Wait? I’m thinking about technology and how quickly content can be released on demand today and Doug is talking about a comedy show. We went to a jazz performance.
“What are you talking about? We never went to a comedy show together.” I wouldn’t do that because I know he’s practically addicted to those things. The guy repeats Kevin Hart lines like a parrot half the time when we hang out. The irony is that both of us much more closely resemble his buddy The Rock.
“Now you’re gonna lie to me?”
“I’m not lying.”
“That hidden camera show, jerk.”
“We went to a jazz performance.”
“Jazz, comedy, whatever it was. I don’t give a shit. The fact of the matter is you were parading her all around town and didn’t even have the balls to tell me first. What a fucking friend you are.”
I take my hand from his face and stand, letting him up.
He’s right. Here I was wondering what I should tell him for the past week, when I should have just done the obvious thing and approached him directly. Heck, the guy is so torn up about it that he thought it was a comedy show and not a jazz performance. His mind must be racing. He must be going crazy and completely mixing up things in his head thinking about how his daughter got mixed up with his best friend…if he still even considers me that.
“You’re right,” I admit.
“Of course I’m right. Don’t tell me what I already know. And don’t tell me anything for that matter. Delete my number like I did yours…buddy.”
If you told me words could smell I would have laughed in your face, but the acrid smell that came of his last word is very real and it’s just lingering in the air right now as he walks off.
I want to puke and I’m not even sure exactly why.
I’m pissed at what just went down between us and most importantly I’m upset at myself.
I walk to my car and prepare to drive off, but stop. This is the same problem. I need to confront this problem I’ve just created head on.
I walk back inside and go to my office.
“Everything okay, boss?” Summer says, her head peeking around the corner of the door.
“Yeah, fine. I’ll get it figured out.”
“You always do.”
“Thanks,” I say, and her head disappears, replaced with the sound of footsteps down the hallway.
Yeah, I do always figure it out. But this time I might be stumped.
Permanently.
CHAPTER 18
Donovan
Two days later
I drive over to the basketball court at the park where we played a lot as kids.
It’s 2 a.m. and I’ve hit a lot of miracle shots here in our epic battles that would rage for hours on end.
But this time I’m hoping to hit the most epic shot of our friendship, and it’s the long shot of all long shots.
The goal? To put an end to his rage and let his daughter and I move forward in peace, and my best friend too.
I pull up to the park and the first part of my miracle is answered. I see him there taking free throws. It’s what he used to do when we were kids and he was trying to figure something out. It calms him, and I know after what he’s found out recently, calm is an emotion that he needs badly.
I shut off the engine and step out and into the night, moving toward the court.
“Court’s taken,” he says, not even turning to face me.
“Not here to challenge the winner or anything like that. Just want to grab some rebounds for ya.”
“No need,” he says, taking a shot that goes straight through the net. “I can’t miss tonight. My mind is perfectly clear for once. Once you cut the grass you can finally see the snakes.”
I purse my lips and lean against the fence.
“Is that all you see, or are you going to open your eyes and see your little girl is truly in love, and so am I. Are you going to see this isn’t some passing fancy and that this is real and there’s no stopping it, not that we’d ever want to.”
He winces at my words and takes another shot…which clanks off the rim. A miss and a bad one at that.
“Says you.”
“We don’t have to say anything because we’re at peace with our decision. Did I fuck it up by not talking to your first? Yeah, sure, but I don’t owe you an explanation for what I want to do with my life and neither does your daughter.” I pause. “You’re going to fuck around being a bitter guy and lose her if you’re not careful.”
“She’ll choose you over me and you know it.”
“That’s the point, Doug. This isn’t a game. This isn’t us competing against each other like we did when we were younger. We’re past that. We’re on the same team now. We have been for years. Don’t you get it?”
He takes another shot, but this time not from the free throw line. He misses badly. An air ball. I grab the rebound and throw it to him, but he doesn’t even make an attempt to catch it. He’s showing he doesn’t want anything from me. Literally nothing. He just lets the ball fly past him and then turns to get the ball as it ricochets off the other side of the fence.
I shake my head. The man is stubborn, which I’ve always kind of liked as it’s made him a great friend. When I mess up he sticks by me…until now.
He comes back with the ball, but this time he doesn’t take a shot. “How long has this been going on?” His voice is flat, lifeless almost.
