Blake nodded. “Right, right. I get it. And you called it. We’ve been here before, and then something stupid always happens. Usually it’s been me screwing it up somehow. I know. I hear you.” He leaned forward, his eyes zeroing in on me. “But this time it’s different. I mean it. I’m better. More mature. And I get it. I understand how great Sam is. How supportive and loving. I’m really on it. You know, there comes a time when we all have to grow up. It happens at different times for all of us.” He pointed at me. “You had it figured out sooner. I’m a slow learner. But I got there.”
He seemed sincere. He really did. His clear eyes looked completely serious.
And I knew Blake well enough to know this was something he did. He’d always latch on to some new enthusiasm—a new job, a different major, a girl he met—and claim that everything was suddenly different, that this time everything would work out perfectly.
But it never did. He always blew it up or broke it down and went back to being the same old Blake doing too much of everything. Drinking. Smoking. Eating.
But I could see how desperately he wanted me to believe it would work this time. How desperately he wanted me to approve and share his happiness.
And for all I knew, this would be it. He might have grown up. He might be a fully formed adult.
I wasn’t lying when I said Samantha was wonderful. She was. Pretty and optimistic. Considerate of others. Warm. Enthusiastic. But with none of Blake’s tendency toward recklessness. She was a schoolteacher, and she walked the straight and narrow. I couldn’t count the number of good causes she’d managed to get Amanda or me to volunteer for or donate money to. She wanted to run for the school board someday. She’d already said she wanted my firm to help with social media when she did.
But I understood what she saw in him. I knew how charming Blake could be. How bighearted. How much he could make anyone feel like the center of his world, how much his attention and energy could focus like a spotlight. Samantha was as smart as I was. She could see everything I could see—the good and the challenging.
I knew she played some of the role in Blake’s life I used to play. She told him when to back off, when not to play so hard. And he kept her from working on lesson plans until midnight.
I got it.
And I wanted to be happy for him.
And I wanted him to be happy. I really did.
Still, I suspected I knew why he’d sought me out that night. If he and Sam were going to get married, then he needed groomsmen. A best man, even. He’d asked me during his second engagement to Sam, the one that lasted the longest of the first two, and I’d said yes, had even gone so far as to begin to plan a bachelor party weekend in New Orleans before things were called off. Their first engagement had ended after three weeks, well before any groomsmen had been asked to join the wedding party.
“Well, that’s great,” I said. “You look great, and I’m glad you two have worked things out.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Really.”
But he didn’t say anything else. He stared at me, and the silence settled between us like a leaden cloud.
The clock ticked. Ten minutes were up. I knew Amanda was waiting at home. I knew Henry was falling asleep without me.
“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” I asked.
“Right, right,” he said. He tapped his index finger against his lips. “There is just one more thing I need to ask you. Just a small request.”
CHAPTER THREE
Amanda and I had both been in several weddings over the years. They caused a lot of stress, and it always seemed as though the wedding party ended up growing irritated with the demands of the bride and the groom. Being in someone’s wedding could end even the most enduring friendship.
Still, if Blake wanted me by his side, there was no question I would do it. We’d been friends for too long. We’d been through too much.
My dad had died suddenly during our sophomore year of college. He just dropped dead of a heart attack with no warning signs at the age of forty-eight. He’d been in the garage moving some boxes around, come back in and told my mom he was hot, and then gone facedown onto the kitchen floor like a falling piano, his head against the dishwasher, his feet under the table. I found out pretty quickly that my parents didn’t have life insurance and that they hadn’t set aside enough money for me to continue in school.
The private college I attended was expensive, close to forty thousand dollars a year, and before I even went home for the funeral, my mom told me I might not be able to stay. I was still processing the reality of my dad’s death, so the news that I might have to leave college and all my friends nearly paralyzed me.
It was Blake who stepped up. He drove me home and went to the funeral with me. He bought me a new sport coat and helped me knot my tie. When we got back to school, and I was ready to pack my room and return home to work and enroll in community college, it was Blake who guided me through the morass of financial aid forms, helping me find a scholarship that allowed me to stay in school. I wouldn’t have made it through all that without him. And I wouldn’t have the life I had now if I hadn’t stayed in school.
And he’d stood up at our wedding as my best man. It felt like he’d been by my side through many of the most important events of the past ten years.
“What do you need?” I asked.
Blake carefully picked up his coffee mug and moved it to the side of the wooden table. Then he leaned forward so his head was more than halfway across the table. There was something about someone doing that in a public place that seemed odd but also inviting. So I leaned forward to hear him.
Why so much solemnity for a request he’d already made once before?
Blake spoke in a low voice. “When I say that Samantha and I have figured things out, that we’re really going to make it work this time and work for real, I mean it. I really mean it. I need her. And I think she needs me. It just . . . feels right between us.”
“I believe you.”
Up close his lips were cracked and dry, his teeth not quite as shining bright as I remembered.
“Well, the thing is, there’s a problem . . . ,” he said. “A loose thread. One that could turn into a noose around my neck if it isn’t taken care of.”
I tried to make sense of what he was saying, but I couldn’t. The confusion must have shown on my face, because Blake went on.
“You know I haven’t always been perfect, Ryan. I’ve really struggled with the idea of committing and settling down. It works for me up to a point, but then when we get engaged, and we start to talk about wedding dates, I start to get itchy. My skin literally crawls.” He shrugged. He seemed to be admitting defeat in the face of the kinds of problems most of us outgrew or pushed aside as we got older. “That’s why this is our third go-around. I haven’t quite been able to take that last step, to just accept my good fortune and happiness with Sam and go for it.”