“Oh, sweetie.” Tara hurried around the table, wrapping her arms around Hailey, murmuring softly, encouraging her to cry if she needed, that everything would be okay.
But she was wrong. Nothing would be okay. She’d lost more than a lover, a confidant, a boyfriend. She’d lost her friend. The person who made her laugh, who teased her about forgetting to set alarms and didn’t mind being teased about the overabundance of the ones he had set. A person who in so little time had come to know her well enough to complete her sentences, see the best in her, and make her believe anything was possible. Just not love.
41
Wes ran his hand over his face, frowning at the rasping sound that followed. When was the last time he shaved? He pulled open the door to let both of his brothers into his apartment. They said nothing as they shuffled past him in suits.
Instead of joining them in the living room, he went to the coffee maker.
“Wes,” Chris said.
Wes turned from making coffee. “What?”
“We had a meeting. You flaked. What the hell?” Noah said.
His brows scrunched closer as he tried to remember his schedule for the week. His brain felt a little fuzzy. Glancing at the counter, he was surprised to see his couple of beers had turned into seven empties. Apparently, he’d had a pity party for one last night.
“Sorry.” He went back to making coffee.
“Sorry? That’s it?” Chris’s voice held no judgment and he appreciated his brother that much more for it.
“Blink twice if your body has been invaded by aliens,” Noah said, coming around to get his face in Wes’s.
Wes’s lips quirked even as a steady, uncomfortable bass began to beat at the base of his neck. “Remind me about the meeting.”
“It was a board meeting. For the rec center. When was the last time you forgot anything? What’s going on?” Chris flanked the other side of him.
“I guess I had more beer than I thought. I must have slept through my alarm.” He glanced around after pressing start on the coffee maker. “I’m not sure where my phone is.”
His brothers followed him into the living room. His laptop sat open on the game he’d made for Hailey. He’d worked through every single combination last night. All roads led to her. Jesus. What a fool he was. He started to close the laptop.
“Wait, what is that?” Noah, being Noah, picked it up without permission.
Wes’s gut turned in a way that had nothing to do with his hangover.
Chris sat beside Noah, forcing Wes to move down on his own couch. They pressed start and worked through the game. Wes waited, the muscles in his shoulders pulled tight.
“This is awesome,” Noah said, laughing with genuine joy. He looked over at Wes. “Pretty basic, but it’s fantastic. Did Hailey love it?”
He nodded. And him. She loved him. Or thought she did. That’s what happened: people confused affection and their desire to not be alone with a word that had deadly potential to wreck lives.
“Can you expand on this? Could you create something more complex? Different levels? More players? Could you do something like add another character into the mix—almost like a bad guy?”
Wes ran both hands over his face then stared at Noah. “Yes. To all of your questions. But I’m not going to. It was just a stupid gesture that, in the end, wasn’t worth my time.” It was good that they’d parted ways. Better now than years from now when she was dropping hints with wedding magazines.
Noah pressed some buttons that made a sound Wes didn’t recognize.
“We’ll come back to that, but first tell me if you’ve made other games and if these graphics are yours,” Chris said, taking the laptop from Noah.
Wes looked over, frowning. Had he added to the code last night? He didn’t remember. “Wait, why are there two different paths?”
Chris glanced at him. “You created it, dude.”
Wes took the computer. Now, instead of just Hailey being the end goal, there was a miniature Wes character in the right corner. Clicking the keys, Wes unlocked the path that led to him on his own. Shit. He must have included that. See? Even drunk, he knew he was better off taking a road that led to him being alone. When he got through the maze, the little version of himself jumped up and down with a speech bubble over his head reading, “You are alone.” His stomach sank. The character’s cheesy smile crumpled as he then crumpled onto the ground with another speech bubble popping up. It read, “For the rest of your life.”
“Damn. That’s dark, man.” Chris shook his head.
“What did Hailey say to that part?” Noah’s voice was strained, his face scrunched.
Wes swore. “That part wasn’t there when she saw it. I must have added it last night.”
Getting up, Wes went back to the kitchen. He needed a shower. He definitely needed to shave. It had been a few days; why didn’t he feel more like himself? Why the hell had he added that dark option for his game? Not wanting the answers to his own questions, he shook his head, as if that could clear the cobwebs.
Taking a long drink, the bitter liquid burning his tongue and the back of his throat, he hoped the caffeine would kick in quick. He heard his brothers arguing under their breath. Might as well say it out loud. He turned, leaned against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other.
“Hailey dumped me.”
If he didn’t feel like he was going to throw up, he would have laughed at the way both of their heads swiveled in his direction.
“What?” Chris stared.
“Whoa, dude. Way to bury the lead.” Noah shook his head. He got up, went to Wes’s fridge, and pulled out a beer.
Wes looked at him, frowning. “It’s morning.”
Noah twisted off the beer cap, took Wes’s coffee, and set the beer in his hand. “No, it isn’t. And if you’re hungover, which I haven’t seen since you were about twenty, you need this first.”
Chris joined them, pulling a chair out from the table, swinging it around to straddle it. “What happened?”
The bottle was cool in his hand as he clenched his fingers around it. He didn’t want the beer but it felt good to hold on to something.
“We’ve known each other close to a year; she knows I don’t want to get married and have a family. We could have stayed together longer but she insisted that if she loves me and I don’t feel the same, it’s not worth it. Since when is having someone in your life who complements you, whose company you enjoy, a waste of time? She didn’t think it was a waste to be friends even though we weren’t throwing meaningless declarations around then.” He set the beer down too hard, making it slosh over.
“Chris?” Noah looked at his brother.
Chris nodded. “Right. Okay. Where to start. First, you’re an idiot.”
Noah pointed at him. “Excellent point. Exactly where I would have started.”
“Secondly,” Chris said, nodding again, “what do you mean you don’t want to get married and have kids? Fine if Hailey isn’t the one, but do you mean never?”
“I would have stuck on the idiot thing longer but we can totally swing back around,” Noah said, grabbing a kitchen chair so his pose mimicked Chris’s.
Wes glared at them. “Since always. Why would I do that to myself? To someone else? To children? Do you not remember how awful it was in the days leading up to the divorce? The yelling and accusations, then the way Dad tried to use us as bargaining chips? The way he threatened Mom with us if she went after any sort of settlement aside from the one he’d drawn up?”
To their credit, both of his brothers looked a little lost. That’s what he’d always wanted for them but suddenly, the burden of being the only one to know felt like it could drag him to the ground. He shoved both hands through his hair.
“It’s not like you two are ring shopping. I was self-aware enough to tell her up front that I didn’t want all that. Maybe you two got lucky, the conversation hasn’t arisen. You won’t talk about prenups at all so what do I know. But I don’t see you heading down any aisles.” He paced to the patio, pulled open the sliding door.
“I want to marry Grace. I hope we have kids.” Noah’s voice was quiet.
“I love Everly more than anything. All I want is to have her be my wife. I just don’t want to rush her.” Chris looked uncomfortable before he asked, “Is Hailey just not the one?”
The one. Everything. “No. Trust me, if ever I was going to dive off that plank into shark-infested waters, she’d be the one I’d do it with. But come on, guys, look at the statistics. Doesn’t that worry you?”
Chris shrugged. “Not more than losing Everly.”
Noah’s brows bounced. “When have I ever not beat statistics?”
“It seemed like you two really fit. Do you care about her at all?”
Wes whirled so fast he felt dizzy. “Do I care about her? Of course I do. But when I do things to show that, she gets all mad, tells me she loves me, then dumps me because I don’t say it back.”