“Nothing has been going on. It just happened a little over a week ago when she found some abandoned puppies in a dumpster by her apartment.”
“Her apartment?”
“Yeah. She moved back to town. She was trying to keep it a secret because she knows you’re stubborn and you’d do everything you can to help her. She knew you wouldn’t let her live over on that side of town.”
“What side of town? I heard she moved in with you.”
“You’re making the same mistake I made. You should’ve asked me directly.” I pause. “She didn’t move in with me. I went and took her, made her move into my place. She was living in an absolute shithole convinced that was the way to prove she was an adult. She’d compromised her safety and I questioned her sanity if I’m being honest. But more importantly I questioned my own. I couldn’t believe the feelings I immediately had for her. It was instant and there was no going back. I mean, if I’m being honest I’d had those feelings for four years, but I did my best to stay away. I told myself it wasn’t right, but I kept being drawn to her and when she showed up at my clinic, not even knowing it was mine, I knew it was fate…as corny as that sounds.”
“So you’re blaming it on fate?”
“Not at all. I take full responsibility. I was done waiting. I was ready to come find you and tell you. Those four years I’d waited were driving me crazy.’
“You mean to tell me you’ve been pursuing her since she was a kid?”
“Listen Doug! Open your damn ears. I didn’t pursue her. That’s the point. Something happened when she turned eighteen. A switch flipped inside me, but I thought it was wrong. That and I wanted her to go off and do her own thing, not to mention it was so sudden and she was your daughter. That’s why I waited four long years, knowing that my feelings for her would never go away, but pretending they might. Well, they didn’t go away all right…they somehow just got even stronger, which I didn’t even conceive to be a possibility being how instant my attraction was for her that moment four years prior.”
“So this has…” He stops, realizing he about misspoke without thinking first again.
I ball up my fingers into fists as the look on his face starts to grow even more intense, letting me know he might toss that damn ball at me, or throw a punch, any second now. At least there’s plenty of distance so I can react in time to either.
“I love her, Doug. It’s really that simple. I didn’t do anything. We didn’t do anything…nothing…until just over a week ago.
I can see his jaw clench under the overhead lights that light the court. It’s
like he’s on stage now, the spotlight on him, and I want to see how he’s going to perform, react, now that he knows the truth.
“You know I can’t just walk over there and shake your hand with a smile or something stupid like that.”
“It’s not stupid of you to do that. It’s not weak or anything you might be thinking. It’s just an acknowledgement that your daughter is grown up and it just so happens that she wants to be with me. I don’t want this to come out the wrong way, but maybe even because of the same reasons you might find me to be such a great friend. I hope those same qualities can be seen by everyone, including you and her. But I do have to admit my faults. I should have said something to you after things between us heated up. It was just so fast.”
“That’s enough.”
“I’m going to take care of her in every way, Doug. You’ll see. I’m going to treat her like the princess she is. Hell, she’s not even a princess anymore. She’s a queen. My queen, and I mean that with everything I’ve got. This isn’t some fleeting thing. This is forever and that’s how long I’m going to love, respect, protect, and honor her…and spoil her rotten.”
He mumbles something and for the first time I feel like I might be breaking through. He is my best friend after all. Surely my words have to count for something still. It’s not like he’s ever heard me talk about a woman this way before. Hell, he’s never even heard mention of a woman I like, let alone love.
Because I never have. Until her.
“Can you try and accept that?”
“I don’t know. Just leave me be, okay?”
He moves past me, but this time he’s careful not to throw a shoulder into me before he moves quickly to his Jeep and jumps in. He speeds off and I breathe out hard, walking over and picking up his basketball and walking back to the parking area.
It’s the first time in my life that I ever came to this court and didn’t take a shot, but in the way that matters I took my biggest one yet.
Okay, my second biggest one. The first was making her mine, but that wasn’t really a shot. We were meant to be together. There was no risk, everything came naturally.
Doug? That’s a different story.
I just hope he believed the one I just shared with him.
He should. I’ve never lied to him and it’s completely true, just like my love for his daughter.
Now all I can do is give him time, even though I don’t want to waste another second of my life without her by my side…officially.
I came here to get his blessing, but with or without it she will be mine in all ways.
All ways and always. Because without her there is no forever. There’s just a bunch of days repeating themselves with no meaning until I die.
Now I know the true meaning of life, because I know what it means to be in love, just as I told Doug I am with Delaney.
And now it’s time to tell her the same.
