“Look guys,” I told my cousins, lowering my voice to a hiss. “I’m not in love with anyone, and the last thing I need is Daniel thinking I am.”
The brothers exchanged a look and then stepped into my space wearing identical frowns.
“Our dad loved our mom,” Emmett said, his voice more clear and pronounced than I’d ever heard it. “And those years, when she was alive, were the best years of our lives.” Virgil nodded. “And now that he is in love again, Virge and I are the happiest we’ve been in a long time.”
I shook my head. “What?”
“Seeing your parent in love isn’t a bad thing. It’s not selfish for you to fall in love, Mike. It’s actually good. Watching Dad fall in love with Lottie Tanner is teaching us how it’s done.” Emmett said.
There was almost too much there to unravel.
“Mom died when we were little. We almost forgot what Dad looked like happy,” Virgil said. “Until now.”
“Don’t make Dan wait to see what you look like happy,” Emmett suggested.
I knew there was a kernel of sense in their words, but I was too angry and tired, and confused about getting wisdom from tweedle dee and tweedle didn’t, and I just wanted to crawl into a cave to think.
“I’m going home,” I told them.
They shrugged and I spun on my heel and went out to the truck. Only I didn’t go to the big house on Maple. I went back to my two bedroom cottage, opened a bottle of whiskey, and sat myself down on the couch. And a couple hours later, I passed out.
“Well, this is lovely,” Shelly said, and her voice seemed to be coming through a barrel of cotton and accompanied by needles poking into my brain.
I shook my head, setting off a ricochet of pain inside as I blinked my eyes open.
Oh yeah. The couch. The whiskey.
It was morning, and I was sprawled on the couch, the half-drunk bottle open beside me. The cushion behind my head was wet, and I could only imagine I’d lain there snoring and drooling the better part of the night.
“Why are you in my house?” I asked with a tongue that felt three inches thick.
“Because I owe you an apology.”
That brought me upright. Oh shit. Ouch. “Huh?”
“Daniel made me realize—” Shelly stopped talking, taking a step back and glancing around. “Listen, could you maybe like, take a shower or something? And then we can talk.”
“I don’t want to take a shower,” I said, though I was just being stubborn. Even I could smell that I would benefit from some hot water and soap. “Fine.”
Twenty minutes later, I walked back into my living room to find Shelly fluffing couch cushions, the vacuum pulled from the closet and resting in the corner. “You’re cleaning?”
“Just tidying up. I guilt clean, you know that.” I did remember that.
“Why are you guilty?” I was a bit hungover and also needed her to narrow it down.
She handed me a glass of water and sat on the couch. I took a seat beside her.
“I’ve been a shit,” she said.
I lifted a shoulder. “I’m used to it.”
“Thanks.”
“So what’s changed?”
“Our son,” she said, staring at her hands resting on her knees. “He made me sit down and listen to him the day after we walked in on you groping that Tanner chick.”
“Always a snappy turn of phrase at the ready.”
“Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “This is hard for me, Mike. But I think I was wrong. I think I’ve been wrong.”
“About what?” I could count on one hand the number of times Shelly had apologized. Once was for telling me the corsage I bought her for prom looked cheap. Once was for screaming at me that everything was my fault while she was giving birth to Dan, and once was for eating all the cookies and cream and then putting the carton back in the freezer. That was it.
“I’ve been unfair.” Her eyes raised to meet mine then, and the sparkling blue depths I remembered from high school looked worn, faded. “I haven’t been happy for a long time,” she said. “And so I didn’t want you to be happy either.”
She paused and I let that sink in. It wasn’t a shock, but it was a shock to hear it out loud. And it was more of a shock to know that Shelly was mature enough to say it.
“I didn’t like the arrangement with Addison. Not because of Dan. Because of me.
“But when we caught you guys the other night and I got angry, we went home and I guess we both thought about it. Because the next morning he sat me down and asked me to drop my custody fight. He told me that the last few months have been the best ones he’s spent with you—that you’ve been more alive than ever before.”
That crushed me to hear. I’d been failing him all along without even realizing it.
“He said that seeing you happy and being with you while you were full of joy was like getting his family back.” Her blue eyes lifted to mine again, and they were shining with unshed tears. “Mike, I feel like we’re just screwing this all up with him. He just wants to see us both happy, and I’ve been too busy being mad, and you’ve been too busy beating yourself up. All he wants is for us both to be happy.”
My heart crumpled into an even smaller ball than it had been before at the thought of Daniel being unhappy. Because of me. Because I was so busy making myself miserable I didn’t realize I was making him miserable too.
I dropped my head into my hands. “Fuck, Shell. What the hell do we do now?”
She sighed, flopping back into the couch beside me. “I don’t really know. I guess we start thinking about what we really want out of life?”
I let out a humorless laugh. “Right.”
“Well, it’s easy for you,” she said.
I turned to look at her. “What?”
“You just need to tell Addison you love her.”
“I don’t love her. I just met her.” But that wasn’t really true. None of it was. I’d known her my whole life, in a way. And I found that I very much wanted to know her for the rest of it too.
“And as long as you keep lying to yourself, Daniel’s going to know you’re not happy. Do it for him, Mike.”
I stared at her, unable to believe this was Shelly telling me to go do something to make myself happy. “You really think I should?”
She nodded. “I was wrong about something else. I thought it would make me unhappier if you were happy. But I think it would make me happy to see you happy.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, I mean, it might not look like it. It will also piss me off and make me jealous, but somewhere down deep inside, it’ll make me happy too.”
That sounded about right. “Thanks.”
She sighed and then pulled herself back up to sit straight. “Okay. I better go.”
I watched my ex-wife stand and walk to the door, still feeling too rough to even be polite and go open it for her. “Shell?” I called from the couch.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for this,” I said.
As the door shut behind her, I let my eyes slide shut again. For now, I needed to sleep off this hangover. And then? I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but I knew it would have something to do with Addison Tanner.