We stand there for a period of time that doesn’t seem to matter. How can it when we both can’t move past the loss? Finally, she steps back and with a soft touch, wipes the tears I hadn’t known left my eyes. We don’t talk. We find that quiet place between us no one else can possibly understand. She gives me a tight smile and steps into the kitchen. Food. It’s what we did a lot of in the end. Mostly, we ate trying to encourage Drew to do so as he wasted away while the cancer slowly ravaged his body.
She fixes us lunch and we sit huddled together watching TV. I hold her hand and she leans into me. And I wonder if Drew is watching us shaking his head. He would so disapprove because we aren’t doing what he wanted, and that was to live.
Silently, she turns her head up until I meet her eyes. I can tell she’s pondering a question.
“Go ahead and spit it out.”
She blushes and I have a feeling what she wants to talk about.
“Jenna tells me you broke up with Karen. I haven’t gotten all the details yet.”
I roll my eyes begging for patience I don’t have. “We were never together.”
Cate gets me, unlike my sister. She doesn’t press. “Okay, fine. Are you ever going to give someone a chance? Drew would want that.”
She has no idea what she’s asking. I tried my hand at love twice and failed both times. There is no way I’m doing that again.
Instead, I toss the question back to her. “I could say the same.”
“I’m not ready.” It’s a mantra I’ve heard from her a thousand times. “I know about the girl from college, although Drew never told me the details.”
I close my eyes remembering. The stab in my chest still feels fresh, and I have to squash this idea she has that I’ll ever get some sort of fairytale ending.
“That girl shouldn’t have happened.” That’s an understatement. The humiliation I suffered in high school hadn’t been lesson enough. “I let my guard down, you know.” She had been a stunner, like fresh-off-the-farm beautiful and innocent. “I should have been smarter than to let someone in. But she wouldn’t go for my fuck-a-friend rules.” I suck in air because I need it for the bullshit part of my life I’m sharing.
“Drew.”
I shake my head because Cate knows firsthand what I’m about to say. “He never believed love was synonymous with fucking and convinced me to give it a shot. I liked her more than most I’d been with at the time. I took a chance and followed Drew’s playbook.”
I grind my teeth together remembering what a fool I’d been. Even after all these years, it still punches at my heart.
“Eventually, she said she loved me and let me ...” I wave a hand.
“Take her virginity.”
“God, I love you, Cate.”
She grins because even though she is my best friend, it’s hard to talk about some of that shit with a woman.
“But yeah. Anyway, we were together for the rest of the semester. I thought I could see myself with this girl in a forever sense. Not right away or anything, but I could picture the white picket fence off in the future.”
I swallow. This is the hard part. “A couple weeks after winter break, she wanted to talk, but all she did was cry. I didn’t know what to do. The tears shit.”
The embarrassment of being dumped burns like a dagger in my chest, even with Cate who knows just about everything about me. I pause, bracing myself to force the next words out.
“She eventually told me she was pregnant.” I remember the fear I felt when the words first left her lips. “Despite being scared shitless, I was ready to do the chivalrous thing and walk her down the aisle if I had to. When I told her so, the sad smile she gave me only confused me until she enlightened me of something very important.”
I didn’t know I’d stopped talking until Cate spoke up.
“What did she say?”
My tongue feels thick. But I finish the story. “She reminded me that I couldn’t be the father because we’d always used protection, even though that’s not foolproof. It was her way of telling me she’d hooked up with someone else.” All my lame moves to be different and better sent her into the hands of another dude, smashing my heart in the process. It had been proof enough that women didn’t want the nice guy. “And now you know the rest of my pathetic past.”
“Oh Benny. That’s terrible.”
“It is what it is. And that love shit isn’t for me.”
She wraps her arms around me, right when Jenna walks in. She gives both of us a harsh glare. A lecture is surely nanoseconds behind.
“What am I going to do with the both of you? Someone has to be the voice of reason. This is not how you honor Drew. He’s probably rolling over in his grave. Snap out of it. He wouldn’t want this for either of you.”
Cate and I look at each other, but don’t say a thing.
No one understands Jenna’s words better than me, but it doesn’t close the open space in my chest that I can’t seem to fill.
“You,” she points at Cate, “need to take Louise out of hibernation and get with Dr. Mercer.”
I try not to react having met the good doctor that Cate says is just a friend.
“Who’s Louise? I know Mercer’s a good guy, but why do you want to fix him up with this Louise?”
Jenna looks at Cate and they both bust out laughing. Cate doubles over and Jenna snorts.