“Fuck!” I shout, before pressing the option to re-record.
Beep.
This time, I keep it short. “It’s me. What you’re asking is unreasonable at this point. That doesn’t mean what we have has to end, for fuck’s sake. Let’s take things slow. How is that an unreasonable request? Jesus!” I sigh. “Call me, Amy. Please. Bye.”
Twenty-Nine
Colin
I check my phone. But once again, there’s nothing from Amy. No return call. No text. No voicemail. Obviously, she’s been ghosting me. And it fucking sucks.
It’s Sunday night, four days since Amy left me. But it feels like four hundred. At the moment, I’m sitting on my couch, eating a cold burrito and drowning in misery and regret. My dream job has been over for two days now. But rather than celebrating the accomplishment with Amy, I’ve been sitting here for two days, alone and miserable.
Ryan.
All of a sudden, my honorary big brother’s name pops into my head like a thunderbolt. Why haven’t I called him? Ryan always knows what to do to fix everything, especially when it comes to women! The Morgans literally call him their family’s fixer!
My heartrate increasing, I grab my phone and place the call, and, thankfully, my Master Yoda picks up immediately.
“Colinoscopy!” Ryan booms. “How the hell are ya?”
“Hey, Rum Cake. I’m shitty. How are you?”
“That’s too bad. I’m great. It’s Momma Lou’s birthday, so the whole fam is here at the house, throwing her a surprise birthday dinner.”
“I didn’t know it was your mom’s birthday. Wish her a good one from me. I’ll talk to you later.”
“No, no. Now’s a good time. I’m sitting here with some of the fam, watching the game while we wait for the dinner bell. Can I put you on FaceTime and let everyone say hi to you, or are you feeling the kind of ‘shitty’ that requires a private conversation?”
“Meh, go ahead and put me on FaceTime. I’ll take all the help I can get at this point.”
We press the right buttons and two seconds later I’m staring at Ryan and his three brothers—Colby, Keane, and Dax—plus, their brother-in-law, Josh, who’s become a brother to us all since he married Kat several years ago. Maddy’s there, too, passed out against Keane’s broad shoulder. Plus, there’s a whole gaggle of kids in the room. In fact, every single man on my screen is holding a baby or a kid. Most amusingly, Colby’s second youngest, Mia, is sitting on her Uncle Dax’s lap, facing him while playing with his long blonde hair, which at present is littered with an array of bows and sparkly clips.
“Colin says he’s doing ‘shitty,’ guys,” Ryan informs the group, after basic greetings are administered. “What’s going on, brother?”
I tell everyone the gist of my shitty situation and admit I’m intensely second-guessing my reaction to Amy’s comments the other night.
“I got defensive,” I admit. “I was pissed she was demanding I tell her brother about us, before I was ready. But now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I can see how me not telling Logan made Amy feel like I was hiding her.”
“Well, you were hiding her, to be fair,” Ryan says.
“But not from you guys! Not from anyone but our families.”
Ryan flashes me a look I know all too well—a look that tells me I’m a dumbshit. And just this fast, I know I fucked up. Royally.
“I wasn’t ready to tell her brother!” I shout. “Is that a crime?”
“No,” Ryan concedes calmly. “But it certainly gave your girl the answer she was looking for, eh? Good for her for walking out. That’s a confident woman. The best kind.”
I roll my eyes. “Ryan, come on. How could I tell Amy’s brother and our families about us after this short a time?”
“What do you mean?”
I explain the timeline, as I see it.
“But you’ve known this girl your whole life, right?” he asks. And when I nod, he adds, “Okay, so you already knew all the most important stuff, going in. You knew she wasn’t a bunny boiler. That’s huge. You knew she’s exactly who she appears to be. Also, huge.”
“But we knew each other as kids. It’s been less than three weeks since I’ve known her as an adult.”
“Yeah, but people don’t change all that much. You knew ninety percent of her by the time you slept with her. You’ve just been getting to know the other ten percent since then.”
I’m speechless. I hadn’t thought about it like that.
“I mean, I’m not trying to push you into anything,” Ryan says. “You’re the one who knows if you click with her or not.”
“It’s not about whether I ‘click’ with her,” I say. “We’ve always had a crazy connection. Honestly, I feel like I know her, inside and out. The problem is that she doesn’t really know me. She thinks she does. Whew! You should have heard the way she chewed my ass the other night. But the thing she doesn’t realize is how weirdly nice and generous I always feel compelled to be around her. For instance, the other day, I heard her say, once, that lilies are her favorite flower. Once. And not even to me. So, what’d I immediately run out and do? Buy her some fucking lilies! Who does that?”
Colby, the eldest Morgan brother, laughs. “A man in love does that, dumbass.”
Josh, Kat’s husband, chimes in. “I’m not trying to push you into anything, either, Colin. But I feel like I should mention the right woman will bring out the best in you. If a woman doesn’t do that, she’s not The One.”
“Amen,” Ryan says, and Colby quickly agrees.
Dax pipes in. “You haven’t noticed how Violet makes me a better man?”
“Mad Dog has certainly done that for me,” Keane says.
“To put it mildly,” Colby mutters, and everyone on the call, except for me, chuckles.
I suppose I’d join in the chuckling, if only a cavalcade of memories from my relationship with Kiera weren’t slamming into me right now—a rapid-fire montage of all the times Kiera and I fought over the stupidest shit and brought out the absolute worst in each other.
Being around Amy feels like the polar opposite of the shit show that was my relationship with Kiera. Being with Amy feels calm and happy. Natural and right. But, still, my rational brain simply won’t stop clinging to the timeline here.
“It hasn’t even been three weeks since Amy and I saw each other for the first time in almost a decade,” I say. “Could anyone trust the kind of intense feelings I’m having for Amy, this fast?”
“Could anyone?” Ryan asks. “Absolutely. Can you? Only you can answer that, brother.”
Colby adds, “Rum Cake’s right. Only you can know if your feelings are the real deal. That said, I’m a believer in ‘When you know, you know.’”
“When did you know?” I ask.
“Oh, I knew Lydia was The One the second I saw her. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I knew.”
My eyebrows shoot up. That’s shocking to me—it’s totally unlike our careful, methodical Colby to jump in, head-first, like that. “Wow, man. That’s intense.”