Luke
It had been less than twenty-four hours since I'd seen her, and I was not handling it well.
I was aware that was insane. I was aware that less than twenty-four hours is not a long time, that grown men go weeks without seeing women they're interested in and survive, that my therapist would've had actual opinions about the way I'd been checking my phone waiting for her to respond to the text I had sent this morning.
I hope you're okay, we want to talk.
A text that she still hadn't answered.
I was also wedged in the front seat of Cole's truck between him and Ben with a six-foot stuffed bear on part of my lap and four dozen roses shoved under my feet, so clearly awareness was not the issue.
"You've checked your phone four times since we left the flower place," Ben said.
"I'm checking the time."
"You have a watch."
"The watch might be wrong."
Cole said nothing from behind the wheel, which from Cole meant he agreed with Ben. I looked out the window and tried not to think about the unanswered text, and thought about the unanswered text.
The bear had been Ben's idea. Specifically, Ben had walked into the flower shop, looked at the giant carnival bear in the display window, and said "that's the one" before either of us could stop him.
I'd argued against it for five minutes and lost, which was how I ended up riding across town with ninety pounds of plushy bear in my lap.
"She's going to laugh at us," I said.
"That's the goal," Ben said. "She laughs, her guard comes down, we talk, everybody wins."
"Or she laughs and thinks we're idiots."
"Luke." Ben turned to look at me, which was difficult given the bear between us. "We're bringing her a six-foot bear on a holiday weekend. We are idiots. The whole point is she already knows that and she likes us anyway."
Cole was quiet for a second. Then: "I can't believe I'm in a truck with a giant stuffed animal because I'm gonna ask a woman to be ours. I've never wanted to share a damn thing in my life. With her I don't even care. And I’m doing it with you two Assholes." He kept his eyes on the road.
He was right, this was absurd. I'd been fine after we left Ben's place last night.
Fine in the way men get when they've made a decision, when the plan is solid and the morning will take care of itself.
Then I'd lain awake thinking about the look on her face when she bolted from that auditorium, and I'd started spiraling in panic and ended up opening my Notes app.
"Tell me you didn't type an actual speech," Ben said, reading my face.
"It's an outline."
"Oh my God."
"Three points. Very clear and concise."
"Cole," Ben said. "He wrote a speech."
"I heard," Cole said.
"It's not a speech, it's a framework for a romantic monologue."
"Read it," Ben said. "Come on. Let's hear your framework Romeo."
"I'm not reading it out loud."
"Then I'm going to improvise my entire thing and it's going to be better than yours and you're going to hate it."
That was a genuine threat. Ben improvising feelings was somehow always perfect in the moment, which was deeply annoying for those of us who prepared. I looked out the window. "Fine. I'm going to tell her that last night she heard the worst version of us, and we came to show her the real one."
"Damn," Cole said.
"That's actually incredible," Ben said, with the tone of a man who'd never admit it twice. "Mine's just 'Cupcake, we're idiots, but we're your idiots.' I was going to wing everything after that."
"You cannot wing everything after that."
"I have never once in my life not wung the rest."
"Wung isn't-"
"It's a word now, I'm making it a word, I get to do that."
Cole made a sound that was close enough to a laugh that Ben looked smug about it for the next two blocks.
It was the most normal we'd been with each other in days. This was us. A lifetime of friendship crammed into a bench seat with a ridiculous bear and nowhere else we'd rather be, going to tell a woman that we were in love with her.
"I keep thinking about when she gets that look," I said, not meaning to say it out loud. "The one when she's trying not to laugh and her nose does that thing."
"The crinkle," Ben said immediately.
"The crinkle," I agreed.
"It's not just the crinkle," Cole said. "It's her laugh. I'd burn the world down for that woman's laugh. Noah heard it and lit up like a kid who actually remembers how to be one."
The truck was quiet a second after that, because we were clearly all pussy whipped.
"Less than twenty-four hours," Ben said, shaking his head. "We are so embarrassingly gone for this woman. All three of us, completely cooked. It's pathetic."
"Thoroughly pathetic," I said.
"I pulled up her Instagram this morning," Ben said.
"I looked at the picture Emma took of her at the goat farm," I said.
We both looked at Cole.
"I drove past her house last night," Cole said. "Just wanted to make sure she was safe."
"You drove past her house," Ben said.
"Yyyyyuppp," Cole said.
"Cole Ramirez," Ben said, in the voice of a man witnessing history. "Scary tattooed military man. Drove past her house like a sixteen-year-old stalker. I need you to know that I am going to be telling this story."
"No you're not."
Her street came into view and I sat up a little, which jostled the bear, which jostled Ben, and Cole turned the corner and there was the little yellow house with her car in the driveway and my heart did the stupid lurching thing that I'd spent years forgetting I was capable of.
