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“You can’t actually be serious?” I’m waiting for the punchline, or for him to break out in his famous contagious laugh and tell me he’s kidding. What a way to get me on Blake’s birthday. I wait a moment. But he doesn’t do anything of the sort. In fact, looking at him now, he’s anything but kidding.
“I am serious. I have them in the truck. I wanted to tell you?—”
“How long have you known?”
“Not long before we saw each other at the Stones Throw when we were planning Blake’s birthday.”
“Brook, this isn’t funny.”
“Do you see me laughing?” He places his hand on his hip and stands there looking down at me like the rogue cowboy he’s always been.
I stare up at him.
Brook is, and always has been, attractive. Now might not be the time for me to truly appreciate that, but here he stands in his dark jeans and his checked button-down tucked in. My eyes dip, to the shiny brass belt buckle with the Bassett Brothers bull head logo — cowboy boots and all. He took his hat off for the celebrations, and he even trimmed his beard. But his attractiveness has nothing to do with any of this… nothing at all. I’m mad at him.
“You’ve known this for a few weeks and you’ve said nothing!”
“I tried, E. I was waiting for the right time.” He holds his palms up in surrender.
“Does anyone know?”
“Only Gabe.”
I run a hand over my face, taking a slow breath as I do. “I can’t believe this.”
“I know, me either.”
“You told me what you had to say wasn’t bad!”
He bites his lip and holds his teeth there while I try to come to term with his words.
“You said, and I quote, ‘rest assured everything is fine’.”
“It’s nothing that can’t be remedied,” he says, a little too calmly. “I guess I’ve had a little longer to get used to the idea of my own stupidity.”
“You can say that again.”
“I didn’t want it to come out like this, on such a perfect day for Blake.”
“I guess I did ask for it,” I sigh, running my hand through my curls. “We really need to talk about this, but I have to go.”
“Go?” His eyebrows knit together as I edge to leave. I don’t know what to say to his confession but I need to try to make sense of this on my own.
“I’m sorry, Brook. I need to think about what this means. It’s not a small thing. What if I’d attempted to marry someone else in the five years we’ve been split!”
“But you didn’t, so that part is okay.”
“Okay?” I don’t mean to raise my voice at him, but it’s definitely getting louder the more we continue and Brook and I rarely fight, so I don’t want Blake’s day to end on a sour note, but it’s hardly my fault. Why the hell did I leave the most crucial part of the divorce to him?
“Look, we can talk about this. We can fix it,” he says.
I start to walk to the exit but he grabs my arm and I whirl around to face him, our eyes lock. His look is as serious as mine. “Brook, don’t.”
“I’m sorry, E. I really am.”
And when I really take in those big blue eyes, the eyes that I’ve known for a lifetime, the same ones I once thought were the windows to my soul, I see that he really is sorry about it.
The same eyes that assured me we were going to be together forever the night we unknowingly conceived our daughter. He always said things like that to me.
