Page 60 of Double Booked

“Want some?” his dad asked.

“Yes, please.” Cole sat down at the kitchen table while Robert poured them each a cup. He glanced around while Robert doctored up his coffee, thinking the place looked exactly the same as the last time he’d visited. When was that again? It must have been quite a while ago, because he couldn’t remember.

Robert set a steaming mug in front of him and then sat across from the table with his own cup. The men looked at each other in silence, and Cole questioned his decision to come here.

Finally, Robert broke the ice. “So, what’s on your mind?”

Cole wasn’t sure where to start. He couldn’t pass this off as a casual visit because his dad would see right through him. “There’s this woman…”

Robert chuckled gruffly. “Of course there is.”

“Never mind,” Cole said. How could he expect to get good advice from his father, who’d left his family behind, and hadn’t settled down since? Coming here was a mistake.

“You came all this way, so tell me.” Robert blew on his coffee and then took a drink.

“How did you know you loved Mom?” Cole blurted out.

“Love? Is that what this is about?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Robert sighed and averted his eyes. Cole decided his dad must be feeling as uncomfortable as him.

“Love is different for everyone. As for me, I knew when I couldn’t stop thinking about her.”

Cole nodded, encouraging him to continue.

“She was always on my mind, even when she wasn’t with me. She became a part of me, in a sense. Do you know what I mean?”

He did, and that was what scared him. “I think so.”

“It got to a point where I couldn’t imagine my life without her, so I asked her to marry me.”

Cole shifted in the seat. “But it didn’t last.”

Robert stared into his cup. “The biggest mistake of my life.”

“Asking her to marry you?”

“No. Leaving her.”

It was so unexpected; he didn’t know what to say.

“Enough about me. Who is this woman of yours?”

“I wouldn’t say she’s mine.”

“But you want her to be, right?”

Cole sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“It always is.” Robert took another drink.

“I haven’t known her that long.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“She just came off a break-up.”