could stop by. I needed distraction, and his house was always in complete chaos.

“Sure, man. Come on over. We’re in the yard.”

Thirty minutes later, I was sitting on their patio, a cold beer in my hand, watching their kids splash around in a little plastic pool. Lanie was in the house prepping kebabs for the grill, and Gage was sitting next to me, blowing up a giant alligator float that was way too big for the pool. When he was done, he handed it to Pennie, his oldest, and told her to share it.

“No,” she said, running away with it. “Uncle Derek, watch me!”

He tipped back his beer. “Whose idea was it to have kids?”

“Come on, you have great kids.” I applauded and whistled when Pennie took a flying leap into the pool on her raft.

“I know, but they ruined my life. Hey, Will!” he yelled to his five-year-old. “Don’t push your brother like that! He’ll fall in, and I’ll have to get out of this chair to save him, and I don’t really want to get out of this chair!”

“I heard that!” Lanie hollered through the screen.

“You hear everything,” muttered Gage. He set his beer on the table and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle. His arms were crossed over his stomach, which showed the first traces of a belly. “God, I’m tired. Remember when I could stay up past ten o’clock and not be exhausted the next day?”

“Vaguely.”

“Those were good times.”

I took a slow, long sip of my beer. “Maybe, but I wouldn’t trade what you have to go back.”

“You wouldn’t?” He raised his voice. “Pennie, if you try to ride that on the ground, it will get a hole in it!”

“No way. You’ve got it all, man. I envy you.”

He glanced at me. “Envy me? Of what, my soul-crushing mortgage? My Dad bod? My messy house? My ability to change a dirty diaper with one hand?”

I winced. “Maybe not the diaper thing. Or the Dad bod. But everything else—your easy relationship with Lanie, your house full of kids, your Saturday soccer games and Sunday barbecues. I wish I had all that.”

“No marriage is easy,” he assured me. “Half the time Lanie and I want to strangle each other. The other half of the time, we want to strangle the kids. But you’re right. I wouldn’t trade it.”

I lifted the bottle to my lips again. “Told you.”

“So have a family,” he said, as easily as he would say have a kebab. “What are you waiting for?”

“The right person, obviously.” I laughed gruffly, but it was fake. “I can’t seem to find her.”

“Carolyn seems cool.”

“She is, but…I don’t know. She’s perfect on paper, but there’s not much chemistry. I’m afraid of getting serious with her and never feeling anything more than I do now.”

“Which is what?”

“I like her a lot, but…”

“You don’t want to bang her.”

“No,” I admitted.

He ran a hand through his unruly brown hair. “Dude, do not marry a woman you don’t want to bang, because that is the only person you have permission to bang until death do you part. Did you hear that? Death.”

I frowned. “Right.”

“Maybe you’re being too picky,” he suggested. “I know you hate hearing that, but maybe you don’t have to have the A-plus-on-paper woman. Maybe you should look for the woman you want to bang who’s like, a B-minus on paper.”