“I didn’t leave for two months,” Devlin defended.
As I paced a living room the size of my entire apartment, Skip and Jack brought beers over from the kitchen. Well, Skip just scooted on his wheeled stool thing and Jack carried the beers.
“But you did let her leave,” Jack said.
Devlin asked me in a deep, rumbling voice, “Two months and you didn’t do anything to win her back? No wonder she’s protected herself against you.”
“I wrote her letters. The whole time,” I said. “I don’t know if she got them but the idea was there.”
“Letters?” Ford asked with obvious skepticism.
“What’s wrong with that?” The big, scary man glared at Ford.
Ford’s eyebrows shot up. “No. Nothing. Very romantic.” He cleared his throat and turned back to me. “What are you going to do, Sanders?” Ford asked.
“I’m not sure. I need to do something big.”
“What does she want more than anything?” Ford asked.
“Could you write her a song?” Devlin said at the same time.
“I think she just wants to be loved for who she is. What we all want,” I said to Ford. Then I turned to Devlin. “Unless I changed the words to ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,’ I got nothing.”
“Well, what do you bring to the table?” Jack asked. There was a definite defensiveness to his tone. He’d not exactly warmed up to me. Hopefully he would in time.
Skip looked from Jack to me with a frown and then added, “Meaning what can you do for her that no other person in the world could?”
The three men looked at me expectantly. The reality of my situation hit me. Then I remembered my father’s letters.
“I know without a doubt nobody will ever love her as much as I do.” I slumped into a massive leather couch next to a fireplace the size of a car. “But that’s not enough, is it? Roxy doesn’t need me. She’s totally fine without me.”
Devlin and Ford exchanged a look.
“Well, he’s not as dumb as I thought,” Devlin said and moved to a chair to my left. The man was huge. No wonder he needed a house this size.
Ford sat across from me. He leaned in seriously. “Here’s the thing. None of these women need us. They are all more than capable of handling life on their own. But that doesn’t mean that they want to.”
Jack helped Skip sit down before joining him on a smaller couch.
“I just want her happy,” I said on an exhale. “I think I fucked up too much to get her back.”
“So don’t get her back. Just show up. Every day. Be there when she is sad. Hold her hand when she feels alone,” Skip said.
“Believe in her when she can’t believe in herself,” Ford said.
“Tell her that you need her. That she makes you a better person,” Devlin said gruffly, then cleared his throat.
I looked to each man, swallowing down a lump. “It’s all true.”
“Just tell her everything you feel. Don’t hold back,” Jack said. “The only way to receive real love is to open yourself to it. To become vulnerable to it and risk pain like you never felt.”
Skip stilled, his gaze piercing the floor.
“Sounds awesome,” I said dryly.
“It’s everything,” Ford said at the same time Devlin said, “It is.”
Skip held my gaze. “It’s the only thing that makes it all worth it. Having people. We could go through life alone. We would survive but we aren’t meant to. We’re meant to need people and to lift each other up.”
“It’s what this is all about, as far as I have been able to figure out. It’s the whole point of life,” Ford said to himself, looking at his hands.
“What?” I asked.
“To love. And to be loved,” he said.
The room went silent. I would have never thought in a million years that I would be in a room full of men discussing the power of love. And yet here in this moment, it felt like the most important thing. We all studied our shoes. After a few sniffs and grunts, Devlin stood up.
“Okay. I’m getting another round.”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
“I gotta piss.”
“I’m going to chop some wood.”
We all spoke at once.
When we came back together, Devlin asked, “Okay. So what does she like in a guy?”
I thought back on our conversations. I thought of what she said about her ex, the biker. I thought about her parents who had no idea what a treasure they had made. Finally, I said, “Stability, I think.”
“We’ve established that showing up and sticking around are a must,” Jack said.
Ford was frowning. “I have a thought. Suzie really seemed to like it when I cleaned up.” Color rose high in his cheeks. “Finessed my looks.”
“Kim likes a little wildness,” Devlin said, glaring around as though any of us would challenge him. “She likes my bike.”
“I’m not a biker. I don’t even know how to ride one,” I said.
“I could teach you,” Devlin said.
“Wait,” Jack said. We all looked at him expectantly. “Oh. I have an idea.”
“I don’t like that look,” I whispered to Skip.
When I looked to my best friend, he was watching Jack with a smile on his lips.
“Trust him,” Skip said.
“How do you feel about sideburns?” Jack asked.
Roxy
“Mother Nature approved,” Gretchen said as we all looked up and warmed our faces in the unseasonably warm fall day.
The SWS had just arrived at the Autumn Carnival just outside Green Valley, celebrating the start of my favorite season. A traveling carnival had arrived to town. The once abandoned mall parking lot now housed a carousel, a few sketchy rides, and food trucks. The delicious smell of fried Twinkies and cotton candy filled the air. This year’s theme for the Autumn Carnival was 1950s and Gretchen of course had
