Chapter 9 #3
“I don’t either.” He wiped his hand over his face and looked at him.
He could see tears in his eyes, and he felt bad for his brother.
Asking him again what was going on, he finally got up and started pacing the room.
“Everything is just too perfect. Like you said, I have a great family that I love. A good job with being leap leader and I love my wife so much that I can’t express in words how much I love her.
But I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, and everything will be gone. ”
“If Grannie were here, she would pop you in the back of your head. You have to stop waiting for things to go bad all the time.” He said he knew that in his head, but his heart was elsewhere.
“Well, get them on the same page. You’re going to make yourself ill if you keep thinking—you’ve always been this way. How am I just now noticing it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I hide it well?” He told him that he wasn’t hiding anything from him. “I know. That’s the reason I came to talk to you. I wanted to talk to someone who would tell me like it is. And I’m not disappointed in you right now. You’ve always been the one person that I could talk to.”
“What about Bailee? Does she know how you’re feeling?” He said that she had popped him in the head. “Good for her. I knew that I loved her a great deal.”
“I’m making myself sick over this. I know that on some level, things are going to continue to go right, but right now, all I can think about is doom and gloom.
I don’t want to feel that way.” He told him he needed to go home and hug his kids.
“That does help a great deal. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have such a wonderful family.
And to have Bailee in my life is just like ice cream with cake. ”
“I tell you what. I’ll get with the others, and we’ll have a pity party for you.
” He told him he wasn’t nice. “I wasn’t planning to be.
You need us to kick you in the ass, and we both know that they’ll be all for it.
I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re going to have to snap out of it before you make yourself ill.
I’ve said this before, but you have a good life and everything a man could want in the world.
Stop waiting for something bad to happen. ”
“I agree with you.” He finally sat down and looked at him. “When did you become so smart? Is that something that I’ve missed?”
“Everyone misses how smart I am. Even Taylor forgets sometimes when I’m around her.
” He laughed, which is what he’d been planning.
“If nothing else, the two of us will have dinner more often. I’m betting that I can convince the others to join us.
They love getting together as much as we do.
And they won’t allow you to be in self-pity mode for long. ”
“I already feel better. I wish I could be as free as the rest of you are from worrying.” He told his brother that he worried all the time. “You don’t show it. I need to be more like you are, rolling with the punches.”
“I don’t always feel like I’m going to lose everything, but when it hits me that I could, I go and hug my wife and children.
They’re the best medicine for any kind of bad thoughts.
” Denver said he’d have to do that more.
“Good. You need to get your head out of your ass and remember that we are all doing well and that we’re going to be doing this well in the future.
Longevity is in our jeans, and we couldn’t have a better role model on that than our grandparents.
They lived to be a hundred years old. That gives you more than enough time to be more productive with your feelings. ”
“I know. I know. I just have to figure out a way to stay more positive. I’m going to take your advice and hug my family more, including my brothers.
I miss that Margo and Grayson have moved away.
They were so much like Grannie together that you sometimes forget that she’s not her.
” He laughed and told him not to tell her that next time he saw her.
“I won’t. She’ll bop me in the back of the head with something hard.
I know she’s got a bit of a mean streak inside of her. ”
He was glad to hear his brother laughing.
He did worry about him and wondered what he was going to do to keep him upbeat.
He wondered if having dinner with the family was going to be enough and decided that it would have to be.
Letting the others know what was wrong with him might bring them all together more.
It couldn’t hurt, and he’d love to have dinner with his brothers more often.
After Denver left, looking better than he had when he showed up, he got back to work.
Getting things set up for the following week always made him feel better, and when he realized that they had the weekend off starting on Friday, he thought that it would be the perfect time for them all to get together at his home.
He called Taylor to see what she thought of his idea.
“I was just thinking about getting us all together yesterday. It’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve had dinner together, and it will be fun.
” He agreed with her and told her that they’d just have things grilled out on the grill that way there wouldn’t be too much in the way of cooking.
“You’ll have to pick up somethings for that as well.
Maybe we can have someone cater it so that we don’t have to worry about the clean-up either. ”
“Better idea all around.” He marked his calendar for the dinner and reached out to all of them to let them know. Maybe Margo and Grayson would make it, and that would be epic. Since they moved away, they’d not gotten to see each other very often.
Margo had started her own school, and it was a great success.
He was so proud of the two of them that sometimes he’d think they had the best life of all of them.
Only having the one child, they were the busiest family that he knew.
Grayson was still working as a CEO of the foundation; he did it from afar, coming in once a week to make sure that things were going the way that they should be.
So far, he’d not had any problems with the foundation, and he thought that it should make Denver happy.
He was going to talk to his wife about his brother at dinner tonight.
They had to get him on the right page with life, or he really was going to get himself sick.
Picking up the things they’d need for dinner tonight, he was happy that Taylor was going to be ordering the food for the catering service.
He loved that they could afford to have it done that way.
He got to spend more time with his family without having to worry about the clean-up, and could visit more.
He thought that being with his family was the best balm that he’d ever had.
When he got home, the kids were ready to eat, so he started portioning out things that they’d want on their pizzas before Taylor came home.
With a kiss to her mouth, he decided that he had the best wife of all his family.
She was so free-spirited that he found himself laughing with her about the strangest things.
She, of course, had to show him what she’d been able to pick up at the store, and he loved that she’d been able to get everything on sale.
She was a bargain hunter if nothing else.