by David Bell
I knew she played some of the role in Blake’s life I used to play. She told him when to back off, when not to play so hard. And he kept her from working on lesson plans until midnight.
I got it.
And I wanted to be happy for him.
And I wanted him to be happy. I really did.
Still, I suspected I knew why he’d sought me out that night. If he and Sam were going to get married, then he needed groomsmen. A best man, even. He’d asked me during his second engagement to Sam, the one that lasted the longest of the first two, and I’d said yes, had even gone so far as to begin to plan a bachelor party weekend in New Orleans before things were called off. Their first engagement had ended after three weeks, well before any groomsmen had been asked to join the wedding party.
“Well, that’s great,” I said. “You look great, and I’m glad you two have worked things out.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Really.”
But he didn’t say anything else. He stared at me, and the silence settled between us like a leaden cloud.
The clock ticked. Ten minutes were up. I knew Amanda was waiting at home. I knew Henry was falling asleep without me.
“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” I asked.
“Right, right,” he said. He tapped his index finger against his lips. “There is just one more thing I need to ask you. Just a small request.”
CHAPTER THREE
Amanda and I had both been in several weddings over the years. They caused a lot of stress, and it always seemed as though the wedding party ended up growing irritated with the demands of the bride and the groom. Being in someone’s wedding could end even the most enduring friendship.
Still, if Blake wanted me by his side, there was no question I would do it. We’d been friends for too long. We’d been through too much.
My dad had died suddenly during our sophomore year of college. He just dropped dead of a heart attack with no warning signs at the age of forty-eight. He’d been in the garage moving some boxes around, come back in and told my mom he was hot, and then gone facedown onto the kitchen floor like a falling piano, his head against the dishwasher, his feet under the table. I found out pretty quickly that my parents didn’t have life insurance and that they hadn’t set aside enough money for me to continue in school.
The private college I attended was expensive, close to forty thousand dollars a year, and before I even went home for the funeral, my mom told me I might not be able to stay. I was still processing the reality of my dad’s death, so the news that I might have to leave college and all my friends nearly paralyzed me.
It was Blake who stepped up. He drove me home and went to the funeral with me. He bought me a new sport coat and helped me knot my tie. When we got back to school, and I was ready to pack my room and return home to work and enroll in community college, it was Blake who guided me through the morass of financial aid forms, helping me find a scholarship that allowed me to stay in school. I wouldn’t have made it through all that without him. And I wouldn’t have the life I had now if I hadn’t stayed in school.
And he’d stood up at our wedding as my best man. It felt like he’d been by my side through many of the most important events of the past ten years.
“What do you need?” I asked.
Blake carefully picked up his coffee mug and moved it to the side of the wooden table. Then he leaned forward so his head was more than halfway across the table. There was something about someone doing that in a public place that seemed odd but also inviting. So I leaned forward to hear him.
Why so much solemnity for a request he’d already made once before?
Blake spoke in a low voice. “When I say that Samantha and I have figured things out, that we’re really going to make it work this time and work for real, I mean it. I really mean it. I need her. And I think she needs me. It just . . . feels right between us.”
“I believe you.”
Up close his lips were cracked and dry, his teeth not quite as shining bright as I remembered.
“Well, the thing is, there’s a problem . . . ,” he said. “A loose thread. One that could turn into a noose around my neck if it isn’t taken care of.”
I tried to make sense of what he was saying, but I couldn’t. The confusion must have shown on my face, because Blake went on.
“You know I haven’t always been perfect, Ryan. I’ve really struggled with the idea of committing and settling down. It works for me up to a point, but then when we get engaged, and we start to talk about wedding dates, I start to get itchy. My skin literally crawls.” He shrugged. He seemed to be admitting defeat in the face of the kinds of problems most of us outgrew or pushed aside as we got older. “That’s why this is our third go-around. I haven’t quite been able to take that last step, to just accept my good fortune and happiness with Sam and go for it.”
“I know, Blake.” I held his gaze, seeing in his face the college kid I’d met ten years ago. “But I’m not sure what that has to do with me.”
Blake lowered his voice even more. “I was involved with a woman, Ryan. This . . . thing lasted a short time. And I want to be clear: It happened when Sam and I were broken up. And it ended once Sam and I were putting things back together. You know Sam. She wouldn’t stand for infidelity, even when we’re dating, and I wouldn’t do that to her. I’m a commitment-phobe but not a cheater.”
“I know that,” I said. “You wouldn’t hurt Sam that way.”
“But I did spend time with this other woman. We had some really good times, to be honest.”
“I still don’t see the problem,” I said. “If you were broken up when you dated this woman and then ended it to get back together with Sam, what’s the issue?”
Blake leaned back in his chair. His cheeks flushed deep red above his beard. “You’re trying to oversimplify it, Ryan. You’re trying to fit things into a neat little box.”
“Isn’t that exactly what you’re telling me?”
