“I heard your friend’s going to be okay. That’s good.”
“Yeah, I called a little while ago and spoke to his wife. He’s doing great, actually, considering. And I didn’t get too much grief about taking a couple of sick days.” Bear finally settled between the chairs and Matt reached down to scratch the top of his head. “Long drive just to check on me. Did Mom put you up to it?”
“Let’s just say she thinks it was her idea, but I was coming anyway. So, son, is this about the accident, or is there a woman?”
He could lie, but his dad had driven two hours to offer a shoulder. The least Matt could do was lean on it. “Little bit about the accident. A lot about the woman.”
“Hailey?”
“I think I started falling for her when I found her breaking into my house through the doggy door to make sure Bear was okay.” It felt good to say that out loud. Scary, but good.
“But, being you, you made sure she didn’t know it, right?”
“We’re different, Dad. Like really different. And right now we can joke about it a little, but over time I don’t think we’ll joke about it any more.”
“You and Hailey have been dancing around this for quite a while now. What happened? What drove you up here this weekend?”
Matt took a long sip of beer and then told his dad how Hailey had rushed to the hospital after making sure Bear was taken care of. And how she’d waited for him, brought him home and took him to bed. “She was just...there. She didn’t care that I didn’t take my boots off at the door or that I smelled like dry stress sweat and who knows what else. She made me hot cocoa and then let me hold her until I went to sleep. I don’t know what to do with that.”
“I’ll tell it to you straight. Walking out and coming up here was the wrong thing to do with it.” His dad shook his head. “She doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who makes a four-hour round trip to a hospital and hangs out in the waiting room to bring a guy home and into her bed just because she’s a nice girl. She has feelings for you, which means right now she’s probably the most pissed off woman in a hundred mile radius.”
“I have a knack for ticking her off, for sure.”
“This one’s a doozie, son. But I guess that just sets up the make-up sex to be all the sweeter.”
Matt almost choked on his beer, and it went down hard when he managed to swallow. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Hey, good sex has a way of soothing a woman’s ruffled feathers.”
“If I have sex with Hailey again, it has to mean she’s willing to go all in.” Matt took a deep breath and blew it out in a rush. “I can’t do casual anymore. If she doesn’t want me, I’ll have to walk away.”
“Why wouldn’t she want you?”
The words stuck in his throat, giving Matt time to figure out a way to spit them out that didn’t make him feel stupid. “She likes finer things. She has nice sheets and likes to dress up and go out. She wants a guy who...you know, like a magazine ad guy.”
“You know I love you, right?”
“You’re about to tell me I’m an idiot, aren’t you?”
His dad nodded. “If you walk away from a woman you love because she has nice sheets, then goddamn right you’re an idiot.”
“I didn’t say anything about love.” Matt’s stomach churned and he set the beer can in the cupholder.
“You know I love you, right?”
“You’re a real comedian today. And of course it’s not about the sheets. Just like I know she’s not writing me off because I had a scruffy beard when we met. All of those are the little things that add up to the fact we’re really different.”
“Of course you are. So are your mother and I. You think she doesn’t like to dress up and go out sometimes? I go, because she puts up with me smelling like fish guts and disappearing for hunting season. You’re not looking at the big picture.”
The big picture scared the crap out of him, that’s why. “I just want to make her happy, and I’m not sure if I can.”
“She’s not going to be happy with you every minute of the day, son. You’ll argue. I’ve been married forty years and there’s a lot of arguing. She yells at you when you track mud through the house. You yell at her when she buys a black pocketbook that doesn’t look any different from the three black pocketbooks she already owns. Sometimes you can’t stand the sound of her voice and other times you wonder how you’d even breathe if she wasn’t there. That’s marriage, and she’ll feel the same way. But when you’ve got a good woman who loves you, your back’s never truly against the wall because she’s there. She’s got your back.”