Or better yet…show her.
CHAPTER 19
Delaney
I move to the window, staring out into the night wondering where my man is, but not wondering too hard…because I know.
I know my dad goes to the park to shoot baskets sometimes when he can’t think straight, and I know Donovan does the same.
That’s where he is now. The second I felt his warmth leave the bed I knew that’s where he was headed. Little Spoon knows her Big Spoon. We haven’t been together long, but when he’s not there in bed with me I feel it instantly, even if he just gets up to get a glass of water or go to the restroom.
I know.
And as he pulls back up to the house I know where he’s been.
“Hey,” I say softly as he walks into the house.
“Hey,” he says, coming to me and wrapping his arms around me. He smells like the fresh night air and even though his clothes are a bit chilly it feels good, like the other side of the pillow. “I woke you when I left, huh?”
“Always. I need you in bed with me.”
He looks down at me, putting a small amount of space between our bodies so he can better see me.
“And I need you forever.”
He drops to one knee and opens his big hand. Where he’s cupping a tiny, black, felt box that is now perfectly placed in the center of his palm, which allows him to carefully flip back the lid.
It may be dark inside and out, but the moonlight flickers through the window, reflecting off the gigantic rock in the box.
A diamond for me.
And a diamond is forever.
“Yes!” I say.
“But I haven’t asked you yet. I have to—“
I reach down and grab his face, pulling him up to me and kissing him hard.
“You don’t have to ask. You always had me. I just want to be yours as soon as possible. Let’s not wait another second.”
“I like the sound of that.” He slides the ring on my finger. A perfect fit.
Suddenly he sweeps me off my feet and carries me into the bedroom…our bedroom, where I’ll never have to miss him again.
I know where he went and I know he did it for me. He tried and that’s more than I can ask.
And now we’re going to try our best to make a baby as soon as possible, although something inside me says that I’m already well on my way.
Call it a hunch. Call it intuition. Call it two perfect for each other people coming together, forever.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you.”
EPILOGUE
Delaney
One year later
“Guys! Dinner’s ready,” I yell out the window.
“We’ll be right in, honey.” dad yells. “It’s game point.”
I watch through the window as my dad tosses the ball to my man and then gets close to him, trying to play good defense so he can’t win.
I look just off to my right at the crib next to me where our little Dustin lies. “We already won, didn’t we sweetheart?”
Dustin wiggles a little and smiles. I turn off the oven and pull out the casserole, sitting it on the stovetop so it can cool a bit.
I carefully pick Dustin up from his crib and carry him to the window so he can watch his papa and his grampy play basketball outside.
“One day you’ll be out there with the big boys playing too.”
I take his little bitty itty hand and wave it to the window. He leaves it up, pressing it against the glass on his own as he stares out at the two men in his family…until drool falls out of his mouth.
I laugh and grab a rag to get him cleaned up.
“Yeah, daddy is easy to stare at isn’t he? I do it all the time,” I confess.
It’s true. After we got engaged we quickly bought a new house closer to the best schools in town. Donovan put up a basketball goal and would shoot hoops each night for about fifteen minutes while I prepared dinner.
It only took about a month to go by until my dad started showing up, and after another month they were best friend’s again.
I always knew they would be, but I also knew it would take time. I was daddy’s little girl after all, and he wasn’t going to let me go that easily.
In hindsight I’m okay that he took it so rough. Did I wish he would have been supportive from the get go? Of course. But the way he reacted showed how much he cared about me, in his own special way.
Once he found out I was pregnant then he turned into a big ol’ softie. He was telling everybody how he was going to be a grandpa and how amazing I looked the bigger I got. He was such a great support for me during the pregnancy and even still, but no one can compare to Donovan.
The man won’t let me lift a finger. When I was pregnant he treated me like I was a fragile piece of porcelain, handling me with extreme care as he was so obsessed with our child being inside me. He insisted I not take any medications while I was pregnant or during the delivery. He wanted our baby to be as natural as possible, or as organic as he first said before I reminded him that babies aren’t on some special aisle at Whole Foods.
Just the thought of him saying organic makes me laugh out loud, which has little Dustin doing the same.
I can’t wait to have another, and another and another. And I know I won’t have to because Donovan can’t keep his hands off me. Once Dustin did come then it was no holds barred in the bedroom again. Donovan gave me the throttling of a lifetime, which is exactly what I needed to get my mojo back.
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