“You’ve got the perfect marriage and the perfect kid. You’ve got your PR firm, for God’s sake, and you have a stake in a hipster brewery. You’ve made every correct step since we finished college. You could have gone in a lot of different directions when your dad died, but you went into a higher gear and haven’t looked back.” He shook his head. “Sam and everyone I see tells me about your posts. The fund-raisers and the charitable donations and the pro bono work. You’ve got the world by the short ones. Your life is always shown through just the right filter, isn’t it, Ryan?”
“Okay, I’m not sure where all of this is going. You said you wanted to ask me something, but instead you’re going on about this woman who you didn’t cheat on Sam with. Are you looking for advice?”
“I don’t need advice. Maybe I’ve outgrown that part of our friendship. I can go to Sam. I can talk to her. Isn’t that what you have in your marriage? A partner?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’m not looking for that here.”
“I’m in a hurry.” I pushed back from the table, the chair scraping against the concrete floor so loudly that the other people in the coffee shop turned to look. “Amanda’s waiting for me. I have to help her put Henry down. You think everything’s perfect. I’m going to go home and have to change a shitty diaper. I can’t put that on Instagram. Nothing’s perfect. I’m happy for you, Blake. I really am. I’m glad you told me about this. Sam’s amazing. I hope you’re happy. But you’re not really telling me anything—”
“You can’t go.”
His voice was flat, slicing like a steel blade through the Cat Stevens song now playing overhead and the murmured conversations around us.
I looked around, and the other patrons continued with their own conversations. The barista, a college student with fuchsia-streaked hair, and what looked like thirteen piercings in her left ear, chatted with a customer while she sloppily poured milk fro
m a gallon jug.
We stared at each other for a moment, Blake and I.
I scooted forward.
“Why not?” I asked.
But I already knew.
And so did he.
“You haven’t even heard what I want you to do yet, Ryan,” he said. “The request. And you know—and I know—you have no choice but to do whatever I ask you to do.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I braced myself for what was next.
No choice indeed. I stayed rooted in my chair, my spine rigid as a board.
“Things didn’t end well between this woman and me,” he said. “I broke it off abruptly. To get back with Sam. This woman didn’t like that. You know, things with Sam, the clarity I acquired about our relationship, that came to me kind of suddenly after all of our fits and starts. Sometimes you just have an insight about your life—an epiphany, I guess you could call it. And then I knew what I wanted, the direction I needed to go. This woman I was with is so carefree. So fun. I love Sam, but her background, her family—they’re all so . . . serious. So proper. I love them all, but I also never quite feel like I can be myself with them. Sam, yes. But the family . . . It was a relief to be with this other woman. It was liberating, and I really let my guard down.”
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“I got carried away in the things I said.”
“Did you promise her something? A commitment? Marriage?”
“No, not that.”
“Who the hell is she?”
Blake shook his head, affecting a casual, devil-may-care approach to such mundane facts as the woman’s identity. “I don’t want to get into all the details, Ryan. Her name is Jen, okay, and she lives here in town. She has a good job. She’s smart too. She’s getting her MBA online. It’s not important to know more, and I don’t want this to be embarrassing for her. No more than it already is. It’s over. I’ve told her that in no uncertain terms. She knows about Sam. She knows I’m getting married.” A slightly amused look crossed his face, as though something had surprised him. “In fact, Sam and I are getting married on Saturday. This Saturday.”
“Saturday? That’s two days from now.”
My own reaction to the news confused me. On the one hand, I felt relieved I hadn’t been asked to participate. On the other . . . one of my oldest friends was getting married, and he hadn’t bothered to tell me about it until the very last moment.
And he hadn’t bothered to invite me either.
As I said, we’d been by each other’s side for everything important up to that point. We’d depended on each other, just not lately.
Blake must have read the look on my face, because he jumped in to explain.
“It’s a small wedding,” he said. “We’ve planned it quickly. Sam’s mom knew someone who could get us in at that place on Deer Valley Road. You know, the Deer Valley Barn. That’s where the ceremony and the reception are going to be. They had a cancellation, so we got in.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Hey, look, we didn’t invite you because of all that stuff Amanda said about me the last time we saw each other. You can understand that, right? I mean, if Sam went off on you that way, you wouldn’t invite her to your wedding. Not that Sam ever would say those kinds of things, of course.”
I understood what he was saying. And why.
Six months earlier, not long after Henry was born, Blake had come over to the house to see the baby. When he came in, Henry was still asleep, and Blake made a grand entrance, carrying a gigantic stuffed elephant. It had taken us what felt like a long, long time to get Henry down, and Blake spoke in a booming voice that immediately woke the baby up. We were new parents, and Amanda was dealing with changes to her body—sleep deprivation, a painful breast infection, the soreness from the delivery itself—so anything might have put us both on edge. Not to mention the whirl of emotions that came with having a baby. I whispered to her that I’d get Blake out of the house in under an hour. And I almost did.