"Okay," I said. "We go in, we apologize first. We tell her she doesn't have to choose. Whatever she wants, however she wants it, we're in. And we tell her the truth about how gone we are."
"Agreed," Ben said, already moving the bear so he could get the door.
"Agreed," Cole said, pulling to the curb.
"She's going to think we're insane," I said.
"She's going to be right," Ben said. "Okay, everybody out. Somebody grab the bear."
The bear came with me because of course it did, and I was halfway up the driveway with the bear blocking roughly eighty percent of my field of vision, roses under my arm, ready to tell this woman everything, when Cole stopped walking.
"Oh, Jesus Christ."
I moved the bear.
There was a man in her driveway. A big man, big as Cole, bigger maybe, beard down his chest, leather vest, and his arms were wrapped all the way around Callie.
Our Callie. Her face was buried in his chest. Her hands were fisted in his vest. Her whole body shaking.
And all around them, like a frame neither of them had noticed, sat a row of moving boxes.
The roses slipped first, four dozen stems hitting the driveway in a wet red splat, and the bear followed an undignified second later, face-down on the asphalt like he'd been shot.
I've spent good money on therapy learning to name what I feel. What came up first was confusion, half a second of it. Then the bottom dropped out, and up came the certain voice that said: of course. Of course she was just as heartless as all the other women in your life.
I was walking before I decided to. Ben said something behind me, I don't know what, and then all three of us were moving, and Callie's head came up off the stranger's chest and she saw us and she had tears all over her face.
This was the face of a woman who had just been caught.
The way I had caught Michelle cheating on me years ago.
"Are you kidding me." It came out quiet, which was worse than yelling. "Are you actually kidding me right now."
"Luke-" Her voice was raw.
"No." And then my cork blew, everything I'd held together since my divorce.
"We were ready to give you the world. Do you understand that?
All three of us, in a truck, with a bear.
A literal fucking bear, Callie. We were coming here to tell you that we're done pretending this is casual, that we want you, that you don't have to choose, that whatever you want we will figure out and you're standing here with this man.
How could you do this? We love you. All three of us.
And you just… You're just out here taking another test drive like we meant nothing. "
"Luke, wait." She stepped forward, hands up. "Please, just listen!"
"I have been listening. I have been so careful.
I did everything right this time and it didn't matter, it never matters, there's always-" I couldn't finish it.
The sentence went somewhere I didn't want to follow, then my stomach went hard.
"None of this was real Callie. I was a fool to think I could be in a relationship with a woman like you. "
She was trying to speak but her sobs were overwhelming her and the tall giant beside her looked like he was about to eat us.
Cole spoke from my left. "I trusted you with my kid," he said dangerously.
"I told you things I haven't told another living soul.
And now I'm standing in your driveway watching you with another man and trying to figure out what the hell about us wasn't enough.
" He shook his head. "I can't stand here and watch this, Callie.
I let myself believe in a fucking fantasy. That's on me."
"Wow. Okay." Ben's voice came out shaky, all the easy gone out of it.
"Okay. Wow." He looked at the giant, then at her, then back at the giant.
"I had a fucking speech. I had a whole fucking speech, Cupcake.
I was going to walk up here and call you the love of my life, and you'd laugh, and I'd laugh, and we'd-" His voice cracked.
"Clearly the fucking joke's on me this time. Because everything we had was a joke."
The big man had been still through all of it, watching, his eyes moving between us and Callie.
Now he came off the step and his voice dropped to something I felt in my molars.
"I don't know who you three think you are, but nobody talks to her like that.
Not today. Not any day. You need to get the fuck off this property right now before I lose what's left of my patience. "
He was moving toward us, all of him, and I was not in a state to do the math on that.
"Wwwait." Callie's hand came up and the giant stopped. She was shaking. She was still shaking and sobbing and could barely breathe, and the part of me that wasn't demolished noticed that and didn't know what to do with it.
"Do you want them to leave?" the man asked her.
Callie looked at us like she was sick with guilt. Her eyes were slowing down their crying and turned at us with a look from her I have never seen. She was angry. Her eyes were now flat and furious and some distant part of me might have realized that guilty women don't look at you like that.
She nodded.
"Message received," Ben said. "Loud and clear, Cupcake."
I don't remember getting in the truck. I remember the door closing and seeing the bear abandoned in a pile of roses that looked like a murder scene in the driveway and Cole's hands on the wheel not moving for a long moment, and the big man watching us go with an expression that, if I'd had a single working brain cell left, looked a hell of a lot less like a man who'd stolen Callie from us and a whole lot more like a man trying to figure out how to explain a car crash.
Nobody spoke for a long time.
"She didn't even care," Ben finally said, quiet, to the window. "Callie cares about everything and everyone. She just turned on us."
Nobody helped him finish his sentence. We had already gotten our answer.