And that was pretty much exactly the opposite of what Fletcher needed to hear right now.
He pushed back from the table. “I need a drink.”
16
Fletcher headed for the bar. As usual, there was hardly an open stool, and any place you put your ass in Ellie’s meant you were going to have a conversation. The stool you chose was determined by the kind of conversation you were in the mood for.
He could talk politics or sports, he could get a sermon, he could listen to tall tales that he’d already heard a dozen times but that each got bigger with every telling, or he could get caught up with all the town gossip. Which he had probably also already heard a few times.
But no matter which one he chose, he could get advice.
Of course, the quality of that advice also varied.
Perusing his choices, Fletcher realized that all of the people sitting at the bar had relationship experience of some kind. The youngest was twenty years older than Fletcher and was happily married. There were a couple of widowers, a couple who were on wife number two or three, a couple who were sworn bachelors, and the rest had wives, kids, and grandkids.
He wasn’t sure he wanted advice.
He nudged in between his grandfather and one of Leo’s best friends, Naomi’s grandpa, Armand. “Iced tea,” he told his grandma.
She looked toward the back table where he had come from. “Leo,” she said to her husband. “Make Fletcher feel better.”
His grandfather looked at him. “You need to feel better?”
Fletcher nodded. “Yeah. But I’m not sure how to get there.”
“His happily in love cousins were annoying him,” Ellie said.
Fletcher wondered if he would ever stop being amazed the way Ellie seemed to know what was going on with everyone. He didn’t know how she kept track of them all, but she was practically omniscient.
“Pretty hard not to be happy around that group,” Leo commented.
“Yeah,” Fletcher agreed. “They make it look easy.”
“Don’t let them fool you,” Leo said. “They work at it.”
Fletcher knew that. He knew Josh was a little worried about being a dad. He knew Owen and Maddie were trying to get pregnant and it wasn’t as easy as they’d expected. He knew Sawyer was still working through issues after losing his best friend to a tragic bayou accident and that Juliet worried about him. Still, it was clear they were all doing something right.
“So what’s up with you?” Leo asked as Ellie pushed the glass of sweet tea to Fletcher.
“Well,” he said with a sigh. “I’m in the middle of a relationship that means everything to me.”
Leo and Armand both nodded.
“Couldn’t be happier for you,” Leo told him.
“Yeah, except that I suck at middles.”
Leo paused with his own glass of tea halfway to his mouth. He looked at Fletcher with a frown. “What you mean?”
“For Jordan and me it’s always been about grand gestures and big, flashy, happy endings. I sweep in and save the day.”
“Like flying off to Vegas when she’s had a breakup? Maybe proposing to her just out of the blue?” Naomi’s grandfather asked with a chuckle.
Fletcher nodded. “Ultimate grand finale.”
The other man tipped his head. “Except the wedding isn’t the finale.”
“Bingo,” Fletcher told him.
“What are you talking about, boy?” Leo asked.
“For years this is how I do things with Jordan. I come in at the last minute. I come up with some big scheme that will save the day. I’m the last-minute hero. Except now, I have to be the twenty-four-seven hero. I’m in the middle of a relationship and the only part I’m good at is the ending.”
“And this relationship isn’t ending,” Leo pointed out.
“Exactly.”
Armand chuckled. “So, as usual, you rush in to fix everything for the girl. But instead of it being a quick fix with you moving on until she needs something else, you went ahead and married her. And now…”
“I’m stuck in a middle and I don’t know what to do all the time. I always know what to do for Jordan.”
Leo shook his head. “Well, yeah, you’re going to mess things up sometimes. We all do. But the middle is the best part, Fletcher.”
“I don’t know about that,” Fletcher said. “That’s where the work happens. And that’s where things go wrong. That’s where all the stuff happens that I have to come in and fix with the big, grand gesture.”
“You’re lookin’ at it wrong,” Leo told him. “The middle is the part that makes something what it is. You can put ham and cheese in between two pieces of bread and it’s a ham and cheese sandwich. You can take those same two pieces of bread and put peanut butter and jelly between them, and it’s a whole different thing. The beginning and the end just hold the good stuff together. What really makes something something is the middle.”
Fletcher looked at his grandfather. Then he looked at Naomi’s grandfather. But Armand was nodding along as if Leo had just said something very wise.
“Comparing relationships to sandwiches is kind of simplistic, isn’t it?” Fletcher asked.
Leo scoffed. “Things don’t have to be hard to matter. Do you know Jordan’s favorite sandwich?”
Okay, they were going on with the sandwich analogy. Fletcher nodded. “Yes. Italian sub.”
“What does she like on her subs?” Leo asked.
“Salami, ham, pepperoni, provolone, mayo, vinegar and oil, oregano, salt and pepper, tomatoes, olives, pickles,” Fletcher rattled off.
“And if you had all of that, does it matter what bread you put it on?” Leo asked.
“She prefers whole wheat.”
“Okay, but does she care more about those ingredients or the bread?”
Fletcher rolled his eyes but said, “The ingredients.”
“Exactly. You get that combination right, you make it the sandwich that she loves best, and the bread doesn’t really matter.”
Okay, Leo was making a not-terrible point. But…
“See, the thing is, all the times her sandwich was not an Italian sub, and she had to eat some soggy tuna salad instead, my job was to bring over an amazing dessert,” Fletcher said. He nodded after he said it. That was actually a very good analogy. Any time things hadn’t gone exactly the way Jordan needed them to, he came through with something to make up for it, to make it better. “And showing up with a double chocolate frosted brownie always worked.”
“But wouldn’t you rather be the sub, the thing she really wants, the thing that really gives her…sustenance?”
Fletcher and Armand both snorted as Leo settled on the word “sustenance”.
Leo grinned. “You know what I mean. A woman can’t live on Coffee Toffee Caramel ice cream alone. Be her Italian sub, Fletcher.”
Fletcher chuckled. “But see, the sub is more complicated. There’s more ingredients, more layers, and it’s easier to forget one of the ingredients or not quite get the right amount of mayo.”
Leo waved all of that away. “You can adjust. If you don’t get enough mayo one time, you get it the next time. But at least the mayo was there.”