But he insisted on holding Henry.
We tried to put him off. We said Henry needed to be fed and then go to sleep. But Blake insisted, saying we were like family, that he was “Uncle Blake” since neither one of us had siblings, and it wouldn’t be right for him not to hold our baby. I said we wanted to get him back to sleep. Blake wouldn’t let it go.
Due to loyalty and years of friendship with him, I finally relented and said Blake could hold Henry if we set him up on the couch.
Amanda’s eyes turned into more than daggers. They were giant icy broadswords directed right at me.
Blake was a good friend. I thought by showing trust, by sharing with him, we’d be showing him how we really felt.
Amanda took over then. She propped a department store’s worth of pillows around Blake, and then gently set the baby in his arms. She sat six inches away, watching with the vigilance of a new mother. She made a mama grizzly look laid-back and calm.
And it all went fine for ten minutes. Henry lay still, gurgling happily. Blake talked to him in a soothing voice. I even managed to take a photo, which I immediately posted on Instagram.
But then Blake decided to stand up. Without asking. And when he stood, he bumped Henry’s head against the glass lampshade next to the couch.
Immediately Henry began to wail. And Amanda moved to take Henry back so fast that a brief little tug-of-war ensued, as they both tried to hold the baby. For a second, I really thought Henry might end up on the floor.
But Amanda wrestled him from Blake’s arms. And a quick examination of his head showed that the bump against the lampshade had left only a small red mark. Henry quieted down, and Blake offered a halfhearted apology.
If he’d offered one that had sounded remotely sincere, he might have avoided Amanda’s wrath. And mine.
But he sounded so casual, so unconcerned about Henry’s well-being and the stress his actions had placed on us, that something had to give.
And Amanda hasn’t always been one for suppressing her feelings.
Amanda called him selfish and self-centered. Immature. Irresponsible.
Inconsiderate.
All the bad things we’d both thought about Blake for years but had never dared to say.
It all came pouring out that evening in our living room.
And I knew Amanda was mad at me too. And I couldn’t blame her.
I pushed Blake toward the door, trying to send him on his way and defuse the situation as much as possible. I told Blake he’d made a mistake, that all he’d had to do was stay on the couch and everything would have been fine.
Then Amanda told Blake he had no regard for anyone or anything. That he was careless and destructive. And she didn’t care if he never came back to our house.
Before he left, Blake turned back and said, “You think I don’t care about anyone? I have something to tell you, Amanda—you should talk to your husband about that.”
“What do you mean?” Amanda asked.
“Forget it,” Blake said. “I’ll just go.”
After I guided him out and went back in, Amanda told me she didn’t know if she could stand the thought of him coming back in the house when Henry was still a baby.
“Blake can see him again when Henry goes to college.”
Things cooled between Blake and me. We texted but didn’t see each other until that night when he’d appeared out of nowhere, saying my name in the dark.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Okay,” I said, “you’re getting married on Saturday, and we’re not invited. That’s okay. If you need me to do something to help you with the wedding, I will. You said you planned this all at the last minute. Do you need a photographer or something? A guy I know at work might be able to do it on short notice.”
Blake shook his head. “We’ve got all that covered. Band, photographer, flowers. It’s really goi
ng to be nice. I mean, if it happens.”
“If? What do you mean, if? I thought you’d patched it all up with Sam, mended the fences, and rebuilt the bridges.”
Blake started to say something, then stopped. His cheeks flushed again. He almost looked embarrassed.
I’d never seen anything embarrass Blake. And plenty of things over the years should have. But maybe not drinking allowed him to feel shame more acutely.
“Like I said, I was really open with this woman,” he said. “I could tell her anything about myself.”
“What did you tell her that’s a problem?”
“I put my thoughts and feelings about her down in writing. In some letters. If you follow me. It’s actually kind of romantic and old-fashioned. I mean, who writes those kinds of letters anymore? A hell of a lot better than changing your Facebook status to say you’re dating someone. Or to post something on Instagram with some gauzy filter. It was a grand gesture, right?”
I shook my head, trying not to say too much. But I couldn’t help myself. “It would have been grand if they’d been written for your future wife. Yes.”
Blake had always fancied himself something of a romantic. I was never sure he understood what the word really meant. From his point of view, being romantic meant falling in love easily, telling a woman whatever she wanted to hear in the moment, and dealing with the consequences later. In college, he had preferred to communicate with everyone, including his romantic interests, through the phone or face-to-face. He’d hated to text or e-mail. He’d never joined social media. He once showed me a note he wrote to a woman he dated casually in college. The flowery, sentimental language made me feel queasy, but it worked to convince the woman to date him for a month. Blake spun all of these choices as something romantic as well. He occasionally referred to himself as a man born in the wrong time, and he liked to mock my social media habits.
“Well, this woman has those letters. And I don’t.”