But he insisted on holding Henry.
We tried to put him off. We said Henry needed to be fed and then go to sleep. But Blake insisted, saying we were like family, that he was “Uncle Blake” since neither one of us had siblings, and it wouldn’t be right for him not to hold our baby. I said we wanted to get him back to sleep. Blake wouldn’t let it go.
Due to loyalty and years of friendship with him, I finally relented and said Blake could hold Henry if we set him up on the couch.
Amanda’s eyes turned into more than daggers. They were giant icy broadswords directed right at me.
Blake was a good friend. I thought by showing trust, by sharing with him, we’d be showing him how we really felt.
Amanda took over then. She propped a department store’s worth of pillows around Blake, and then gently set the baby in his arms. She sat six inches away, watching with the vigilance of a new mother. She made a mama grizzly look laid-back and calm.
And it all went fine for ten minutes. Henry lay still, gurgling happily. Blake talked to him in a soothing voice. I even managed to take a photo, which I immediately posted on Instagram.
But then Blake decided to stand up. Without asking. And when he stood, he bumped Henry’s head against the glass lampshade next to the couch.
Immediately Henry began to wail. And Amanda moved to take Henry back so fast that a brief little tug-of-war ensued, as they both tried to hold the baby. For a second, I really thought Henry might end up on the floor.
But Amanda wrestled him from Blake’s arms. And a quick examination of his head showed that the bump against the lampshade had left only a small red mark. Henry quieted down, and Blake offered a halfhearted apology.
If he’d offered one that had sounded remotely sincere, he might have avoided Amanda’s wrath. And mine.
But he sounded so casual, so unconcerned about Henry’s well-being and the stress his actions had placed on us, that something had to give.
And Amanda hasn’t always been one for suppressing her feelings.
Amanda called him selfish and self-centered. Immature. Irresponsible.
Inconsiderate.
All the bad things we’d both thought about Blake for years but had never dared to say.
It all came pouring out that evening in our living room.
And I knew Amanda was mad at me too. And I couldn’t blame her.
I pushed Blake toward the door, trying to send him on his way and defuse the situation as much as possible. I told Blake he’d made a mistake, that all he’d had to do was stay on the couch and everything would have been fine.
Then Amanda told Blake he had no regard for anyone or anything. That he was careless and destructive. And she didn’t care if he never came back to our house.
Before he left, Blake turned back and said, “You think I don’t care about anyone? I have something to tell you, Amanda—you should talk to your husband about that.”
“What do you mean?” Amanda asked.
“Forget it,” Blake said. “I’ll just go.”
After I guided him out and went back in, Amanda told me she didn’t know if she could stand the thought of him coming back in the house when Henry was still a baby.
“Blake can see him again when Henry goes to college.”
Things cooled between Blake and me. We texted but didn’t see each other until that night when he’d appeared out of nowhere, saying my name in the dark.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Okay,” I said, “you’re getting married on Saturday, and we’re not invited. That’s okay. If you need me to do something to help you with the wedding, I will. You said you planned this all at the last minute. Do you need a photographer or something? A guy I know at work might be able to do it on short notice.”
Blake shook his head. “We’ve got all that covered. Band, photographer, flowers. It’s really going to be nice. I mean, if it happens.”
“If? What do you mean, if? I thought you’d patched it all up with Sam, mended the fences, and rebuilt the bridges.”
Blake started to say something, then stopped. His cheeks flushed again. He almost looked embarrassed.
I’d never seen anything embarrass Blake. And plenty of things over the years should have. But maybe not drinking allowed him to feel shame more acutely.
“Like I said, I was really open with this woman,” he said. “I could tell her anything about myself.”
“What did you tell her that’s a problem?”
“I put my thoughts and feelings about her down in writing. In some letters. If you follow me. It’s actually kind of romantic and old-fashioned. I mean, who writes those kinds of letters anymore? A hell of a lot better than changing your Facebook status to say you’re dating someone. Or to post something on Instagram with some gauzy filter. It was a grand gesture, right?”
I shook my head, trying not to say too much. But I couldn’t help myself. “It would have been grand if they’d been written for your future wife. Yes.”
Blake had always fancied himself something of a romantic. I was never sure he understood what the word really meant. From his point of view, being romantic meant falling in love easily, telling a woman whatever she wanted to hear in the moment, and dealing with the consequences later. In college, he had preferred to communicate with everyone, including his romantic interests, through the phone or face-to-face. He’d hated to text or e-mail. He’d never joined social media. He once showed me a note he wrote to a woman he dated casually in college. The flowery, sentimental language made me feel queasy, but it worked to convince the woman to date him for a month. Blake spun all of these choices as something romantic as well. He occasionally referred to himself as a man born in the wrong time, and he liked to mock my social media habits.
“Well, this woman has those letters. And I don’t.”
All of a sudden, I got it. “Are you saying she’s threatening to show them to Sam?”
Blake’s face unclenched for the first time in a few minutes. “More or less, that’s what she’s told me.”
“So what? You and Sam were broken up. You dated someone and gushed at her. Sam can’t hold that against you forever. Just get married and move on.”
Blake nodded. “I really laid it on with her. Look, I don’t know what all I said in the heat of the moment. I was just spilling my thoughts.”
“Then just come clean with Sam about what you may or may not have said, that you may have gotten a little carried away, and she’ll forget it. This is really odd behavior for you. Worrying so much about this. You’re all tied up in knots over what you said in a letter to this Jen. It’s no big deal.”