“I’m not sure we can count Nolan as all the guys, but sure. Of course. How silly of me.”
Lauren and I had taught our son to read when he was four. Usually, I was proud of this, watching people’s jaws slack open as he perused the adult menu at restaurants, pronouncing words like linguine, parmesan, and Bolognese with ease. However, the minute he’d opened that bubble mower and read the recommended ages were twelve to thirty-six months, I’d never regretted anything more.
Cal had always been shit at buying gifts for Jack. He tried. He really did, but after the four-hundred-dollar ninja throwing stars he’d given my son for his third birthday, Lauren had forbidden Calvin from giving him anything other than cash or a donation to Jack’s college savings account.
Vanessa had not gotten the memo.
Still, I believed wholeheartedly in being grateful for the things you were given, and I worked hard to instill that in my son. But seriously, my boy was quite possibly the easiest kid in the world to shop for. He loved every sport imaginable. The last time Cal had been over to the house, Jack had wiped the floor with him at an extremely competitive game of lacrosse. Vanessa could have bought him any ball in existence and it would have been the highlight of his life. Actually, I believed those were the exact words I’d used when she’d texted me to ask what he might like. Yet Vanessa had gotten him a bubble-blowing lawn mower for toddlers.
I loved Cal, but the only thing worse than his taste in gifts was his taste in women.
“You don’t have to play with it, bud. How about first thing tomorrow morning, I give you a screwdriver and you can use my workbench in the garage to take it apart.”
His eyes lit. “Can I use the circular saw?”
Oh, yeah. He was totally my kid.
“Nope. If I send you back to your mom missing a finger, I’ll be missing my head. Now, come on and hurry up. I’m starving, and this tie is cutting off the blood to my brain.” I made a show of staggering from side to side, tugging at my collar. “Must. Get. This. Off.”
He giggled, and just as it had since the day I’d heard his first cry, the sound of his voice filled my heart in unimaginable ways.
Truth be told, I’d never wanted kids. After the way I’d grown up, bouncing around from relatives and foster care, I knew firsthand that not everyone was cracked up for parenthood. Though, at twenty-two, without so much as a serious girlfriend, I hadn’t given it a ton of thought, either.
However, that was all before I’d fallen in love with my best friend.
No. Not Cal. Though that would have been an interesting plot twist in my fucked-up life.
Lauren Rafferty. The girl next door.
Well, the girl next door to Cal. Her family had a boatload of money. No way had she lived in the slums with me. While she was a year younger than Cal and me, Lauren slipped right into our crew, making our duo a trio. Then, a year later, when Lex joined the ranks of Willowing Creek High, our trio became a quartet. The four of us did everything together. Lauren and I naturally gravitated to each other though. She had this laid-back, easygoing way about her that I so desperately needed in my life.
She didn’t judge when I unloaded a mountain of baggage about my mom or my desire to finally meet my dad so I could punch him in the fucking face. Lauren just smiled, told me to consider wearing my state championship ring when I punched him, and then passed me a can of Coke.
On the flip side, I didn’t judge her, either. I listened to her vent about her overbearing mother and her workaholic father. I just smiled and offered to let her borrow my ring, should she ever decide to punch him in the face.
It was never romantic between the two of us. That wasn’t how we worked. We were just two friends who understood each other in a way no one else could.
After Cal and I went off to The University of Georgia—me on a football scholarship, him on a path for medical school—things became strained for our little clique. Lex and Lauren had never been particularly close on their own, and without Cal and me there as buffers, they went their separate directions. However, when we came home for the holidays, everything fell back into place like nothing had changed.
Until my mom died. Then every-fucking-thing changed.
I’d just graduated college with a bachelor’s in communications—a.k.a.: the easiest, most useless degree UGA had to offer. Cal was heading to Emory, but the Lawsons had been kind enough to let me crash at their place while they, Lex, and her boyfriend spent the summer at their Hilton Head Island beach house.
I’d never forget that phone call. I hadn’t spoken to my mom in years, with the exception of when she called to borrow money, but the finality of finding out she was dead rocked me to the core.
I raged.
I collapsed.
And I was bitter as fuck that I even cared at all.
I don’t remember when she’d shown up. Or how she had known to come over to begin with. But when Lauren Rafferty appeared, the weight of the universe somehow seemed lighter. While everyone else was supportive and there for me, she never left my side that summer.
As my mother’s closest surviving relative, I was stuck with handling all the details. The funeral, the legalities, cleaning out her piece-of-shit apartment. God bless the Lawsons, they’d loaned me the money to pay for everything—a debt I repaid the second I was able.
But through it all, Lauren was there.
That was when I knew I loved her. It was the kind of love that burrowed deep into the marrow of my bones. She was beautiful, and funny, and sweet. What was there not to love?
One night in late August, days before she was supposed to start her last year at Georgia Tech, we got drunk and my dumb ass confessed my feelings. She was shocked. A little weirded out. But see the aforementioned drunk part.
Under the stars that night, Lauren and I had the most awkward, uncomfortable, horrible sex of my entire life.
Seriously, almost eight years later, I still cringed when I thought about it.
We decided the very next day that the love I was feeling deep in the marrow of my bones was the thank-you-for being-there-when-I-needed-you kind and not of the let-me-strip-you-naked variety. Four weeks later though, when she came to me crying and holding a pregnancy test, I was grateful there was at least some love between us, no matter the variety.
I’d been terrified about having a baby. Scared I was going to fail my kid the same way my parents had failed me. Scared that I was twenty-two, unemployed, living with my best friend’s family, and had no fucking idea what the hell I wanted to do with my life.
But once again, Lauren was there to quell the storm, and nine months later, our little man, Jackson David Bradley was born.
Let me be honest, there was nothing and I mean nothing that could test the bonds of a friendship more than co-parenting with someone. Through the years, there had been times when Lauren and I were at each other’s throats. There were also days when she’d call me to see if I needed anything from the grocery store, or I’d run over to her place to fix her leaky pipes. It was a process we took day by day, but all in all, I thought we were doing a pretty remarkable job at giving our son the life he deserved.
So, no. Long story long, I had zero interest in getting married.
Besides, while I was no expert, I assumed dating was required before the whole tying-the-knot thing anyway. I was far from celibate, but the idea of bringing another woman into Jack’s life and flipping our entire comfortable world upside down was a hard no. There was no amount of shit Cal, Lex, or even Lauren could give me that would change that.